Because if things go terribly wrong at the Czech embassy tomorrow I want to record the fun times had so far before hand.
Arrived in Vienna by train and made it to our host C's place with no problems. We hung around for a bit then went out with her to meet up with some of her friends. Went to a nice outdoor restaurant with good Austrian beer and the best burger I've had in Europe. The Czech Republic can't do beef. This was BEEF. They all spoke English but mostly stuck to German. We didn't mind, C has a lot of couch surfers and we didn't expect her friends to get to know us or anything. We didn't stay out too late and headed home to crash.
Saturday the boy and I just wandered around the city. She lives close to the center and wander we did. Took pictures of main attractions and watched people. Then we got a little further from the big stuff and just took in the more residential streets. We found a nice Italian restaurant tucked away in a corner street. Awesome food and cheaper than stuff near the center. We met up back at her place in the evening to go to a film festival she knew about about music/bands. 11 Euros for as many films as you wanted to see. We watched ones of Fiest, P.J. Harvey, Arcade Fire (The Suburbs), and Noah and the Whale. Surprisingly P.J. and Arcade Fire were my least favorites. Just plain boring or weirdly done. The Fiest one was all about how she records/performs, who she works with, etc. Really interesting stuff. I'd never heard Noah and the Whale but the film was the entire album played to a story/narrative that was really interesting. It was my favorite. We got schnitzle and beer right in the cinema later. We could have caught a tram but the wait was as long as the walk so we hauled home in the rain with one umbrella between the three of us. Spent a couple of hours at home listening to music. That's how C and I hit it off before after all.
Today we had a "Before Sunrise" plan. I've never actually seen the movie. According to the boy "it's not a chick flick, it's a haunting, bitter story of human emotion and fleeting connection". I'll have to take his word for it until I watch it. We found exactly where some of the scenes were filmed and went there to take pictures. It was actually really cool because the locations took us down streets we'd never have gone to before and we saw even more cool stuff along the way. And walked in the footsteps of Ethan Hawk! ;) Only did five out of around twenty things but not a bad idea at all.
He left for Prague in the afternoon and I met back up with C to meet yet another Couch Surfer who just wants to meet some new people. He was pretty cool and lived on the outside of the city. It was still in the city limits but didn't feel like it at all. Narrow hilly streets and vinyards on the sides. We got a great view of the city (which isn't as pretty as Prague from far away) and drank wine and ate some traditional Austrian bread with different spreads on it at a cool outdoor place. It had rained earlier and was getting windy and chilly again so we took the bus and then metro back to her place.
Got to do lots of fun/local stuff I'd have never known about if we hadn't been hanging with a local!
Embassy tomorrow. Fingers are crossed that all goes well.
Good things about Vienna. It's clean; less graffiti, dog crap, and homeless people than Prague. The bad; it's expensive. Stupid Euro. Eh well, free accomodation with a cool person can't be beat.
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