Wien

I've decided not to wait a week to write about last weekend, unlike the week before, and I'm bored right now and have just done my journal entry for the day, so...yeah!

I set off last Thursday night, 11PM sharp, on a six-hour bus journey to lovely Vienna. My good bud Tar, who I hadn't seen in a year because of something that happened between us but is now sorted, is doing Erasmus there and has been living in the city since last September. He met me at the U-Bahn station at 5AM (sucks to be him!), we travelled back to his flat and slept for a few hours before we hit the city. I wasn't really interested in doing touristy things while I was there, preferring to experience real life in Vienna as it were, and luckily, he was more than happy to oblige me.

We ate in a very fancy Burger King in the city centre (all BKs over here are fancy, I dunno why) and then wandered about for a bit, taking certain things in, such as the Opera House, which was beautiful, and about a hundred churches. We got cheap booze on the way home and I was shown a funfair, a brothel and a strip club. I was dying to see a real, live hooker but I was assured I would by the end of my stay. I dunno if the city is just filthy or sexually open or what, but there were even more strip clubs and sex shops than Munich, if that's actually possible, and of course the aforementioned brothels. It was quite a trip.

We did pre-drinks and got fairly tipsy before heading out to meet a load of Austrians at a club that turned out to be a ska bar. We skanked the night away with mad people who couldn't understand my accent, and vice versa. Viennisch and Bayerisch are supposed to be fairly similar, but I couldn't really hear it at all to be honest! We headed to a bar called G-Punkt (like G-spot) afterwards, with the charming tagline "Ich habe das G-Punkt gefunden" (I found the G-spot, basically) and played a drunken game of foosball, and then a drinking game involving a hammer, nails and a tree trunk. Basically, everybody gets a nail, hammers it into the trunk a bit and then the hammer is passed around and you take turns hitting it with the blunt edge. Whoever gets their nail in last buys a round of shots. Of course, it was me. I didn't end up buying shots though because we got kicked out of the bar earlier than expected.

We were waiting at a tram stop in the beautiful light of the morning, when I realised I had plastic flowers in my hair. It took me a sec to remember that Stefan, one of the Austrians, had given me a lei that I'd broken (of course) and thus tied in my hair. Then, I kissed a poster of Tokio Hotel and got Tar to take a photo for my sister.

We went back to his and slept it off til the next afternoon.

When we could finally face the sunlight and heat, we dragged our asses out of bed and across the city to a pizzeria that Charley had recommended to me from her trip there the weekend before. It was in a dodgy part of town, but we went in with an open mind and we were not disappointed! It was probably the nicest pizza I've ever had, not to mention ridiculously cheap. We got two massive pizzas and two big Cokes for under a tenner. If I were a food reviewer (and what a fantastic job that would be), this would be when I'd give it five fucking stars. We took half of each pizza home and cracked into it later on after we'd been drinking again.

It was Niamh's birthday, one of Tar's friends from back home, and so we did pre-drinks in hers, where she and I discovered a shared hatred for Ruth Gilligan and love of Marian Keyes. Once the bonding was over, we went to one of their favourite cocktail bars, where I racked up a sixty quid bar tab over the course of the night. I met more mad Austrians and another mad Irishman, who's been living in Austria for five years. I also got a great kick out of the fact that one of the Austrians looked a hell of a lot like Jonathan Davis.

We moved on to G-Punkt later into the night, and it was there that I was reminded that, the night before, I'd drunkenly challenged Jogel, one of the most hardcore Austrian drinkers, to a drinking contest involving Birne, the strongest and most lethal shot they've got. Of course, I couldn't back out then, because not only had I been bragging the night before, but I'd heard way too many stories about Tar passing out and getting sick after nights out drinking, and I felt it'd really be letting the side down if I refused to do it then.

So the shots arrived on a long tray, provided by Jogel, whose eyes were shining at the thought of showing me up. Luckily, he didn't. I downed each one like a trooper, barely blinking despite the fact that my throat was stinging like fuck. He was quite impressed by the end, as was Tar, who seemed completely and utterly shocked that I hadn't passed out or been sick everywhere. I was glad to prove that I can handle my drink, even if I'm probably painting myself now as a gigantic alco. Oh, and Niamh pulled the barman. I was well jealous.

I bid everyone goodbye and we headed back to Tar's flat, where we gorged on the pizza from earlier on and then slept well into the following afternoon. I woke up a bit earlier than him, eager to go to the zoo, but he was too exhausted and so, we sat watching German MTV (which is hilarious) until a more reasonable time and then headed out for lunch/dinner. He took me to an Irish pub, called Flanagans, that was run by Brits. Even so, I was impressed. The food was delish, and since the weather was gorgeous, we sat by an open window with the sun on our hungover faces and relaxed for most of the day.

We went back to his flat, grabbed my suitcase and headed out again. I was on the bus, after a quick goodbye, around 10.30PM and I arrived in Munich at 4AM, which wasn't too bad. I stayed awake the whole journey, not really tired after my long afternoon sleep earlier that day, and listened to music the whole way home. The guy next to me took pity on me, sniffling and coughing practically the whole time, and gave me a pack of tissues which I clung to for the entire journey.

I was back in my flat at 5.30AM and collapsed into bed, more tired than I'd anticipated, and feeling slightly strange to be back. Munich feels like home now, and as a result, I'm beginning to get scared about heading home to Dublin.

Saz and Charley are leaving here July 30th, but I think I'm going to leave the following day so that I can spend some time saying goodbye to this place alone and prepare myself for my return. It'll be great and terrible to get back. Niamh said that it's really going to hit her in a bad way when she's sitting at the bus stop waiting for hours for her bus to come, which I definitely agree with, but there are more things to sort out too, and I'm really not looking forward to dealing with bullshit again. Being over here means I'm sort of hidden and protected from all of that. I dunno how I'll feel when I'm thrust into the middle of it all again.

I can't believe this is nearly over.


Song of the day: Foo Fighters - Everlong.