Surfs Up

Day 252
I woke up and laid in bed for a bit. At one point I heard someone coming up the steps and assumed that it was the guy from the night before. He then knocked on my door. I decided to pretend to not hear it. After a few knocks he tried to open the door. Creepy. It was locked and he went away.

After breakfast I got my act together and went to the castle. It wasn't opened but I was able to check out the birds that guarded it. With nothing really to do I just headed back to the hostel and worked on my blog for some time.

When it was finally time to go I had a bit of a panic attack. The bus station was rather large and no one seemed to know where the bus to Vienna was. It even took me some time to figure out where I could actually ask. Eventually I found it and after a short bus ride and a train ride I was in Vienna.

After waiting a few minutes I was greeted by couchsurfer Christine. She was kind enough to allow me to crash at her place for the evening. Christine was about to embark on her own big trip and was having a going away dinner that night. After dumping my stuff at her place we headed there.

The dinner was at an Indian place that was all you can eat and pay what you wish. It was really quite good. When the party was over we headed back to her place and chatted for some time before calling it a night.

Time Warp

Day 251
The family was really loud and eating breakfast at 6 am. I didn't realize how early it was though. Somehow I had messed up the time on my ipod so that it was 2 hours ahead. After falling back to sleep I woke up and thought that it was about 10 am. I rushed getting ready and eating. The tourist office wasn't going to be open in the afternoon and I wanted to make sure that I got there on time. It wasn't until I checked the time when I saw the office wasn't open and I thought it should be that I realized what time it actually was. To kill the next hour I wandered around and took pictures of random things.

When the office opened I was a bit shocked to find out that the woman didn't speak any English, but did speak German. Half of the questions that I wanted to ask went flying out of my head. I did manage to find out the bus times though and which museums were opened.

Nothing would be opened for an hour so I headed back to the hostel and ran into Claire and Kasey. We decided to go on the underground tour, however, we had to wait until noon and got some tea to pass the time.

That tunnel tour was one of the more interesting of this type that I have been on. The English part was on a handout, but it was clearly marked when we were meant to read each part. The tunnels have been used for storage and protection for the last several hundred years. A long time ago the towns people knew that the Swedish army was approaching so they hid themselves and all their valuables in the tunnels. The Swedes found an empty town and left compltly creeped out.

We also passed an old wine cellar and a gnome. The gnome was ugly. There was a small labyrinth that even I had to bend down in. At one point the guide turned off the lights. We all had to just stand there and wait, going forwards would ensure getting hurt.

After the tour we headed for lunch and then Claire and Kasey were back to Prague. I headed to the history museum but found it to be rather boring and didn't stay long.

Back at the hostel I spent most of the evening updateing the blog and talking to my mom. I had thought that I had the place to myself but around 10 a random guy showed up. It turns out that his car had broken down and he was stuck. He didn't speak English and sat in the kitchen smoking. This was really annoying me so I went out to a local wine bar and wrote for a bit.

Today’s Letter is Z

Day 250
Day 250 should be a big day. It really is just another day, but one with a nice big round number to it. Perhaps if I had known in advance I would have planned something special, but as it is, I’m not really cognitive of the day of the week or date, let alone the day number. I guess everyday is a weekend for me.

I was up unbelievably early. The French guy, who had spent about an hour complaining about loud people in hostels the night before, was up at about 6 and must have had 100 plastic bags to pack his things in. Because of this I was way early for breakfast. I ended up getting my things packed up to pass the time. I was able to get rid of a couple of bottles and some books, making my load lighter. This made me very happy.

CFM left shortly after breakfast and I finally had some peace. I had a bus to catch, but not for a bit. I had wanted to take advantage of the free internet, but the monitor was missing. I read my book instead. I headed out a few minutes early for my noon bus. It was late and I just stood there freezing for a bit.

After an hour I got to Znojmo. I had no directions to my hostel, just a picture. I thought that it would be easy to see from the station. It really wasn’t. I wandered for some time and lucky ran into Claire and Kasey, teachers from Prague here for the weekend. They knew where the hostel was and led the way.

Once I had dropped off my things I headed out for lunch. I was a bit sick of Czech food and thought I would go to a Chinese place that I had passed earlier. I couldn’t find it, but I did find a place called the Saloon that had American flags on the outside. I felt like this was my type of place. Inside they only had Czech and German on the menu. I would have found it really funny if they didn’t have an English menu at all. Luckily they did and I got fried cheese. I guess I wanted some Czech food after all.

Znojmo was completely dead. It sort of reminded me of Cosenza in Italy. This could be a really pretty town, but its kinda falling apart. Perhaps it is good for me to go to at least one place in the CR that isn’t a UNESCO site. I wandered the empty streets for some time before going back to the hostel.

This is a holiday weekend and there was a family consisting of several generations staying here from Prague. They took over the kitchen completely. I ended up going to my room (I was the only one in there) and taking a nap. I really felt out of place.

When I woke up it was dinner time and I ended up chatting with Claire and Kasey some more. This is one of the Czech wine regions and they had tried to do some tastings today. Nothing was open so they bought a selection of wines from the Znovin vineyard instead. They were very nice and shared their tasting with me. Eventually the family came back and we sort of felt like we were intruding. It took some time, but we found a hotel bar with super cheap beer and we had a couple of drinks there. When it closed we went looking for something else, but there was nothing so we simply went back to the hostel. I was happy to see that I still had the room to myself.