Vienna ::: Day 2

After an awful time getting to Vienna the previous day, I was happy to see my friend Keri, from Minneapolis, and her friend Dave. It was rainy, cold, and they were getting sick, but we went out for lunch and did some quick site seeing anyhow.

We walked around Museumsquartier, Stephansdom, Rathaus, Parliament, and some other spots, before returning to the main shopping avenue. Unfortunately, my camera took this opportunity to stop working. I think it must have absorbed too much rain from the wet umbrella I put in my purse (because I'm brilliant like that).

After a nap back at the hostel, I ventured out to a bar just around the corner to get dinner. There seemed to  be a lot of young men wearing lederhosen in the place, which struck me as weird, since Oktoberfest is technically over. One of these guys, named Hubert or Humphrey or something German-sounding, soon joined me. I tried to tell him that I just wanted to order some dinner, see you later, but he didn't speak English very well, so he just kind of stuck around.

I ordered a beer and put my thoughts of food on hold. I didn't much want to order a meal while his drunk friends kept walking by every couple of minutes, stumbling into my table and making what I can only guess were lewd comments to their friend.

After an awkward conversation, he wondered if maybe I would go out and get some food with him. So we walked across the street, he bought us a pizza, and when he tried to hold my hand after I decided to say goodbye.

The whole Bavarian costume and constant drunkeness is really rather ridiculous, and I think maybe the disdain my friend Izaak and his Hamburg friends have for these sort of people colored my judgment a little. According to them, the people who celebrate Oktoberfest are historically the people who supported the Nazi movement in Germany. And when H made a disparaging comment about someone in the pizzeria that he suspected was gay, I thought maybe there might be something to that statement.

For my first couple nights in Vienna, I kept running into this same group of guys everywhere, including my hostel. It made for some awesome avoidance maneuvers.