sweet wien

Onwards and upwards through Eastern Europe! I have now left behind Budapest - the city where pop songs of the late 1990s go to die - and I am writing from the back room of Hotel Kaiserin Elisabeth, central Vienna, Austria. Although we didn#t know it before we said our goodbyes in Lund, Nikki and I were both planning to be in Vienna tonight. So after some frantic texting we met up at Westbanhoff station and had our tearful reunion a week earlier. She has now taken me back to her hotel and we are taking advantage of the free internet and polite waiterboys calling us 'madam'. Tomorrow we go our seperate ways, and will meet up again in a week in Poland.

The bus from Budapest to Vienna took only 3 and a bit hours at an insanely cheap student price. We drove through the Vienna Airport (or Wien Lufthaven or however they call it) and it was like coming in a full circle - about 6 months ago I flew into there from Australia, almost asleep standing up, wide-eyed and waiting on a bench for my connecting flight to Copenhagen. At the Hungary-Austria border we drove through kilometres upon kilometres of wind turbine fields, spinning gracefully and silently. All in all a pretty sweet trip.

Budapest was a great city, with a foot in both east and west europe. The weather continued to be beautiful - mild all through the day. Apparently it's going to be getting better this week. Last year the whole place was covered in snow! The Hungarian receptionist put it down to global warming. I experienced a whole manner of pleasures. Highlights included- clubbing with some Australians and a crazy Japanese bloke called Esky, breakdancing hero; walking thought the eerie Statue Park and looking at all the Lenins and wondering whether I should spend my last forints on a 'The Very Best of Communism' greatest hits CD from the ticket stall; treating myself to a delish hungarian traditional meal with goulash soup and plenty of cabbage; and lastly, spending an afternoon in the Geillert Thermal Baths, soaking up all the nutrients and watching incredibly obese (but happy looking) naked Hungarian women totter from the shower to the pool and back again.

Again I am experiencing the highs and lows of travelling solo. I'm loving it at the moment. It means I don't really have to book ahead, or plan anything, and I get to follow my whims to wherever they take me. I also tend to think a lot about a whole manner of things, sometimes useful but mostly idiotic. And I get to meet heaps of cool people in the hostels. The downside is that I keep getting placed in dorms full of canoodling couples, who spend entire evenings whispering sweet nothings in their various langauges (of love) while I try to ignore them and continue to slog slog through Frances' abandoned copy of Pride and Prejudice. I have, however, developed the perfect 'no thanks/fuck off' face ideal for the single female traveller - blank, minimal eye contact, and a general air of disinterest and disdain which pretty much prevents any strange men from striking up conversations on the metro where there is no escape.

Nikki and I have an engagement to attend to now - an English screening of The Third Man, a film set in Vienna and also number #45 of the Greatest Movies of All Time. More when I find out what this Vienna place is all about.

auf wiedersehen!