Wien: Day 2

Had an awesome breakfast at Wombat's (the hostel we're staying at in Vienna) this morning. It's all-you-can-eat for €3.50 so we had hot chocolate, fruit, muesli, cheese, ham and bread. We even made some rolls for lunch.

Without such a good breakfast I think I would've gone insane as the rest of the morning was spent in various queues trying to sort out our onward travel plans.

Mine was (so I thought) fairly simple): back to Praha for a flight on the 23rd. This meant either an overnight train or a late bus and staying at a hostel for one night. As the hostel would inevitably be Centrum again I would have preferred the overnight train. That is, until I was told how much it would be: €70 incl. reservation! That's just ridiculous for 5hrs on a train!!

So I picked the last bus of the day (€20) and booked Centrum again. At least this time I'll have a printed reservation sheet and I'm arriving around 9:30pm, so it should all be OK.

Bec and Nicky's plans were far more complicated. They intended to use their Eurail passes to the max (and why not) and were thus heading to Barcelona on trains. They had not counted on two things: 1) the timtables changing slightly, making a 3-change trip into a 5-change trip and 2) the Spanish railways charging upwards of €70 to reserve couchettes on night trains.

So we spent an hour or so going back and forth trying different options and seeing the various prices. The option they went for saved them €100 each in reservation fees, but requires 6 changes I think, and takes 30 hours. Not something I'd want to do, but at least they have each other for company.

After that ordeal, we headed for the KunstHausWien - the museum associated with the architect Hundertwesser (of whom I spoke yesterday) - which was fascinating! Really really great art, and amazing models of planned day-care centres and entire communities without straight lines. The HR Giger exhibition, however, that took up the top two levels was, in equal measures disturbing, confronting and creepy. This guy did the set design for Alien, and his art follows similar lines. He seems to have blended mechanics and erotica however, creating some trully strange art.

From there we headed straight across the road to use the net for 2.5hrs! So we're nerds, you're the ones reading our work!

Dinner was had at Mozart Stube (I think I spelt that right), which is this awesome tiny family-run restaurant around the corner from Westbahnhof. Awesome food, although for some reason I ordered chicken liver, and so it was not so nice. Why did I do that to myself?!?

We finally went to bed after more card games - this time without Victor.