jumping glockenspiel

I spent today laying low and sleeping, nursing my shabbiness and avoiding what potentially could have been the hangover from hell. Karthi taught me her mum’s apple strudel recipe and showed me how cheap goon bag white wine can be used in desserts rather than something that just makes you spew.

Last night I cooked a big dinner for the girls as thanks for letting me stay and made the deal that if all members of the house were home, I would cook for everyone. We polished off a bottle of wine and joined a group of Viennese go-getters at the Naschmarket for a few bevvies. Topics of conversation ranged from snowboarding to James Bond, but failed to reach the logical conclusion of a snowboarding James Bond. Oh man, that would be cool. After that, a small tangent of us peeled off and headed to Flex for Monday night dub. On the way there, I discovered the French girl who had joined us is also couchsurfing and we discussed how the people who talk the most about CS not being a dating site are usually the ones looking for a root. things were made clearer when I explained what “root” means. We got to the club and thanks to our fabulous personalities (and knowing someone who worked there), we got to hang out in the VIP room, use the staff toilets (accessed by the tightest spiral staircase I’ve ever seen), and dance on the stage if it was our thing. Our host armed us with generous sized Redbull and Vodkas, and the night disappeared into the wee hours of the morning with dancing and drunken philosophical discussions with the club owners. My shirt stayed on and the stage was free from my fancy footwork, but rumour has it that I was bopping around like an idiot amongst the commoners for most of the night. When we went to leave at around 5am, we found the French girl out the front of the club where it was clear that she had got the bad end of the drunk stick.

Sunday was a fun day.. Well not really. The plan was to pack up my stuff and move over to my next host’s place and had sent an email on Saturday to find out the plan for Sunday. I still hadn’t had a reply by 2pm, so I packed up my stuff and copied down what I thought was his number from an email. What I didn’t do was read the whole email and ended up writing down the number for one of the other Couchsurfers using his house. So when I was calling my next host I was actually calling the other traveller. Stupid right? When I worked out the mistake and finally got hold of my host, he told me that I couldn’t stay as planned, and suggested I find a new host for the night. This was at 5pm that night. Poor form dude. Next time you plan a big Couchsurfing sleep over, make sure you ask your parents first.

This extended the time for doing tourist stuff with Tal (the Canadian), which included looking around the Schönbrunn, catching Running Sushi (a surprisingly unpretentious modern dance performance), and then grabbing pizza. I was still in a bit of a stink about being put out by my host, so rather than going to a CS party where I could have easily met an alternate host, I stayed at Wombats, a hostel that came with good recommendations from Tal. There I met a bunch of pissed Australians doing a Contiki tour around Europe, but choose a group a few American student who were much more chilled to chat with. In the morning, I had some humorous chats about Schmittens and Antarctica with a couple of Seattle girls and am expecting an email asking whether I’m in India any minute now.

I headed back to the flat to sort out my stuff and explain to Petra what had happened with my other host, only to end up with a place to call home for the next month. The girls have a tiny little spare room use to store cleaning stuff, extra clothing and a small mattress and they were totally cool with me hiding there for the next few weeks while I go to Sziget and decide where my journey will take me next. So if you are up for making up a mix cd or sending a postcard, email me and I’ll give you the address.*

The plan as it stands at the moment is visiting the Austrian countryside where I'll meet the Petra and Karthi's parents and enjoy some tasty home dried fruits. Then on Saturday I'm venturing to Budapest for next Wednesday's Sziget Festival, giving me a few days to see the city and check out the Chuck Norris Bridge. Please Castro, don't die. I need to visit your little island before you drop off the twig. I will post an explanation in the coming days of the ImPulzTanz photos I uploaded a few days ago. If you take a look in the right hand column of this site, there should be a little counter showing the amount of days I’ve been travelling for. If anyone knows how to make a java script counter look a bit funkier, let me know.


*I would just like to quickly comment that over the past couple of weeks I’ve had a few ideas about what to write in my blog, only to find that battlecat.net had beaten me to it not once, not twice, but four times. I wanted to talk about my freaky dream about a snake with two heads, the cool hair ties and fridge magnets I found at the MQ, how song lyrics influence our lives and today I go to make the above post, only to find I'd been pipped at the post (oh the puns), with Ms. B opening up her mail box to your post cards and mix CDs. Another example of note was my plans to use the phrase “3 Songs, No Flash” as the title for a rock photography book, only to find one of my Australian photo type heroes will hold an exhibition under the same name later this month. Scheiße mellone.