sun, 5 jun
vienna, austria, still


schonbrunn palace. palaces all look the same. yawn. decide it probably won't be worth the admission, ISIC discount or not. climb a hill up to a viewing platform. discover viewing platform, too, has an admission charge. take in panorama from bottom of the viewing platform.


the st. marxer friedhof - st. mark's cemetary - in the afternoon. 200+ year old tombstones. atmospheric. see mozart's grave. nothing really special about it, other than the fact that its separate from the other graves.


we're a little late getting back to our hostel from dinner - a sun which only sets at 9pm doesn't help. reach wien-schwechat flughafen (the german language has so many cool words. like fahrkarten) at 2215 - still ok for a 2330 flight.

as we check the departure listings and our flight never appears we realise we've been conned by our fucking fifty dollar LP guidebook (the title of which, most ironically, is "europe on a shoestring"). it says

Sky Europe flys to Croatia, France....

However, its 'Vienna' airport is far from the city - in Slovakia, actually.

all the while we had thought vienna's airport was in bratislava, slovakia. yes, we realised that was really strange but hey! so is lederhosen!

that was really a 'doh!'-slap-your-forehead moment.
hindsight, as they say, is 20-20.

so basically we had 60 minutes to get to an airport 80km and 1 border crossing away.

we made one austrian taxi driver a very happy man - must've been the easiest 150€ he ever made.

got to the bratislava airport at 2320, mad run to the check-in desk. which is closed. mad run to the skyeurope counter (ok lah, actually it was just 10m from the check-in desk. dramatic license.).

skyeurope babe frowns and says, "i'm sorry, but the check-in is already closed."

"but the flight's been delayed!"

"yes, but the check-in always closes on time."

argh.
but eventually she relents and another! babe comes and checks us in. and i find myself thinking maybe slovakia isn't a bad place to miss your flight after all...

so we make the flight - it only takes off at 0030, after all. thank god for late departures from lisbon!