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So, a couple of weekends ago I went to Vienna, and it was great. It was more of a low key trip, did more and drank less for once. We took the student agency bus, it wasn’t as long of a bus ride as Budapest, maybe about five hours or so. We stayed at the Wombat hostel, which is located at the end of the main shopping street in Vienna, a street most women I know would kill to shop at. I was more impressed with the donairs.

Donairs, 3 Euro

The hostel was fantastic, it was very clean, and very modern. When we walked in, we awoke a sleeping Korean man, who was startled by our entrance. Hora and I talked to him, and it turns out he was in Vienna for the International Atomic Energy conference! The first thing I thought to ask was “What the hell are you doing in a hostel?”. But I guess scientists don’t make as much these days. The beds were very comfortable, more so then my own bed at the Kolej. This hostel had a great bar in the basement, on the first night we went down and ended up playing fooseball with the bar tender, who had the key to the machine and kept the ball rolling all night. He was pissed of when he lost though, it was Greg and I vs Hora and him.

Hostel

During the day we went exploring, and it was very different from Prague in a lot of ways. The city was quite a bit more modern looking in the main downtown, the buildings not quite as old as Prague. Another thing about the city was that it was it was more spaced out, much less cramped then Prague, although I’m not sure if thats a good thing, they definitely didn’t get the most out of the land, but it was a nice change. We walked down the main shopping district to get to the main downtown core. Once we got there, there was a ton of buildings to take a look at, most of them we’re pretty cool.

Some castle I thought looked nice

Later on that night, we went to a Hukka bar and smoked some flavored tobacco with the rest of the students who were on this trip from the dorm. Apparently there is a large Turkish population in Vienna, so these kinds of bars are quite common. We also had some beers and just chilled out.

Chillin’ at a Hukka bar

The next day, it was an amazingly sunny day, the first time I’d walked outside in Europe with just a t-shirt, and it was about damn time. We walked to Schonbrunn Palace, which is the palace that Kaiser Franz Joseph lived in. This palace was absolutely enormous, so big that it had its very own zoo inside, and it wasn’t just some small zoo. We spent almost all day at this palace, both inside and out.

All the land in this picture is part of the palace, not even close to the total amount

Huge bat

Random cool lookin’ fish

Later on in the night, I went out with the students to a bunch of bars, and I wanted to go to the main bar district called Bermuda Triangle, but no one else wanted to go. I was fine with it because I figured I’d go out there myself the next day and meet some random Germans, but little did I know that Vienna practically shuts down on Sunday, almost no bars were open… Oh well, I know the next time I go to Vienna.

One of the bars we went to, the sign says “Put your phone in your ass”. Double you tee eff.

The next day was the night I found out the Bermuda Triangle was closed, but we did find a different cool bar, and it was playing hockey! It was the playoffs for a Austrian team, the hockey definitely wasn’t NHL calibre, but it was fun to watch none the less.

Pub

The next day we had to check out at 12, so we packed our bags and headed on over to an amusement part that was beside the bus station. The way it worked was a lot different from the PNE. Basically, you don’t have to pay to get in, you walk in for free, and you pay for each individual ride set by the company who leased the plot of land on which they build their ride. Each ride was four to five Euros, but most of them were worth it, especially this one in particular:

I also enjoyed this one, it was a combination of the swings and the hellevator:

I got a pretty good view of the city from up there

Afterwords, we kind of ran out of money, so we went exploring until our bus came. We walked across a bridge that leads us to more of a residential/industrial area of Vienna, which was pretty cool because we found a random Microsoft conference where they were going to talk about Windows 7. We took a couple flyers and watched them set up, but unfortunitely it started when our bus came…

Overall I had a great time in Vienna, it would have been nicer (especially in the palace) if it was Spring, but it was still great. Good beers, interesting people, and great food, that’s a good combination for a great city. I ate at least 10 donairs, I kind of went to town in that country when it came to food, significantly more then I spent in Copenhagen, which was after this trip, but that blog post will have to wait for another day. To see the rest of my pictures, go here:

Vienna Album

Random graffiti