Morning in Bratislava; Evening in Vienna

Morning in Bratislava; Evening in Vienna

Vienna, Austria, Europe

I ended up staying up until just after midnight watching the Red Sox win to stop their ten game losing stretch. I figured that while I have good wifi and the Sox were playing at a sensible time for me, I might as well take advantage of it. I’m glad I did. I then woke up at 6am because my windows had white blinds that did a horrible job of blocking out any light. In fact, I think it actually made the room brighter. I checked out of my hostel and went out for a pretty good breakfast at a little Slovakian restaurant. I was happy to get some ham and eggs for breakfast, it was a nice change from croissants or pastries.

I joined a free walking tour so that I could see some of Bratislava before heading off. It was a nice little city, but it was very little. We covered the whole city in two hours, but the tour probably could have been done in one hour. There is not much to see in Bratislava. There’s a castle. There are a few churches. And luckily today, there was a lot of sun. Unluckily, I didn’t put sunblock on, so I got a pretty good sunburn on my face. Stupid Eric.

The tour guide wasn’t the best, but it was still a decent way to see the city and get some idea of what I was looking at. We finished up around 1:30pm so I headed back to my hostel to grab my bags. I got to the bus station, found the right ticket office and paid my €7.70 for my ticket to Vienna. It was a nice, easy ride of just over an hour. It rained on and off the whole way here, but luckily when I arrived it had cleared up.

I checked into A&O Wien Hauptbahnhof Hostel, and it is one of the cheapest places I have ever stayed at. Not cheap for me, but cheap by them. They charge extra for absolutely everything. I’ve never been in a hostel where you pay a fee for the room, and that doesn’t really include anything you’re going to need. There were no linens on the bed, just a pillow and duvet, so that was an extra €3. Then an extra €1 if you want to use a towel. There is free wifi in the lobby, but if you want to use it in your room, that’ll be €1 per hour. Breakfast consists of cold meats, bread, and cereals, that’ll be an extra €6. So what seemed to be a great deal for €11 a night, turned out to be not such a great deal.

I dropped off my bags in the room and then headed out to see some of the city. It was about a 20 minute walk into the city center and that’s when I could see that Vienna is something special. The architecture in this city is amazing! I had glorious sunshine for about 15 minutes when I got into the center of the city, and then the sky opened up. It has been raining consistently since about 6pm, and I didn’t go out with my rain jacket, so I was forced to call it an early night.

It was probably for the best anyway as I had to figure out how I was going to move on from here to Ljubljana, and I got that sorted out. I will be staying here in Vienna until Friday, and then getting a bus to Ljubljana. I’m sure I can keep myself busy here for a couple of days. I’ve also met a couple of the guys staying in my dorm. One is a really nice South Korean guy called Jay, the other is an Austrian guy staying in the hostel until his apartment is ready to move into. Both seem like nice guys, so that’s good.

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