Vienna

Rachel, Iris, and I went for two days and two nights to lovely Vienna. We stayed at this hostel called Believe it or Not. We thought it was a strange name until we got there. It's in this random building down a random alleyway. We walked into the building which was all but abandoned and the hostel turned out to be an apartment on the second floor. We "checked in" via a phone on a table. Our beds were elevated about 10 feet in the air and we had to climb a rickety ladder to get there. But, it was safe and relatively clean so no complaints. We met two boys from Madrid who are studying abroad in Sweden and decided to ditch school for a week to travel around. Their names were Ivan and Miguel and they were fun. I talked Iris into going out on the town with them. They took us to a nearby bar and then took a cab to a club down by the river. I'm not really a fan of European clubs but it was okay. I don't understand how Europeans classify bouncing back and forth to be dancing. At four, we said goodbye to our Spanish friends and headed home. Iris informed me that she had never really drinken before and proceeded to hug me a lot and tell me how much fun she was having.

I decided that cabs are for the weak and so help me God I was going to find my own way back to the hostel. We walked around for about and hour and saw some amazing buildings. Vienna at 4 in the morning. Yeah. We stopped at a kebab place to buy some water and snacks. The guy selling kebabs was really awesome and was yelling "I love America!!!!" as he gave us our food. Austrians are the most pro-American Europeans I have met so far. All of them had little American flag pins and upon learning where we are from would all yell "America!!! I love it!!!" Eventually we got back to the hostel, about an hour and a half later. The next morning Ivan and Miguel were shocked and astounded that we dared to walk home from the Danube.

The next two days were awesome as we say some of the major sites of the city. Everything was beautiful and grand, but by far the best time was relaxing with our feet in a pond outside Karlsplatz while an accordian played behind us and puppies froliced in the water in front of us. It's moments like that that I love about being here.