Vienna, Austria: May 28th-31st

So, there we were waiting for our train to Vienna. We had neglected to check what time the train would arrive in Vienna, but we anticipated that it would be about an 8 hour journey. However, after being on the train for only 4 short hours, we arrived in Vienna. Now, that was a problem because we had not booked our hostel for the night of the 28th; we had only booked the night of the 29th and 30th.

So, when we arrived at the train station, it was a little after midnight, and we had no place to go. We decided that the best thing to do was to stay in the train station until the next morning, and then take the subway to our hostel. It was a great plan (well maybe not great, but good enough) until the cops came around and told us we had to leave because the station closed between 1am and 6am. Our only option was to get into a taxi and have him take us to the subway station that we knew our hostel was near and hope the hostel would let us stay there. One thing to mention is that when we left Budapest, it was very hot and miserable, so we had on shorts and t-shirts. When we stepped out of the train station in Vienna, it was not only cold, but also raining. So, with our record of not being able to find our hostels very easily, this was not the best weather. By the time we finally found the Huddeldorf Hostel, my feet were freezing and we were soaked. They did, however, give us a bed, and we had to crawl into bed wet and dirty, because it was too late to use the showers. But we slept like babies.

(A cathedral in the center of Vienna.)

We slept for a few hours and woke up to go exploring the city. We also needed to find the US embassy, so we could have extra pages added to our passports. I was down to only 1 blank page, and I knew I would need a couple more visas before the trip was over. So, we found the embassy, left our passports, and had quite an enjoyable day wandering around Vienna. The city was very clean and modern and it was a shopper's paradise. Of course, we couldn't actually buy anything, but we had fun looking at everything we couldn't afford.

(A random street performer in Vienna. He was pretty amazing. He put different levels of water in each glass and played it like an instrument.)



The following day, May 30th, we walked around some more and decided to treat ourselves to a movie. We found a cinema that was showing Pirates of the Carribean 3 in English, so we went in. While waiting in line, we noticed that the guys in front of us had t-shirts from the UGA, so we asked them if they were from Athens. Turns our, they were...small world!















(A monument dedicated to Mozart.)





There isn't a whole lot of exciting details about Vienna. After picking up our passports, we left on the 31st on a night train to go to Venice, Italy. We spent most of the day before our train departed hanging out at the hostel and doing our laundry. But, then we left for Venice, and the next 2 weeks were pure magic!