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.
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