Before we left Gastein we realised that our train tickets would very soon be running out. This meant that we'd have to stay in Vienna a good week or so to wait for new ones to come in. Which meant making sure that our next hostel was a decent one. And a good price too. As usual we searched the internet high and low. We chose Meininger. Its a big name hostel, they've got several around Europe and our Interrail tickets gave us a 10% discount. It also has a kitchen and free bedding, two of the main things we'd be looking for. The free wi-fi is lobby only however, but that's a small disadvantage.

It was just another short train journey from Gastein into Vienna. And then the U-Bahn (underground) straight to the hostel. The public transport in these cities is incredible. We're loving the U-bahns and the S-bahns. A three day ticket is incredibly cheap, considering how many journeys you can fit into that amount of time.

Here'sa paragraph devoted just to the hostel itself, because I haven't really done it before and this place kind of deserves one. Feelings are mixed. You walk into the lobby and the place feels like a strange mix of hostel and hotel. There are many different age groups wandering around. The room we got is pretty decent. 6 beds, clean, plenty of space. Its an En-suite too which is pretty cool; no sharing with an entire floor of people. After setting our kit down and making our beds up our next stop was the kitchen. We were fairly disappointed. You first have to walk down to the basement level where the door to the garage is. Then walk through 3 more doors into a dark room, apparently as far away from civilisation as its possible to be in Vienna. They've got one of those small plug-in hob things. Which is fair enough I guess, but why not have another one? The microwave was disgusting, we'll be keeping away from that. And there's no oven. Just an electric grill device with ancient crumbs and pizza sauce coating the bottom. The fridge is a good size though. We've just been buying our day's food or so from the bakery and Spar (Spar!). It's keeping us going. The overall vibe of the hostel isn't amazing. The staff aren't incredibly helpful and the bar is quite expensive. We've kept our time in the common area quite minimal. That's the bad points; and I think that if it weren't for some of the other people that are staying here with us we probably wouldn't want to spend much time here at all. We have, however, met some great and interesting characters.

Mainly Americans. Strangely, we haven't come across any Ozzies or Brits. Our first encounter was with an old american retiree down in the breakfast room (brekkie was awful by the way. 4.50 each, we've been feeding ourselve brekkie and lunch at almost same price buying our own food). Nice guy. But we've had a couple dudes in our room with us. We generally get talking in the evening and an early night can turn into a very late one. One of the guy's was a professional poker player. His family's orignally from Taiwan and he's been living in Hong Kong. Now he's travelling Europe following the big tournaments. He sit on his laptop most of the day, playing online tournaments. Its been very interesting. Last night I watched him turn $200 into $17000 in a speed tournament. Crazy! Our other room-mate is a budding artist from Washington DC. He's training in Greece and here for a holiday. He's got his sketch pads out right now, does some pretty nice stuff. We've had a couple of less interesting people come and go, but we also have quite a mysterious room-mate that none of us have really met at all. I spotted him downstairs at 6 O'clock on Saturday morning, so I know he's about middle-aged and English. Other than that, we've only really heard him appear for short periods while we've been in bed. He's a very heavy breather. Heavy snorer too, but thankfully he's only actually spent one night sleeping in here. After that here disappeared altogether for a good day or so. Not sure what's going on there.

There was also a huge group of younger Americans hanging about for a short while. They go to uni back home and all came to Europe to help with their International Relations studies. They're pretty much what you'd expect from a group of American College students. They're friendly enough though. Though they do like to talk. Fine in small portions.

Well, that's where we're staying. Crap hotel, we won't be staying at another Meininger at least. But great room-mates. And that;s really the main thing you want from a hostel. As well as a half-decent room to hang out in when you've been out all day. We have that. I'll write a new blog for the city I think. This one's grown quite large quite fast.