Couchsurfing with Ulli

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Getting from Dubai to Vienna was drama free - got picked up from the hotel in a brand new Cadillac and this driver was actually careful about the car, no near misses on this trip. Dubai airport is something different, the place is seriously lacking in places to eat and seating. You walk straight in amongst the shops and it seems like catching your flight is of secondary concern. Once you go upstairs to where the departure gates are there is people laying around everywhere because of the lack of accessible seats - most of the level is partitioned off for each gate. Then the gate opens an hour before takeoff and you can go through into the seating for a short time before its time to go on the plane. As Ulli says very often “fucking stupid”… for most of the time those seats are not being used. And then we have to catch a bus half way across the tarmac to get to the plane?

Anyway, on the 5 hr flight to Vienna next to me was a grandmother from the Czech Republic, who was on her way home after spending several months visiting her son & his family in Papua New Guinea. He works for a mining company as an engineer. Talked about Australia and where I was going in Europe, and she warned me to be careful of gypsies. Sounds like they are Europe’s answer to abos - drinking, drugs, don’t work, steal stuff, etc. She said Romania was pretty dangerous the last time she was there, which was several years ago.

In Vienna I was going to stay with Ulli from www.couchsurfing.com, who turned out to be a great girl and a good host. From the airport got the train into the city, took me a while to work out where I was, the info booth helped me out. Rang Ulli from the station near her place and she came and got me. She looks lot younger in real-life than she does in her photos, and reminds me a lot of Carlie - looks similar, gets cranky the same way, felt at ease with her straight away. Had a chat for a while with her and Victoria, her friend who seemed to have fallen in love with her couch surfer that had just left, then it was study time so I went in the first district for a walk around to check the place out. Ulli was disappointed she couldn’t show me more of Vienna herself but she had studying to do.

Starting at Stephansplatz, I was immediately impressed by the Stephansdom (St Stephen’s Cathedral). It’s huge and is hemmed in by all the buildings close around, and as it was home time (17:00) there was people everywhere. Not knowing exactly what I wanted to go and see, I just wandered along with the flow of people, soaking in the atmosphere. Narrow streets, cobblestones, tall old buildings, and horse drawn carriages taking people around. While other people where going where they needed to go, I was doing zigzags looking at everything.

One thing I noticed immediately was people taking their dogs everywhere, and not just ‘put it in your handbag’ dogs like Paris Hilton, but normal sized dogs like golden retrievers, coming out of shops, on the trains, everywhere. Another thing was the suspension of street & traffic lights above the middle of the road; they only have telegraph poles on big wide streets.

The public transport is pretty sweet - the underground, trams and buses all run very regularly and seem to be running on an honour system; there are no ticket-reading machines to stop you getting on and I never saw anyone checking tickets. Even jumping on the bus, walked straight past the driver and he didn’t bat an eyelid. And services run very regularly, I think the longest I waited for a train was 3 minutes. I took some photos as I wandered and eventually found myself at the Hofburg.
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Don’t know where we are at the moment but some guard came past checking passports, looked like a psycho version of Mirat Safin the tennis player, dressed in military style uniform he was only missing a big gun.
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I was surprised at how ‘used’ the Hofburg is, as in you can drive through it like a normal road at anytime of the night, and take your dog to run around and take a shit on the lawn. So I took photos of everything, continued down past Parliament House and the Rathaus, which was the most impressive I thought. Yeh the Hofburg and Parliament buildings are big and strong, but I like the gothic look of the Rathaus and the way it was lit up.

Did some more wandering and had dinner at a place not far from Ulli’s, where I noticed another difference - they don’t have a till, each waiter has a money bag and they count out the change in front of you. I thought it was just at this place but it turned out to be the case everywhere.

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