Train # 5 (Wien to Budapest, Day 19)

Today we embarked a train to our last generation, Budapest. We saved the best for last. Here Greg is reading the first few pages of my copy of Atlas Shrugged. I read only the first half of the novel two years ago, and I loved it, but sometimes it's just too dense and the font is microscopic, I promise I will finish it someday but I want to give it the attention it deserves.

We took over the entire cart, what a mess.

Wien, Österreich (Day 18)

I ate gelato at Zanoni & Zanoni and if I could eat gelato every day I would come here. They have so many flavors and all the gelato servers speak Italian so it's fun to interact with them.

nom nom nom...

We went to the Lomography store and it's like I died and went to heaven. I love plastic toy film cameras. I was able to touch and play with all the cameras and gadgets that I've seen on their site. I bought a blue lomolito and I can't wait to use it.

There is a very serious student protest going on in Vienna right now. Everything started with a student occupation of the University of Fine Arts in Vienna. Two days later on Thursday last week a sudden turn happened after a spontaneous student protest at the Main University of Vienna. Hundreds of students invaded the finally occupied the biggest lecture hall of Austria - the Audimax. At the end of the afternoon a storm of students flooded the lecture hall. Thousands of present students of the Main University present at the Audimax agreed to form a plenum.

The plenum is based on a "grassroots democracy". Every day two plenums are held in the lecture hall. The present students elect two moderators twice a day. On this platform discussions are held about the current state of the movement and "task-forces" present their achievements during the day.

The movement is participatory and volunteers form and join "task forces". Those task-forces have the purpose to tackle certain administrative problems within the occupation. Although they are concentrate on their postulations.

Daily, thousands of students participate euphorically in the occupation and a new critical political atmosphere can be sensed among the Viennese student's community.

As a matter of fact, this motivation has jumped on several other universities in Austria and attracted a lot of attention in other universities around the world. Students in Graz, Linz, Klagenfurt and Innsbruck, what are other major university cities in Austria are protesting and occupying their universities. Messages and visits of professors from around the world are legitimizing the occupation in the Main University of Vienna.

After a week of prospering occupations around Austria universities, major protests were held in the whole of Austria. More than 30,000 students were on the streets of Vienna demanding their rights and their nonnegotiable postulations.

The demands of the protesters include funding for the democratization of the universities, as well as the abolition or non-introduction of tuition fees.

To view a full list of their demands, click here.

Sabrina made us a delicious cake, it was like nothing I've ever had before. The cake was moist and full of tiny poppy seeds, almost like a Lemon poppy seed muffin, only a hundred times better. The "frosting" was made out of yogurt and crushed berries. It was sooo good. Note: listen to Sabrina's speech, I love the way she talks and pronounces things, I could listen to her for hours.

Me, Sabrina and her roommate....

Her roommate was heavily involved in the student protests so that night she took some food to feed the student occupying the university. The internet plays a central role of communication and when she wasn't hanging out with us she was watching the live-feed of the University. She has been interviewed on television a few times and I admired her intense passion for the cause. That night Greg and Sabrina and I played cards and showed each other magic tricks.

Wien, Österreich (Day 17)

Today we used our Rick Steve's Easter Europe guidebook and followed his self-guided walking tour. We saw many monuments, statues and gigantic stone buildings.

We went to Demel chocolate shop:


This reminded me of Sarah & Hannah:

I bought my Dad three chocolate bars:

We saw this advertisement plastered everywhere. Although I do endorse eating locally grown meat, it was very very disturbing to see his ad.

After our self-guided tour we just walked around town with no particular direction. I found my favorite tree in all of Vienna:

and Greg found this beautiful brick wall:

I spotted a poster for an Annie Leibovitz photo exhibition so we trekked across town to see it. She is coming out with a book but it was awesome to see the physical prints displayed in the gallery. At night we hung out with Sabrina and her friends. She took us to this Jazz bar after it took 10 minutes to find a parking spot and another 10 minutes to parellel park....

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: