Arrived in Vienna

Vienna, Austria

I arrived this afternoon in Vienna, Austria. I took an overnight train that left Zurich around 11pm and arrived here just after noon. The train ride was about 3 hours longer then it needed to be because we apparently had to take a detour to get around some flooded tracks. The train ride itself was actually fine. I was in one of those sleeper cars that has 4 bunk beds in them for you to sleep on. I only had 2 other people with me (3 total in the room), and the other two were two girls from the University of Florida who were studying in Normandy, France. That made for easy conversation and the night went by pretty quickly.

I had no problem finding the hostel, about a 5 minute walk from the train station. I spent the afternoon wandering around Vienna. It's certainly way more lively then Geneva was, with a bunch more people out and about. I suspect a good number of people are in from out of town to celebrate the National Holiday on Wednesday. Down by the Imperial Palace and gardens, there is all this activity taking place to get ready for the huge military parade. There are tanks and military vehicles on display just about everywhere, hundreds (if not thousands) of military personnel walking about (many carrying their machine guns over their shoulders...), so it looks like this might be a big party for the country.

I'll probably spend some time tomorrow walking around and hopefully getting some pictures, though I also need to start figuring out how to get to Istanbul. I passed all these discount travel stores in Vienna today, and each one seemed to offer a trip to Turkey at ridiculously low prices. Could be that I didn't understand the German flyer, but I think I'll look into it tomorrow. The alternative is to catch a direct flight into Vienna, or take a 2 day train through Bucharest and Budapest, which could be cool.

For now, it's drinks at the Wombat Hostel and depending on how the social scene develops over the next hour or so, maybe out on the town or to bed early.

Kenny