It was a last-minute decision, and we had to re-plan it twice, but for the next 5 days, Georg and I are going on a trip to the great city of PRAGUE (if we find a couch there)!

First, we wanted to go to Madrid, taking about 10 days including hitchhiking there and back, but my boss would not give me another 4 days off. Anyways, she agreed to give me 2 days, and Georg and I agreed to go to Rome instead of Madrid, as it is not that far to go. As we were not able to find a couch or not too expensive hostel there, we started looking for another city, and decided to try Prague.

At the moment, we’re still looking for a couch – so if anybody can recommend us (to somebody), we’d be very grateful!

And that’s the plan:
Get up pretty early on Saturday.
Go to B7 Brünner Bundesstraße, and hitchhike to Prague.
Arrive in the late afternoon/early evening.
Have a grat weekend in Prague!

We’re on the road all the time – at least that’s how it seems now that I’m thinking about it.

After working 3 days (Wednesday, Thursday, Friday), we went to Graz on Friday afternoon to join our friends at the Graz monthly meeting. It was great to see how happy they were to have us there!

Also, it was great to see how the Couchsurfing Network of Trust works time and time again. We sat down beside Markus and his girlfriend Kim and startetd to chat a bit, and then mentioned that we came here without having a couch. “Oh, really? Well, there’s this spare room in my flat. And I have a couch we can put there. If you want, that means.” – and so Markus and Kim were our hosts for the night! After dinner, we went to a bar, where Georg was not allowed to enter because he was carrying our backpack, so we had to go to Markus’ place first to leave our stuff there. We even got a key to the flat then!

After Nightexpress, the whole group was pressing on to a bar we had already visited last time – Club Q. Georg and I did not feel like Q that night, so we said goodbye to the others and left for bed. Of course, Georg did navigate there without a problem, but then we were not sure if we were at the right entrance. As no key fit the lock, it soon was obvious 😉

The next day, we met for a – little lat – breakfast near Jakominiplatz. The plan for the rest of the weekend was to go to Klagenfurt by InterCity Bus (yes, there’s a bus connection operated by the Austrian Railways!) and discover the city. We did not find a host – better: we did not bother with looking for one – so we called a friend, Andi. We knew he used to live in the surrounding of Klagenfurt, and we knew he was visiting his parents, so we figured he might have a couch for us. Even better: he had a whole room with a great bed we could use. His parents’ place is located about 30 minutes by car out of the city – but this proved to be just about perfect. After being busy meeting others and spending time in the city, this short farm holiday, all complete with cows, dogs, cats, and the boys playing at bows and arrows was just what we needed to take a break.

Thanks again to everybody for this great weekend 🙂

On Saturday, we met for breakfast with some other Couchsurfers (Beate + Matthias) at a Supermarkt/Café in town. After having some delicious breakfast, we did the shopping for the BBQ that was planned for the night. Incredible amounts of meat, potatoes and beer were bought and brought to my place.

Afterwards, we went to Füssen, a small town in Bavaria – but we did not really visit the town itself, but two buildings not far from it. Pretty much everybody knows them: It’s the Königsschlösser, the castles of Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau.

The entrance fee for the castles is pretty expensive, and Neuschwanstein was not finished after King Ludwig II’s death, so there is not too much to see on the inside. So what we did was to walk up to Neuschwanstein, go to Marienbrücke (THE spot to take pictures of the castle!) and then on to Hohenschwangau, where descendants of King Ludwig’s family still reside.

After a short break and snack, we did a bit of an unplanned detour through another big park nearby, and then drove back home, picking up some prepared things fpr the BBQ at Beate’s place. Back home, we first decided to have another break (some even took a nap 😉 ), and afterwards started the preparations for the BBQ. The boys were transporting everything to the fire place and got the fire running, while Lisa and I were working on salad and the like. The classic role model, and it worked very well!

And this is what we had for our BBQ:
spiced potatoes, by Beate. delicious!
green salad with tomatoes, sausages, Speck, meat-on-a-spit, and beef … the beef was high quality, and we cooked it properly: only some minutes, still raw on the inside, and without any fancy spices. Only a little salt, a little pepper – and that was it. Perfect! After this feast, we still had some marshmallows, and spent some more hours at the fire. Lisa went home around 1, I went to bed at 2, and the rest of the gang left around 4 in the morning.

On Friday, we were planning to go to the Medieval Festival at my home town. Since 2003, it took place every year on the last weekend in July. Since 2003, I attended the festival 6 times (out of 8!). 4 times, I was there all 3 days, sometimes even the night before and/or after.

I think you can imagine the things I got told when I arrived there, around noon, with “tourists”, and not wearing my “Gewandung” (medieval costume). Mainly, people said “What are YOU wearing?”, or “What is it with you? You used to stay here the whole weekend!”.

Well, anyways, it was great, as always! The weather was not that great, also as always 😉

Before and after watching the tourney – our spots were not the best, unfortunately – we spent some time at the camp and the market, and met some other Couchsurfers who live in the area. Just before the battle was scheduled, I got a message from Fabian and Lisa, saying they had finally arrived and were waiting for me at the entrance. So I went there, picked them up – and nearly could not return back, as I did not have a stamp saying I had already paid the entrance! Lucky me, the security company is the same since the very beginning, and some of them know me ever since. So when one of the guys I know showed up, I explained the problem – and got back in without a problem 🙂

After watching the battle, we got ourselves some food and mead (of course!) and settled down in one of the taverns. Later on, we watched the concert and the fireshow, and around half midnight, we took our stuff and went back home. Being pretty tired, I went to bed immediately, while the others helped themselves to some beers and spent another hour in the garden.

It is Friday, July 22nd. This means: last day of work before I’m going on holidays for 11 days.

YAY!

The plan so far:
Pack my stuff this evening.
Get on the train with Georg on Saturday noon.
Stay on the train while he gets of at Linz to visit his family.
Go to Innsbruck.
Have a great day and evening with Barbara, an old school friend, and stay at her place for the night.
Have a great day in Innsbruck on Sunday, not yet sure with homm, and also where I will be staying on Sunday night.
Monday around noon being joined by Georg again, and then go to my parents’ place – by train or car, we don’t know yet.
And then: spend a great week at my home town, including a Medieval Festival and meetings and BBQs and hikes with my Couchsurfing Friends from all over Europe!

Yipieeeh!

Just a week ago I asked my boss – who at the time did not know yet I would leave the company to go to university – if I could have a new PC. The one I’m using right now is pretty old already and still runs on XP. Using Google Earth plus 2 or 3 other programs at the same time usually causes problems like the computer not responding any more.

Some days ago, the new computer finally arrived, and it is already set up. I installed about all the programs I use frequently (Chrome, Firefox, IE, a PLIST editor, the Office package, Skype, …) and at the moment I’m clearing the old PC’s hard drive to see what I (or better: my successor) will need in the future.

It’s amazing how much stuff is collected during little more than one year 🙂

Also, I’m currently writing a handover for my successor. In it I try to describe our products, and what is my part in creating and maintaining them. There is explanations of the different Content Managing Systems we use, our databases, our servers … Pretty much everything that one can pretty well use during the first week on a new job. The last time I did this for the job I quit for this one, and the handover was about 40 pages long. This handover at the moment has 20 pages, lots of them containing login-information, and the paths to files and folders my successor might be using sometimes. And still, it is only the beginning.

I want to hide this stupid statistics tool wordpress is showing on my dashboard. It has to be wrong. Only 2 visits per day? No way.

Are there so many of you out there reading via RSS?

I’m turning 25 tomorrow, and I’ll be partying already tonight.

If you’d like to join, send me an email (sburtscher[at]gmx[dot]at), or check the Vienna Group on Couchsurfing. I’ll give you all the information you’ll need!

Today, I’ll be doing “my thing” again. My thing in Couchsurfing Vienna is walking around with Couchsurfers. From time to time I would point out something along the way and say something about that thing. It’s not a guided tour, it’s just a walk.

Usually, these walks take place at Zentralfriedhof in Wien Simmering. If so far you never considered Zentralfriedhof (Central Cemetery) to be a sight worth 2 hours time, try my walk. I have done this about a dozen times by now, and had a lot of people coming with me. All the feedback I received so far was somehow connected to the words amazing, awesome, so cool, fascinating, incredible or similar.

The next date is TODAY, 13th of July. I won’t publish the exact time and meeting place here, simply to avoid masses of people showing up.

If you’d like to join, send me a mail to sburtscher[at]gmx[dot]at, and I’ll send you the directions. I’ll be checking my mails until 5 pm.