Day 170: To New York City

To say I was excited to finally be going back to the US would be an understatement. Oh the possibilities! Suddenly I would once again be the most fluent speaker of a country's official language, all the signs would be in English, and I could finally use the citizens only fast lane during passport control.

I woke up an hour before my 8am alarm and took my time getting everything I needed together, leaving the hostel around 9am. 

My train to Amerika!

I arrived at Schönefeld Airport with plenty of time to spare before my 12:25pm flight. Unfortunately, there was congestion at Schönefeld and our plane didn't leave the ground until 1:40pm. I should say that I was worried, because my original layover in Keflavik, Iceland was only 55 minutes, but I was partly curious if I had any chance of receiving some sweet, sweet compensation.

When it was apparent our plane would land only five minutes before my connecting flight to Newark, I could smell cash like a loan shark. I had dreams of lounging in 100 euro a night Icelandic hotels, courtesy of the airline. I envisioned the airline bending over backwards trying to satisfy my insatiable demands, begging me to take thousands of dollars in compensation in exchange for a later flight -- eventually chartering a private jet for myself once they realize that it's their only hope of not losing every last penny they own in airline court.

But it was not to be. They announced that the connecting flights (there were multiple scheduled to leave around this time) would all wait for us, and I made it onto my next flight uneventfully (if you could call walking out of one plane and onto another within five minutes, with no waiting in lines whatsoever, a non-event).

After landing in New York I bought a ticket for an express bus into the city. A new bus was supposed to arrive every 15 minutes, but presumably because it was rush hour, and the bus company can't plan for an entirely predictable event, I had to wait 80 minutes for the bus to finally arrive.

After the 45-minute drive to Manhattan Island, I bought a weekly metro pass and took the E line a few stops to Queen's Plaza, where it was a 5-minute walk to Q4 Hotel and Hostel.

It was only 9pm, but my body was still on Berlin time (3am) and all I'd had to eat that day was a small lunch on the plane and breakfast in Berlin. I wanted to cross the street and get a kebab or a slice of pizza, but excessive pride wouldn't allow me to accept a $3 ATM fee at the hotel or brutalize a business to the fees charged by credit card companies for such a small transaction -- so I walked half a mile to a nearby 7-11 and splurged on cliff bars, banana bread, and a healthy smoothie. Back at the hostel, I played an intense ping-pong match with another guest from Saudi Arabia before showering and turning in for the night around 11:30pm.

Day 169: Turkish Market

I had made a friend, Laura from Hungary, last night -- so today we agreed to meet at 3pm at the biweekly Turkish Market in the southeast part of the city. The market was full of plenty of fresh produce, fresh smells, and fresh people. We stopped to watch a musical performance along the river.

After perusing the market, we stopped at a cafe to the south for drinks and conversation. We moved our conversation to a nearby park before heading back to the hostel and topping the night off with a beer. We both had modes of transportation to catch in the morning -- Laura a train back to her current home in the Netherlands, and myself a plane to New York City -- and went to bed relatively early.

Day 168: Berlin's Books by Bike

I rented a beat up single gear bike from the hostel and rode into downtown. I had identified a few locations of interest: two libraries and the "gay museum", which purportedly has exhibitions on LGBT life in Germany throughout the ages.

Eight kilometers later, I found myself at Berliner Stadtbibliothek, one of the two locations that the Berlin State library calls itself home to.

It had everything I love about libraries, including plentiful seating, free WiFi, outlets, and, as a bonus, one euro coffee at the builtin cafe. I spent some time there working on my Spanish and finishing up blog posts before heading out to the next closest destination on my list, Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek.

AG is the second building housing the Berlin State Library's collection, and was partially funded by the United States during the beginning of the Cold War. Whereas Stadtbibliothek is where books on medicine, law, mathematics, computers, (among other things) are kept, AG holds books on religion, social sciences, music, etc. There's a fairly wide selection of sheet music available to be checked out. All of these cool state libraries I've been visiting makes me wonder what Washington State's state library is like. (I can already feel my expectations being lowered in anticipation of that Google search).

I spent some time at AG browsing the shelves and taking advantage of the free WiFi before getting back on my bike for the long ride home. I took a wrong turn after passing through Alexanderplatz and ended up pedaling a few more kilometers than necessary. Luckily, Berlin is mostly flat.

Day 167: German Museum of Technology

After a shockingly long 12-hour sleep and a flash downpour in the afternoon, I took the tram and metro to the German Museum of Technology.

I arrived a mere 2 hours before closing time, but most of the signs being in German sped the whole process up for me. The museum showcases German trains, windmills, textile machines, computers, planes, ships, among other things. I found it amusing that the very first sign of the computer exhibition states that "The German engineer Konrad Zuse built the very first computer". Only later in the exhibit is there a brief mention of the English engineer Charles Babbage, who is largely considered the "father of the computer" (at least according to the English Wikipedia). Zuse was actually the inventor of the first working electromechanical programmable, fully automatic digital computer, a distinction that I'm sure most museum goers don't care much to make -- but perhaps a distinction that the 50-years-before worth of analog computer creators might feel a bit more strongly about.

After seeing everything I cared to see at the museum I walked to Potsdamer Platz.

After the rain earlier that day, it had been partly cloudy and very pleasant to be outside. Good smells abounded and my shorts and sweater felt extremely cozy.

Looking down on the Landwehr Canal from the 4th floor viewing deck of the German Museum of Technology

After the 20-minute walk to Potsdamer Platz I conceded that I needed to buy something to eat before going back to the hostel, and got myself a kebab before settling at a Starbucks with the cheapest coffee I could buy. I wanted to use my laptop while I was there, since I had been having issues connecting with my laptop (but not my phone) to the WiFi back at the hostel.

After some blog work, I went back to the hostel after the Starbucks shut down at 8pm.

The cost of cooking yourself breakfast and dinner, a fast food lunch, drip coffee, round trip transportation, a single, 4-euro tourist activity, and accommodation for a day in Berlin? About 32 euro (~36 USD). Berlin is a city that I can just barely fit into my preferred budget.

Day 166: Hold Up

I was able to get a decent amount of sleep -- perhaps 7 hours -- after last night's shenanigans.

Although I was now in one of the most expensive places I had ever been, I was still trying to stick to my budget of 30-40 USD per day, but was finding it difficult. Seeing that yesterday I had had a free lunch and made myself breakfast and dinner, I still spent 3 euro on coffee, 8 euro on taxis and trams, 14 euro on accommodation, and about 30 euro at the clubs, for a grand total of about 61 USD, I was ready to slow way, way down on my spending. And so today, to lessen the blow to my bank account from last night, I didn't spend a single euro.

The courtyard of Sandino World Improvement Network

I had sufficient groceries remaining from my visit to the discount grocers, and in the evening I walked to a nearby park to sit on a bench, watch the jets of water from a fountain blow in the breeze, and contemplate life.

Day 165: Charming Encounters and Berlin Nightclubs

In the morning I went out with Annie, whom I had met in the dorms last night. Annie was "made in China" but now lives in San Francisco with U.S. Citizenship. Turns out Annie is good friends with one of my university friends, Grant, whom I had a class with at the University of Washington. Bizarre that we should meet in Berlin!

We visited Berlin Cathedral Church, an utterly massive Protestant church on the Spree River.

The entry fee is 6 euro normally, and 5 euro for young looking people that carry their old student card with them. The nave sits exposed to the central, towering dome in a way that makes the building feel strangely hollow for how thick and intimidating it looks on the outside.

You can climb more than 200 steps to the viewing deck, which circles the central dome at the top. It really gives a sense of just how flat and expansive Berlin is.

Looking down upon "Lustgarten". A dangerous name for a garden adjacent to a church.

After the cathedral we decided to go to a nearby Vietnamese place, but on the way Annie got distracted by "Bandy Brooks, Homemade Ice Cream". To describe what happened next, I have to talk a bit about Annie.

Annie is one of the most charming and vivacious persons I've met on my trip, and is often innocently naive in the way she expresses herself. Her English isn't perfect, but she's not afraid to say whatever happens to be on her mind, usually in a blunt or otherwise unusual manner. After describing to me her very busy itinerary for the day, and myself telling her that I would quickly wash up and have breakfast so we could leave, she quipped back "Take your time, because I will take mine". Later that day she would fawn over 65 euro sandals, "So cheap!" -- a price that made me feel uncomfortable just looking at them. (Ten minutes later she would be the owner of a brand new pair of cheap, 65 euro sandals, despite having left the hostel this morning in new looking sandals).

She even told me that the only reason she voted for Donald Trump in the past presidential election was because "his son Jared Kushner is so smart", a sentiment that I found amusing since it was recently examined on an episode of Last Week Tonight. (The conclusion drawn by the show was that the primary facade, real or deceptive, of Kushner's great intelligence was the juxtaposition of his quiet and empathetic conversation style to his father's blunt and belligerent style -- that we couldn't decide one way or the other if Kushner truly does have a great mind hidden behind his stoicism because, publicly, he's done almost nothing but listen and empathize with others problems).

Annie is the kind of person that will spontaneously tell someone on the street how handsome they are or how cute that dress looks on them.

So when Annie walked into Bandy Brooks and asked in the most timidly hopeful voice at the register "Is your ice cream really homemade?" that struck off a 10-minute conversation with the owner that ended in both of us receiving free double scoops of ice cream and free currywurst and fries at the neighboring business, also owned by the same guy. My uncomfortably tight budget was henceforth eternally indebted to Annie's charm.

The owner we (by "we", I mean mostly Annie) conversed with had led an interesting life. He was Dutch, but grew up in Kenya and met his German wife while she was on vacation there, before moving back to Berlin with her.

After that pleasant experience, we walked through a park and Alexanderplatz to an Einstein Kaffee chain to sit down for a coffee. I was finally able to try an einspänner coffee, a concoction that I had been searching for in Vienna.

Einspänner is supposed to be a strong black coffee served with whip cream on top. One for two ain't bad.

After chatting at the cafe, Annie left to continue checking off items on her itinerary and I left for the hostel.

Around 10pm Annie came back as promised and her, myself, and two guys from Hong Kong went out in search of Berlin's hottest nightclubs. If you've read my past blog posts, you'll know that, historically, I never enjoy nightclubs. Tonight would be a partial exception.

We first went to Berghain, a club infamous for its seemingly arbitrary entrance criteria.

After waiting in line for anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours, bouncers at the door will either give you the nod and allow you to pay for entrance, or the boot and send you away. We arrived around 12:30am and waited in line for 30 minutes before finding ourselves underneath the bouncers judgmental gaze. While waiting, we had seen perhaps 20 to 40 percent of those in line be rejected. Apparently they liked the cut of our jibs because they let us in to the club to pay the 12 euro entrance fee. (I wish they hadn't.)

We payed 3.3 euros each for small bottle beers and waited for the awesome to start. (It never did.) The music that night had a strange sound to it. Sort of like house music inspired by the intro to Michael Jackson's Thriller, except it never settles down into something interesting to the ears. The music was also, of all things, fairly quiet for a club. We decided to leave after 30 minutes, completely let down by the high expectations set by Annie and whatever NYT or GC article she had read on the internet before coming to Berlin.

[It was only later after some googling that I realized we had seen only one tiny portion of Berghain and that their main club floor, which had been completely blocked off to us while we were there from 1 to 1:30, is massive and cavernous. This is why researching a place before you go is important!!!]

Of course, we hadn't given up on the night yet, and took a taxi to Sisyphos.

It was partly my idea to go to Sisyphos, for no other reason than that I had heard its named mentioned in the lyrics of a Vulfpeck song I liked. After another 30-minute queue, we each payed the 15 euro entrance fee and went inside. While we were there, there were two dance floors open. The smaller one was located in a single room about the size of a small single-family home. The larger dance floor was the ground floor of a factory that used to manufacture dog treats. I actually rather enjoyed the larger dance floor. It was reasonably packed, but not uncomfortably so, and the mix of strobe lights, bright flashes of blue and red, and the artificial smoke made for a really neat experience. To enter the dance floor, you walk through a room with green lasers bouncing off mirrors in a symmetrical pattern. If you turn your phone flashlight on, you can use it to "write" on the wall, leaving green marks that fade with time. I'm still not sure the science behind all that. 

I was having a good time, and I think Annie was too, but the two Hong Kongers were still not fans of the music and wanted to leave ASAP. I was a bit peeved, since this was Berlin, a city renowned for its techno clubs, and these two came clubbing with us despite not liking techno music -- but it was already 4am, I had burnt through most of the 40 euro I had brought with me, and a future version of myself was telling me that it was probably best if we all go back to the hostel now.

[Unlike Berghain, it seems we were actually able to witness all Sisyphos has to offer.] 

We took a taxi back to the hostel and I made myself a PBJ before sleeping for the night.

Day 164: To Berlin

My bus left at 12:30, so I had an easy time packing up my things and carefully walking through the shade to the station in the afternoon heat. I had intended to look up directions from the destination to my hostel while en route, but the internet on the bus cut out as soon as we crossed the Czech/German border and I had to steal WiFi from a different bus once we arrived at the station. Public transportation is extremely expensive in Berlin, even more so than Seattle. A one-way ticket will cost you 2.8 euros (3.13 USD). It's possible to buy a week pass for 30 euros, which is what I had originally intended to purchase, but the ticket machines are confusing to use (even in English), and the line behind me was so long that I bought a 4-pack of tickets as quickly as I could for 9 euros and got out of the way. The tickets are good for unlimited transfers on any form of public transportation within some reasonable time limit, but that doesn't help much when all you want to do is take the tram 10 stops into the city center.

Once I arrived at Sandino World Improvement Network it was already fairly late in the day, so I paid a visit to a discount grocer and stocked up on groceries for the next few days at least.

There were some friendly people in my dorm, and I went to sleep rather early around 11.

Day 163: Back to Reality

Now that I only had one last day in Prague, had essentially seen everything I cared to see, and had no more friends left, I was free to get down to business on my laptop at the hostel. After practicing my Spanish and buying a bus ticket to Berlin for tomorrow, I updated my CV and started searching for jobs for once I arrive back in Seattle. I still had a semi-open offer from my old employer (conditional on their budget and need for new hires, I presume), but I wanted to be as prepared as possible and exercise all my options. I applied to 3 or 4 jobs and that, needless to say, took most of the day. An hour before sunset I was starting to get zombie brain so I walked to the viewpoint atop the park adjacent to the hostel to get one last look at the city.

After returning to the hostel, I cooked myself dinner and was in bed just before midnight.

Day 162: John Lennon Wall

As soon as I woke up and was ready for the day, I went out with my Vancouver friend in search of John Lennon Wall. Although it was a 3.5 kilometer walk, the downhill grade on the way into old town made things easier.

The wall itself is mildly amusing at best, and seemed mostly to be a prime location to take photos later to be posted on social media.

John Lennon Wall

From JLW we walked through a park and stopped at a cafe for a cider. We were getting hungry, but didn't want to pay exorbitant (i.e. North American) food prices so we grabbed more drinks and snacks from a nearby mini mart before returning to the park I had previously visited on Saturday. 

More wild babies

The day was a scorcher, and we sat in the shade on a bench with a view. We found so much to talk about that it wasn't until the sun began to set seven or eight hours later that we crossed back over Charles Bridge and took the bus back uphill to the hostel. 

Okay, maybe Charles Bridge can be nice sometimes.

Me, posing naturally

At this point we were both starving (me more so than her, because she had a bag of nuts that she hadn't even opened the whole time we were there because she was "saving them for tomorrow"). We crossed the street from the hostel and had pasta and drinks before capping the night off with more Netflix. She left early the next morning for Krakow so we said our adieus before turning in for the night at 1am.

Day 161: Malarkey

Nothing particularly of interest happened today, either. Tash and Kade checked out in the morning to leave for Munich. This time it was actually goodbye, unless they serendipitously decide to head to Berlin after their time in Munich, although I think they are planning on going to Slovenia instead.

As a last huzzah I went with them to their favorite Prague restaurant, Eska Restaurace.

The food was delicious and, at a bit over 10 USD for a coffee and an omelette, was not too expensive by Prague standards (yeah, Prague is really effing expensive).

After the kiwis left I faced the prospect of either trying to find something of interest to do in town or relax at the hostel. Though Prague is filled with historic buildings and a myriad of museums and art galleries, I didn't particularly feel like visiting any of them on my own, and so I spent most of the day at the hostel. There was supposed to be a walking tour put on by the hostel at 2:30pm, but that never materialized. I had made a friend from Vancouver, British Columbia yesterday and we chatted some and watched Tarantino's Pulp Fiction with others from the hostel in the evening.

Day 160: Prague Public Piano

After my usual cafe visit in the morning, I decided to hunt down one of Prague's public pianos. I went to the one that seemed to be located in the least touristy area of the city. As a musician, you live your life in perpetual tension: always hoping that someone will listen to you but constantly dreading that anyone will actually overhear you.

The piano there was in fine shape. After 20 minutes a buxom Czech lady came up to me and started talking to me in Czech. I didn't understand a thing she said, except "black people music", which I assumed meant jazz. After not too long she expressed a desire to scat sing while I accompanied her. Initially, I took her to be a friendly, outgoing local. But after 20 more minutes of duet, my impression was that she was a bit off her rocker -- not clinically diagnoseably so, but more like she had an eccentric cat lady type personality. When someone else came up to us and asked to play the piano I took the opportunity to say good riddance and walk back to the hostel.

A bizarre television tower built 30 years ago during the communist era

I spent the rest of the day relaxing, and nothing more of interest happened.

Day 159: Lesser Town

Once again I found myself at Café Pavlač in the morning (where I find myself again, one day later, typing this post), working on my Spanish and blog posts, starting the day off nice and slowly. I went back to the hostel briefly to make myself lunch before taking the bus to the Franz Kafka Museum. (This time I actually bought a ticket, because I happened to have coins in my pocket and, of all places, there is a ticket machine directly outside of the hostel entrance).

The museum was alright. It did all it's necessary requisites -- walk you through the life of Kakfa, his private conflicts, his friends, influences, romances -- but it was so unusually crowded for a museum that you constantly felt rushed and in the way of everyone else.

The amount of tourism in Prague is astounding. It's particularly evident on Charles Bridge, which has hundreds of people walking over it at all times of the day. The bridge itself has some historical significance, but is not particularly aesthetically pleasing. A renovation of the bridge in 2008-2010 was carried out so poorly that it caused UNESCO's World Heritage Committee to adopt a decision that "the restoration of Charles Bridge was carried out without adequate conservation advice on materials and techniques". Furthermore, all the statues along the bridge are merely replicas of the original, leading me to believe the bridge itself is more facsimile than original. For some reason, tourists absolutely love it.

From the museum I bought a lunch of bananas, chocolate milk, and Skittles from a convenience store and walked to the base of a park to partake in my feast.

The park itself sits on the eastern face of a steep hill, so I climbed up it, hoping for some good views.

Although you might be tempted to think that atop a hill on the opposite side of old town is where all the locals hide, you would be wrong. The top of the hill is once again infested with tourists, though there is a slight respite from the crowds while climbing the hill because most don't bother with all that physical activity and take the funicular rail line to the top instead. 

While on my way down from the hill I stole some WiFi from a nearby beer garden and connected with Tash and Kade to get some burgers back on the eastern side of the Vltava River. A 40-minute tram ride, an ATM hunt, and kilometer walk later I was eating a tasty burger with fries and a Pilsner at The Tavern.

The food was delicious, but (surprise, surprise) there were some noisy tourist groups at the place and we had to move tables twice to get some relative peace. It was the coldest day of the week, and the wind combined with sub 20 degree temperatures made eating outdoors a bit unpleasant.

After dinner we went back to Tash and Kades homestead, Brix Hostel, and they ordered drinks. I had been a bit budget conscious lately, and didn't feel like ordering anymore alcohol for the day. We played some ping-pong, but for a Saturday night the bar located in the hostel was absolutely dead. Tash and Kade decided to go to bed around 10pm and I went back to my own hostel, finished my bananas, and turned in for the night at midnight after a hot shower.

Day 158: A Serendipitous Symphony

Around noon I met Tash and Kade at the nearby Café Pavlač, where we had some food and coffee.

When they left to return to their beds, I stuck around and finished some work on my computer. Around 4pm, I had a list of destinations that I would like to see and walked into old town to begin checking them off my list. Prague is absolutely stuffed with tourists, perhaps not surprising given that it was a Friday evening, though I have a feeling it's like this just about every day -- especially in the summer. I bought a Trdelník, a cylindrical donut type pastry that you can have filled with frosting or even ice cream. It wasn't bad. Extremely sweet, though.

After walking through the central mass of old town, I moved out towards the river. On the way I passed by a church that had a sign on its front door advertising a performance by, of all things, the Fort Worth Youth Orchestra.

And the performance had just started two minutes ago! I walked inside to ask about tickets, and was told the performance was free! The program they handed me was full of Tchaikovsky, Latin music, a few well-known Czech composer orchestrations, and (you won't believe this, but) a piece that featured a typewriter as a soloist.

Of course, I stayed for the whole thing. And it was one of the coolest -- if not most random -- musical experiences I've had on my trip.

Here is the first piece I saw, archetypal Czech music, Vltava by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana.

After the performance ended at 8pm it was still light outside, so I crossed a bridge to the new town area. 

An overcast day in Prague

I passed by the Franz Kafka Museum, which I decided I would definitely be going back to after seeing the weird fountain/sculpture outside and reading about Kafka later that night. There's also a neat bookstore along the main cobblestone street closest to the river. It has a lounge area downstairs so you can sit down and enjoy a book for a while before deciding to buy it. 

I was looking for a Kafka book to read, but they only had new copies available, all outside of my budget.

On the way back to the hostel I had to bum a ride off the bus because the company in charge of public transportation here makes it stupidly difficult to buy tickets. The only place to find readily available ticket machines are in metro stations (not that unusual, but you'll see why this is annoying in a moment). The ticket machines only accept coins. I'd just donated all my coins to the church where the youth orchestra performance had been, and there is no change machine, change counter, or human you can buy a ticket from. Buying a longer term ticket is a possibility to avoid having to visit a metro station with a pocket full of coins every time you want to ride the bus, but the closest options to what I need are a three-day pass and a month-long pass (which requires an I.D. to buy, another 150 CZK), neither of which are going to save you money unless you're hopping on a bus every few hours. Get your stuff together, Prague Public Transport!

Day 157: To Prague

My bus for Prague left 30 minutes later than scheduled, around 1pm and we arrived four hours later. After figuring out public transportation and moving into Hostel Marabou for the weekend, I walked into town half a kilometer and met the two kiwis, Tash and Kade, at their hostel, Brix Hostel.

I had originally thought that they were in Poland for a week, but it turns out they had gone to Prague instead. Their hostel has a bar that's open to the public, but it's essentially just hostel guests and their friends (like me) that frequent it. According to Wikitravel, prices for a half liter of beer should be around 20-35 CZK (0.8-1.5 USD !!!) but a beer at the hostel was a pretty steep 40 koruna. It's the places where beer is cheaper than bottled water that concern me at times.

The kiwis had met a group of Brits at the hostel, and they joined us later. There was a girl from Seattle staying at the hostel who joined us as well. It was nice to chat with a fellow Washingtonian and good times were had all around. Around 2 in the morning we were catching a breath of fresh air outside (at least I was -- others were there for a smoke), when it started to rain and lightning could be seen lighting up the sky. Not much later, I took advantage of a slight pause in the rain to dash back to my own hostel before things got any hairier.

Day 156: Austrian National Library and the Graves of Greats

I wanted to visit a kaffeehauser while I was here, and since the area around University of Vienna seemed ripe with interesting cafes the first thing I did was to take a metro back to that part of town. The cafe I stopped at, "Einstein", didn't have any of the special Viennese coffees I had seen listed on the internet, so I ordered an espresso machiatto with onion rings instead (a compromise between class and frugality). There is a beautiful cathedral, "Votivkirche",  nearby that I had only seen from afar yesterday. It sits in a park so it's easy to stroll around.

The architecture reminded me of Suzallo Library at the University of Washington.

While walking back through Heldenplatz on my way to the Austrian National Library, I passed through a plaza, "Michaelerplatz", that I hadn't encountered on my first pass through yesterday.

 It had some interesting buildings and sculptures.

At the National Library, the ticket lady gave me a student discount even though I didn't have my student I.D. with me (actually I did, I just forgot it was in my bag since I never use it). After ascending the central staircase, you enter a 77.7 meter long chamber densely stuffed with ornamentation and old books. I found it quite impressive and mostly tasteful.

These were my two favorite photos that I took there

In the back corner there is a Bosendorfer grand piano (Bosendorfer is an Austrian company, in fact). It must sound absolutely ethereal when played in such a large space.

That piano looks like it needs to be played 😬

The volumes on the shelves are so, literally, voluminous that you wonder what it was they had so much to write about hundreds of years ago. A few facsimiles were on display. A lot of bibles. In fact, almost everything I remember seeing had something to do with Christianity. Seems as if everyone had a god fearing fever up until the past few hundred years. Or those were seen as the only works worth preserving. There were a few old maps on display as well.

After the National Library I stopped at another cafe, this time closer to the outer ring of the Inner Stadt, where I heard there were more authentic, local cafes. The only Viennese coffee item they offered was Melange, the "most typical" Viennese coffee, similar to a cappucino but with a Viennese style "mokka" (espresso) and foamier milk. I ordered that and a sacher cake, a layered chocolate cake that I found kind of bitter. Sugar and caffeine overload!

After my "dinner". I took the metro all the way to the end of the line, then took a tram to Central Cemetery where the graves (or in some cases, supposed grave/monument) of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, among others lie.

Believe it or not, a cemetery far outside the center of Vienna was not much of a tourist attraction. It was almost entirely void of life the entire time I was there (I'm pretty sure the few bodies I saw strolling through the graveyard were among the living). The composers' graves were easy enough to find, though they were also indicated on my map, which helped quite a bit.

A church near the middle of the cemetery

I felt I needed to commemorate this moment with a selfie, although I'm still unsure how kosher grave selfies are. At least no one caught me taking pictures of myself.

Nailed it?

From the graveyard I reversed my commute back to the hostel for the night, but not before they closed all the gates to the cemetery and I had to leave via an "emergency" exit. I mean, it wasn't an emergency, I just didn't want to spend a night in a graveyard. On the tram ride back, the operator ended his route a stop earlier than I had anticipated and I pretended to understand his directives in German as he showed me and guy-with-headphones-in-his-ears out the door. I run into small obstacles such as these all the time while when traveling, so often that I usually don't even mention them in my posts. I walked the remaining half kilometer to the metro station.

I slept around 12:30am. I had already bought tomorrow's bus ticket to Prague.

Day 155: Inner Stadt

I only had two full days in Vienna, so I was pretty motivated to see as much as I could. I took the metro back to Museumsquartier Station, which was just about as far as I had gone yesterday. I first checked the park for my lost key card, with no success. I then explored a building complex and plaza known as Heldenplatz.

This is where the VIPs of yestercentury would spend their days. There is an ancient instrument musuem and the old court library in the area, but today happened to be one of the five or so days a year they are closed, so I bookmarked them for tomorrow.

A smaller square near the main plaza

From Heldenplatz I walked into Volksgarten, an extremely pleasent garden area with fountains, statues, and hundreds of rose plants.

Needless to say, it's a great place to just be -- smelling the scents and sitting in the shade by a fountain. 

One fountain shoots out of a fish's mouth, another shoots out of a man's mouth

Inside the above building is this sculpture by a contemporary American sculptor

Tanning with a view

From Volksgarten I stumbled into the University of Vienna, which seems to be located entirely in a single, large building that takes up a square city block. I thought there would be a cool reading room inside, but most of the doors were closed and everything was labeled in German so I was too afraid to try the door handles.

After stopping at a cafe closer towards the center of the city, I found St. Stephen's Cathedral.

Surprisingly, there is a free entrance area that allows you to see most of the interior of the church. Throughout the 20th century, the facade of the cathedral became increasingly blackened by the pollution from nearby factories and vehicles. Some sections have yet to be cleaned. The look is not very flattering.

I hopped on the metro for a stop to Stadtpark. North of the park there is the Museum of Applied Arts which usually has a 10 Euro cover charge, but specifically on Tuesdays, from 6-10pm it is free. It was only 4pm at that point, so I went back to the hostel to make myself nuttella and jelly sandwiches for dinner and to rest. At 7pm I took the metro back to the museum.

Among a lot of old furniture and ceramics, the museum has a lot of items that would probably fall into the industrial design genre. Things like book covers, posters, rugs, household tools, etc. I thought they had some exhibits on the "singularity", which I had seen in one of their brochures and had been my primary motivating reason to come back, but they were nowhere to be found. 

Looking up the central staircase at the musuem

I left around 9pm and went back to the hostel for the night.

Day 154: To Vienna

My bus to Vienna left just before noon, so after checking out of Unity Hostel one last time I walked with a Swedish girl to the metro (she was going the same direction as me, but to the airport). The bus arrived 20 minutes late, but I wasn't in a rush. The first thing you notice upon entering Austria is the massive wind farm that surrounds you. Towering windmills stretch on in every direction for as far as the eye can see. It makes you wonder how anyone could think windmills are ugly.

Once we arrived at Erdberg Station in Vienna 2.5 hours later, I bought a Mon-Fri metro pass for 16.8 euros and took the metro about 10 stations to within a 10-minute walk of my hostel.

Google Maps is no help in this respect, because for some reason it has yet to parse the Vienna metro routes, or the company in charge of the metro hasn't made the data accessible online. After the usual check-in formalities I had to do my laundry before going out. I didn't want to have it done at Unity Hostel in Budapest because they charge 8 Euros to wash, dry, and fold your clothes for you. It turned out that the price of laundry here was 7 euros but you had to do it yourself, which just about entirely obviated my reasoning. After taking care of my laundry, I walked down the main pedestrian boulevard toward old town Vienna around 8pm. A trio of musicians were performing near the MuseumsQuartier and I stopped to listen. 

A little further downtown there is another impressive (but apparently incomplete) building and an adjacent park, where I flopped down on the grass to soak up the evening ambiance with the numerous other groups that were already there.

Once back at the hostel I realized that my key card had slipped out of my pocket at some point and I had to pay 5 euros for another one. I slept around 12.

Day 153: Rudas Baths

Around noon I went with Tash and Kade to Rudas Baths, another Turkish Spa in Budapest.

I'm happy to report that my experience at the baths this time was overwhelmingly positive. Rudas is rather traditional, in that it is non co-ed during the week, but, being Sunday, all three of us were able to go. The locker rooms are really neat because instead of a locker, each person has their own "cabin", which is just a small changing room where you also lock your stuff after you are done.

If you only pay for the thermal baths as we did, Rudas has one large Turkish bath, five smaller pools, and wet and dry saunas. The Turkish bath is about 36 degrees, and the other baths range from 16 to 42 degrees. The dry sauna gets up to about 80 degrees (yes, Celsius). The wet sauna feels even more intense from inside, but is probably only 50-60 degrees. After three hours, I felt so relaxed that it felt as if gravity had gotten stronger while we were bathing.

After the baths we were pretty hungry so we stopped at a cafe just across the bridge before hiking the remaining 20 minutes to a sushi place only two doors down from my hostel. Tash and Kade were heading to Poland tomorrow, whereas I would be going to Vienna, but we would be seeing each other again a week from now in Prague so our adieus were heartfelt, but not overly sorrowful.

At the hostel I joined some others watching Rick and Morty in the common room (at this point I'm thinking 'how much better can this day get?'), before joining a group of Canadians and Israelis going out for dinner. We stopped at a Caribbean place and afterwards went to a beer garden for drinks. At this point our group splintered off and the Canadians and I bounced around a few pubs, but not finding much going on at any of them, returned to the hostel around 11pm.

Day 152: Back to Budapest

My flight left at 5 in the evening, so I had plenty of time to prepare myself for the day. I was able to take the metro all the way to the airport, after a transfer, but, in one final cash grab by the city, it's necessary to buy a special, 5 euro airport ticket before exiting the station for the terminal.

After a 2.5 hour flight, we landed in Budapest around 8pm. From the airport I took the 200E bus to the nearest metro station, from where I was able to ride into the center of town, arriving back at Unity Hostel around 9:30pm.

The two kiwis -- Tash and Kade -- were still in Budapest, so I met up with them at Kuplung for some drinks.

Around midnight we called it quits and returned to our respective hostels (they had since moved to a different hostel, which they regretted terribly!).

Day 151: Last Day in Barcelona

When I woke up I discovered that my shoes and last remaining pair of clean socks had been rained on during the night (I had left them on the windowsill to air out), so I was stuck at the hostel for the next few hours while they dried out in the sun. I didn't mind too much because walking up and down the 161 steps to and from the hostel had really caught up to me, and I was sore.

Around 8pm I decided to walk up to the bunkers to get a good look at Barcelona one last time. Being a Friday evening, there were innumerable groups of young'ins that had had the same idea as myself, plus alcohol. For a moment, I reflected on how much better my Barcelona experience could have been had I stayed at a proper, social hostel.

After returning to the hostel

In the evening, the Ecuadorian girl (Jerry's friend) that had flaked on me at the club a few days earlier texted me asking if I wanted to get some beers downtown. This time I was actually able to meet up with her and, along with her Moroccan friend, went to a bar called La Oveja Negra. 

It was supposedly a "very spanish" pub, but halfway through our drinks chants of "USA! USA!" broke out at one of the tables, quickly followed by "España! España!" at two or three others.

It was a fun night out, and I made it back to the hostel around 1am.