You can imagine at this point, this was it. I was about to land into a new life. As the landing gear hit, skidded, and rumbled--it was time to get ready.
So my first story that I have for you all starts when I was looking for the train station to go to my hostel. I first asked some man at an information booth, and after hearing my German with an American accent, he immediately began to speak English. I was thinking to myself, "huh, it's that obvious." So I listened to his directions and I walked to what looked like a train station--with like 80 pounds of luggage. I was really confused, anything that information guy told me was completely out my head. I wandered, went up and down some elevators. Then I went up some ramp and somehow ended up back at the same guy at the information booth. I told him I walked in a circle and he explained it again. This time I proceeded and wandered to some place that ended up being a train station. I wasn't sure how to buy a ticket and wasn't sure what the guy at the info booth said. So I got on a random train. I tried to act cool and got really nervous I would end up in another country. I got off at some stop that said "Wien Mitte"--that sounds important I thought. After some random back and forth train-taking, I ended up in Wien Mitte, again, after 30-40 minutes. I pulled out some paper and found the correct train to take--finally. So I got off at some stop that was apparently within 100 meters of the hostel. Feeling good about myself--I walked about 100 meters and found a Chinese grocery store. "That's not right"--I thought. I decided to take a detour, a very stupid decision. I wandered the streets for about 40 minutes with 80 pounds of luggage. Sweating, I stopped at a Chinese Travel Agency. The ladies inside told me that the hostel I was going to was just around the corner. By my surprise, I found the hostel in some kind of a concave entrance--so it was hidden right next to the Chinese grocery store, just where I decided to take a 40 minute detour. I wanted to straight up cry, out of frustration and joy of finding the hostel.
Chapter 2 (of this post): New friends, new places
So I check-in my hostel. It's basically a dorm that is cheap to stay at. My room had two bunk beds. I had two roommates who were from Brazil or one was from Lisbon...something like that. If I got that wrong, they spoke Portuguese and some English. Below is a selfie with my roommates in front of some big fancy building in the central area of Vienna.
I may look happy, but behind that smile is a very tired jet-lagged individual. Some other sites I visited:
Cool row of buildings with common architecture to this area. With added fountain and statue.
This one is the inside of St. Stephens Cathedral. Very nice!!!
Majestic horse-rider and more common architecture in the background.
So, in this area I was wandering around I also went to a Schmitterling-Garten (Butterfly garden). It was super cool and made me really happy and almost broke my camera because it was steaming hot and moist in the indoor garden. After looking at butterflies or Smitterling to my hearts content I headed back to the hostel around 4:30pm.
Later that night I went to the hostel bar. I could swear, every drink allowed more and more German to come out of my mouth. At one point in the night I spent an hour conversing with a guy from Argentina who also spoke some German. It was a lot of fun joking, drinking and talking in German all night! The bartenders smiled at me whenever I ordered in German...they were also dudes by-the-way. So it was definitely the fact I started the night speaking English then went full-on German. Viel Spass--a lot of fun!
I could also tell you guys this proud moment I had when I successfully bought a magnet and a bratwurst in German...but not at the same time, because we ain't crazy.
So, auf wiedersehen! Good bye! And tune-in next post for the next great Austrian Adventure!
P.S. Above is a picture of a "Schmitterling" in the butterfly garden --while my camera was sweating itself into brokenness.
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