Saturday, November 7, 2009

Shuttle to Linz, Österreich + Train # 4 to Wien (Day 16)

Today we took a shuttle from Cesky Krumlov to Linz, Austria. Then from there we took a train to Vienna. We stayed with my friend Sabrina - a Viennese girl Lana and I met in while backpacking last summer in Costa Rica / Panama. Sabrina is amazing. She is very sweet, always laughing, and a great conversationist. She knows how to include everyone and make them feel comfortable. This past year she spent a semester abroad in Spain teaching English as a Second Language. She knows German, Spanish and English all fluently. She was out of town on the day we arrived but informed her flat mates that we would be arriving. We arrived in the late afternoon but when we buzzed the apartment no one answered. We waited around for someone to open the front door and I went up to the fourth floor to knock on their door. A little aggressive I know but we were tired from so much transit and just wanted to set our packs down. No answer. We sat outside her building for 30 minutes and Greg shot this photo of the opposing apartment complex:
We were hungered so we tried looking for a cafe to grab a bite to eat. We were sort of in the wrong part of town because there was mostly just apartments and buildings and no eateries. We set our packs down inside a windowless, cigarette hot-boxed bar complete with digital dart machine and the meanest butch bartender women. She yelled at us in German when we entered the door, she yelled at us in German when we set down our packs, she yelled at us to order some beers, she yelled at me when I stepped outside to find another bar, she yelled at Greg while I was gone, all she did was yell and give us the meanest looks in the world. It's no wonder she only had two customers, one of which was a dog. We quickly left without buying anything and she yelled at us as we left her stupid place. We found another bar with the jolliest Austrian bartender in the world. We didn't know German and he didn't know English so a lot of sign language and pointing was used, but the love for each other was mutual.....8 beers later we were feeling great but Greg had to make a quick sprint to the ATM to pay for the tab. Whooops. Once he paid for the beers we put on our packs and arrived at Sabrina's, her flatmates let us in, we set down our packs and went out again to find some food. We settled on doner kebab and pretty much inhaled it. We came back to the apartment and called it night. In the morning I took these photos of Sabrina's place for Lana to see:
She had many photos of Panama around her room:


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