We arrived in Vienna around 8:30 local time (all times will be in 24h mode in keeping with the european theme of the blog.) The flight was uneventful and incredibly boring, just the way I like 'em. Flew Austrian airlines. they must have the oldest fleet of jets of any national carrier out there. The seats were nice and tight, but I had some leg room (ie, just enough so that I could put my knees in front of me for a few seconds before annoying the person in the seat in front of me.)
I took one of those fancy anti-anxiety pills before the flight, but I'm pretty sure I broke it because I didn't notice any less anxiety than normal. whatever. movies: surf's up, half of Gran Torino, Marley and Me, which I avoided like the plague. downside: the headphones were shit and the blugs were those stupid 2 prong thingers, so I couldn't even use my own. result: couldn't hear most of the movies.
Once we landed in austria we headed immediately to the rental booth to get our little Opel european mini-van/crossover/tiny suv-type-thing. We managed to tetris all the luggage in the back, and it was time to leave the parking garage. one problem...we couldn't figure how to get the car into reverse. by we, I mean M. either way, we eventually figured it out and got to the exit, where naturally, we couldn't find out ticket. the helpful but clearly exasperated austrian dude on the mic. eventually got us out of the garage and we were on our way.
driving in austria is like driving in canada. except the speed limit is 130km/h and you only use the left lane for passing. what a novel idea. at those speeds, we made it to the border pretty quickly, and let me just say that they get it there. seriously. we drove into slovakia without slowing down. I didn't see a pissed off border guard anywhere.
got to Bratislava around 11ish? not too sure, but it didn't take that long. however, we were too early to check into our hostel for the night, which sucked because we were all tired as hell. fortunately, the hostel dude let us put our luggage in the building so we didn't have to leave our stuff in the car, which was parked on the sidewalk just down the street.
-side adventure- we somehow managed to miss our turn on the way into the city, which is stunning when you consider that everyone knew we had to cross the river before turning off the main road. anyway we turned away from the river and basically got lost on some side street. I was all, "relax guys, I got this." but no one was listening. (another theme of the trip.) I convinced M. to just listen to me rather than the 3 shouting ladies in the back and after a series of quick turns through a sketchy apartment complex I had us back on track. No need to panic. Easy. -end of side adventure/bragging-
anyway, back to the hostel...well, we left the hostel and headed to the castle overlooking the danube. oh wow, how impressive! they had scaffolding in the 10th century...wait, you mean it's under reconstruction and we can't really see any of it? oh. well then...yeah, this was another theme of the trip. showing up in may, outside of the high season for tourism, was probably not the best idea for seeing all the old buildings in good repair.
so yeah, the castle was totally in ruins until the 50s. It wasn't really all that impressive, but that's probably because it's undergoing a massive reconstruction at the moment. good views of the city though. we didn't spend much time there.
after the castle it was time for the old town, or at least the old centre of town. cool little place, and no cars, but that's probably because it was sunday. we stopped for a quick drink/ice cream break and I had some wicked cherry ice cream, though it tasted a bit like medicine. Had pizza after that, and it was also okay. whatever, at 1400 we made our way back to the hostel to check in...finally.
did two of the 3 s's and then had one hell of an e.p.i.c. nap on the top bunk. only 1.5hrs. but I was out like the dead. woke up with a completely dead hand due to the abnormal, on-my-back-with-knees-up-hand-behind-my-head sleeping position.
at around 1800 we made our way back to the old town square, which was filled with chincy souvenir stands and left pretty quickly. had dinner at "slovakia pub," which we never would've found without our hostel guy, and had a pretty decent meal. dumplings with fancy slovakian smoked sheep's cheese.
went back to the hostel, had one warm beer, and passed out again. oh...one more thing...on our walk to the castle in the afternoon we passed by some british tourists/backpackers. I think they assumed we couldn't understand english, but as we walked by one of them quipped, "wow, nice cans on that one." referring to kaiser. nice of 'em.
