Off Again

One foot out the door. One foot at the train station. On foot on the train. One foot in Vienna.

Okay, so I got restless. I got restless and I grabbed my Nikon and threw a few dresses in a backpack, since that’s really all I wear, and I bought a one way ticket to Vienna. 

I took a night train, an old stuffy Polish sleeper train, which reminded me of communism. Even I don’t know what that means, but it just had this old fashioned communistic vibe. 

My sleeping bunk neighbor was Bernadetta, a lovely polish violinist, who lived in Salzburg, the city of Mozart. She was the most animated woman I’ve ever met, and literally seemed as though she might explode from joy at ever word I said. She made a wonderful start to my stay in Austria, that’s for sure. 

On a friend’s recommendation I tried checking out Couchsurfing.com, a super cool travel portal where you can find locals in other cities that you can crash with for free. 

Unfortunately, all of the cool people I wanted to stay with were either out of town, or already had guests. Which is fair, considering my request was ridiculously last minute, I was literally asking people if I could stay over tomorrow. However, upon making my trip public, meaning other hosts on the site saw that I was visiting Vienna, my inbox was flooded with invitations from many kind men, of all ages, very willing to offer me a bed. Things got really weird, really fast. 

Needless to say, I declined and decided against couch surfing Vienna.

Does that mean I’ll never use couchsurfing? Absolutely not. My experience was a last minute thrown together effort and in no way exemplifies the website. I would love to give it another try and find some cool locals to hang out with! In fact, I got a reply from a really cool lady today to crash with her, but I had already arranged accommodations by the time I saw her response. Maybe next time I ought to send requests at least a week in advance, yeah? 

Anyways. That’s that and here I am. In Vienna. I’ve already been to Vienna, once, when I was a child. But I thought it would be lovely to go back. And it is. This is lovely.