The Rail to Vienna: Sunrises, Architecture and New Friends

Picking up where we left off: Bye bye Munich! Hello Prague & Vienna!

For the first time in my life, I’m travelling mostly by train. The transport system in New Zealand is really shoddy, and it seems to me like taking the rail around Europe is the rite of passage for a lot of travel. I said goodbye to Lisa and Henry early in the morning to catch a 10:44 train to Prague. The entire route with no transfers was 5hr 30m.

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The Rail System

I’d been a little worried about not having a seat reservation, but honestly, if you get there early you have nothing to worry about. It’s only if it explicitly says seat reservations required that you should probably get one.

I sat down with some nice people in the middle of three, (I wasn’t that early), and immediately was followed by two loud Americans, already complaining about something being very wrong and should get a refund. Made me cringe, but the two next to me were also American and were silently rolling their eyes too.

In the end, I opted for the Eurail Pass. This cost me $380USD for ten days of travel within two months. This means on each travel day I can get unlimited trains from 12:00AM to 11:59PM. I was tossing up between getting point to point tickets, but the Eurail Pass makes everything online so much smoother, and cuts away a lot of the hassle. The train conductor simply scans your pass’s QR code and you’re good to go.

Heads up: Wifi has limits sometimes :’)

The Train to Prague

The transition from Germany to the Czech Republic was incredible. Rolling green hills turned into canyons and forests before making it’s way into apocalyptic, ex-communist architecture. Buildings were falling down, covered in graffiti or half lost back to nature. As the train got closer and closer to Prague, the buildings morphed into incredibly tall, pastel coloured buildings, with sills and decor that made them look like cakes.

I arrived at 16:15, and was able to go straight to my hostel to check in. I walked around the downtown area a bit before heading to the riverside where the most fantastic golden hour was hitting the buildings. It blew my mind.

I distinctly remember thinking, oh yeah, I’m alone. no one can tell me not to stare off into the distance leaning against this bridge, because no one cares.

One Day in Prague

I didn’t have a lot of time in Prague, in all honesty. Originally, I hadn’t even planned on making it here. And if you asked me again, I’d tell you I simply wanted to cross off another country. I’m very glad I did explore Prague for a little bit though.

The museum was incredible. Forget the modern buildings of the Western world, Prague has what looks like an old palace at the top of a hill. It’s the centerpiece of the city, and the inside is just as amazing. Walking up the red carpet made me feel like I should be in a dazzling red dress that takes up four steps instead of pants and a shirt.

I decided to treat myself to a lunch to get myself going, which absolutely filled the gap. Nothing local, but also I’d been craving a good pad thai since finishing at the ranch. I felt great, until my card declined. And then my NZ card declined. And then I realised I had no cash.

In case of emergency – leave your ID with the restaurant and make a mad dash to an ATM. Find out that the minimum withdrawal amount is the equivalent of 50USD in Czech Koruna, of which you’ll only be in for another 24 hours. Stamp your foot angrily, put on a smile and call the cash a souvenir. Problem solved.

I was also scared of the public transport at this point. I’d used it plenty of times in Munich with Lisa, but doing it alone felt too much. Cue 40 minutes of walking uphill. That was the last straw.

Now, one of my favourite movies ever is Interstellar. Earlier in the year they had announced that it would be doing a rerun live in IMAX. I was gutted that I was going to miss until I realised, well of course they’re going to show it in Europe too. I wa slucky enough to see it on my second night in Prague. Trying to use up my money from the ATM incident before, I ordered the largest popcorn and pepsi (ridiculously large), and experienced IMAX for the first time. I was slow to book, so unfortunately there were only front row seats left, but it was still amazing. And to feel the rumble of Hans Zimmer’s cornfield chase honestly almost brought me to tears.

Cooper was halfway through tearfully catching up on Tommy’s videos when booom. Bye bye screen. The movie shut off for 30 minutes after that, due to some problem that I didn’t understand enough Czech to know about. There were cheers when they fixed it, and sighs when it shut off a second time about forty minutes later. All in all, despite the blackouts, it was awesome.

I took the metro, it was fine. Not walking anymore.

Arriving in Vienna

I’m going to be honest, I felt lonely in Prague. I wanted to meet some likeminded travellers, especially for Vienna, where I was excited to explore some of the sets from ‘Before Sunrise.’

So, I jumped on Hostelworld, which has a chat feature and put out a message. It’s on here that I met Kayla and Liam, both originally from America. Kayla got in later, but I was able to meet up with Liam for a bit of a walk around the city before checking into my hostel.

Later, all three of us went out and scoured the city for somewhere to eat. After an insane amount of back and forth, we settled on a spot called ‘Inigo.’ Kayla and I both ordered a traditional schnitzel, which was really good. We walked down to the canal and explored a bit more of Vienna after sunset before heading back to our hostels, promising to catch up the next day.

Vienna Day One – September 28th

That’s exactly what we did. We met at a little cafe on the edge of the city, where we learned that they only take cash. Well. After a 10 minute run to find an ATM, we were on our way. The first stop that I made them come with me to was Alt & Neu Records. The record store from ‘Before Sunrise.’

Liam had watched it once when he was young, and Kayla had never heard of it. I must’ve looked a little crazy being so excited over a record shop.

Unfortunately the listening booth was no longer operational, but everything was exactly like it looked in the movie. Maybe a little less popular. There were posters stuck around the shop from the movie, and they even had three turntables set up with Kath Bloom’s ‘Come Here’ for people to listen to.

We took a few photos, found a record as a souvenir – Creedance Clearwater Revival’s ‘Bad Moon Rising/Lodi’ and went to pay. They had the cutest little pin, and the manager even threw in a free Austrian record for me. He gave me stickers, a little information packet and was very excited when he learned I was a fan of the movie. He offered for all three of us to listen to ‘Come Here’, and I was honestly fighting back tears listening to that song in the store.

There was a flea market not far from the record store, just along the riverside. We had a lot of fun sifting through old cameras, photos, postcards, maps, painting and other trinkets. It was only until Kayla found an old SD card and inserted into her camera that things took a funny turn. We scrolled through a few of the pictures, before bam, we were blinded by the sight of an obtrusive image. I’ve never seen someone pull an SD card out of a camera so fast. Laughing, we continued on. We were able to find three postcards for Kayla, an old film slide of the Austrian Mountains around Bad Hofgastein for me, and a wallet for Liam.

The coolest thing we found was a gold plated New Zealand map, that I absolutely would have bought if I had a viable way of getting it home with me. It was the most beautiful map of my country I’d ever seen.

We then proceeded to tackle an insane amount of landmarks around Vienna (including two from the movie – below), and I can thoroughly say we explored almost all of it. My google maps timeline agrees with me.

Kayla and I had our first bratwurst for lunch, and we found a park next to a big church to hang out. I was taught how to play a new card game, before we found another cafe to sit down and play properly in. It was SO PINK.

I got an hour or two to chill out back at my hostel before we all decided to go out for dinner and to find some dancing.

We ended up at a spot underneath the Vienna State Opera house. It was three rooms, with three different DJs, and three different vibes. There was a group of six of us from various hostels and it was a lot of fun. Fun enough to be out until 4AM.

Vienna Day Two – September 29th

I took the metro into town today to see the Spanish Riding School in action. I’ve never been more impressed with the architecture of a horse riding school before. The arena looked like something straight out of Barbie’s Swan Lake. What they’ve taught the horses there is incredible, I got to see the Creole, in hand and other beautiful movements. I was so sad when they told us we couldn’t take photos during the performance. I got Mum some goodies from the store afterwards instead.

Afterwards, I met up with Kayla for a goodbye lunch before heading back to the hostel for a nap!

Vienna Day Three – September 30th

Today was my dedicated lazy day. No alarms were set, and I made sure to get a bit of admin done, alongside visiting the last set of Before Sunrise on my list. I got some lunch near the spot, an amazing chicken an rice bowl from a place called Kenny’s. I am really glad I made it to the bridge, being able to explore this other side of Vienna via the street car was nice.

I’ve just been working on my budget, trip plans and photo editing this afternoon and am hoping to call Mum later on!

Next stop: Budapest!