I’m not sure which is more suitable to this, and so are my friends. Some are happy, some are sad, but it was unavoidable.
Due to regulations for the scholarship and some other stuff concerning my studies, I had to become Viennese. It’s official since Thursday, August 18, 5.15 pm.
I’m not tyrolean any more (at least in the population register).
Some weeks ago, I guess it was around the end of June, a friend of mine told me about this awesome HBO series he had discovered. It was called “A Game of Thrones”, and being totally new, was yet not broadcasted in the european area.
What should I say. I started watching the series, 11 episodes of 50-55 minutes each, and I finished within about one week. It’s a great series, with a wonderful cast, amazing landscapes and sets, and the storylines are really good. After finishing the 11 episodes, I checked the wikipedia article to see when the next season was planned to air.
2012.
How should I make it without knowing how the story goes on, until 2012? That’s one year!
But then I discovered this little sentence: “Based upon the novel >A Game of Thrones< by George R. R. Martin." Two days later, I had found and ordered the whole box, including three more books of the series, on Amazon. Another 3 days later, one day before my birthday, the box arrived.
What should I say. I started on July 15th, and by today, I am on page 193 of book four, "A Feast for Crows". Fortunately, book five, "A Dance with Dragons", has been published as a hardback shortly after I bought the box, so the paperback will come soon, too. Still, Martin has showed that he sometimes needs a bit longer to write his books than he plans to. Book 4 and 5 each took about 4 years to be published.
At least, in 2012 the next season, based upon "A Clash of Kings", will air.
A successor has been found.
I don’t know too much about her until now. She’s from Tirol, and in case she accepts the offer, she will be moving to Vienna. I know her name, and her contact details, but have not met her or talked to her until now. She obviously was either the only person applying for the job, or the best, as she was the only one who came around for an interview.
We will see, hopefully she will start on September 1st.
Long weekend short:
app. 750 km traveled
8 geocaches searched – 8 geocaches found
app. 5 castles visited
one night camping in the wild
one night in a hotel because of bad weather
3 sunny days, on rain during any day
a bunch of pictures
As soon as I got my pictures from my phone and the other guy uploaded all of his, I’ll post them. And in the meantime, I’ll try to write something longer and more detailed 😉
We did not find a host, so we did not go to Prague. Instead, we’re going to Slovakia with a Couchsurfer, to see some castles and find some geocaches 🙂
Have a nice (long) weekend!
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 🙂
Sunday Morning … nothing special happened on Sunday, I’d say. We just packed our stuff, cleaned up, and then left.
Well, Fabian and Lisa left first, when Josef and Stefan went to bring some things back to Beate. The swiss couple was determined to hitchhike to Brunico the same day, and they managed to arrive there within 5 hrs – including traffic jams all the way to Innsbruck.
So while Lisa and Fabian were hitching along, Josef, Stefan, Georg and I went on our roadtrip back to Vienna. We were in no hurry, so we took several breaks to have coffee and food and to change the driver (Josef and Stefan took turns). We arrived in Vienna around 8 pm, and Georg and I were dropped off first. The rest of the evening was reading, watching TV and then going to bed pretty early.
I still had two days off, Monday and Tuesday, but had an appointment on Monday morning, so I had to be well rested. After my appointment, we did not quiet know what to do, so we decided to go to St. Pölten, the capital city of Lower Austria. By train, it’s 40 minutes from Vienna. And what did we do there? Geocaching, of course! We were not too successfull – once again, we tried doing a multi cache, but failed miserably.
The next day was better. We decided to go the opposite direction and ended up in Deutsch Wagram, a small town in the northeast of Vienna. There is pretty much nothing to see or do there (I see no point in living there, either), but there are some nices geocaches to find. Still, after 3 hours, we were done and took the next train back to the city.Tuesday evening was business as usual: Pub Quiz @ Café Benno on Alserstrasse/Bennogasse.
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.