Edelweiss! Salzburg

The A&T hostel in Vienna was a very nice place; new, clean and with very friendly staff. The only issue was that the cleaners were very persistent about entering my room, way before the allotted 10am to 2pm slot, and I had to tell 4 different women to go away before I was ready to leave. I don't think so many women have seen me in my underwear in such a short space of time before, but it was all very sexy, trust me.

Due to some very enthusiastic recommendations, I made my way to Schönbrunn, via the train station to lock up my luggage, to visit the palace there. Built by the wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II (not all by herself), the 1441-room palace is so exuberant and vast in size, it would have taken many hours to experience it all. All I really wanted to do was check out the gardens, but it was utter pandemonium there and the ticket office was like a disorganised cattle market, only with less shit on the floor. The ticket purchasing system seemed overly complicated for most, with several different combinations of attraction passes on offer, and each person spent a good 5 minutes at the ticket machines trying to work out what they wanted. After 20 minutes of queuing, having hardly moved at all, I decided to knock it on the head as I was hoping to get to Salzburg early enough to at least see some of it during the daytime.

The journey through Austria by train is a very pleasant one. It's the stuff postcards are made of. Chalets scatter the incredibly lush countryside, either collected together in little villages or standing all alone and proud in the middle of nowhere. I imagined some bearded lederhosen-wearing Austrian father deciding that that spot was the perfect place for his family's home and just built it, free of planning permission applications, civic ordinance or a care in the world, and I liked that.

Salzburg nestles beautifully within the Alps, and is definitely the most scenic city I've visited so far. I thought my blisters were easing, but the walk to the hostel, due to the public transport being jammed up by some tie-dyed hippie-led protest in the city centre, enraged them further. The hostel is a lot further from the centre than they'd have you believe, and I was in a bit of a sweaty bad mood by the time I got there.

It was later than I was hoping for by the time I was ready to head out again, and I knew I wasn't going to get to see anything cultural when I got back into the city. I certainly wasn't up for the walk again. Thankfully the hostel rented bikes, and I hopped on one of them to make it back to the centre of town. It was the best decision I'd made all day, because it gave my feet a rest and also got me into town within 10 minutes.

I made my way to one of the cafes by the river to get drink, enjoy the scenery and get some much needed people-watching time in. Heading down the cycle path, some dozy bint stepped right into it without looking, causing me to break suddenly. She shrieked unlady-like and shouted "achtung!" at me. I thought "you bloody achtung!"

A drink by the river

I had some amazing food at a nice decked-out garden bar called Zirkelwirt; smoked pork with white bread dumplings in broth and a side sauerkraut with bacon and chives that was swimming in oil. Pretty epic. They had a very nice beer called Kaltenhausen, and I had a few of them while I watched the world go by. Its a phrase I've used again and again in this blog, and I'm not sure if it's just one of the exclusive perks of being an Englishman, but there is a wonderful amount of pleasure to be had in just 'being'. The comedian Mickey Flanagan talks about the joys of doing fuck all (not 'nothing', but actually 'fuck all'), and sitting alone with a pint just staring at existence is the next step on from that.

One thing that's almost as good as just 'being' is cycling through a European city in the summer at sunset. Much cooler than during the day but still pleasant, I actually thought for a brief second "I could happily do this for the rest of my life". I got a little lost through the winding old town streets, but that was ok because I was just having too much fun. Eventually I found my way back, but I suppose nothing good lasts forever.

All things considered, I've been pretty lucky with my hostels. Until now. I don't know in which hostel they took the photos they used on their hostelworld webpage, but it definitely wasn't this one. Looking like a communist leisure centre/ministry, there is nothing welcoming about the Muffin (?) Hostel, and the lengthy check-in process felt more like applying for a soviet block visa than anything else. Only accepting cash is getting rarer in hostels, and, if you do only accept cash, make sure you're near a cash machine or actually have plenty of change when people do give you cash. Alternatively, don't make every price require stupid amounts of change - round those prices off! Also, I've never had to mess about with my internet proxy server settings to get on to WiFi before, but apparently that's just the done thing here. Even after following the stupidly complicated instructions it didn't work, and the lobby is full of people desperately trying to get online.

At least the hostel has a bar, which they proudly advertise on the hostelworld website. What they don't tell you is that it doesn't open until 10pm, and it resembles the most desperately pathetic working mens club you've ever seen. There are hundreds of miniature bottles of something called 'Klopfer' pressed into the polystyrene ceiling tiles as if many a crazy party night has happened here before, but the lack of any other booze behind the bar apart from warm cans of beer and one lone bottle of Bombay Sapphire suggests that's never been the case. They hadn't switched on the oldskool DJ traffic lights by the time I'd left though, so it could've all kicked off later. But I doubt that.

Party central