sat, 4 jun
vienna, austria


arrive in vienna at 5+ in the morning. take the u-bahn downtown. despite the hostel being a ten minute walk from the station, we manage to walk for 30 minutes before finding it.

and mostly by accident, at that.

this sets a precedent for many of our later encounters with metro systems.

secure sleeping arrangements, dump backpacks and set off for big flea and food market.

flea market section full of junk. no 10€ soviet cameras anywhere in sight. although to be fair, they could all have been buried under the electrical cords, old photos, used clothes and other assorted junk. at least 200 stalls and nothing worth buying.

food section was fragrant and colourful, although as you go down the rows you realise all the stalls are selling pretty much the exact same foods. aggressive - or at least what my innocent mind imagined to be aggressive - kebap vendors touting for business.

hapsburg palace in the afternoon. all very grand at first, but after a while you realise it looks like just about every other building in the city, indeed, in most of europe, looks like it - huge baroque columns, statuary all over and so on. entire museum devoted to the empire's silverware - pity the poor servants who had to wash all that. tour of the imperial apartments - boring.

cafe central, where trotsky used to drink.
didn't see him around.
sacher torte disappointing. maybe authentic sacher tortes are supposed to be dry and not very tasty, though. no accounting for different tastes, as the austrian predilection for sauerkraut clearly demonstrates.

st stephen's cathedral. massive organ pipes. like the palace, it being our first cathedral, we were all 'wowww' at first. but again, there are millions of places like this in europe.

it sure seems like we saw at least five hundred thousand, minimum.

the cathedral, being in the centre of the tourist district, was infested with wig wazoos - these guys dressed up like a bunch of powdered, wigged ponces which was presumably the fashion a century ago - trying to sell tourists overpriced concert tickets.

to their "konnichiwa!"s i reply - always smiling and bobbing my head - "kani nabe!". kevin reported that he heard one repeating the word a few times. hopefully he'll try it on the next singaporean who comes along.

cafe sperl - hitler's favourite hangout before he got busy conquering europe and all that.
no sign of him, either.

for all of vienna's celebrated cafe-culture, well - nothing special, really. more posh coffeeshop lor. with matching prices, naturally.

just when we're about to head back to the hostel in the evening it starts to rain. still too early to buy the 24h u-bahn ticket which is supposed to get us to the airport the next evening, so we decide to make a run for it in an attempt to save 3€.

bad idea.