In some or other ephemeral poll of which I have been told by multiple sources, Vienna is consistently ranked among the world’s most livable cities. Not to disparage the rich history and old world beauty of the place, but… really? I spent five nights in Austria, and as my semi-unfair rant last night to a generously sympathetic friend can attest, I have had quite enough.
I should begin with a disclaimer that my opinion may not be entirely unbiased. My main complaint about the city is its plethora of cigarette smokers. By my estimation, three out of four people in the rather crowded street are smoking, and the for whatever reason, that smokes seems far thicker and more irritating than any smoke I’ve had to deal with before. With that ratio, its only natural that they stop looking out for the non-smoking minority. Even inside, most place reeked. I tried to avoid it as much as I could, but by day three, I had progressed to a coughing, sneezing, choking allergy victim who couldn’t take a breath without wanting to vomit or cry. So… I didn’t like Vienna.
This misery may or may not have been exacerbated by the hostel I stayed in. A little ways out of the city center, I got a good deal on a bed for the duration of my stay. Actually, a rather fantastic deal when you consider that I had the six-bed dorm room and en suite bathroom to myself for the first three nights. Sometimes, while traveling, I forget how much I need my space. Not just alone time with my thoughts. I have plenty of that. But alone space, where I’m not constantly aware of any and everyone around me.
But then there were the issues with the hostel.
First was the mattresses and pillows, which I’m pretty sure were full of dust mites, which couldn’t have helped with the allergies. By night four I had to stop wearing my mouth guard to bed because I couldn’t breath through my nose, which then led to even worse headaches than I would have had with the allergies alone.
Second was the neighborhood. It got a bit better after the first day, but when I arrived Sunday evening it felt a bit like a flash back to Egypt. I was tired, and intended to get something to eat and go to bed, but it being Sunday evening, everywhere was closed. I wandered for a bit and eventually found a pizza place, but the wandering itself was horrid. Stares everywhere, exclusively from the large number of Turkish and Arab men populating the streets. It being Austria though, I was determined not to let it get to me. So I tried to eat my pizza in the park.
I’d barely sat down when a man sat down on the bench right next to mine, taking surreptitious glances at me out of the corner of his eye. It was about two minutes later that he asked me something in German which I didn’t understand. From his miming, I am fairly certain he wanted to know if I had a phone. Since he had his own phone in his hand though, he either wanted my number or was out of pay as you go credit and wanted to make a call. My pessimism assumes that if it was the latter, it was probably that heinous Arab tactic wherein they use your phone to call themselves and then have your number whether you wanted to give it to them or not. Either way, I was not happy. I tried to brush it off as not understanding, but he was insistent, so I eventually glared at him, said something angrily, and stormed off to eat my pizza in peace at the hostel, furious at being excluded from enjoying public spaces because of my gender. Again.
The neighborhood did get better once it was the work week again. There was a train station nearby and a large shopping center that seemed to do fair business with not creepy people who didn’t stare at me. I even ate in the area a couple times, though never again sitting in the park. I’ll get to those later, I expect, but as the title is meant to suggest, this post will probably be a lot of jumping around.
The final issue with the hostel was the other people who were staying there. Most of them seemed to be friends or family of residents in the area, who would come in to the lounge and hang out like it was their living room. That meant we had large groups of loud, drunk, Turkish and Azerbaijani men taking up the common areas most evenings. There was also another creepy old Italian man who started mocking me to the others in the room when I refused his slovenly offer of beer. Alas, there was no where else to escape to with my roommate (singular that night) asleep and my laundry in the machine. I ignored him as best I could.
Then there was the matter of my roommates on the fourth night, the only other night I wasn’t alone. This was my first night without my mouthpiece, and also the worst night for my allergies by far. I had attempted to go to bed early, failed through my sniffling and sneezing, and eventually nodded off around one in the morning. A few hours later, I was woken by the slam of the door, the lights going on and off, and a lot of loud shouting and laughing in rapid, clearly slurred German.
My first roommates, after three nights alone, were a pair of veeeery drunk German girls. Well, to be fair, they might not have been German, but they were speaking German. To me, as it were. I didn’t realize at first, seeing as I was 1) still waking up and 2) assuming they could see I had been asleep to begin with and 3) not understanding a word of German even when fully healthy, awake, and coherent.
I eventually drug myself out of my half comatose state to see a half-naked large German girl sitting on the bed opposite me, elbows on her knees, staring at me intently as she rattled on in that warp speed German.
“No German,” I mumbled, burying my face in my pillow. Why couldn’t they just let me sleep?
“Phone connection.” She responded with that same intensity. “I can use your phone connection?” And she picked up my phone from where it lay charging next to me on my bed, pointing at the place where the charger met the phone. I was too tired to argue, or talk around it, and really what did I care? So I mumbled another, “sure, whatever,” unplugged my phone, and threw the charger at her so I could go back to bed. Or at least try until they finally settled down what felt like ages later.
This was three in the morning, according to my phone. At five, I woke up because I had to use the restroom. I still wasn’t terribly coherent, but I did notice enough to see that neither girl had made her bed with the sheets provided, opting instead to curl up on the bare mattress with uncovered pillows and duvets, which helps explain the dust mites. At six in the morning, they left as noisily as they had arrived and I was finally able to lay there for an hour in peace, interrupted only by my own sniffling and frustrated sighs.
And all of this even before I start telling you what I’ve been doing. Whoops. Let’s rewind a bit.
So on my way from Ljubljana to Vienna, I had opted to take a slightly longer route than was strictly necessary. By adding an hour to my journey, I could cover two of the three legs of the Alps tour from Vienna I had planned later, thus possibly saving me a sightseeing day. There was a tiny problem with this plan, however. Namely, people.
My planned route was Ljubljana, Slovenia -> Villach, Austria -> Salzburg, Austria -> Vienna. On the first leg, while finishing my last blog post, I shared a six-person compartment with two Turks and a Slovenian. Due to a rushed transfer, I ended up boarding the first class car out of Villach, intending to walk through to the second class seats, but was soon stopped by the Slovenian man from the train before, coming out of one of the first class compartments. He wanted to know if this train stopped in a teeny-tiny village whose name I’ve already forgotten. I didn’t know, but I was sure the rail planner app on my phone did, so I ducked into the compartment to lend my assistance.
It did, in fact, stop there, allowing the Slovenian man to relax into a first class seat for which I was sure he didn’t have a ticket. No one had come to claim the compartment though, and a passing conductor hadn’t seemed to mind, so I settled in to first class too, figuring if worse came to worse I could always move. The other window seats were probably full up by then anyway.
As much as I wanted to look out the window and enjoy the Alps though, the Slovenian man had other things in mind. Clearly unimpressed, he just wanted to chat, and I didn’t want to turn down a chance to learn more about Slovenian people and culture. It turns out he was a migrant worker digging holes for warmth in Switzerland. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but that was the only way he could explain it in English. He’d been to visit his family for the weekend and was not back to work in Salzburg.
It was interesting, to see a side of European migrant culture, but it wasn’t the most fascinating discussion I’d ever had. The man, Mihail, didn’t seem interested in much more than smoking and making money. Nevertheless, by the time he realized his stop was approaching, he started making the most unsubtle of overtures, asking me to go to Switzerland with him, either on that train or when I was done in Vienna. Despite the idea being completely ridiculous, and me not being the least bit interested, he was actually rather polite about it. At the very least, he wasn’t creepy, old, or Italian. I declined anyway.
The train from Salzburg to Vienna wasn’t as Alpsy as I had expected, making me grateful I hadn’t taken a full day out for a tour. I still got to sit by the window and enjoy the view, but by the time I arrived in Vienna all I wanted was a good meal and a comfy bed. Alas, I was to have neither. Because it was Sunday.
I chalk up what I have dubbed the Bahn Disaster of Vienna to poor planning on my part. You see, Vienna has two metro systems, the U-Bahn and the S-Bahn. My Eurail Pass allows me free travel on the S-Bahn, but the U-Bahn I still have to pay, and the prices in my opinion are quite exorbitant for a metro. I wasn’t bothered though. I’d just take the S-Bahn, right? There were fewer stations, and fewer trains, but despite a lack of posted schedule on line it sounded like the trains ran frequently enough that it wouldn’t be a problem. Well, it wasn’t. Except on Sunday.
On Sunday, you see, the trains that usually run every five or ten minutes slow to running no more than once every hour. I didn’t know this, however, and so I hopped one train to a connecting station at the far end of the city only to realize I had missed the train I needed from there by a single minute and the next didn’t come until ten o’clock. Well, I was far too tired to wait for ten o’clock.
So I paid for a U-Bahn ticket, but then that ticket needed a transfer ticket, and by the time I reached the station by my hostel I was exhausted and grumpy and in a fair bit of pain. But remember what I said about the hostel neighborhood? Yeah, that just made it worse. Anyway, I tried to brush it off, sure that the Vienna city center the next day would make up for it. And I mean… I wasn’t entirely wrong?
I woke the next morning and took the forty minute walk to the city center, enjoying the elegant Austrian architecture on the way. The feel of the city changes drastically as soon as you pass north of the local train station, so it was actually a pleasant walk. I passed the State Opera House, the City Hall where they’ve been hosting a summer music film festival, and Hofburg Palace, the sprawling winter residence of the Habsburgs now housing government offices, a library, and something like a dozen museums.
I purchased a ticket to tour the State Rooms, which also included entrance to the Imperial Silver Collection and the Sisi Museum. It was all quite impressive, and I especially enjoyed learning about Empress Elisabeth ‘Sisi’ of Austria, who has become something of a cult figure in Austrian history.
Following the Hofburg I stopped by two important local churches, St. Peter’s, where I was just in time for a lovely free organ concert, and St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Then I was off in search of one of those kitschy touristy symbols of the city, the Riesenrad ferris wheel.
I expected the Riesenrad to be a smaller version of the London Eye, which I suppose it more or less was. The ferris wheel was located in what I read as a quaint little park themed with Austrian cultural heritage of the schnitzel and lederhosen variety, but then I kept walking, and walking, and walking. And it wasn’t a tiny park at all. Turns out there’s a massive theme park called Praterstern smack dab in the middle of Vienna, no entrance fee required. Most of the rides cost between four and twelve euros a go and overpriced carnival games abound, but the food is reasonably priced, and I think each individual attraction is privately owned. I’d never seen a set up like it before, but it was fascinating to experience, especially when I didn’t have to pay to get in.
By the time I was done with the park, my feet had started to hurt. Considering I was wearing my new shoes though, and it had taken a full eight hours and a bit of swelling in my feet for it to happen, I thought that was pretty good. The Danube wasn’t too far away though, and I thought this might be my only chance to see it from Vienna, so I decided to keep walking.
The view of the river was lovely, though I declined to cross into the park on the other side. It was getting late, and you know how I get when the exhaustion sets in, so I headed back to the hostel for an early night.
The next morning I was up early enough for a lovely day trip to Bratislava, but for the sake of coherency I’m going to move on to the day after, which was once again spent in Vienna. That ticket I’d bought at the Hofburg was good for another palace and collection too, so I thought to make the most of it and set out for those on Wednesday.
First came Schonbrunn Palace, the summer residence of the Habsburgs, where I was happy to discover a more detailed history of the dynasty as a whole. The Schonbrunn is also hosting a summer film festival in the gardens, and quite nice gardens they are. It is unfortunate, however, that the weather was rather drear that morning, and I declined to stay and explore. This was also the onset of the worst of my allergies, so I didn’t want to exasperate them with pollen if indeed it wasn’t cigarette smoke or dust that was the problem.
After the Schonbrunn came a tour of the Imperial Furniture Collection, accumulated for those palaces which weren’t furnished year round (i.e. most of them). By the time I was done there, my allergies were getting so out of hand that I had no choice but to stop and buy medicine. It was expensive, but it definitely made a difference, if not enough of one to stop the misery or even help me sleep. After three times the recommended dose though, I finally wasn’t sneezing buckets of snot on everyone and everything, so that was good.
From there I took the long way home, giving me a chance to stop by the last of the major palaces in downtown Vienna, Belvedere Palace. It’s an extremely expensive art museum now, so I didn’t go in, but the views from the outside were lovely as well and the walk there led me past some stunning monuments.
Over the course of these two days, I also made a point to try out some of the local cuisine. Viennese food, like most European food, is fairly meat heavy, but I think I’ve found my gastronomic calling in the sampling of desserts. First there was palatschinken, the Viennese answer the crepe, then Almdudler, an exclusively Viennese soft drink, and finally Sachertorte, a Viennese chocolate cake made with apricot preserves. I paid far too much for that last one, but it was at a lovely little cafe that made for the perfect place to relax after a long day, so I’m going to call it worth it. The palatschinken, on the other hand, was made by a kind old Turkish man whom I only realized was Turkish after I’d mimed my way through the ordering process. At least I was able to thank him appropriately in coherent human speech.
Now! For the days trips.
My first day trip out of Vienna was destined for Bratislava, Slovakia. I was surprised, upon my departure from the train station, that the entire city looked so obviously communist. As I mentioned in Slovenia, there were certainly areas with communist flair, but old town Ljubljana had a charm all its own. Well, as it turns out, so does Bratislava. I was just lost without realizing it.
After walking half an hour in the wrong direction from the train station, I eventually realized my mistake and turned around. The city is still less pretty than a lot of places I’ve been, but there have been some efforts in beautification, not least of which is the smattering of statutes strewn about the town.
Even with my minor delay, I made it to the old city center for my free walking tour with plenty of time. We learned a lot about Slovakian history and culture, including the communist legacy, the intense rivalry with the Czechs, and the Slovakian penchant for hockey. I was also interested to learn about an Easter tradition of dumping buckets of water on young girls and smacking their rear ends with sticks for luck, a tradition straight out of ancient Rome. I mentioned as much to my guide, but I don’t think she understood me, let alone knew what I was talking about.
It was the rivalry that actually consumed most of the tour. Our guide was adamant about stating and then restating all of the events or traditions attributed to Prague that were actually born in Bratislava. It was clear that Bratislava, or at least this tour company in Bratislava, is trying to boost tourism. The guide even lamented Bratislavan appearances in Hollywood movies like Hostel and Eurotrip that drove tourism down by 75%. To be fair, Hostel was an entirely inaccurate representation. Eurotrip on the other hand… wasn’t quite as far from the truth… You see, the communist rulers of Czechoslovakia decided amongst themselves that Prague was going to be the classic, historic city while Bratislava was going to be “modernized.” So basically, they knocked down everything pretty and threw up giant metal monsters to herald in “progress.”
After the tour, the weather was getting gross again, and I didn’t want to linger in the rain. I stopped by a local restaurant to splurge on a plate of traditional potato dumplings in a sauce of goat cheese, which was delicious, and then headed south for the train home from a different station than the one at which I had arrived. That walk south was possibly more informative than much of the rest of my walking.
The guide had mentioned the neighborhood through which I would pass, Petrzalka, as the prime example of communist architecture in Bratislava. I couldn’t help but laugh then when I crossed the Danube to find a neighborhood that reminded me of nothing so much a the urban fringe of America. Shopping malls, decently maintained cookie cutter apartment buildings, and a complete unfriendliness to any and all manner of pedestrians. I was forced to wind back and forth across the same highway no less than four times on my journey to the train station, heading ten minutes out of my way only to come back fifty meters from where I’d started. It was a good thing I’d left the city center early, because while I didn’t beat the steady light showers that had caught me without my umbrella, at least it gave me the extra time I needed to make my train on time.
The second day trip on Thursday, to Budapest, was a little more eventful. My morning train from Vienna was crowded - more crowded than any train I’ve ridden thus far. Because I was riding without a reservation, I was kicked out my seat twice before realizing that there weren’t any seats left and retired to an empty little niche in one of the spaces between coaches meant for baby carriage parking.
It was comfortable enough sitting on the floor, especially considering I only had my purse with me at the time. The downside though was I hadn’t any windows. I got a lot of reading done though, and the compartment all to myself on the way back more than made up for it.
As for the city of Budapest, it is firmly on my list of places I need to go back. First of all, the city is gorgeous. The banks of Danube shining in the golden midday light are especially awe inspiring, and I could have stared at them for ages. I didn’t have ages though.
Most of my time in Budapest was taken up by the walking tour I did there as well. Our guide did a lovely job of summing up the history of the Kingdom from the first settlers arriving from the vicinity of modern day Mongolia up through the fall of the Soviet Union and Hungary’s increasing integration into the European Union.
Hungary isn’t part of the Euro Zone yet, still using Hungarian Forints, but that’s a good thing for me. Things in Hungary were dirt cheap. Like… dirt. For my few hours in the city I took out the equivalent of about €13/$17. After buying far too much langos (the Hungarian answer to pizza with lots of goat cheese and onions) and ice cream in the most touristy area for lunch, plus tipping my tour guide generously, I had only spent about a third of that. Since the tour had run over and I’d missed the train I wanted, and it really wasn’t worth changing €8, I decided I might as well start walking to the far train station, spending indiscriminately on the way.
My first purchases were local food. Hungarian strudel, stuffed with roasted poppy seeds, chimney cake, covered in cinnamon sugar, and this little candy bar our tour guide told us about that’s more or less chocolate covered cheesecake. With the exception of the cheesecake, I bought the others at highly inflated prices, and still I had two-fifths of my forints left. This seemed like the perfect time to buy a skirt.
I wandered in and out of a few shops that were actually too expensive. Not because they were actually expensive, but because they cost more than the €5 I had left. Then I found a shop with a second hand black skirt for €3, after the exchange rate. It wasn’t a flowy peasant skirt like I’d wanted, but it was knee length and fit and was €3. So I took it up to the counter where the lady proceeded to insist it was not three euros, but one.
Well, by that point it was time to catch my train, and I still have nearly a thousand forints left. So, the moral of the story is you can’t give money away in Hungary. Well, I’m sure I could have given it away, but… It was a nice change, not to be watching my pennies. And I have a skirt!
Despite getting back late from Budapest, I took the opportunity to do my laundry that night so I could just pack up and leave in the morning. I was ready to be well shot of Austria. Now I’m on the train to Prague, and yet the excitement isn’t over.
Having found the perfect window seat for my journey in the far fron carriage, I’d just settled in to start writing this post when a group of no less than a dozen death metal enthusiasts smelling of smoke, booze, and the unwashed dogs that were accompanying them, filed in to sit a few rows down. It was the smoke that most bothered me, paired with the fact that they were blaring their death metal. I expected someone to tell them to turn it down. Might have myself if I spoke German. I was very seriously considering moving despite my perfect seat on an otherwise full train. I couldn’t have handled that all the way to Prague. But it was the conductor that got to them first.
I’m not sure what was said, but the conductor seemed unamused, and I overheard one of the metal heads telling his friend in English something about the next station. Well, the next station was certainly important, because that was where the police got on. I would say “oh, to be a fly on that wall,” but I was better. I was a person in that carriage. But fly or person, it didn’t do me much good without the German.
As best I could tell, the metal heads didn’t have tickets. Or maybe they had too much alcohol? Whatever it was, no one seemed angry, exactly. The police checked their passports, and got on and off the train a couple times, and then the metal heads groaned a bit, and then they were escorted from the train, still swigging from their liquor and beer bottles. It was rather a longer process than I would have expected, resulting in a thirty minute delay, but considering how much nicer the ride has gotten since, I don’t mind in the least.
The Czech Republic is beautiful so far, by the way. Lots of trees and rolling hills, like a more developed, less extreme Slovenia. And I can breathe again. And the people on the train, metal heads excluded, seem very nice. I think they were German anyway though. It sounded like they were headed to Hamburg.
Also, a few small notes that I think I’ve missed:
1. I definitely got that job on the French canal boat in August. I will have to reserve my train ticket down when I get to Germany, and then I will be working on the canals for a few weeks until I head back to London and on to my cruise. I even bought a French Dictionary & Grammar Summary from a university book store in Bratislava in preparation, which I feel was a very good investment. Unfortunately, there is no wifi on the canal boat. I even had to mail a letter to my future boss to introduce myself. I will still be available on my phone, but posts may be few and far between. There will, however, be a new blog with the url ‘laurenonaboat,’ spanning the time of my cruise as well.
2. I failed my Foreign Service Exam by 3.3 points, which is less than a quarter of a percent. So if anyone has any bright ideas about what I might do for the next year until I can take the exam again, please let me know.
3. I feel like I’m missing a number three, but I can’t think of it, so…. bye?
I should begin with a disclaimer that my opinion may not be entirely unbiased. My main complaint about the city is its plethora of cigarette smokers. By my estimation, three out of four people in the rather crowded street are smoking, and the for whatever reason, that smokes seems far thicker and more irritating than any smoke I’ve had to deal with before. With that ratio, its only natural that they stop looking out for the non-smoking minority. Even inside, most place reeked. I tried to avoid it as much as I could, but by day three, I had progressed to a coughing, sneezing, choking allergy victim who couldn’t take a breath without wanting to vomit or cry. So… I didn’t like Vienna.
This misery may or may not have been exacerbated by the hostel I stayed in. A little ways out of the city center, I got a good deal on a bed for the duration of my stay. Actually, a rather fantastic deal when you consider that I had the six-bed dorm room and en suite bathroom to myself for the first three nights. Sometimes, while traveling, I forget how much I need my space. Not just alone time with my thoughts. I have plenty of that. But alone space, where I’m not constantly aware of any and everyone around me.
But then there were the issues with the hostel.
First was the mattresses and pillows, which I’m pretty sure were full of dust mites, which couldn’t have helped with the allergies. By night four I had to stop wearing my mouth guard to bed because I couldn’t breath through my nose, which then led to even worse headaches than I would have had with the allergies alone.
Second was the neighborhood. It got a bit better after the first day, but when I arrived Sunday evening it felt a bit like a flash back to Egypt. I was tired, and intended to get something to eat and go to bed, but it being Sunday evening, everywhere was closed. I wandered for a bit and eventually found a pizza place, but the wandering itself was horrid. Stares everywhere, exclusively from the large number of Turkish and Arab men populating the streets. It being Austria though, I was determined not to let it get to me. So I tried to eat my pizza in the park.
I’d barely sat down when a man sat down on the bench right next to mine, taking surreptitious glances at me out of the corner of his eye. It was about two minutes later that he asked me something in German which I didn’t understand. From his miming, I am fairly certain he wanted to know if I had a phone. Since he had his own phone in his hand though, he either wanted my number or was out of pay as you go credit and wanted to make a call. My pessimism assumes that if it was the latter, it was probably that heinous Arab tactic wherein they use your phone to call themselves and then have your number whether you wanted to give it to them or not. Either way, I was not happy. I tried to brush it off as not understanding, but he was insistent, so I eventually glared at him, said something angrily, and stormed off to eat my pizza in peace at the hostel, furious at being excluded from enjoying public spaces because of my gender. Again.
The neighborhood did get better once it was the work week again. There was a train station nearby and a large shopping center that seemed to do fair business with not creepy people who didn’t stare at me. I even ate in the area a couple times, though never again sitting in the park. I’ll get to those later, I expect, but as the title is meant to suggest, this post will probably be a lot of jumping around.
The final issue with the hostel was the other people who were staying there. Most of them seemed to be friends or family of residents in the area, who would come in to the lounge and hang out like it was their living room. That meant we had large groups of loud, drunk, Turkish and Azerbaijani men taking up the common areas most evenings. There was also another creepy old Italian man who started mocking me to the others in the room when I refused his slovenly offer of beer. Alas, there was no where else to escape to with my roommate (singular that night) asleep and my laundry in the machine. I ignored him as best I could.
Then there was the matter of my roommates on the fourth night, the only other night I wasn’t alone. This was my first night without my mouthpiece, and also the worst night for my allergies by far. I had attempted to go to bed early, failed through my sniffling and sneezing, and eventually nodded off around one in the morning. A few hours later, I was woken by the slam of the door, the lights going on and off, and a lot of loud shouting and laughing in rapid, clearly slurred German.
My first roommates, after three nights alone, were a pair of veeeery drunk German girls. Well, to be fair, they might not have been German, but they were speaking German. To me, as it were. I didn’t realize at first, seeing as I was 1) still waking up and 2) assuming they could see I had been asleep to begin with and 3) not understanding a word of German even when fully healthy, awake, and coherent.
I eventually drug myself out of my half comatose state to see a half-naked large German girl sitting on the bed opposite me, elbows on her knees, staring at me intently as she rattled on in that warp speed German.
“No German,” I mumbled, burying my face in my pillow. Why couldn’t they just let me sleep?
“Phone connection.” She responded with that same intensity. “I can use your phone connection?” And she picked up my phone from where it lay charging next to me on my bed, pointing at the place where the charger met the phone. I was too tired to argue, or talk around it, and really what did I care? So I mumbled another, “sure, whatever,” unplugged my phone, and threw the charger at her so I could go back to bed. Or at least try until they finally settled down what felt like ages later.
This was three in the morning, according to my phone. At five, I woke up because I had to use the restroom. I still wasn’t terribly coherent, but I did notice enough to see that neither girl had made her bed with the sheets provided, opting instead to curl up on the bare mattress with uncovered pillows and duvets, which helps explain the dust mites. At six in the morning, they left as noisily as they had arrived and I was finally able to lay there for an hour in peace, interrupted only by my own sniffling and frustrated sighs.
And all of this even before I start telling you what I’ve been doing. Whoops. Let’s rewind a bit.
So on my way from Ljubljana to Vienna, I had opted to take a slightly longer route than was strictly necessary. By adding an hour to my journey, I could cover two of the three legs of the Alps tour from Vienna I had planned later, thus possibly saving me a sightseeing day. There was a tiny problem with this plan, however. Namely, people.
My planned route was Ljubljana, Slovenia -> Villach, Austria -> Salzburg, Austria -> Vienna. On the first leg, while finishing my last blog post, I shared a six-person compartment with two Turks and a Slovenian. Due to a rushed transfer, I ended up boarding the first class car out of Villach, intending to walk through to the second class seats, but was soon stopped by the Slovenian man from the train before, coming out of one of the first class compartments. He wanted to know if this train stopped in a teeny-tiny village whose name I’ve already forgotten. I didn’t know, but I was sure the rail planner app on my phone did, so I ducked into the compartment to lend my assistance.
It did, in fact, stop there, allowing the Slovenian man to relax into a first class seat for which I was sure he didn’t have a ticket. No one had come to claim the compartment though, and a passing conductor hadn’t seemed to mind, so I settled in to first class too, figuring if worse came to worse I could always move. The other window seats were probably full up by then anyway.
As much as I wanted to look out the window and enjoy the Alps though, the Slovenian man had other things in mind. Clearly unimpressed, he just wanted to chat, and I didn’t want to turn down a chance to learn more about Slovenian people and culture. It turns out he was a migrant worker digging holes for warmth in Switzerland. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but that was the only way he could explain it in English. He’d been to visit his family for the weekend and was not back to work in Salzburg.
It was interesting, to see a side of European migrant culture, but it wasn’t the most fascinating discussion I’d ever had. The man, Mihail, didn’t seem interested in much more than smoking and making money. Nevertheless, by the time he realized his stop was approaching, he started making the most unsubtle of overtures, asking me to go to Switzerland with him, either on that train or when I was done in Vienna. Despite the idea being completely ridiculous, and me not being the least bit interested, he was actually rather polite about it. At the very least, he wasn’t creepy, old, or Italian. I declined anyway.
The train from Salzburg to Vienna wasn’t as Alpsy as I had expected, making me grateful I hadn’t taken a full day out for a tour. I still got to sit by the window and enjoy the view, but by the time I arrived in Vienna all I wanted was a good meal and a comfy bed. Alas, I was to have neither. Because it was Sunday.
I chalk up what I have dubbed the Bahn Disaster of Vienna to poor planning on my part. You see, Vienna has two metro systems, the U-Bahn and the S-Bahn. My Eurail Pass allows me free travel on the S-Bahn, but the U-Bahn I still have to pay, and the prices in my opinion are quite exorbitant for a metro. I wasn’t bothered though. I’d just take the S-Bahn, right? There were fewer stations, and fewer trains, but despite a lack of posted schedule on line it sounded like the trains ran frequently enough that it wouldn’t be a problem. Well, it wasn’t. Except on Sunday.
On Sunday, you see, the trains that usually run every five or ten minutes slow to running no more than once every hour. I didn’t know this, however, and so I hopped one train to a connecting station at the far end of the city only to realize I had missed the train I needed from there by a single minute and the next didn’t come until ten o’clock. Well, I was far too tired to wait for ten o’clock.
So I paid for a U-Bahn ticket, but then that ticket needed a transfer ticket, and by the time I reached the station by my hostel I was exhausted and grumpy and in a fair bit of pain. But remember what I said about the hostel neighborhood? Yeah, that just made it worse. Anyway, I tried to brush it off, sure that the Vienna city center the next day would make up for it. And I mean… I wasn’t entirely wrong?
I woke the next morning and took the forty minute walk to the city center, enjoying the elegant Austrian architecture on the way. The feel of the city changes drastically as soon as you pass north of the local train station, so it was actually a pleasant walk. I passed the State Opera House, the City Hall where they’ve been hosting a summer music film festival, and Hofburg Palace, the sprawling winter residence of the Habsburgs now housing government offices, a library, and something like a dozen museums.
Note: This is the back, but I didn't photograph the front, so... eh.
I purchased a ticket to tour the State Rooms, which also included entrance to the Imperial Silver Collection and the Sisi Museum. It was all quite impressive, and I especially enjoyed learning about Empress Elisabeth ‘Sisi’ of Austria, who has become something of a cult figure in Austrian history.
Following the Hofburg I stopped by two important local churches, St. Peter’s, where I was just in time for a lovely free organ concert, and St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Then I was off in search of one of those kitschy touristy symbols of the city, the Riesenrad ferris wheel.
I expected the Riesenrad to be a smaller version of the London Eye, which I suppose it more or less was. The ferris wheel was located in what I read as a quaint little park themed with Austrian cultural heritage of the schnitzel and lederhosen variety, but then I kept walking, and walking, and walking. And it wasn’t a tiny park at all. Turns out there’s a massive theme park called Praterstern smack dab in the middle of Vienna, no entrance fee required. Most of the rides cost between four and twelve euros a go and overpriced carnival games abound, but the food is reasonably priced, and I think each individual attraction is privately owned. I’d never seen a set up like it before, but it was fascinating to experience, especially when I didn’t have to pay to get in.
By the time I was done with the park, my feet had started to hurt. Considering I was wearing my new shoes though, and it had taken a full eight hours and a bit of swelling in my feet for it to happen, I thought that was pretty good. The Danube wasn’t too far away though, and I thought this might be my only chance to see it from Vienna, so I decided to keep walking.
The view of the river was lovely, though I declined to cross into the park on the other side. It was getting late, and you know how I get when the exhaustion sets in, so I headed back to the hostel for an early night.
The next morning I was up early enough for a lovely day trip to Bratislava, but for the sake of coherency I’m going to move on to the day after, which was once again spent in Vienna. That ticket I’d bought at the Hofburg was good for another palace and collection too, so I thought to make the most of it and set out for those on Wednesday.
First came Schonbrunn Palace, the summer residence of the Habsburgs, where I was happy to discover a more detailed history of the dynasty as a whole. The Schonbrunn is also hosting a summer film festival in the gardens, and quite nice gardens they are. It is unfortunate, however, that the weather was rather drear that morning, and I declined to stay and explore. This was also the onset of the worst of my allergies, so I didn’t want to exasperate them with pollen if indeed it wasn’t cigarette smoke or dust that was the problem.
After the Schonbrunn came a tour of the Imperial Furniture Collection, accumulated for those palaces which weren’t furnished year round (i.e. most of them). By the time I was done there, my allergies were getting so out of hand that I had no choice but to stop and buy medicine. It was expensive, but it definitely made a difference, if not enough of one to stop the misery or even help me sleep. After three times the recommended dose though, I finally wasn’t sneezing buckets of snot on everyone and everything, so that was good.
From there I took the long way home, giving me a chance to stop by the last of the major palaces in downtown Vienna, Belvedere Palace. It’s an extremely expensive art museum now, so I didn’t go in, but the views from the outside were lovely as well and the walk there led me past some stunning monuments.
Over the course of these two days, I also made a point to try out some of the local cuisine. Viennese food, like most European food, is fairly meat heavy, but I think I’ve found my gastronomic calling in the sampling of desserts. First there was palatschinken, the Viennese answer the crepe, then Almdudler, an exclusively Viennese soft drink, and finally Sachertorte, a Viennese chocolate cake made with apricot preserves. I paid far too much for that last one, but it was at a lovely little cafe that made for the perfect place to relax after a long day, so I’m going to call it worth it. The palatschinken, on the other hand, was made by a kind old Turkish man whom I only realized was Turkish after I’d mimed my way through the ordering process. At least I was able to thank him appropriately in coherent human speech.
Now! For the days trips.
My first day trip out of Vienna was destined for Bratislava, Slovakia. I was surprised, upon my departure from the train station, that the entire city looked so obviously communist. As I mentioned in Slovenia, there were certainly areas with communist flair, but old town Ljubljana had a charm all its own. Well, as it turns out, so does Bratislava. I was just lost without realizing it.
After walking half an hour in the wrong direction from the train station, I eventually realized my mistake and turned around. The city is still less pretty than a lot of places I’ve been, but there have been some efforts in beautification, not least of which is the smattering of statutes strewn about the town.
Even with my minor delay, I made it to the old city center for my free walking tour with plenty of time. We learned a lot about Slovakian history and culture, including the communist legacy, the intense rivalry with the Czechs, and the Slovakian penchant for hockey. I was also interested to learn about an Easter tradition of dumping buckets of water on young girls and smacking their rear ends with sticks for luck, a tradition straight out of ancient Rome. I mentioned as much to my guide, but I don’t think she understood me, let alone knew what I was talking about.
It was the rivalry that actually consumed most of the tour. Our guide was adamant about stating and then restating all of the events or traditions attributed to Prague that were actually born in Bratislava. It was clear that Bratislava, or at least this tour company in Bratislava, is trying to boost tourism. The guide even lamented Bratislavan appearances in Hollywood movies like Hostel and Eurotrip that drove tourism down by 75%. To be fair, Hostel was an entirely inaccurate representation. Eurotrip on the other hand… wasn’t quite as far from the truth… You see, the communist rulers of Czechoslovakia decided amongst themselves that Prague was going to be the classic, historic city while Bratislava was going to be “modernized.” So basically, they knocked down everything pretty and threw up giant metal monsters to herald in “progress.”
After the tour, the weather was getting gross again, and I didn’t want to linger in the rain. I stopped by a local restaurant to splurge on a plate of traditional potato dumplings in a sauce of goat cheese, which was delicious, and then headed south for the train home from a different station than the one at which I had arrived. That walk south was possibly more informative than much of the rest of my walking.
The guide had mentioned the neighborhood through which I would pass, Petrzalka, as the prime example of communist architecture in Bratislava. I couldn’t help but laugh then when I crossed the Danube to find a neighborhood that reminded me of nothing so much a the urban fringe of America. Shopping malls, decently maintained cookie cutter apartment buildings, and a complete unfriendliness to any and all manner of pedestrians. I was forced to wind back and forth across the same highway no less than four times on my journey to the train station, heading ten minutes out of my way only to come back fifty meters from where I’d started. It was a good thing I’d left the city center early, because while I didn’t beat the steady light showers that had caught me without my umbrella, at least it gave me the extra time I needed to make my train on time.
The second day trip on Thursday, to Budapest, was a little more eventful. My morning train from Vienna was crowded - more crowded than any train I’ve ridden thus far. Because I was riding without a reservation, I was kicked out my seat twice before realizing that there weren’t any seats left and retired to an empty little niche in one of the spaces between coaches meant for baby carriage parking.
It was comfortable enough sitting on the floor, especially considering I only had my purse with me at the time. The downside though was I hadn’t any windows. I got a lot of reading done though, and the compartment all to myself on the way back more than made up for it.
As for the city of Budapest, it is firmly on my list of places I need to go back. First of all, the city is gorgeous. The banks of Danube shining in the golden midday light are especially awe inspiring, and I could have stared at them for ages. I didn’t have ages though.
Most of my time in Budapest was taken up by the walking tour I did there as well. Our guide did a lovely job of summing up the history of the Kingdom from the first settlers arriving from the vicinity of modern day Mongolia up through the fall of the Soviet Union and Hungary’s increasing integration into the European Union.
Hungary isn’t part of the Euro Zone yet, still using Hungarian Forints, but that’s a good thing for me. Things in Hungary were dirt cheap. Like… dirt. For my few hours in the city I took out the equivalent of about €13/$17. After buying far too much langos (the Hungarian answer to pizza with lots of goat cheese and onions) and ice cream in the most touristy area for lunch, plus tipping my tour guide generously, I had only spent about a third of that. Since the tour had run over and I’d missed the train I wanted, and it really wasn’t worth changing €8, I decided I might as well start walking to the far train station, spending indiscriminately on the way.
My first purchases were local food. Hungarian strudel, stuffed with roasted poppy seeds, chimney cake, covered in cinnamon sugar, and this little candy bar our tour guide told us about that’s more or less chocolate covered cheesecake. With the exception of the cheesecake, I bought the others at highly inflated prices, and still I had two-fifths of my forints left. This seemed like the perfect time to buy a skirt.
I wandered in and out of a few shops that were actually too expensive. Not because they were actually expensive, but because they cost more than the €5 I had left. Then I found a shop with a second hand black skirt for €3, after the exchange rate. It wasn’t a flowy peasant skirt like I’d wanted, but it was knee length and fit and was €3. So I took it up to the counter where the lady proceeded to insist it was not three euros, but one.
Well, by that point it was time to catch my train, and I still have nearly a thousand forints left. So, the moral of the story is you can’t give money away in Hungary. Well, I’m sure I could have given it away, but… It was a nice change, not to be watching my pennies. And I have a skirt!
Despite getting back late from Budapest, I took the opportunity to do my laundry that night so I could just pack up and leave in the morning. I was ready to be well shot of Austria. Now I’m on the train to Prague, and yet the excitement isn’t over.
Having found the perfect window seat for my journey in the far fron carriage, I’d just settled in to start writing this post when a group of no less than a dozen death metal enthusiasts smelling of smoke, booze, and the unwashed dogs that were accompanying them, filed in to sit a few rows down. It was the smoke that most bothered me, paired with the fact that they were blaring their death metal. I expected someone to tell them to turn it down. Might have myself if I spoke German. I was very seriously considering moving despite my perfect seat on an otherwise full train. I couldn’t have handled that all the way to Prague. But it was the conductor that got to them first.
I’m not sure what was said, but the conductor seemed unamused, and I overheard one of the metal heads telling his friend in English something about the next station. Well, the next station was certainly important, because that was where the police got on. I would say “oh, to be a fly on that wall,” but I was better. I was a person in that carriage. But fly or person, it didn’t do me much good without the German.
As best I could tell, the metal heads didn’t have tickets. Or maybe they had too much alcohol? Whatever it was, no one seemed angry, exactly. The police checked their passports, and got on and off the train a couple times, and then the metal heads groaned a bit, and then they were escorted from the train, still swigging from their liquor and beer bottles. It was rather a longer process than I would have expected, resulting in a thirty minute delay, but considering how much nicer the ride has gotten since, I don’t mind in the least.
The Czech Republic is beautiful so far, by the way. Lots of trees and rolling hills, like a more developed, less extreme Slovenia. And I can breathe again. And the people on the train, metal heads excluded, seem very nice. I think they were German anyway though. It sounded like they were headed to Hamburg.
Also, a few small notes that I think I’ve missed:
1. I definitely got that job on the French canal boat in August. I will have to reserve my train ticket down when I get to Germany, and then I will be working on the canals for a few weeks until I head back to London and on to my cruise. I even bought a French Dictionary & Grammar Summary from a university book store in Bratislava in preparation, which I feel was a very good investment. Unfortunately, there is no wifi on the canal boat. I even had to mail a letter to my future boss to introduce myself. I will still be available on my phone, but posts may be few and far between. There will, however, be a new blog with the url ‘laurenonaboat,’ spanning the time of my cruise as well.
2. I failed my Foreign Service Exam by 3.3 points, which is less than a quarter of a percent. So if anyone has any bright ideas about what I might do for the next year until I can take the exam again, please let me know.
3. I feel like I’m missing a number three, but I can’t think of it, so…. bye?
(3.5. Just before I post - I've arrived at my hostel in Prague and I think it's going to make up for everything. Everything. I have a private room, with my own sink, and it's all clean and perfect and there's a kitchen and free breakfast and the internet is fantastic and it's raining but I think I'm going to go explore and try to find something to eat, but in the meantime, stay safe everyone!)
No comments:
Post a Comment