To Salzburg

Monday 13.9.10

In the morning this couple that has slept in my car were talking, and I thought they were Czech and that they had mentioned Olomouc, but I didn't want to butt in on their conversation so I didn't ask them. Also I don't speak Czech and thought it might be rude to interrupt them and then insist they speak to me in something other than their native language.

Before we reached Vienna, I started thinking about what I would do with my few remaining days, and I pulled out my Eurail map and eventually decided that I had already seen Vienna, and instead of seeing a museum or coffeehouse I'd already visited (lovely as the Viennese museums and coffeehouses are), I wanted to go see Salzburg. When I reached Westbahnhof (the main rail station in Vienna), therefore, I asked the information guy for somewhere to get internet, and ended up walking down the street a little ways to this gambling café thing. I ordered an espresso to be polite and used their internet station, which was operated by the insertion of coins. I looked up the Hostelling International website (H.I. tends to have decent hostels, which are perhaps not the cheapest hostels, but are still cheaper than a hotel and aren't extremely sketchy, like some of the hostels I'd been in (see Rome, Innsbruck entries)) and wrote down the directions to a hostel there.

I walked back to the train station and got a cigar in a tobacco shop. They guy there was pretty nice and helped me pick out a cigar. He had a bit of trouble converting numbers between the German and English systems (Germans would say 'four-and-eighty' instead of 'forty-eight', for example), but fortunately I speak enough German that we could get past our differences. I boarded my Salzburg train, and ended up sharing a car with the punk teenager looking Austrian girl. I worked on this blog on my laptop. Eventually this old guy came in and was mean to this girl for some reason. I think he was another passenger, but she had some problem with her ticket when the actual conductor came by to check. The details are kind of hazy, but the old guy was pretty mean to her and didn't really have a reason for being so. When the food cart came by he bought a beer, which I guess made him seem a cranky old alcoholic. This girl and I exchanged glances and kind of shared a giggle.

I arrived in Salzburg and found my way to the hostel. One of my roommates was this overweight white American guy who was researching the area because he wanted to be a tour guide. He was, as you may expect, full of facts. However, I remember I didn't quite like him for some reason. Anyway for the rest of that day I think I just went to the grocery store and worked on the blog. Even such a mundane thing, though, is pretty cool when you're in Europe.