First Days Back West

We got into Vienna, spelled "Wien" in almost every language except English, yesterday evening. We took a 4pm train out of Prague and spent those last hours in eastern Europe just bumming around the hostel. We got here around 9pm and took a very slow tram (quite reminiscant of a city bus, actually) from the Südbahnhof train station to Westbahnhof, where we had taken our connecting train to Budapest from Venice at 6am a week or so ago. It was nice to see a familar train station and eat at a familiar pastry shop while using familiar currency. That's not to say that I haven't loved using forints, złoty, and korüna, because I loved all those, but it's just nice to not have to do decimal point moves and division in my head every time I look at a price. I actually think I'm now more used to thinking in euros than in dollars, something I'm quite sure will be reversed upon my return to the home of the latter.

Anyway, this hostel is called Wombat's and it is quite the factory. This place is more like a college dorm than a hostel, with the addition of a large bar in the basement. This is definitely a party hostel; the staff is distant and mediocre, most of the people are American frat guys, and there is hardly an air of community (outside being drunk) anywhere. This place makes me miss hostels like those in Gimmelwald and Barcelona. To make matterw better, we are staying in another branch of this hostel in Berlin as well.

We got quite a late start today. We took the metro over to Schoenbrunn, which is a palace and set of beautiful gardens that mimic Versailles. Our day was filled with walking around there, getting chased by merciless mosquitos at every turn while still enjoying the fountains, gardens, and above-ground mazes. After, I was finally able to find a replacement pair of my linen pants at a nearby H&M (mine have a huge hole in the crotch, black leather stains from the rainstorm in Rome, and hadn't been washed in about a month since I literally wear them evey day) before we got dinner from a grocery store. Packaged sandwiches, yogurt, and apples; our de facto meal for the past few weeks. Delicious!

To end the evening, we went to a kitchy, local movie theater and saw Brüno (English with German subtitles). It was quite funny and stupid, I must say, but it certainly did its job in providing me with an evening of entertainment. It would appear that Vienese people have yet to get over the whole Hitler thing, judging by the almost absolute silence in the theater whenever he was mentioned in the movie.

There has also been a route change for the trip! This is our first major one, and has proven to be quite an interesting experience to plan. Let's just say I'm very glad we booked all our hostels before this trip began. Otherwise, things would have been way more stressful, annoying, and expensive. Anyway, we decided we wanted to see Munich after all. So we cut a night each off of Vienna and Salzburg and got a hostel in Munich for two nights. I believe that increases the city count for this trip to 22!