Our main job this morning was to catch our train to Vienna. We got up and had breakfast, finishing off the muesli we’d bought. I tried Google Translate on the not-milk that we’d accidentally bought, and found out it was soured buttermilk. Which was surprising, but not bad, as buttermilk is pretty good.
We went for a short walk so I could take some photos of the main square and Astronomical Clock with a long lens, and my wife could get a morning coffee. We found a small Italian cafe just off the square and she got a flat white there. They also has focaccia sandwiches and we bought two caprese ones to take with us for lunch on the train. They kindly packed them in a paper bag for us, with serviettes.
Coffee done, we went back to our room and grabbed our bags to check out, leaving the key in the lockbox as requested. Then we walked back to Prague’s main station for our train. When we got there, the departures board indicated that no platform had yet been assigned for our train. The station was very busy, with a lot of people standing around watching the board to find out where their trains were leaving from. The morning was hot and it was pretty warm inside the station. They had a large Lego version of the station building in a glass display case, which was pretty cool.
After ten minutes or so of waiting, the departure platform was announced and joined a horde of other people streaming the same way. Once on the platform I tried to find any indication of where our car number might pull up, but couldn’t find any. So we had to just hope it would be nearby. As it happened, when the train pulled in our car was just a few steps away, and we were right at the front waiting to get on. A lot of people got off though (the train had come from Berlin), and it took several minutes. And as we waited, a man drove a small cart pulling a trailer up and started beeping to get people out of the way. It was tricky with people trying to get off, people crowded around trying to get on, and this cart trying to move everyone away. It looked like the trailer was delivering food for the adjacent restaurant car or something, and slowly the guy pulled forward until the cart was almost blocking the door we were waiting to get in. This forced people waiting on the opposite side of the door to retreat to provide a way out for the people still climbing off the train. So when eventually the stream of people stopped we were the first ones to climb aboard.
Our seats were almost in the centre of the carriage. We were supposed to have facing seats on the aisle, but a woman and man were sitting in the forward facing seats, so we took the window and aisle seats opposite them. The train pulled out for the four hour trip to Vienna, stopping at Brno and Břeclav. The man opposite us got out at Brno, but the woman stayed all the way to Vienna. She had earphones in and was doing stuff on a laptop and didn’t talk to us. Across the aisle from us was a very chatty Asian Australian guy, travelling with two kids, who during the course of the trip told his entire life story to the young British woman sitting next to him.
During the trip we both worked on our sketchbooks. I drew a few scenes from Prague, while my wife filled in her ink scenes from yesterday with watercolour.
We arrived at Vienna Hauptbahnhof just before 15:00. We disembarked and descended the nearest stairs from the platform, which led us to a quiet area with exits in three directions. Using a map to get our bearings, I realised we’d come out the far eastern exit of the station, whereas the best way to our accomodation was from the west (main) exit. But there was no way to get there without either going back up to the platform and walking along it, or exiting the station and walking around outside. We did the latter, reaching the main part of the station, which was huge and busy. From here we walked towards Naschmarkt, which is near our accommodation.
But when we got there, it seemed clear that this was another small set of guest rooms to be accessed by a key code at the door, and a lockbox inside with a key. But I hadn’t received any instruction for how to get inside or access the room key. I searched through my messages from the accommodation and didn’t find anything. So I tried phoning the contact number, but nobody answered. I sent a message through the Booking.com app, and hoped that someone would see it and get back to us. We waited several minutes, with no responses. I scanned the QR code on the accommodation sign at the door, but it said the URL domain was vacant! We started to fear that the accommodation had stopped business and taken our advance payment without informing us!
A man came out of a door next door, pushing a trolley with bottles on it, and we stopped him to ask if he knew anything about the accommodation there. He said as far as he knew it was there and pointed at the sign to suggest we contact them, which we’d already tried. Then an older couple emerged from the door, and we stopped them to ask if they knew anything about the accommodation. It turned out they were staying in one of the other apartments run by the same guy, and they had an SMS message chain with him, and said they’d just contacted him an hour ago. The woman tried phoning (the same number I’d tried), and got through! She explained to him (in German) that we were here and didn’t have check-in information. She listened and then told me to phone him again, and hung up. I called the number again and the guy answered straight away. Phew!
He said he’d sent check-in details to me via WhatsApp. I’d noticed WhatsApp on my phone giving me notifications a day or two ago, and from the notification summary it looked like spam because the guy had sent several messages and the one that was summarised was restaurant recommendations, so I’d ignored it and actually deleted the app, because I don’t ever use it and didn’t want more spam notifications. So he did actually send the check-in info, but I’m a bit surprised that he used WhatsApp as the medium. Anyway, he sent me the details via iMessage, now he knew my phone number, and within a couple of minutes we were safely inside, finally.
The apartment we have for the next week is very nice, with a kitchen, a separate bedroom, and a balcony overlooking a central courtyard. Once we dropped our bags, we went out to get a quick cold drink. One of the places the owner recommended was a cafe just on the corner of the street, so we went there. It was closing at 17:00 and by now it was 16:30, so we had just enough to to get drinks. My wife had an iced caffe latte, while I tried their home made pear and ginger lemonade. It was nice, though I’d hoped for a little more of a ginger kick to it.
We returned to our apartment and looked for some place to have dinner. We felt like something simple and easy, with guaranteed good vegetarian options, so chose a Thai place called All Reis, which was abut 20 minutes walk away in the Inner Stadt area. We stayed in the cool air conditioning until after 18:00, then ventured out into the sultry evening air to walk there. We passed a lot of amazing sights on the way. It looks like there’s a lot to see in Vienna!
When we got to All Reis, there were half a dozen outdoor tables, all occupied, and we were shown to a table inside, and near the back behind a partial dividing wall. There was no air conditioning and it was very warm, with a rotating floor fan blowing air around. We were so warm we moved tables to get closer to the fan. We ordered some vegetarian rice paper rolls to start, then I got a chicken pad siew and my wife got stir fried morning glory in soy chilli sauce with rice. The food was good and very filling, with generous serves, which was good because we were both hungry after our simple sandwich lunch on the train.
After eating we walked back to our apartment via a different route following our noses at first down interesting looking streets and discovering amazing sights at each turn. After a while we ended up at the main St Stephen’s Cathedral.
From there we turned to a more direct route home, passing through the Burggarten, a lovely grassy and tree-filled park looking onto the Hofburg palace.
Then past the historical art museum and back towards our accommodation.
We’d planned to do a load of laundry tonight using the apartment’s laundry room, so we checked that out on our way in. We saw that a completed load was in the machine, and thought we could bring down our laundry and take that load out onto the table there while starting our load. But five minutes later when we returned with our bag of dirty laundry, two other people were there and had just started a load! The machine has 1:38 on the timer to run. So we had to go back down later at almost 22:00 to start our load.
I’m actually not that surprised that your host used WhatsApp as a communications medium as that is the biggest one in use in Europe.