Continued from Prague Day 3 Part 2.

I had to catch a morning train out of Prague, so I said goodbye to everyone and was on my way. On my own again, I wonder what the future will bring. For one, I know paying for dinner will no longer be a 20 minute ordeal where we all try to figure out what we each ordered and how much we each owe. One bill, one person, one payment. Done.

Love, hate relationship with cobblestones.

Long walk to the subway station. My 24Hr metro pass from yesterday is still valid so saved some money there.

Another wedding. So many people have gotten married that I think half of the people who got married yesterday have gotten their marriages annulled to get married again today.

 

Errr….where’s the subway station?

Took me a while to find it because the dumb tree was blocking it. Terrible signage!

Down we go.

I really liked how this photo turned out.

Really packed train. Good thing I only had to go one stop before I get out to transfer.

Prague central station.

Saw all these bikers getting ready to do some mountain biking.

They didn’t have too many food choices at the station, so I had to settle on this.

Chicken sandwich and fries. Crap, they didn’t give me ketchup.

No worries. Remember that 20 Euro cent ketchup packet I had to buy in Verona at McDonald’s? Well, I had bought two and only used one and saved the other one because it was, well, 20 Euro cents. McDonald’s ketchup is just exactly what I needed for my Burger King fries. Heresy.

They had a nice departure display inside Burger King so I could just enjoy my brunch while keeping a close eye on what platform the train will arrive on.

The station looks really Eastern Bloc.

We saw this guy with the dog in the station on the day we arrived in Prague. He was asking us if we needed accommodations. Seems really shady.

I guess the dog and the dog carrier is part of his prop. He had so much stuff packed in his dog carrier that he was using it more like a luggage than anything else.

On my way out of Czech Republic.

Use the hammer to break the glass to get the hammer that’s behind the glass. How Kafkaesque(I can say it because I am still in the general vicinity of Prague, where Kafka is buried).

Hahaha. Saw this on the toilet seat and it reminded me of “NNNEEEEeeeiiinnnnnn!!!!!”

On this train, you can only throw bottles out of the window, but not yourself.

In my train compartment, my travel companions were a woman from Australia traveling partly for pleasure and partly for work conferences and an American couple from Florida who are 3 weeks in on their year long trip across Europe and Asia. Amazing. They had their first aid packing list down pat with multiple types of antibiotics for every different sort of symptoms. I’ve got a long way to go on being a seasoned traveler. They also told me about how they’ve met so many people from Australia and New Zealand who are on these years long travels all over the world, some spanning more than 8 years!! Definitely a different lifestyle than what my life is. It did plant a seed in my mind whether it would be possible for me to travel for an extended period of time though….Hmmmm….I’ll have to water that seed and see if it grows into a forest.

Rambow knife to make tomato and cheese sandwiches for lunch. The Florida couple were on a 50 Euro daily budget(Yes, that includes board, food and everything else!) since they have to make their dollar stretch for an entire year. I was too ashamed to tell them how much I had spent on dinner the previous night. I easily spend close to 50 Euros even before I have dinner, and that’s just on food and transportation…

My hazelnut chocolate bar.

Pamphlet for our train info. I don’t understand their numbering system. Are cars 1,2,3,4,5,6 not good enough anymore?

Pumpkin patch?

Vienna! Not what I was expecting to see. The suburbs are almost always ugly everywhere in the world.

Off at the train stop, said goodbye to my friends in the train and now I shall head into the subway network.

Vienna has the honor system for subway where you buy a ticket, validate it and there are no other checks.

Easy breezy ride to my stop. Up to the surface. I hope I can find my hotel easily.

St. Stephen’s Cathedral. First thing that I saw after getting out onto the surface. Of course, it’s under restoration. Every single famous building in Europe is under some sort of perpetual restoration. Sigh.

This is Stephansplatz, in the old town center. Billions of people walking around and tons of shops all around. I had trouble finding my hotel and I was walking around like a tourist, a dumb lost tourist, a dumb lost tourist with a huge luggage. Sigh.

Found it! I am such an idiot. I didn’t even notice this but if you go 3 photos up, the one where it shows me on the escalator going to the surface, look at the top left corner of that photo. Yeah, I literally came onto the surface at the doorsteps of my hotel. Sigh…

Very nice, it’s got enough room for me to open my luggage fully!

Full sized shower without wasting space on a bidet! I love my room.

My number one priority in Vienna is actually to slow down a little and spend a lot of time sitting and chilling out in various coffeehouses. Vienna has a very strong coffeehouse culture and I plan on taking it all in over here. With that said, tonight I will just walk around and then probably sit in a coffeehouse to either read or blog.

Lots of people all around Stephansplatz. I will say this, the girls here are beautiful. I saw more beautiful girls in 10 minutes here than I had in the 3 days in Prague. Everyone who told me that girls are beautiful in Prague, YOU LIE!

No restoration work seen from this angle.

Mozarthaus. Mozart used to live here in the 1780s.

Citroen DS and I don’t know what the other car is. Some American vintage?

I wish it wasn’t under restoration.

There, the cathedral in its completeness without anything to cover it up.

Oh, I wonder if this is some sort of cool magic trick. The guy was moving around in there for a good minute. All the tension is building up.

The guy in the dreadlocks comes out of the bag. Yeah, that’s it. Absolutely nothing else happened. He got out of the bag and walked next to the trashcan to have a smoke. WTF was that all about then!?

This is a very famous street here in central Vienna.

Graben.

OK, Graben is very nice and all but I need some serious medicine to knock out this crazy allergy I am having. I’ve been afraid of taking my newly acquired medicine from Czech Republic, so I shall attempt that effort again here in Austria.

They had several registers all ringing up orders for drugs. I asked for Sudafed, but of course, they didn’t carry it. Sigh. Instead I got something else that I can’t understand but apparently it’s for sinuses according to the picture on the cover.

I have no idea what this sign means. No holding hands? No dates? No prostitutes? What does it mean?

Pestsäule in Graben. A mercy column erected for the plague of 1679.

Yes, I finally get to visit a true Viennese Coffeehouse. So excited!

Just kidding. I will be visiting this one instead, Cafe Hawelka. It’s been around since 1939.

Typical of Viennese coffeehouses to have newspapers on wooden reading frames.

Sachertorte(chocolate cake invented here in Vienna) and Einspänner(coffee with cream). The Einspänner is traditionally served in a glass cup. Why glass, I do not know. Fancy name or not, the hot coffee still burns fingers through the glass. Ask me how I know.

This is the sinus medicine that I got. I looked it up and apparently it’s some sort of popular herbal remedy. I doubt it’ll be all that potent. Where can I find some black market Sudafed around here? Shit, at this point I think it may be easier to just buy some amphetamines and reverse cook it into Sudafed in my hotel bathtub!

Second cup of coffee. This one is with milk and comes in a typical coffee cup with a handle. The coffees are typically offered with a glass of water and couple of sugar cubes. I am not sure how they’ll react if I asked for Splenda.

I love the atmosphere in here. Just love it.

Doing some reading while getting wired on caffeine and herbal sinus remedy.

If The Economist can get away with cussing, I can get away with cussing in my own fucking photo blog.

OK, this is the other side of that sign we saw earlier. I wonder if the other side got vandalized? I took a closer look at the red cross out line and it looked to be too well done to be a vandal’s job. Still clueless to what either side means.

Almost dark, the lights are starting to come on.

The hotel front desk recommended this place when I asked for Austrian food. They mentioned that it was not touristy.

They were absolutely right about it not being touristy, because I was one of only 5 customers in there.

Wiener Schnitzel and mixed salad. How Austrian. Despite the restaurant being very empty, the food was actually quite tasty. Good recommendation from the hotel.

I saw this in a display window. I don’t know what it is, but I think I need it.

They had these colorful lights projected onto Stephansplatz.

Inside the cathedral. There was no natural light coming in because, well, it’s night, so this is the best picture that I got.

I am very crass, but this is just so wrong. Where can I buy one?

This guy was rollerblading all around the plaza with LED lights attached to himself everywhere. What an attention whore.

I loved Cafe Hawelka so much that I came back after dinner with my laptop so I can catch up on all of my photo blogging here. They also have fast free Wifi which completes the whole package. Love it.

Some orange soda this time.

Time to get to work. As the night went on, the place got more and more crowded with it hitting peak crowd at around 10ish. The cafe closes at 1AM. This shall be my home away from home for the next 3 days.

To be continued at Vienna Day 2.