After a couple days, we headed for Vienna, on a Wednesday, I believe. The difference in our transportation methods was a problem again. We didn't know where Phyllis & D___ would be taken by their Bus pass (the buses tend to go to hostels or campgrounds), so we arranged an 8PM meeting at the most likely hostel and a 12 noon thursday meeting at Maria Theresa Platz, in the center of the city in between two of the major museums. I managed to get a reasonable single room fairly close to a lovely cathedral (the gothic one with two spires north of Rathausplatz) and the ring. I called up the girls' hostel, but they didn't have any Busabout folks there, so it sounded as though they'd gone somewhere else. I decided to head out there anyway, just in case. The hotel turned out to be on my map - Schon something Gasthouse, which surprised me until I got there. Wow! Its a huge, huge mansion on a hill west of the city, overlooking it. this place had parks and a minigolf course. It had been converted into a hotel, and was just gorgeous. There was a cute little hostel next to it, and my friends weren't there, so after enjoying the view and waiting for a while, I took off.

The next day I met up with D___ and a random australian in the Plaza, and we took off for a tour of the city, with me as the guide, on the insubstantial basis of once having spent a weekend there led by Mr. Archer. I remebered that there had been a cool museum that I thought was at the bottom of the long park, whose look I remembered. I looked on the map, and found 3 or 4 long parks which seemed possible. We wandered all over the city, checking each rectangular park for museums. As usual, we happened across the park where the drug dealers hang out, where we sat and ate oranges while drinking water and watching deals happen. These people were so obviously out of place. We had no idea what substances changed hands, but it was pretty obvious what was going on. Some funny looking dark skinned people who really didn't fit in gave us nasty stares as we quietly consumed citrus fruits next to their places of business, but given the number of genuine old austrians streaming by, they didn't do anything more than stare. Eventually we moved on.

At the third or fourth park we got to, the one where I had said with the most firmness "I really think this is it", the name Belvedere struck a familiar note, and the moment I saw it I knew. Yeah, this *is* it! The cool museum is here! I was a bit wrong, tho, I had thought the cool museum was at the bottom of the hill, but it turned out the upper belvedere was the cool one and the lower belvedere was sort of lame. Anyway, we had a great time in the upper belvedere, enjoying the paintings that I had seen a year before, and we zipped through the lower one in 10 minutes because it closed in fifteen.

I spent only a few days in vienna, looking for apricot liqueurs for professor Moody, chilling with D___ whenever we could rendezvous, and enjoying the cathedrals. We went inside one, St Peters I think, which had an inside done in "20th century scaffolding" style. The entire inside of this place was taken up by a huge cube of scaffolding. It was actually sort of cool, I wanted to climb and monkey all over it, but restrained myself, cuz, well, it was a cathedral. We also saw St. Stephens Cathedral, the big one in the center of the pedestrian zone, which had cool pillars but lame windows. Windows are a big part of the cathedral for me, and this one only had one good one, a big round one above the organ. Other than that, the side windows were boring and the ones behind the main altar were partially hidden by the huge altar thingy. We went up to the top of the side towers to see the view, and I was distressed to discover that this cathedral had a lift! How terrible! I have a deep intuitive conviction that lifts in churches are wrong and that climbing lots of stairs must somehow be good for you, so I was quite bothered by this, but I enjoyed the view anyway.

Thats most of what I remember from vienna. I bid a sad farewell to D___, with whom I'd traveled for 13 days, promising to visit her in Utah eventually, and went to budapest on saturday. I checked into Diaksport, the Party Hostel, of which I'd heard rumours. I think I'll send a seperate email to folks who have been to hungary with the stuff that only they will care about. Suffice it to say that in Hungary I walked a lot, checking out nostalgic places like my old school and apartment, and that my cellular connection didn't work, the access numbers for hungary did not reach modems. The cybercafe was closed on sunday, so I was screwed for email. I met some cool personages about whom I'd write more if I wasn't so tired, but nothing really important happened. I met a friend from my semester in Budapest (Timi) for lunch. I climbed a hill, i looked at the river a lot. I couldn't get a ticket on tuesday to connect with my flight home from London, so I flew back to england today (monday) afternoon. I got to the airport and checked my big hiker backpack, not wanting to lug it anywhere.

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