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!

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.