Vienna

Friday, October 29^th, 10:20 PM

  JoEllen and I are sitting on the last leg of our train ride back to Ostrava, in a surprisingly chilly though otherwise relatively comfortable R train, about halfway between Brno and Ostrava. We decided that, since Thursday was a state holiday in the Czech Republic (commemorating the declaration of independence from the Habsburg Monarchy) and neither of us have anything on Fridays, that we'd have a short vacation in Vienna, which isn't terribly far away from Ostrava (about three hours, usually). We headed out Wednesday around fiveish, since I had class (though as it happened I completely spaced that we were meeting at the library instead of the classroom, so I didn't manage to make it regardless), and got into Vienna at about 8:30 that night. Veronika and Anna met us at the station, which was awesome. JoEllen took off to go get settled at her couchsurfing place, and Veronika, Anna, and I went back to Anna's place, where I was staying, and took down half of the handle of Becherovka Lemond I had brought as a thank-you gift and watched videos of some of the performances from the summer school and then some silly you-tube videos, including Arnold Schwarzenegger's 150 best quotes and a Ukrainian Army recruiting ad. Thursday I met up with JoEllen and Ida from Denmark who was also staying at this couchsurfing Mecca and we had coffee at the Loos-Bar then went to Schönbrunn, where we spent quite a lot of time walking around the enormous grounds. Afterwards we visited the Hofburg, saw the Staatsoper, walked around the city center for a bit, then went and met up with Veronika and Anna to go visit a Czech pub near Veronika's place, at which hilarity ensued. Today we had lunch at the Wirtschaftsüniversität, where they go to school (best cafeteria ever.) then we headed over to the Albertina, where there were two big exhibitions (one on Michaelangelo and one on Picasso). Afterwards we just wandered around the city for a while, got some coffee (Kaffee mit Schlag!) and then decided to head home, since our hosts had to head out for the weekend and Vienna is no place to have to pay for housing on a Czech salary. Overall it was quite a nice trip, though we're both terribly exhausted and looking forward to spending a day or two at home doing nothing in particular. It was actually quite cool to be back in an authentically big city, none of which exist in the Czech Republic. It also felt quite homelike to me, since I could actually understand everything that was going on, instead of my usual 50-70% in Ostrava.

  Luboš brought me a clothes cabinet before I left, but disassembled. Thankfully he didn't conscript me to put the thing together, but said he'd come back and do it Thursday, so I'll have something new waiting for me when I get home. It's entirely possible that he'll also have rearranged my room, which seems to happen on a relatively regular schedule of about once every two weeks, but I don't suppose I'll care that much, since I'm not particularly attached to any particular furniture arrangement. I finally caved and bought an exercise bike, which got delivered Wednesday morning, so I'll put that together this weekend. Pseudo-home gym more or less complete! Well, we're approaching the station, so I'll wrap it up.