Vienna!!
Day 17
We woke up to snow covered lawns this morning and it was so cold in the hotel room. I’m usually the first one to awake and get showerd/dressed in the mornings but not today... I’m also a little pissed off for reasons I am not going to detail in this journal.
We jumped on the bus early to begin our journey to Vienna. I’ve been looking forward to Vienna for quite some time so while I would have loved to have spent more time in Munich, for now it will simply have to be a place to put on my list of cities to see again one day. We made a pitstop in our usual three hours into the journey, stopping just inside the Austrian border. It’s kind of strange everytime we cross the border-most of the time we don’t realise until Ryan tells us that we have. It’s not clearly marked all the time, usually it’s just a sign with the EU symbol and the country’s name in the middle of it and it’s always small!
Before we got back on the bus, Ryan reminded us we were being taken to go and have a look at at a concentration camp in Mauthausen. It wasn’t an optional extra, he actually organises quite a few things for us to see that are generally free or only really cheap without us knowing till the last minute, which I think is really good. However, I felt a little bit funny about going to a concetration camp with only a day or two warning and I wasn’t quite sure if I was going to be able to do it. In the end when we got there it was a pretty miserable day and as soon as I walked inside I knew I wouldn’t be able to go with everybody to watch the documentary or take a look around the museum. Turns out Sophia felt the same. Since we were not obliged to watch the documentary or go the museum if we felt we couldn’t, Sophia and I decided to take a walk outside and wait for everybody. It turned out that the documentary ended up being quite graphic and sad-I definitely think I could not have watched it.
I can’t really explain why I couldn’t do it. I learnt about concentration camps in school so I know all about it, it was just really confronting and overwhelming actually being in one and knowing that thousands and thousands of people were tortured and killed there. They’ve set up this camp as a memorial to the people who lost their lives, so Sophia and I took a look at the memorial statues while everyone else looked around inside the actual camp.
Once everyone had finished looking around, we jumped back on the bus and headed to our hotel. We’re staying out the outskirts of Vienna, in a huge hotel that is right next to the largest shopping centre in Western Europe. After dropping off our bags in our rooms (another massive room, I've got the lounge room area to myself!), a few of the girls and I wandered over to the shopping centre to take a look. It was so big it puts any of our shops to shame... you could spend at least a day in there and not see everything. They even have a massive inbuilt Ikea in there that is probably twice the size of ours! We did a quick look around, I bought an alarm clock because I’m sick of relying on other people and then we decided to grab some dinner in the food court section. That was a bit of a challenge to find. We ended up running into Sophia and Stu who joined us for dinner at a tiny American 50’s cafe, which had a menu in English, haha. We had burgers but I can tell you that right now all I am really really craving for is steamed vegetables and rice! They don’t eat a lot of vegetables here-well not enough for me anyway.
After dinner the centre was closing so we made our way back to the hotel where again we somehow ended up back at the bar and the surrounding lounge areas just drinking and talking and checking emails. Turns out Sophia and Stu are going to be setting up base in Ireland as well, they are coming on the 1st of June so we made plans to keep in contact and all catch up when they arrive. I’m so pleased I’ll know someone in Ireland now, even if it isn’t till June! I ended up having a bit of an early night-felt like a nanna but I am just so tired. It’s a good tired, if that makes sense. I’m glad we are on the go everyday and are doing so much, I couldn’t sleep in or be lazy knowing there is so much to see and do out there in every city we are in. It’d be such a waste of a trip if all I did was sleep in, drink booze all the time and not going out venturing like we do.
However, it’s getting to that point now where being in close quarters with everyone is starting to take it's toll on people, so I think we all look forward to alone time when we can get it. I know I am looking forward to my own room again-although I know that is a while away for now (I miss my bed already). Our tour finishes this time next week and I have to say that while I have enjoyed myself so much and seen so many wonderful things, I am at the point where I am almost ready for it to end... not before going to Prague of course. Not long till we go now!
x
We woke up to snow covered lawns this morning and it was so cold in the hotel room. I’m usually the first one to awake and get showerd/dressed in the mornings but not today... I’m also a little pissed off for reasons I am not going to detail in this journal.
We jumped on the bus early to begin our journey to Vienna. I’ve been looking forward to Vienna for quite some time so while I would have loved to have spent more time in Munich, for now it will simply have to be a place to put on my list of cities to see again one day. We made a pitstop in our usual three hours into the journey, stopping just inside the Austrian border. It’s kind of strange everytime we cross the border-most of the time we don’t realise until Ryan tells us that we have. It’s not clearly marked all the time, usually it’s just a sign with the EU symbol and the country’s name in the middle of it and it’s always small!
Before we got back on the bus, Ryan reminded us we were being taken to go and have a look at at a concentration camp in Mauthausen. It wasn’t an optional extra, he actually organises quite a few things for us to see that are generally free or only really cheap without us knowing till the last minute, which I think is really good. However, I felt a little bit funny about going to a concetration camp with only a day or two warning and I wasn’t quite sure if I was going to be able to do it. In the end when we got there it was a pretty miserable day and as soon as I walked inside I knew I wouldn’t be able to go with everybody to watch the documentary or take a look around the museum. Turns out Sophia felt the same. Since we were not obliged to watch the documentary or go the museum if we felt we couldn’t, Sophia and I decided to take a walk outside and wait for everybody. It turned out that the documentary ended up being quite graphic and sad-I definitely think I could not have watched it.
I can’t really explain why I couldn’t do it. I learnt about concentration camps in school so I know all about it, it was just really confronting and overwhelming actually being in one and knowing that thousands and thousands of people were tortured and killed there. They’ve set up this camp as a memorial to the people who lost their lives, so Sophia and I took a look at the memorial statues while everyone else looked around inside the actual camp.
Once everyone had finished looking around, we jumped back on the bus and headed to our hotel. We’re staying out the outskirts of Vienna, in a huge hotel that is right next to the largest shopping centre in Western Europe. After dropping off our bags in our rooms (another massive room, I've got the lounge room area to myself!), a few of the girls and I wandered over to the shopping centre to take a look. It was so big it puts any of our shops to shame... you could spend at least a day in there and not see everything. They even have a massive inbuilt Ikea in there that is probably twice the size of ours! We did a quick look around, I bought an alarm clock because I’m sick of relying on other people and then we decided to grab some dinner in the food court section. That was a bit of a challenge to find. We ended up running into Sophia and Stu who joined us for dinner at a tiny American 50’s cafe, which had a menu in English, haha. We had burgers but I can tell you that right now all I am really really craving for is steamed vegetables and rice! They don’t eat a lot of vegetables here-well not enough for me anyway.
After dinner the centre was closing so we made our way back to the hotel where again we somehow ended up back at the bar and the surrounding lounge areas just drinking and talking and checking emails. Turns out Sophia and Stu are going to be setting up base in Ireland as well, they are coming on the 1st of June so we made plans to keep in contact and all catch up when they arrive. I’m so pleased I’ll know someone in Ireland now, even if it isn’t till June! I ended up having a bit of an early night-felt like a nanna but I am just so tired. It’s a good tired, if that makes sense. I’m glad we are on the go everyday and are doing so much, I couldn’t sleep in or be lazy knowing there is so much to see and do out there in every city we are in. It’d be such a waste of a trip if all I did was sleep in, drink booze all the time and not going out venturing like we do.
However, it’s getting to that point now where being in close quarters with everyone is starting to take it's toll on people, so I think we all look forward to alone time when we can get it. I know I am looking forward to my own room again-although I know that is a while away for now (I miss my bed already). Our tour finishes this time next week and I have to say that while I have enjoyed myself so much and seen so many wonderful things, I am at the point where I am almost ready for it to end... not before going to Prague of course. Not long till we go now!
x