Category Archives: CouchSurfing

CouchSurfing, GeoCaching, traveling

One GeoCache intended – two found.

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So after picking up our car, we had a rendezvous in Providence: Eric, who had surfed my couch in Summer 2012, after hearing that I was coming to Boston, had suggested Pizza and Geocaching. The pizza was really good (awesome decoration, too), the first geocache was discovered quickly, and as a reward we had frozen yogurt afterwards.

Another hour driving (and some more detours after taking a wrong exit in NYC already) took us to Dorchester, Boston. We stayed with Jason, who is 23 and is working on his PhD in Nuclear Sciences at the MIT. We had planned to go to the Pub around the corner, but ended up having drinks at home.

The next day in the morning, our first stop was Boston Common, to find the Visitor Information Center. On the way, we walked by the Soldiers and Sailors Monument – and found an unexpected geocache: Josef saw the hideout, said “I bet there’s a cache!”, reached in, and got it out. Awesome!

CouchSurfing, traveling

New York: Manhattan by foot.

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The flight was great, getting to Manhattan was also pretty easy. Only my suitcase got into my way more often than not – lesson learned, next time it’s the backpack for sure.

For the first night, there was already a party planned: Couchsurfing New York’s weekly meeting, featuring the birthday party of two members. People were asked to dress up 80ies-themed, and some costumes were really great 🙂

The next day we went to Central Park … Just like that, we walked all the way from 103rd street down to Central Park Zoo. Of course we took a break in between; we had a snack in a Cafe that is located in a church(!). Also, we visited the shop at the Guggenheim Museum (I got a book on graveyards around New York there 🙂 ).

Thanks to some awesome recommendations from Chris, my former work colleague, we had a huge list of food to choose from for lunch. We decided to have the roastbeef sandwich from Little Italy – something we for sure did not regret. The rest of the list is still somewhere around, for my next trip 😉

Later we walked over to Brooklyn (yes, all the way from Little Italy via the Bridge). After that, we went to High Line Park – all in all this were about 12 km that day, so I had good reason to fall asleep on the couch at 9 pm 😉

The next day, we had breakfast at the mexican restaurant downstairs, packed our stuff, said good-bye to Nicky and the other surfers and went to pick up our car at the airport.

The lady at the rental company tried to make us change from a normal car to a SUV, as the weather was “so  bad”. In fact, the further north we got, the sunnier it was. True story.

And now for some pictures!

CouchSurfing, traveling

Coming up: Poutine, Chowda, Smoked Meat and lots more.

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3 cats, about a dozen different types of beer, poutine, chowda, smoked meat, hot dogs, pastrami, tostones, Kaiserschmarrn and of course a red Ford Focus – that’s what came along during my 17 days in North America.

17 days, in which we spent about 1800 miles on the roads of 8 states in the US and Canada (New York, Maine, Massachussetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Quebec, Ontario and also a bit of Virginia, as far as I remember).

17 days, in which I severly annoyed my travel companion with remarks about his accent.

17 days, in which we stayed in 7 households, with 15 different people and all in all 3 cats.

17 days full of great impressions and lots of awesome memories: a pubcrawl, pubfood, great views of great cities, a CD release concert,  crossing the US border, the Falls …

Be prepared, it has begun …

CouchSurfing, Enjoying Vienna

Wednesday Walk, all alone

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During the last days I spent in Vienna, it’s been damn cold all over Europe. For Vienna, this means around -12° Celsius, loads of sunshine, and wind.

After all the exams and all the studying the weeks before, I finally took the time again to make one of my Wednesday Walks. This weeks’ targeted area was Türkenschanzpark, a rather big park in the 18th district, where most of the CS kickball games take place.

The meeting was set up for 11 am, and a small group of people had registered either through CS or via mail/text message. Still, at 11.09 am, after waiting for 15 minutes in the freezing cold, I decided to start my walk. Some minutes later, I got a text message from Albert, who often takes these walks with me, asking me not to wait for him as he had overslept 🙂

Here are some impressions of the walk. After 40 minutes, my legs were prickling, my nose was nearly falling off, and I was more than happy to see the next bus to take me homewards would arrive within 3 minutes 🙂

CouchSurfing

It’s planned!

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Yes, I know, I’ve been lazy again in December. So let’s try to catch up a bit, right?

In August I booked a flight from Vienna to New York and back again for less than 400 Euros, and got two guys, Josef and Christian, to join me.

Unfortunately, Christian won’t be able to join us any more, as there’s been some changes in the company he’s working with, and he should definitely stay in Vienna during February.

So yesterday, Josef and I got together and started planning the trip. He came up with the idea of going to Montreal (“There’s someone who’d LOVE to host us!”), and I said “Well, when we’re already in Canada, why not continue to Toronto and go see the Niagara Falls, too?”, and he said “But what should we do in between there and Washington? … Oh, wait, Cleveland’s just around the corner.” and I said “Oh, and Pittsburgh, right there, it’s on the way too!” … so this is our current schedule:

According to google maps, it should be about 34 hours of driving. The longest part would be from Montreal to Toronto, taking about 6.5 hrs. Our day-to-day schedule is not 100 % fixed yet and we’re not sure about some stops yet (e.g. if we’ll stay overnight in Cleveland and/or Pittsburg at all), but that’s about it.

I’ll be on my couch now, checking my brand new rough guide to the USA 🙂

CouchSurfing, GeoCaching

Walking and Caching

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It did not really go according to plan on Wednesday. Georg couldn’t join us, and wihtout him I did not want to try and go for the multi caches. Still, I could show the people who came along a simple traditional cache. I knew exactly where to find it, so no problem there 🙂

Thursday was a public holiday in Austria, so I decided to spend the afternoon in Baden, a town not far from Vienna. Again, some couchsurfers came along, and one of them is a fellow geocacher, so we decided to also head for some caches. We ended up looking for 3, and finding 2 of them. The third we could not find because we could not get near the coordinates, as there were christmas trees stored on the spot and there was a fence all around.

CouchSurfing

Secret Santa

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As mentioned already, the Vienna Couchsurfing Community is very active. Every year, for a couple of years now, a game of Secret Santa has been organised. This year nobody made the first step until the end of November, so I contacted some of the organisers … and got promoted to organiser of Secret Santa!

So together with Maria, I am now organiser of Secret Santa. Together with 11 others, our names were put on lots, and one of my friends from University did the drawing. The whole idea is to get in touch with the person that was drawn to receive a present from you, without him/her really noticing. Find out, what they would like to receive (price should be less than 5 Euros), and then give it to them at Christmas Dinner.

It’s really fun, especially as some people are pretty new to the community and therefor a bit harder to find out things about 😉

CouchSurfing, GeoCaching

Walk, talk, and try to find a Geocache!

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As my university schedule offers a whole day mostly off on Wednesdays (only Maths from 9 to 10 am), I decided to go for a walk every Wednesday. In order to be more motivated, I told others about it. About a thousand others, as I posted my plans to the Vienna Group.

Now every Wednesday I meet up with some others to have a walk for about one hour, and we change location every time. Like this, I have visited Schönbrunn, Wienerberg and Augarten in the last three weeks. This week, I am planning to go to Prater, and I want to add something else to the Walk and Talk-Meeting: Finding a multi stage geocache. I have already tried once to find it, together with Georg, but we started out too late and it went dark before we were finished. This time, we will start at noon already, so it should be light long enough for us to solve all the riddles.

If anybody wants to join, there is more information available on the CS Meeting Page. I’d love to see you there! If you can’t sign up because you’re not registered on Couchsurfing, just leave a comment.

CouchSurfing

CS Walk & Talk meeting

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Inspired by another Couchsurfers’ Walk and Talk meetings, I’m about to start a weekly meet-up.
The meetings so far usually were easy hikes that nevertheless took about 4 hrs, but my edition will be for the busy, or lazy, or both, people.

As my University schedule leaves lot of time available on Wednesdays, and I would love to explore Vienna’s parcs, this is my idea:
Let’s meet up every Wednesday around noon for a walk of approximately 1,5 – 2 hours. The location will change every time so we can discover new places.

This week, I want to walk through Schönbrunn gardens.
Meeting point: the big gate in front of the palace.
Meeting time: Wednesday, Nov 16, 1 pm.

Hope to see you there 🙂

CouchSurfing

A little CS break

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As always, after attending a CS invasion, I needed a break of Couchsurfing in the last weeks. Especially after the marathon we had completed during September and October, going to Salzburg, Augsburg and Graz, Georg and I were not at all motivated for hosting anybody for some weeks.

The end to that break came with Armi and Andre, who sent Georg a really nice request (also including my name, and some of our hobbies). The last years, they lived in Christchurch, New Zealand – does the name ring a bell? Christchurch has seen about a dozen earth quakes since February, at least one per month. I don’t know if that was the only reason for them, but in the end, Armi and Andre decided to leave New Zealand for good and try their luck in Europe. They will be looking for jobs and a place to stay in Berlin pretty soon, so if anybody of you knows something, let me know 🙂