The bus left Brno at 1:30pm on Friday. It took 2hrs and arrived in Vienna (or Wien in the local language…German) around 4:00PM. The long distance busses in Europe are great! They have all the luxuries and sometimes have wifi and a TV screen like on a plane. I then took 2 metro trains and walked 400m to the hostel. It had started raining now and didn’t stop until the morning. The hostel was really nice. Melike recommended it as she stayed there 2 nights a few weeks ago. It’s not far from the main international train station and the property is on par with the classy ones in Bratislava and Budapest. Hostel Ruthensteiner.
I met a Turkish guy and 2 Aussie blokes from Sydney in my room and we went on a pub-crawl. It cost €15 (it included the first hour of unlimited local beer) and was pretty fun. We met lots of people from Austria and they spoke English pretty well. Beers were between €2-4 each. I was told this place was expensive??? I had 2 slices of pizza for €1 each for dinner.
I woke up at 7:30, took the train to the correct station with 2 names. I didn’t know this so mistook it for another station and went back, spent too long going back looking for the right station and missed my train to Villach HBF. I had to re purchase a ticket €25 and wait an hour for the next leg of the journey. It turned out ok because I only lost 2 hours and €25, I really wanted to hang out with Gianluca on the weekend. After breakfast at the train station I went back and grabbed some snacks for the bus / train journey. I purchased a roll with cheese, lettuce and tomato, a half ciabata with pizza topping and a bottle of water cost me €6.70. At home that would have cost up to $15.
I caught the train to Villach HBF and transferred to a bus, which took me to Venice, or Venezia as it is called in Italian. The bus took longer than first thought because of traffic but that’s ok. The busses and trains are really comfortable here.
Vienna was a nice place and I enjoyed the 18 hours I was there. I would like to go back. See you soon Vienna!