Vienna
August 24th
Next morning I woke up in my hostel room on German talking, looked around and there were 2 Germans packing up their things. I asked if they knew how I could get a connection to Vienna. One of them said they are going back home after a weekend in Bratislava and they have a car and can drop me off in Vienna. I’m just a lucky bastard I thought.
So next thing I know I’m right in the centre of Vienna and they dropped me near a big cathedral near Reichsrats Street or something.
at the Parliament
I was planning to stay in Vienna just for a few hours so I just took my wallet and camera, all my things were back in Bratislava and next morning I was having the Czech connection to Prague. I wandered about for a bit, saw the lovely architecture and the stunning Parliament building and then… I thought now what? How am I gonna go back to Bratislava? I didn’t even have a map to try to get around and on a Sunday afternoon you won’t get too many places open to get maps from or at least I didn’t find them.
I spotted a tourist tryin to read a map, went to him and asked if he could show me on the map where I am and how I could get to the train station, or the bus station. And he said “Mate I donno where I am either, for the past few minutes I’m tryin to find where I am on this map. But here, I have an extra one, you can have one if you want”. Thanked very much and on my way I went.
Few minutes later I thought I should check the map.
the Parliament
I opened it and I swear it was the size on a bed sheet with thousands of streets typed in very small; the long German names didn’t help either. I wasn’t even able to spot the city centre on it, so I put it back in my pocket and just went on the biggest street I had in my sight. This was actually the first time in my life I had troubles reading a map... i even get wee bit pisses bout it.
Anyways, I kept walkin on that big street till I arrived at some train station. “It’s not that bad after all” I thought. But after the info desk girl told me the last train to Bratislava left half an hour ago and the next one's in about 6 hours I wasn’t that happy. Luckily, she told me I should take a tram to some other train station as from there trains depart to Bratislava every hour. So after a bit of a hustle on how to buy my tram ticket from a German speaking machine I got to the train station, jumped on a train and back in Bratislava I was.
Vienna seems a great place and definitely worth being visited more than just a few hours like I did, but I just wanted to had a taste of it and hope to go back there soon and stay a few days to see and do more.
Spent my last night in the Slovak capital and next morning I was off to czech Prague.
