We stayed another day and went to the zoo which was very nice. I saw some crazy animals in there. There was one that looked like a cross between a monkey, a bat, and a lion. It was all black except its paws were lion colored and so was its long lion like tail. Got some good pictures, which I’ll put up later as soon as I get all my crap together.
Later that night, we ordered some hungarian food from a really cheap place that came highly recommended by all stayers of that hostel. It was really good, but I’ll learn later not to save if for the next morning. Anyway, we stayed in that night chatting with other hostelers and met some really cool people. We also watched Euro Trip which was hilarious. Finally went to bed around 3 and had to get up hella early to make the train to Vienna.
We arrived in the afternoon and it was raining. I have decided that Vienna hates me. I’ve been there once before and it was also overcast and rainy. It stayed rainy pretty much the entire time we were there. Oh and there’s more reason. I ate the Hungarian food for dinner that night and felt wonky the entire next day, leading up to a lovely spat of food poisoning. But we’ll get to that later. So we went and did some shopping. I finally found the hat I’ve always wanted and even added a smiley face button and one that says “bin degegan” which means “I’m against it.” Then we went to the MUMOK museum and saw some interested artwork. THere was some done by an artist named Lisa something or other that was very good. Oh and we had checked in at the hostel Ruthenstein and were staying a block down from the main hostel at a smaller summer hostel. We went down to the common room and ate dinner and chatted with some folks, of course ending up playing cards and I learned a new game called Du Roch, it’s russian and pretty unlike any card game I’ve ever played before. It was a russian girl, Nika, that showed us. We also met a canadian brother and sister, Devon and Jess.

THe next day, we walked around Vienna with Devon and Jess, went to the Leopold museum and the Sisi museum, which is really the one I wanted to go to the whole time. Learned all about Queen Elizabeth who helped orchestrate the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She was known as Sisi by the people who loved her or so the story goes. In reality, she wasn’t much of a public figure when she was alive, but after her tragic death, poets immortalized her as a caring young girl who had duty thrust upon her and that’s when she gained publicity as being beloved. Oh and we also had the pleasure of seeing their entire dish collection. yaaaay…
That night, we were supposed to do a pub crawl, but I had been feeling weird all day and when I laid down to take a nap, I felt it coming on and I hate to vomit, like I will do anything I can not to vomit and when it’s something like motion sickness, usually I can hold out, but food poisoning is a must vomit. There were times when I was sitting on the toilet with the trash can having stuff come out of both ends. Not a good night. So of course I did not make the pub crawl but I told Jenny to go without me. And I’m glad she did cause she had a great time. She was taking care of me before hand though and offered to stay home. She prolly wouldn’t have enjoyed watching me throw up over and over again though. After about 12 hours of this, I felt my system was sufficiently purged from what I believe was the bacteria filled hungarian food and so I took an immodium and got up for the day.

Wed, everyone felt about the same. I was getting over my illness and Jenny and Jess were getting over the night of SEVERE drinking. Devon didn’t even get out of bed. We took it easy and went to the Handerwasser Haus which is done by an architect who “doesn’t beleive in straight lines” It was kinda cool, but I think Antonio Salvador of Barcelona was better. We walked around a bit more and tried to find this cemetary which we never ended up finding. Then returned to the hostel after buying train tickets to play scrabble until our train came. It was a straight shot from Vienna to Passau and I know I slept the whole way pretty much.
We had one day in Passau before I had to go back to Munich to fly home. Jenny finally enjoyed a good 12 hours of sleep (still can’t believe humans sleep that long), and then we went out to lunch at a nice Bavarian place with her roommate Mickey and his friend Wolfy (Wolfgang). The service took forever cause they were packed, but we didn’t even get food until like an hour and a half after we got there, but it WAS very good, so that made up for it. That night, we took it easy and watched some movies before going to bed. We got up early the next morning and drove the 4 hours or so to Munich. It was a sad departure. I had a lot of fun and Jenny is fun to hang around. She says she’ll be coming to Austin next year so hopefully that’s true.
Now what did I learn from this trip. Number one, I learned that there are a lot of attractive women in Southern Germany and Hungary. I came back and went out to bars in Austin and looked around thinking, where are all the hot girls? Sad I know. My I should move. But almost as important, I learned that it’s very difficult for me NOT to talk. I always knew that the less I said, the more luck I had with women in bars, but I didn’t know as much that is was actually a struggle to be in silence. Perhaps that’s because of all the time I spend alone with myself. So I know I need to work on that and I am. I also realized this sort of weird dimension in which I exist. I’m never really anywhere for a period of time and everyone in my life seems transient. Perhaps that’s why I think most about my parents because they are the few constants which are in my life. I feel I want to stay put a bit more, but really I can’t stop traveling. Perhaps I should just embrace it. In fact, I’m off to Southeast Asia in November. So there ya go.