One of the first things my dad asked me when I got back was: "Do you want to go to Vienna?". Without asking how or when or why I shouted: "YES!!!". Now I know that I should have waited for th emore detailed explanation ofthe offer.
The next day I woke up because something (or someone) was shaking me from side to side and mumbling.
-Yana, Yana, ar eyou not going running today?!?!?! I looked online...blahblah...Vienna...blahblah...tickets, tour, excursion...blahblah...cool right?
It was 6:43 am so I haven't quite captured the meaning of dad's words. I asked him again later, he got offended and didn't speak to me for an hour.
Later on the same day I have learnt a life skill - living in the country and not knowing the language is a terrible, repetitive pain in the arse. I'll explain how I got to this conclusion. So to get tickets in, lets say, UK you will need to spare 5-6 mins of your time, go online and book. However in a highly developed Croatia you will need roughly 2-3 hours. Online booking here is not availible, therefore you have to go to the actual train station. That took us abot 40 mins. Than you have to spend a good amount of time explaining what you want and wait for the ticket assistant to write up all of the ticket BY HAND!!! Keeping the concentration on the face the woman handed us 4 rectangular pieces of paper with croatian writing on them. At that stage I was already bored and tired of the heat, so basically ready to go home. I was already about to step out of the station door when my dad turen right, walked to the bench, sat down and started reading the tickets. I found the idea pointless but to avoid the argument I sat down next to him and paciently waited. It took us exactly 17 minutes to understand that the ticket is only for one person. We went back, explained the situation, the angry woman shouted:
-You say you want the ticket, I give you ticket!!! I no fault!!!
The next quater of an hour we waited for her to write up another ticket and listening to perturebed wispers of the queue behind us. Finally she gave us even more papers and I was about to happily proceed to the bus stop but dad, again, stopped at the bench. This time I wasn't frustrated especially when we found out that the ticket for tha way back is booked two days later than we needed. I went back to the ticket window and found out that the woman decided to take a brake for 45 mins! Got tired of writing, твоюмать. We got our tickets in an hour and already mentally prepared for a hard trip. We were not wrong.
We took the night train so that we don't waste the whole day travelling. We thought that changes will not make much difference as we will just sleep the whole time on the train. Very naive and funny, right?
On the way there we only had to change once in Salzburg. Our first train was great, there were beds, sink and even croissaunts in the carrier. climbed into my bed, cuddled in the hoodie and fell asleep while reading. It seemed like a great beginning. However the stripe of misfortunes begun from 1 am when I woke up and saw a ghost, all dressed in white dancing around and humming. After couple of minutes I realised that that was my dad truing to tuck in the duvey into the contitioner whole. I watched him for a bit and fell asleep again. In three hours we had to wake up again to change.
There wasn't much time between trains so we quickly glanced at thi timetable, saw platform 3 next to our train and sprinted there. We got into the train 4 minutes before departure. Sat in the first empty seat that we saw next to a man, who my dad decided to start a conversation with straigh away.
-Oh those trains!
-Yeah, I know.
-Such a mess!
-True, it's always like that in Salzburg though.
-I see.
-Where are you from?
-Travelling from Croatia, decided to go to Vienna with my daughter for a couple of days.
-Vienna? But this is a train to Munchen!
At that point the conversation stopped being pointless, we grabbed our bags while running and stepped out of the train 20 seconds before the departure. We than wildely dashed around the station looking for the train needed. I asked the assistant, he looked at the timetable, that looked at the platform, said: "What the fuck?" and walked off. I am not sure how but after some time we finally found our train and dropped ourselves on the seats in a carrier next to a 20-22 year old girl dreaming about the following three hour sleep.
However, in the next three hours I have fond out that the girl is 23, her name is Daria and a story of her life. She didn't shut up for more than 2 minutes (that's when she had to reply her funny, talkative friend). The time flew by and there we were in Vienna, with a girl who we knew better than her own mother.
We got to the centre, had a huge-ass breakfast and immediately got a call: "Hello, my name is Taras, I'm gona be your guide". From that moment we dived into a constant flow of beautiful architecture, delicious food, refreshing wind and Taras' voice.
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| One of the first destinations - hundertwasser house, which I wouldn't say is a house but a piece of art |
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| Even the toilet |
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| Dad asked to take a picture in Albertina museum, other people probably thought we are mentally unstable or smth |
After the first 3 hour Vienna tour dad went straight to bed. I didn't want to waste time went to wonder around Vienna in the heat. After two hours I was asleep in an air-conditioned hotel room.
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| Liked the park. Didn't like the fact that homeless people take up all of the benches. |
In the evening we went to a local konoba to try out young white. Dad wasn't that impressed by th ewine but we both appreciated sausages!
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| Friendly musicians come to sing songs in any language right in your face. Loud but extremely pleasant. |
The next morning we spent again exploring galleries and took a brief glance at al the other tourist attractions.
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| You see tourists attracted to this building |
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| Ceiling of the building |
After having one of the most delicious meals in my life (if you go to Vienna before trying traditional schnitzel you must have Tafelspitz - tender beer boiled in broth served in a vegetable and pancake soup, toated black bread, minced apple and horseraddish and sourcream sauses and... are you ready?.. brain in a sculb bone... yum) we went to Vienna forest. Dad liked old 12th century castles, I liked the wind.
There we also visited an underground lake which was magically beautiful but too dark to be beautiful on the camera screen.
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| Taras didn't tell us details of the the trip. We were literally about to step into the cave when he decided to mention that temperature down there is 9 C. |
I loved Vienna, the night Dunai and life there. Coming back with two changes this time was hard! I could of done with couple of more paragraphs explaining but I already took three morning to write up this post so... let's just say that I had enough inspiration and a really strong will to try new chocolate which I could only open with my mum's presence to go through another sleepless night.
