I had a really hard time falling asleep last night and didn’t sleep very well once I did.  I was awoken around 10AM when the cleaning ladies came into the room, turned on the lights, and had conversations at full volume.  Wasn’t exactly the best way to wake up, but it was effective.

I woke up to about half a dozen messages on my phone from Aiden who was trying to see if I’d gotten to the hostel and if I’d wanted to get breakfast.  When I eventually responded he suggested that we go to a cafe a block away from the hostel, but by the time we got there they were only serving lunch.  I got an Americano and a club sandwich.  It was pretty good.

Initially Aiden was going to catch a train at 11:30, but decided to catch a later one to spend more time walking around downtown Vienna.  I bought a 72 hour subway pass for about 16€ and we rode down to Stephansplatz and saw some of the main sights in the downtown area.  We walked from St Stephen’s Cathedral to Hofburg Palace to the natural history museum to Rathausplatz, and then to a pub for beer before he needed to catch his train.

I went back to the hostel to charge my phone for a bit and maybe take a nap, but instead met two new people in my room, Alifa and Bjarn.  Alifa is a first year  journalism student from Singapore and Bjarn is from Hamburg and works with shipping containers.  They met during a school exchange trip in Singapore when they were 17 and have been in regular contact for the past 6 years and decided to do explore some of Europe together for a week.  Bjarn worked for a year as an au pair in New York and got to see a fair bit of the US while he was there, and Alifa will be doing a semester abroad in Missouri next year.  We all decided to go on the other side of the Danube up a big tower to see panoramic views of the city, and it was really nice.

Afterwards we decided to get dinner at Schnitzelwirt, a wienerschnitzel restaurant Google Trips had recommended.  I ordered their standard wienerschnitzel and a pint of one of their lighter drafts and they were both very tasty.

Tomorrow I think I will go on a walking tour, and maybe try to go to Schonbrunn Palace.  It’s not even 10:30 yet and half of the dorm room is asleep, and two are snoring.  It may be a long night.