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This entry is essentially when I actually saw what Vienna has to offer. This is the second time writing this entry after giving it a shot last week and then my phone doing something stupid and losing it all. But it's been near a week since then and my laptop still hasn't arrived so I figure I might as well give this another shot.
Because I didn't really like the other hostel I decided to move to another not far away. It was called the Hostel Ruthensteiner and it's probably the best hostel I've stayed in. This was due to several reasons; mostly notably was that it had a bar with good beer a good prices and a bunch of instruments which anyone could use including a piano. This combined with some awesome people made for a great atmosphere. One old guy in particular just happened to be regular at the hostel as his son lives in Vienna and he visits every year, and every year he takes over the piano every night. He was damn good and this year there was also a guy on the guitar playing with him. One would just start playing something and the other would listen for a while and then join in. They were damn good. Each night most of the hostel would just go down to the bar and listen to them and request songs.
As for the touristy stuff I did over these few days. Well I went to the Belvedere palace which is now a museum. The palace is in the middle of a huge garden which is surrounded by a concrete wall. It took me about 45 minutes walking around this wall before I found the way in. To be honest I can't really remember much about what was actually on display on the museum. Mostly paintings. But the building itself and the gardens were quite amazing. There was also a pretty nice Christmas market behind the palace.
On one night I went to the opera with a bunch of people from the hostel. Not normally the way I'd spend an evening, but hey, when in Vienna. Besides it was only like 3 euro for standing tickets. The opera we saw was Peter Grimes. Although it was in English it was still pretty much impossible to understand what was being said/sung. Thankfully there were little screen with the transcript so we could follow it. It wasn't bad, though in hindsight we probably should have gone another night and seen The Magic Flute.
Come to think of it, perhaps there wasn't all that much touristy stuff happening. I visited a few other Christmas markets. One night I went to the theme park with a girl from the hostel which was suppose to be having some kind of winter festival with live music. There was a small Christmas market and there was live music, but that was pretty much it and all but the Ferris wheel of the theme park was closed which was disappointing.
Oh, and there was the free walking tour which was really good. It took us 3 attempts to actually get to it on time. But it was quite long and very informative. Learned a lot about mostly the Hapsburg family which ruled most of Europe at one point. After the tour we went and got lunch at a Indian restaurant which is a all you can eat buffet and then pay whatever you think it's worth, so that was rather interesting.
One night we discovered this hostel even had board games so we played d Zug um Zug which is what Ticket to Ride is called in German. I won comfortably being the only one to have actually played it before. Awesome fun though. Another night I found myself playing some drinking games with a large group of mostly aussies in the hostel. This night ended up leading back to that Aussie pub and got pretty wild.
Hmm, so I guess that's probably mostly it. Many nights actually just spent hanging out with people in the hostel and drinking while listening to some great music. Lots of Christmas markets and just a touch of sightseeing and local culture.
After this I was off to Graz where I had managed to find a Couchsurfing host.
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