I arrived in Vienna on Friday at about 2pm, and then followed the simple instructions to get to the hostel, which was easy, given Vienna's fantastic public transport system. After off-loading my stuff at the accommodation, I went out into the world and went for a sight-seeing tour around the city, in spite of the weather. It was good to see the city again, and it felt familiar, as I'd been there before, which was nice. The trip definitely reminded me that it is a city in which I would one day like to live. It is expensive for a budget traveller and/or someone spending money earnt on a Polish wage (ie me) but it wouldn't seem overly expensive to someone living on a Viennese wage (I assume).
Later on Friday night there was a party held by the group (IAESTE) who organised the trip, so I went there and with the extremely cheap drink prices, managed to get well and truly unsober. The party was lots of fun, and I met some interesting people there who were also there as guests of IAESTE, as well as caught up with some people I met last weekend when they came to Gliwice. A few of us decided that 2:30am was a good time to leave and head back to the hostel. We followed the great directions given to us by the organising committee describing how to get to a bus stop to catch a night bus and then where to get off. (Take note Brisbane - Night buses are a fantastic idea. Berlin has them too.) We arrived back at the hostel at about 3am and then realised that we had to be up by 8:30am for breakfast and to be on time for the next day's activities.
The next day involved a tour-like trek over the historic centre of Vienna, which was interesting as our tour guide knew a lot of fascinating, trivial facts about the city that I didn't know about last time I visited. At about 1pm I left the main group to go and meet up with Florian in Stephansplatz. We went to an Italian restaurant for some healthy food (I had a hot chocolate and tiramisu - and forgot to take a photo. Damn). Afterwards we intended to go to the Jewish museum as neither of us had ever been before and it sounds interesting. Unfortunately we hadn't thought that it would be closed on Saturday, being the Sabbath and all, so we wandered around and found an art gallery instead. It was fantastic - the gallery was showing a Matisse exhibit, so I got to see a lot of his works, including the famous "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" painting. My favourite Matisse, however, is the painting of the horse with a rider amoungst some trees. I don't know what it's called because the titles were only in french and german, and I didn't know this particular word in french and Florian didn't know it in english. Oh well.
After I had a short rest in the afternoon, I went out and found some felafel for dinner (mmmm..... felafel...). It was good. I like felafel, and it doesn't seem to exist in Poland. After the felafel, I went to Heurigen, which is a wine bar in Vienna. There was some meat provided by IAESTE which was delicious and some really good wine. I spoke to a guy from South Africa who speaks fluent Afrikaans and found out about a cool phrase in that language. If any of you know someone who speaks afrikaans (ie, anyone at UQ in physics can ask Jacques), ask them how to say "Choose my side" in afrikaans. Choose my side!
After the wine bar we went to something billed as a disco, called U4 (because it's near one of the U4 stations). Cindy, another australian, and I were hoping that it was really a disco, complete with 70s and 80s music and a mirror ball, but we both knew that there was a strong possibility that it'd just be a discotheque. When we got there we were very pleasantly surprised to find that it is, in fact, a disco!! They played much 70s and 80s music and there was a large mirror ball. Cindy and I were very pleased. Much dancing ensued.
Sunday morning involved a trip to Schoenbrunn for the group, but as I've already been and didn't fancy paying another entrance fee, I went off on my own to do some more sightseeing around Vienna. I went back to the Hundertwasserhaus to see it in summer, and it was more impressive than when I saw it at the end of winter. The building looks better with leave-covered bushes rather than sticks. It was definitely worth seeing a second time.
After my visit to Hundertwasserhaus, it was time to return to the hostel to collect my luggage and make my way to the suedbahnhof for the train back to Poland.
The trip was excellent, just a shame about the weather (it rained for the whole weekend).
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