Looking at the map of Vienna it seem our hostel wasn’t that far of a walk from the station, but then we quickly realized we underestimated the scale of it. What I was expecting to be a 15 minute walk turned out to be 45 minutes and the kicker of it was it wasn’t even the right hostel. For whatever reasons I got the address of a different hostel and after this realization we found out our hostel was right next to the train station!
By this time it was already 5 PM but not wanting the day to be a complete wash we walked up to the city center which took about 30 minutes. Once there Rick Steves recommended a quick trolley tour around the city. What he failed to mention was that when he said you cross the Danube Canal for a short while that short while is about half an hour. By the time we got back to where we started it was pushing 7 PM which is when happy hour at our hostel started and you can’t miss happy hour. So we jumped on a bus and headed back. As we where there two girls, both named Marcia, came and sat down with us. They already have been in Vienna a couple of nights and started to tell us of this bar right by the hostel that had some pretty sweet deals. One of which was a liter of beer for 5 euros and the other good one was 10 shots for 20 euro (no smaller quantity was available) and offered the possibility of doing them as a snuff shot which was something very unique. You would take the shot and then slam down on this wooden contraption that would then shoot snuff (snortable tobacco because after you have tobacco you can smoke or chew its only natural the next step is to snort it) up your nose.
The death machine
The nail game (facial expressions play a big part in it)
It pretty much felt like you shoved Vicks vapor rub up your nose. They also had two good games one of which was trying to hammer a nail into wood using the opposite end of a hammer and another was trying to balance a coin on a lemon floating in water. If you are able to do it you get a free shot. After wasting about a euro on the lemon (with the bartender watching ever one of my failures) he gives me the encouragement to do it one more time. As soon as I drop the coin on the lemon it rolls of but he throws his hands up in the air and goes you got it and immediately pours two shots one for me one for him. This happened another two times and then I was all set. The bartender on the other hand moved down to the next group and started taking shots with them. After we could no long breath out of our noses (j/k) we headed back to the hostel around 4 am and therefore drinking for 9 straight hours on a night we were originally planning to stay in on.
The next morning we blew our noses and headed out to do some sightseeing and timed our return just in time to make happy hour again lol. When we were at the Schoenbraunn Palace some guy was taking a video and we began to get a little suspicious that as we walked by he followed us on his camera. Not being sure what to do I waved at him in which he waved back, closed his camera, and then left to doctor the video in some way that it can get on Vienna Boys Gone Wild (at least that seemed the most likely).
Schoenbrunn Palace
This was then followed by buying our subway tickets back from a homeless man out of his fanny pack. It was an interesting experience. As we were walking back we decided we will probably just stay in tonight and do laundry since it has been long overdue. The first thing we had to take care of though was the suspicious email Jeff got from WSU. He got an email with the header please call as soon as possible and in the email was just a number and I was excited because it was the first time I got to use my Skype account I created about 2 years ago lol (turned out it was only 2.1 cents/minute which is amazing). After about 2 minutes on the phone Jeff got a giant grin on his face and that was when I knew that our night had just turned into a night of liver punishment.
Meeting some people from North Carolina and Israel we told them about our experiences last night (as we played numerous drinking games in the hostel) and they decided they wanted to see it first hand. As soon as we walk in I scouted out that lemon and with a steady hand was able to get it to stick on my first try because I am a big deal.
Bam!!!
After the free shots the liter beers began to flow. I was tired from the night before since I only got about 5 hours of sleep but somehow managed to stay out until 3:30 at which time I realized everyone I came with was gone.
Waking up this morning made me realize how bad I need to do laundry when I was trying to get a shirt out of my bag and when I opened it, it was like someone just breathed out a long drag of a cigarette into my face since all the bars are smoke friendly and ever damn European smokes. Eating the bread out of there this morning tasted like it had remnants of nicotine in it. As I am writing this we are on the train to Munich. We just got to snag some seats after having to sit in the connector between two carts for the past hour.
Jeff catching some z's. You can also see the legs of another sleeper.
When we arrive in Munich we are meeting Claus who is letting us surf his couch. This is going to be our first couch surfing experience so I am just hopping for the best.
B
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