Day Ten: Welcome to Wien! (but first, try to get out of Budapest…)
July 3, 2008
After a rather relaxing night in Budapest (to remind you, Leslie fell into deep snoring slumber early on and I just blogged away until ridiculously late) we awoke with a plan (and, to remind you, we’d been having good luck with plans in Budapest). The plan: go down to the market again, get some food for the day, do a bit of shopping and whatnot, and then quickly go to the post office (which we’d already located) and send the insane amount of alcohol Leslie was going to buy back home before catching the noon-ish train to Vienna.
[side note: Through shopping, Leslie and I have discovered yet another difference between us! Leslie, while also just being a bigger shopper than me, is also much better at deciding to buy things. She sees it, she likes it, she buys it. done. The deliberation time is maybe a minute or two. This of course allows her to cover more ground and buy more stuff. As for me… oh dear gods – nobody should actively opt to go shopping with me. I am super picky as to which stores I want to enter and then, once I’m in, I’m there for an epic amount of time. When in a good store I do some sort of bizarre primitive-man dance thing-ah-mah-jig. I enter. I do a quick survey. Then I go through everything again more slowly, this time mentally eliminating some things from the list of possible purchases. Then I go through again and again… and again and again. Slowly but surely I get down to business. And then… maybe… I buy something. I’m exhausted and I’m sure Leslie is exhausted (and amazed at how long it takes to buy one stupid thing) but there it is! Another difference]
Anyways, back to Budapest. So we had a plan. The plan took a horrible evil hot and sweaty 5ish hour detour. Watch the 3-part video below to find out what happened. [side note: I know you hate that I break the videos up into parts. I know it breaks the flow. But look people!! The Internet in these raggedy hostels is, in the words of Leslie, sketch! And, uploading three or four minute videos can take hours! I’m not lying! So give me a break. When I get back home and feel so inclined I’ll go back and upload the full versions and then replace these broken up ones. But until then, no complaining!]
Suffice to say, Leslie will never ever complain when I want to go shopping. Not that she did before, but she certainly won’t now!
So, after Budapest was all finished, we were on our way to *trumpets please* Vienna! We got super duper lucky and got an air conditioned cabin all to ourselves. We took the liberty to lay down and sleep most of the way (after I finished some blogging… of course!). And oh, we keep passing the most beautiful and cheery fields of sunflowers on these train rides but I just can’t get a decent picture! I so badly want you to see how lovely and sunny they are! But instead you just get to see a blurry disaster. I think I’ll try and take a travel photography class or something when I get back… that way next time I’ll take better more artsy-funky photos.
Alright – then we hit Vienna (aka: Wien). And let me tell you, we knew it was going to be awesome right from the start. And why? Because the signs and public transportation systems were so clearly labeled! It was glorious! We didn’t get confused, everything was clean and organized… it was just what we needed after the chaos of the Budapest postal service.
After we dropped our stuff off we got some dinner at the place down the street. And I, being totally exhausted, felt justified in getting myself a cider (the alcoholic kind) but, alas, they didn’t have any. So our very friendly cute waitress recommended these flavored beer things. I got lemon and it ended up tasting a lot like cider! Yummy!
After dinner I subjected Leslie to about 2.5 hours of walking. I’m now a big fan of the once-you-get-to-a-new-country/city-walk-everywhere-that-first-night plan. The temperature drops to perfection, all the locals are out (Europeans stay out ridiculously late), and you can just relax without all that hustle and bustle. On our trek we randomly fell upon the Museum Quarter, which is an area where a bunch of Museums come together and in between them exists this piazza thing. In this middle open area there had to have been over 2000 people – and they were all super young and hip and just hanging out together at 1AM! There were also all these cafes and swank bar things set up in there. It was totally awesome and I was so excited. It seemed like such an awesome thing to be doing.
After all that we kept walking down to the downtown/main area and oh my gosh we almost died from all the cool stuff we saw. So much art and culture and performance listings and beautiful things to buy – it’s crazy! I said to Leslie, “I don’t know how I’m going to get across how in love I am with this place on the blog.” – and it’s true. You have to imagine I’m standing in front of you with my hands on your shoulders (shaking you) while yelling, “soooo freakin’ awesome!!!!!!”
I don’t know what these people are all doing for a living (especially given the fact that everyone is out so late on weeknights) but whatever it is, they are doing well. I was instantly sorry that we’d only have one full day because it was obvious that much much more time was needed. Vienna is the city I’ve visited so far that I most wish I could stay at for significantly longer. There is an incredible amount of art stuff going on and it would take weeks to process it all! So if anyone out there is up for a week in Vienna, you just let me know!
So after walking around we called it a night and got ready for our artsy full day in Wien!
Oh and as a random side note – isn’t the baby outfit to the right the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?! In case my future husband ever reads this: if we have a boy (I mean we won’t actually have any boys, just two girls… but you know, if the metaphysical fabric of the universe rips and we somehow freakishly have a boy), he will so have to wear this at some point. In Vienna. Just so you know… 
Oh and of course, for all the pictures from today please go here.
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noooo!!! part three of the videos is a repeat of part one!!!!!