Wien!

July 1st, 00:53 am
Wien, Austria (Vienna)

Hello from Vienna! Mark and I are officially in our first country as tourists. A big thank you to Matt Richardson and Amanda Wolfson, fellow NU grads and great people who volunteered their time and connections to suggest places to go while we are here, people to stay with, and food to eat. Thanks!

We took an EasyJet plane ride from London to (more or less) the capital of Austria, Vienna. Its always fun walking out of the airport and onto the tarmac to board a plane, and many of the things I´ve heard about EasyJet are not complimentary (they supposedly look for excuses to deny you entry to the plane, such as if you arrive too late, or with overweight luggage, or didn´t know the secret handshake, etc) but despite that the flight was quick, painless, and cheap. Thanks EasyJet!

Getting into the city, finding a place to stay, not getting mugged, etc., was initially a bit of a worry, since as part of our Evil Knievel travel strategy we have neglected to do any pre-planning, booking, or making of reservations. Fortunately we got a hold of a couple different hostel names, and more or less fought our way into the city and found one. Rather painless really... taking a look at the subway map here: http://www.urbanrail.net/eu/vie/wien.htm, Mark and I are staying at the intersection of the Green and Yellow lines, numbered as U3 and U6, the Westbanhof stop.

Mark and I started off by dropping our stuff off at the first hostel we found, called "The Wombat": http://www.wombats-hostels.com/vienna/the-lounge/. Relatively cheap rooms (€21 for each of us) that consist of a bunk bed we split in a room of 4 total bunk beds, plus free sheets, a bathroom, and a locker to store our stuff. They also were happy to take my Iphone behind the desk and charge it for me, since I didn't want to leave it unguarded in my room. I think a lot of people, at this point, would say something like "Zach, you idiot, don't leave your Iphone at the front desk, with someone you don't know, and without any real form of security." But one of the great things about traveling, I think, is that I've become a lost less anal about things like that. I've left everything in my possession except for my passport with hostel owners in Thailand, secured by nothing more than the promise "I will return to get this in a couple days," and of course it was there when I got back. So, loyal readers, you won't be surprised to hear the IPhone was fully charged and safe when Mark and I returned after our night's adventures.

Thought I should mention that as I'm sitting here blogging this in the communal computer area of our hostel, two very inebriated English (Canadian) people have begun to engage, next to the communal computer area on a couch-type thing, in sexual acts of a nature and a volume that might be very distracting to someone less focused. But A) they are not incredibly attractive and B) I am focused to a razor's edge right now. So fear not readers... just know what I'm going through to produce this material for you. And this only increases my love of the hostel/backpacking life.

Vienna, by the way, is spelled Wien locally, which means that just like someone is a "New York"-er, here they are "Wien"-ers, or more graphically, "Wieners". So Mark and I have decided to spend a couple days in a city of Wieners.

So getting back to the main narrative, Mark and I dropped off our stuff, and headed to a restaurant called "The Centimeter," which has 6 or so locations around the city and basically serves the student clientele cheap and plentiful beer, brats, and other goodies. Mark and I ordered up a beer known as OttaKringer, which was pretty decent, and then proceeded to order up more artery-clogging, cholesterol-inducing sausage than I have ever seen. I don't have a way to add pictures to this blog right now, but trust me when I say it was intense. Since we were ordering sausage by the meter, Mark ordered up 2 meters worth of a thin sausage (6 feet!), and I ordered what turned out to be 3 hot dogs filled with cheese, and in turn wrapped with bacon. For any Wisconsin-ers reading this who are proud of having the most unhealthy cuisine around, eat your heart (no pun intended) out.

After our meal of sausage and sausage (delivered with a side of french fries), Mark and I journeyed over to the Museum Quarter, which ended up being the best decision we've made all day. The Museum Quarter is basically a number of museums (The Leopold Museum, the Modern Musem, etc.) which sit together to enclose a sort of public square with an outdoor beer garden and populated liberally with sitting/hanging out structures and students and other young persons sitting/hanging out. Mark and I ended up having a great conversation with three young Austrian students, talking about everything from where to go tomorrow, Austrian vs American music, the relative physical merits (in terms of attractiveness) of Austrian vs German vs Czech citizens (best girls - Czech, best guys - Sweden), Arnold Schwartzenegger, the Austrian economy and educational system, and what kind of beer we should try. I've come to believe that the best part of any traveling is talking to the people, and tonight was a great example of that.

Tomorrow morning I am going to try to get in a solid run through the parks in the south side of Vienna, running down Mariahilfer street, through the Vienna zoo, around the Schonbrunn Palace and then back to the hostel. This route will be mostly in a park that is a popular jogging spot for local Austrians. Based on what I've seen of the locals walking around the city, I'm prepared to get my ass kicked on the road.

We have some fun things planned for tomorrow, but those will have to wait until then! And no matter what happens on our trip, we now have a new phrase to help us bear it all - "Das ist mir wurst", as they say: "Its all sausage (the same) to me".

Thanks for reading this incredibly long post, thank you to everyone for the emails and blog posts thus far, and I promise to pick people up chocolate etc if they can request something specific :).

Night all!

P.S. We may see a guest blog post from Mark P. if I can wrangle him into it.