Vienna

Friday November 5, 2010
I think I just had one of the best night's sleep I've had in a hostel. Probably because I was so tired, and the dorm was so quiet.
The basic breakfast at the hostel cost €2.50 but the bowls were so small that I had to go back for another bowl...and another...and another; I ended up eating seven bowls of cereal. I'm not sure what the breakfast serving staff member was thinking, but why are hostel breakfast bowls always so small, it's ridiculous.
I got chatting to some Australian guys; Adam and Chris were from Sydney and were traveling around Europe, that's about as much as I can remember of their stories. They were heading off that morning.
There was another Australian guy too, Kalle. They all seemed quite interested to hear about me riding around Europe, and what it was like, so I talked a lot about that.
I had a good chat to Kalle though, his name is Swedish because his parents are Swedish, and that means he has dual citizenship, lucky bugger. He wasn't too far into his Europe trip, he'd been to Denmark and Poland and Sweden I think, can't remember where else. In Denmark he'd met a girl and stayed with her, so this was the first hostel he'd ever stayed in. And it was a good hostel to start with I think.
Kalle was 19 years old, from Brisbane. He was doing a floor laying apprenticeship there, which would have been hard work getting up before the sun each morning, working the whole day, sometimes working on the weekend, and being on your knees all day would be hard too. After a year he'd had enough, and quit his apprenticeship (I don't blame him). His boss was like "well Kalle, you're a good worker, if you want to keep working for me outside your apprenticeship, you can", so he worked for another half a year before giving it up, and deciding it was time for a change of scenery, time to travel. So here he was in Europe, and he was going to head to St Anton in the Austrian Alps in a week to be a "ski bum" as he called it. Basically working at the ski resort there. He'll only be earning €10 an hour, but the work wouldn't be hard, handing out ski jackets and the like, and they give you a free room to stay in. I thought it sounded really cool, I was a bit jealous because I'd like to do something like that myself.
Back in the day before his floor laying apprenticeship consumed his life, he did a lot of mountain biking, both cross-country and downhill mountain biking. I've never done downhill mountain biking, but I'm pretty confident it would be heaps of fun. I love cross-country mountain biking too, I haven't done enough of it since I've been living in Melbourne, my mountain bike mostly sits in the garage gathering dust :( I think I'll get back into it more next year.
Kalle must have been pretty fit because he used to do endurance mountain biking. He said he could ride a hundred kilometres in three hours on a mountain bike. And once, he entered this 8 hour endurance mountain bike race, and finished 36th, but only 50 or 60 people out of the 100 starters actually finished the race.
He also told me about a crash he had once on the mountain bike. They'd built up a big jump, and it all seemed pretty solid, but when Kalle hit it at speed, it gave way. The bike didn't get enough lift and went crashing down into the ground on the other side, while Kelle departed trajectories with the bike, and actually made the jump, albeit with much pain when he landed. He was pretty bruised and cut up apparently. Ouch!
While I would have liked to stay and chat, I had to get going to look for a new front tyre for my bike, before meeting up with Juls to do some sight-seeing in Vienna.
Unfortunately I only had time to drop into one bike shop and unsurprisingly they didn't have the tyre I needed.
Also unfortunately, I was late to meet Jul's again, and just missed her because she went back to her hotel room. Our only means of communication was email so I sent her an email, and we met up, at this landmark:

The Donner Fountain (Donner Brunnen), in the centre of Neuer Markt, Vienna, Austria.

The Donner Fountain (Donner Brunnen), in the centre of Neuer Markt, Vienna, Austria 

We decided we'd go to the sound museum, the HAUS DER MUSIK. It cost €10 to get in, but the place was pretty cool. It was mostly interactive and it explored many different areas and aspects of sound, although it had somewhat of a focus on classical music and famous composers.
On the first floor was the Vienna Philharmonic Museum. They didn't have a real orchestra there but they had a video recording of one, so we watched a few movements of that. Not bad, the conductor was very animated, and one of the violinists looked like Associate Professor Kevin Walsh, one of mine (and Juls') meteorology lecturers from Melbourne Uni.
There were all sorts of musical relics, mostly of famous composers.
The second floor was the sonosphere. There were interactive computer modules which explored different aspects of how sound works, sound and tonal phenomena. One of them of them enabled you test your upper hearing threshold. The highest frequency I could hear was about 17,300 Hz. We also tested this is physics in year 11 and I think my threshold has reduced a little since then, but that happens as you get older. Our forty-something year old physics teacher (Grizzy) could only hear up to about 14,000 Hz, from memory.
The third floor was dedicated to the great masters of Viennese music tradition, so it explored the lives and works of famous composers such as Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Johann Strauss, Gustav Mahler, the Second Viennese School of Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern.

Families of famous composers.

Families of famous composers.

Now I do enjoy listening to classical music, but this was a bit too much for me to take in. As with any museum, there is so much more information there than you can take in, unless you literally spend days there, so we had to skip over a lot of it. However I naturally like to be thorough and cover every detail. That's why my blog is so detailed, you see?
The fourth floor was called (put on your dramatic voice)...the Futuresphere. It featured the "Brain Opera", where "Visitors can create music themselves and become co-shaper of the future. The tones and moods that they create by interactively playing the amazing hyper-instruments of the Mind Forest through their movement, their touch and their voice".
Some of it was pretty cool, other parts didn't work, and we didn't hang around too long. I guess they have to build it so that it's all interactive, with these big impractical instruments that detect your movements and produce weird sounds, but you really don't have much control over the music you're making. The things you can do with music on a laptop using a few nifty programs is just incredible. This is where the future of music lies, not their "Futureshpere".
For example, about a week before I flew out of Australia, Jim and I were surfing the net using StumbleUpon. If you don't know what StumbleUpon is, and you feel the need to procrastinate or discover some cool new websites, you should definitely check out StumbleUpon (www.stumbleupon.com). Anyway, Jim stumbled upon this cool little music making website called inudge. You can easily make your own music, and it's really fun! Even though I had so many things to organise for my trip, I got stuck on this website for a few hours because it's so addictive. Here's a little piece of music I threw together on it: http://inudge.net/#/3g74
Sound and music is something I'm really interested in, and I'd like to look into some careers in the field. I think something like sound production could be a future career for me.
The top floor of the sound museum was just an overpriced gift shop and restaurant, so after the three or so hours we'd spent in the sound museum, we headed on out.
We wandered around Vienna for a while, admiring some of the impressive buildings, architecture and even street performances.

One of the buildings at Michaelerplatz (St Michael's Square) in Vienna, Austria.

There was a crowd of a few hundred people gathered around a building which, on the balcony, had 4 performers singing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", they actually sounded really good. I guess that's why there was such a large crowd gathered.
Next we had to find a restaurant for tea, but neither of us had any idea where to go, which restaurants were good, or even where the restaurant area of Vienna was. In this situation I'll usually ask a random local for advice or a recommendation, but since I couldn't speak German, I was discouraged from asking locals for recommendations.
Eventually a woman started speaking to us, I can't remember what prompted her, maybe she was just a friendly lady. She'd just parked her really short car, in a parking spot that was already half taken by a motorbike, but because it was such a short car, it still mostly fitted. She had her dog with her, and we had a chat. We told her where we were from, and she said she lived in the building just across the road, but that she was ready for a change of scenery, and she wanted to move to a different country. We also asked her for restaurant advice, and she said not to go to the overpriced touristy one which sells huge chicken schnitzels which taste like cardboard (although she used different words to that). She recommended us her favourite restaurant, which was called Cafe Englander. So we went there.
The place was quite fancy, and thankfully had a non-smoking area. Austria is quite behind in their anti-smoking legislation, they still allow smoking in restaurants, it's horrible. Anyway, I had a delicious dish of pasta.

A fancy bowl of pasta in the Cafe Englander, Vienna.

Pretty small serving size, but probably the most delicious meal I've had on the trip so far. The fanciest one, anyway.
The weather, keeping in line with the past week, was still very mild. It was warm enough to be dressed in a T-shirt outside, as this photo attests:

Me and Juls outside the Cafe Englander, Vienna.

It's funny, because I've noticed heaps of locals are so overdressed, Juls did too, because it seems they dress for the season rather than the weather. They think that because they're heading into winter, the weather should be cold and so they have to wear warm clothes, even though the weather actually wasn't cold.
Afterwards we went to the gelataria and ate gelati. Mmm.

Ice-cream from the gelateria nearby.

We chatted a while, before we said our goodbyes. Juls had to get up at some crazy hour, like 4:30 am, to catch a plane; she was going to visit her brother Alex in London for a few days, before flying back to Melbourne, and getting back to work.
I tried taking an alternative route back to the hostel, one which featured more bike lanes, but I wasn't very successful at this, and I got a little lost. I was stopped on the corner of the main road and a one way street that I wasn't meant to ride down, and I noticed this bloke look at me as though he recognised me and I could tell he was about to say something. He said "hey, do you remember me? You passed me on the bike earlier." I actually didn't remember him, I didn't know which instance he was talking about because I pass lots of people on bikes. He successfully jogged my memory though, he was the touring cyclist that I passed on the way into Vienna, the one that had headphones that I passed by without slowing to chat. What are the chances I'd run into him again, hey? Pretty big coincidence!

Mathias, a fellow touring cyclist who was riding from France to Romania.

His name was Mathias, he was 25 years old. We had a good chat for maybe half an hour, compared travel stories and equipment set-ups. He was French, and was riding from France to Romania. He wanted to go to Turkey, work over there during the winter and then ride across China after Winter. Pretty ambitious!
He was intrigued by my set up with the iPhone for GPS navigation and the dynamo hub to charge it. He'd just been navigating the traditional way, using maps. Interestingly he didn't have Facebook either, but I grabbed his email address, and invited him back to our hostel, since it had a bar. I had to show him the map and he had to memorise it to get to my hostel. I rode back to the hostel, he was just on foot, and he must have gotten lost because he didn't make it to the hostel. Ah well.
Back in my dorm, there were about six American girls that had just moved in. They were on a short holiday for a week from their courses, they were studying for the semester in Europe somewhere.
I went and chilled in the common room, it was all happening there, being a Saturday night. I met a few girls from Sydney who'd been traveling around Europe for nine months, and said "wow, that's a long time to be traveling around Europe!" They reckoned they weren't sick of it though, and I think they still had three months to go.
I had a strum on the guitar since I haven't played one for about two months, but I found I couldn't remember any of the songs I'd learnt :(
This English guy joined me, but he was actually really good, and was playing some Chili Peppers and Hendrix, which of course I couldn't play.
We had a chat anyway, he was studying at the university in Swansea, doing his PhD in nanotechnology. When I was applying for university courses in year 12, nanotechnology at LaTrobe Uni was just starting up, and I was considering doing it. I mentioned one of my friends who did that course though, Leigh Sands. Leigh graduated from the course this year, but he's now not working in the field, but instead following his passion for squash and was working for Squash Victoria at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre. He's a really good squash player too, ranked about 50th in Victoria.
Coincidentally, this guy I was talking to, John was his name, was also a keen squash player! He used to watch videos of squash players like Jonathon Power and Peter Nicol, and try and play like them. He was keen to improve his squash.
He asked if I played snooker, because he plays snooker as well, and he reckons people who are good at squash are often good at snooker too, and vice-versa. John mentioned that the current snooker world champion is Australian - Neil Robertson. I didn't realise this but I looked him up and he's from Melbourne, and the current world number 1 in snooker. "Robertson made snooker history in May 2010 by becoming the first Australian to win the Betfred.com World Snooker Championship title, and only the third non-British player, after Cliff Thorburn and Ken Doherty, to lift the famous trophy."
There were a bunch of people playing Kings beside me in the common room, but I wasn't getting involved. I didn't feel like getting drunk. They eventually all headed out to the Aussie Bar, and I was tempted to head along, but stayed back and surfed the net on my iPhone instead.
Kalle, the Australian guy, later came in, and we chatted a while, and across from us were another two Australian guys chatting to two American girls.

Two American girls on the left chatting to two Australian girls on the right.

The Australian guys were from the country, near Newcastle, you could tell they were country fellas though. We listened to the conversation, and sometimes got involved, although I didn't want to interfere with their ground-work. They had some interesting discussions actually. They started talking politics and communism at one point. The American girls had some strong ideas and claimed Obama to be an outright communist. She reckoned Obama was creating a larger middle class, and this was bringing the average American's quality of living down.
They also talked about the holocaust, they'd all visited the concentration camps in Auswitch. Their guide had told them "what I'm about to show you is not pleasant, you're not going to like it" Apparently the guides don't take you right through the tour, but leave you alone to contemplate it all. And I could tell it moved them all deeply. The American girls said they were crying for most of it, as well as after they left. The Australian guys said that after they left, they just sat with each other back on the train in silence, and couldn't speak to each other for a few hours.
The Australian guys had been traveling for a few months and were doing it rough for some of the time. They'd slept at train stations, camped out in parks and even camped in snow when they were in Sweden. When they were in Poland, apparently there are lots of beggars that follow you around and pester you for money, and keep following you and pestering until you give in and give them some money. The Australians reckoned you're better off just giving them a few euros to get rid of them, because otherwise they will literally follow and pester you all day.
When they were on a train in Poland, they had met some seemingly friendly guys on there, they seemed to get along well and had a good chat, then the Australians got out a few slices of left over pizza, and snap!, the guys they had met completely changed tact, and all of a sudden they were demanding the pizza, "give me the pizza, give me that pizza". The Aussie guys were like "ah, no, it's our pizza", but the beggars started threatening them and looked like they might become violent, so the Aussies ended up giving up their pizza.
One of these guys also told about how he was mugged in London. They'd been out drinking all night, and he was at one of the train stations at about 2 am, on his way home, but blind drunk, and a man came up to him and asked him for some money. The Australian said something like "no, I'm not giving you any money", then the mugger pulled a knife on him and said "give me your money". The Australian was like "okay". And he just handed it over, £40 or something, and that was that. He got on the train to go back to wherever he was staying, and got asked by a ticket inspector to show his ticket. He said to the inspector "I was just mugged, so I couldn't buy a ticket". The inspector was like "sure mate, I've heard that one before".
"Check your CCTV cameras at such and such station, and you'll see if you don't believe me", replied the Australian.
"The CCTV camera's at that station are undergoing maintenance at the moment", the inspector said, or something like that, so the poor Australian bloke after being mugged, was also issued with a £40 fine. Pretty unlucky night!
This Australian bloke also mentioned that he only had €600 to live off for the last month of the Europe trip. That would be difficult.
We suggested that they get onto couch surfing (Kelle was also an advocate of couch surfing). They reckoned they'd just joined couch surfing a few days ago, but hadn't taken it any further, hadn't organised anyone to stay with.
One of the American girls was a member of a sorority, which is a fraternal social organisation for undergraduate students, and seems to be common in American universities. This girl's sorority was called "Delta Gamma" (sororities are typically named after letters in the Greek alphabet). She said it also stood for "Do Good", because she reckoned they did lots of fund raising to help the visually impaired. The Australian guy joked that it stood for "Dirty Girls", and the girl was like "...how did you know that?" I think he just stumbled across a secret of the Delta Gamma sorority.
She also showed us the special Delta Gamma hand movements, which they use to show you're a member of Delta Gamma.
Eventually the American girls decided it was time for bed and headed off. The two Australian guys remained behind a little longer and said something like "well that was a waste of two bottles of vodka". We chatted to them for a little while, but you could tell what they had been there for. They headed off and then I chatted to Kalle for a while longer. He used to be a guitarist in a band and said he was into hard-core music. I remember someone from college had mentioned "Parkway Drive are the best hard-core band to come out of Australia". Kalle agreed. I'm not really into my hard-core music, I prefer metal, but maybe I should give Parkway Drive a listen.
We both agreed that, of any music genre, metallers are up there with the most intelligent music listeners. Now here's some generalisations for you. People who listen to rap music are just like "yo, ma homies!", people who listen to pop music are clearly not real music fans, country music listeners are simple country bumpkins, reggae listeners just smoke pot all day, dance music listeners are normally fairly mainstream city folk who work in fashion or retail, or in trades and take party drugs...whereas metal listeners are often well-read in literature and knowledgeable, have some ideas on philosophy and understand society, and they are typically particularly knowledgeable in everything to do with metal music, more so than people who are into other genres are knowledgeable about their genre.
Kalle wanted to stay up late because he wanted to be so tired that he could sleep in in the morning. You see ever since his floor laying apprenticeship work, where he had to get up before the sun came up, he hasn't been able to sleep in. As soon as the sun is shining, bam! He's awake, because when he was working, if the sun was already up that would mean he was going to be late for work.
Wow, I'd hate not to be able to sleep in. I love sleeping in!
Eventually we both went to bed; I got to sleep at about 4 am.




Ride stats:
Distance: 13.2 km
Average: 7.9 km/h
Maximum: ?
Time: 1:39:52