Night of madness

I came in last night from a KFC and did a little bit of blogging beforeI chose to shoot down to the Wombar ( Wombat Hostel Bar .... cool place with widescreen tv, lots of different drinks on offer, happy hours and enough electric fans to keep you chilled in even the hottest of Austrian heatwaves ) and just managed to miss the big game between FC Bucharest and FC Bayern Munich, bad timing I guess.

It was fun to watch a lone German footy fan trying to get a reaction out of a couple of Aussie guys about the sport, who were unsurprisingly not that impressed or interested, despite the rivetting story of the old goalkeeper Oliver Khan being a true great in his position.

However you look at it, a bearded gnomish looking German trying to talk sport to a couple of drunk Aussies at 11pm is a funny image.

Sad to say that at no time is Cider on happy hour at the bar, which opens 6pm til 2am, and I felt I may as well have asked for champagine, and ended up heading off after just the one drink.

When I got up there the three Austrians girls who I shared the room with were all tucked up in bed, the single korean guy had already packed up and left for the night and the newcomer to the room, a Chinese / Japanese girl with long straight hair had turned her, and my, bunk bed into a bit of a laundry room with sopping wet trousers and undies strung all over the place, was up and talking although I felt she was very shy as she didnt really get into any conversation with anyone.

Considering the fact that I could still climb the ladder to my top bunk, just, I let it slide in the name of freestyling in a cool hostel and just went to sleep.

What I didn't expect was that at about 1am another newcomer, a oriental guy, to come up and turf the C/J girl out of the bunk as he had reserved it, whereas the girl had not.

I am not sure how she had managed to get into the room without one of the magic cards, or why she felt the need to take over a bunk and use it for drying laundry when there is a perfectly good 24 hour laundry room on the ground floor, but I guess maybe she was trying to keep a low profile and thought that the bunk was vacant for the night!

Not wanting to get her into any trouble I didn't say anything when I checked out, but I am rather curious about the history and what happened to this phantom young Widow Twankie!

The three Austrian girls had perfect timing yet again, and managed to barely wake me as they prepared to leave at about 7:45am, which was exactly the time I had hoped I could wake up, and so that all fitted perfectly.

Earlier in the week an American guy had left his copy, or I assume it was his, of Ben Eltons High Society and as I didn't bring any of my own books to read I felt that I would help this book do a little travelling on its own, as I will be taking it with me to Switzerland and possibly Spain or even South America, depending on how fast I get through the book as I won't be trying to do too much reading.

I am just about to head on out to the Airport but I can't help but feel a tiny bit peeved cos outside the sun is burning high and hot in the sky for the first time in days and here is me with a packed and heavy rucksack due outbound on a early afternoon flight to Switzerland where it is due to throw it down worse than I've suffered here.

But you know what I say ... do your worst cos soon its Fiestsa time in Spain and then on to Brazil and the rest of South America. Ayayayayyy

Last day and night in Vienna

Well luckily the rain held off for the bulk of today so I didn't get wet, however that isn't to say that the sun came out as it was overcast and cloudy every day and it will show in all the photos { or at least it would if the poxy camera and laptop would work together as they are suppose to! }.

It is always nice to know that my blog readers are enjoying themselves, so if anyone has any CONSTRUCTIVE, or even neutral, comments then I would love to hear them, but if you have any negative ones then please keep them to yourselves, lol.

Using google analytics I can see that I have a nice few readers in London and Chatham as well as a few on the west coast of USA, but strangely even though I have over 100 internet friends in about 40 countries not all of them have even viewed my blog once in the last month, as Argentina, Costa Rica, Brazil and Japan all show up as zero hits, so tut tut to those few who are either too busy to read my blog, and for those who are not allowed I pity you and hope that we can keep in touch in other ways.

I have found that Vienna is very much like Prague in that the historical buildings are everywhere and so common that after awhile you almost become blinded to their beauty and it is only the truly magnificent ones that catch your eye.

Having said that, I spend a good few hours with my backs to walls so that I could get as full a photo of key buildings as I could, and I found that often they were right behind me, and at times it almost felt as is I was going round the city backwards.

The good news is that many years ago the city fathers decided that they would not allow any sleazy brothels, massage parlours or nightclubs in the city centre, so if you want that kind of thing you have to go near the outer ring roads that circle the city, but what it does have is a very tasteful sex shops selling all kinds of goodies for men and women.


{Just for the record. as I went along on the overground tube network I counted at least ten along the same road, all pretty shabby looking, all right next to the entrances/exits and nearby them in one direction or another was also a hotel, so feel free to draw your own conclusions!}

When I first saw the shop directly outside the tube stop I paused and doubted whether to go in, until I saw a teenage daughter led by her mother go inside, and that sort of convinced me that if they were allowed to go inside without any finger pointing then surely I, a single guy, would not be out of place.

The first thing that hit me was that the salespeople were all women, but not all busts and lipstick but respectable middle aged women who were wearing decent length clothes and modest make-up.

The next thing I noticed was that neither of the saleswomen spoke any English which led me to believe that the place was mainly for locals and not tourists.

Being brightly lit they were not at all camera shy and on the way out I saw a couple being eagerly led by the guy and the girl was not objecting or struggling in the slightest.

From this moment on I can only assume that this was what a Ann Summers shop is like, and now that I have been here nothing much could hold any fear for me now.

When the rain did finally show up I had timed it perfectly as I have chosen to watch the new Vin Diesel film "Babylon A.D." at 5pm in an English speaking cinema, that was pokey and small and smelled off gone off popcorn from the outside, but once in the theatre itself the smell subsided.

The film was pretty much a post apocalyptic sci-fi where the world had gone to the dogs, to a crazy religion and where bombs going off in inner cities was pretty much the norm.

It was good to see Vin back in action, but the camera work and script wasn't amazing and it wouldn't be on my DVD to buy collectoin as after you watch it once it has littl repeat value.

Back at my hostel I was just bashing this out and trying in vein to get the stupid machine and camera to work when the nice American woman next to me suggested just inserting the card directly into the machine.

Well, being totally honest, the first thing she suggested was launching it against the wall, but once the joke wore off she then was helpful, and I felt like a bit of a moron with this stranger telling me how to use my own laptop. But then hey, it is still a new thing for me, and I have only been keeping to the basics til I really got the hang of it.

Anyhoo ... heres a few of them photos I mentioned.

Apparently I am taking the wet weather with me

Sodding typical. I have just done a weather forecast for Vienna, Zurich, Bern and Geneva, and I cannot belieave that even my luck is this bad.

According to the latest charts and forecasts each city is in glorious sunshine the days before and the days after I arrive but during my stay it is either foggy, overcast, slightly raining or heavily rain througout my stay.

Considering that it was pouring in Amsterdam, wet in Dusseldorf, Berlin and even started to rain on the last day of my trip to Prague I am beginning to feel as if mother nature is testing me and no wonder that I have the startings of a mild case of trench foot.

All in all it will have been raining in 7 of the 8 cities that I have visited up to the end of Switzerland if this trend continues, but I will not be beaten by a little bit of water. If I am meant to give up this trip then I am expecting somethig like Hurricane Ike to come after me.

Rain and Trench Foot

I have come to realise that perhaps I would have been better to have left another month earlier, as the weather has ruined more days and trips than anything else.

Vienna is very much the lake District back home in that it would look beautiful and majestic in the glorious sunshine however because more often than not it is pissing it down all you see are the grey clouds, yellow plastic rainproof ponchos and umbrellas turning themselves inside and out in the blustery winds.

After successfully doing all my laundry this morning I ignored my own suggestion of trying to organise Switzerland in advance and took to the streets to see how friendly was Vienna, rain or no rain.

Thanks to the fact that the modern automated machines in the main tube stations have a 'translate to English' button, I easily bought a 48 hour all travel ticket for only EU $10, and even without a full map of the city I was able to get in and out without any real difficulty.

My biggest criticism of most major cities are that the tube stops are not that well signposted and I was following the tram lines on the roads to get back to a major hub in order to catch a tube back out from the town centre back to my hostel.

Back in the hostel I took another look at my poor feet and sorely regretted that I have manage to make both pairs of footwear sodden at the same time and have a nasty feeling that if I don't have a completely dry day then I might come down with trench feet.

Having done history, and also watched Forest Gump a few times, I am keenly aware that healthy and dry feet are important and not to be ignored or overlooked, and so I will only go out tomorrow if my shoes are fully dry and at the first sign of a dark cloud I will be scuttling back to the hostel as quick as soon as possible.

The Wombat Hostel is like our very own nightclub and social bar, and I have figured out that the word has gone out to all the Aussie tourists to converge on here and it is totally overrun with them, in every dorm and room you chose to enter.

The good news is that they are very much a bunch of friendly crowd and there is always someone to talk to, but the flip side of the same coin is that there is no quiet corner and if you have a headache then you really have little choice but to retreat to your bunk with a painkiller, eye cover and ear plugs and hope for the best.

Realising that this could be the last chance to spend some quality time with a large bunch of young and crazy Aussies til January I have decided to forgo a super early night and if my shoes are willing to head on down to the Wombar and kick back a few brewskies.

The English Lingo

As I have now been to almost thirty countries I feel assured that I can call myself at least a bit of a traveller without coming across as a wannabe or a newbie, and so there a few things that I have noticed that seem as universal as the rising and the setting of the sun.

Despite what the travel agencies and the embassies may try and convince you, English is { sad to admit } spoken, even if it is badly or broken, in just about every major city and in every major hotel and hostel in the world.

There are possibly almost as many young Australians travelling around the world as there are back in their native homeland, as without except in every hostel and major train station you can find at least one Aussie, and again without exception they have already been to more places than you do, and as most of them don't speak many other language other than their own, I feel that this has certainly helped the advance of the common English language around the globe.

I saw in one televised interview with Alan Wicker, that he said that his advice when travelling is not to try and get by with a phrase book, but instead bluff your way as an important Englishman.

His view was that while in darkest Africa or South America, the natives feared / avoided him more when he blustered and bulldozed forward heedless of their shouts and demands and that is he had tried to politely and respectfully talk his way out he would probably never got out alive and in piece from every scrape he had got himself into.

Now thanfully the world is a more civilised place than it was thirty or forty years ago, but the lesson although updated remains the same, if you try and speak conversationally the local lingo they will respond much quicker and faster than you can comprehend and you will be more confused than before, but if you just act like they should know English then they will often respond.

But my own interpretation is to remain calm, remain smiling and friendly and do not get angry or aggressive as this only makes everything worse.

Bars, restaurants, cafes and nightclubs are another place in which I have seen the overall English Lingo make its presence felt, as no matter which city I am in the music is almost always US/Brit pop from the 80's, 90's or modern day.

I even commented on this to a girl hereabouts who just shook her head and said that Austrian pop is not very good!

Leaving Prague and arriving in Vienna

The train journey to Vienna from Prague was not quite was I was expecting and I am beginning to think that the way to get around is via trains as I have never got asked to even show my ID on the trains and at the main terminals are main train stations there are no passport cheques there either.

Thus it is that apart from when checking into a few hostels / hotels, and only then because I don't drive or have any other ID with a photo of me on it, my passport has been very much an unused part of my travelling preparations.

Another few small items that I had packed back in England and never used got dumped in the bin in Prague, as I felt I was just carrying around extra weight for no real reason.

Although the main train station was only about fifteen minutes walk away I was glad that I arrived early and did not let my pride prevent me from asking at the information office as the train for Vienna left from the train station at the other end of the city.

Thankfully my friend from Koln had versed me well in what tickets to buy and having taken me on a tram, bus, funicular and underground the short three stop journey did not phase me in the slightest.

What did puzzle me was that the train station, considering they were main train stations, neither were well signposted and I could have well missed them, hidden as they were behind a row of trees.

On the platform I was wasting time by browsing the various postcards, feeling slightly guilty that I have not got the money to buy enough to send them to all my close friends and family, when I came across some 3D ones that caught my eye, and further when I realised that behind the normal ones were ones with an old fashioned black and white photo of three naked ladies.

Knowing that I had only bought one other postcard so far, which was the one in Berlin which included a genuine { well ... if you believe the blurb and advertising, that is ! } piece of the Berlin Wall, made me buy this unusual item and I now regret not buying the ones that I found near the red light district which included its own mini block of marijuana resin, a testament to its openness towards the substance.

Although I am not going to send them to anyone, except home to my mother, I feel that this could be a nice little nicnak to look out for as T-shirt would be too expensive and bulky to buy from everywhere I visit.

If you find yourself on a intercity train for hours and you have a laptop with you, always investigate your seat and surroundings carefully, as behind a curtain I found a power socket that would allow me to use my laptop, and I cursed myself that I did not find it earlier than about half an hour before the end of the journey.

With a new determination to try and use the local transport as soon as possible, I managed to obtain a tram ticket and despite the rain I was able to reach my hostel with a modicum of self respect and dryness, and this brings me on neatly to the next big tip for travellers.

Make sure you have a few small denomination notes and coins for public transport and automatic machines, as being forced to buy a can of coke for EU$3 just so that you have change is both annoying and expensive.

It was a shame that in Vienna the rain was pouring hard, as it meant that I did not want to venture out far into the night, despite arriving in plenty of time and only being here for a few days.

The hostel I chose was the Wombat's Hostel and to be honest it is the ideal place for anyone that is not a businessman, maried couple or exteremly shy person.

The staff are all loveably insane and extremely helpful, even though I had to give a EU$20 deposit for the keycard I think this place rocks.

All the staff are ex or current travellers, all speak at least three languages, the main reception is staffed 24 hours, and it needed to be as even past midnight there were people turning up.

The place has its own bar, its own laundrette, two pool tables, a restaurant, a mini internet hub where you can sit and chat while you surf, the main reception has a range of comfy leather sofa's where you can sit with your wifi enabled laptops and do your own thing fre of charge, it has a few vending machines and the rooms are spacious, big and have there own ensuite bathroom / shower.

The security of the place is cool, as you cant even get near the rooms without a special card which is preprogrammed to only open your own hallway, your own room door and your own locker inside the room.

This kind of security makes you feel very safe and relaxed, as even though anyone off the street could get into the hostel they could not go any further without a card and even if they mug someone for a card they could not get to you unless they stole it from one of your roommates and even then they would need to snag your card before getting into your locker.

The Hostel was full of its young and hip lads and lasses, and I felt a little old just to be rubbing shoulders with them in the room, but it if bothered them then they certainly didn't seem to show it.

It was a shame that the following morning the rain was still as heavy and as continuous as it was the night before, as has really put a damper on me going out and about investigating for very long.

Mind you, as this was just one of those in-between stops that I set into my itiniary so that if anything had gone pete tong before now I could just skip a day or two here and be back on track it is not huge loss.

I am just going to use the time wisely, to catch up on emails, do all my washing, relax, let my feet have a rest { which they really need as I have a few blisters and sore spots and the rain is not doing them any good } save a few pennies and plan my trip to Switzerland now that I know that I am on schedule and all is fine so far.