Hey guys! I’m writing because I have officially left Vienna, Austria, but mainly to keep my brain occupied from the anxiety that exists within it.

I know I’ve mentioned this a couple of times now but ever since I went into SVT on a train in Italy and almost died I’ve really been struggling during bus and train rides since then. It feels like the anxiety just consumes me and I’ve gained some sort of claustrophobia that I’ve never experienced before. As if I get on these buses or trains I won’t be able to get off in a hurry if I need to. In every destination now, I’m immediately checking for the nearest ER rooms. I’m definitely suffering from some sort of post traumatic stress disorder from the event but I also have awareness that this is what’s happening in my brain so I do my best to stay calm and remind myself that I’m going to be okay. It does get tough though if I’m being completely honest. I can’t even imagine trying to step on a plane again knowing I’m so far from the ground where I could receive help if I needed it. I will cross that bridge when I get to it. So here I am writing to you so that my mind stops trying to make me believe I’m going to have another episode and die on this train.

I arrived in Vienna after a pretty long travel day. After getting off the train, I was lost. It was somehow, someway more difficult to navigate the station in Vienna than it was in Italy. The language spoken in Austria is German and have you ever seen the German language written out? What the helly is that??? When they say the words out loud it doesn’t even match the words written down in my head. I use Google translate for everything and I mean everything but it’s time consuming and can be confusing.

I finally found my way out of that train station and by the grace of God found the bus I needed to be on. There was no ticket scanner on the bus like there has been for everywhere else and there were police on the bus that I tried asking for help. They immediately hated me when they realized I was an American tourist but they still helped me to download an app on my phone that would allow me to buy direct tickets from there.

You have to be really careful with the bus and train systems in Europe because if you buy physical paper tickets for your ride, you have to also verify the ticket with a stamp machine on the bus and if you don’t, you get a big fine and can get into big trouble. Even though you literally have a physical ticket in your hand it has to be stamped and verified. Seems a little scammy to me but whatever.

I rode the bus to the stop that was about a 10 -15 minute walk from my hostel. The hostel was really adorable with great vibes. I got assigned the bottom bunk in my dorm room which I was thankful for. The top bunk is the worst and no one wants it. I dropped my belongings off and then went out to seek some dinner. I walked around the city for a long time and found a cute little authentic Asian place. I tried some duck rolls and had grilled chicken, veggies, and noodles. And wine of course, duhhh. I was heartbroken. I needed wine and I needed to text crazy stuff to Chris, which I did.

I was still really sad and missing Chris after arriving in Vienna. I wasn’t really in the mood to be social in my hostel or try to get to know anyone because I just wanted to sit with my feelings and be there. I got back to my dorm and went to bed.

The next morning I woke up feeling better and finally had a wonderful and full night of sleep. I was really excited to explore Vienna. There’s this massive outdoor market that exists Monday-Friday that has everything you could imagine. Clothing, souvenir items, homemade & local goods, street foods, bakery items, ect. It goes on forever and I was told by one of the workers there that it was one of the biggest markets in all of Europe.

They hand out a bunch of samples as you’re walking by and I did great avoiding them all until it came to this one man who just sucked me right in like the lost American girl I am. I fell for it. I tried the cinnamon crusted peanuts and they were amazing. He then kept forcing me to try other ones even when I kept politely declining. They’re very pushy around there. He asked me where I was from and after I answered with, “the US,” he takes a step back and yells, “DONALD TRUMP!!” super loud. Nice. Thank you for immediately associating me with that man. I then told him I didn’t have room in my bag to buy anything but he kept holding up this small brown paper bag and telling me just a little. Fine. Whatever it took to be left alone so I could leave. I told him not to fill it anymore than halfway full. He says okay and then proceeds to fill it to the brim. Excuse me….I could’ve sworn we were both speaking the same language. My bad. He then walks over to the dried fruits and I kept shaking my head no that I didn’t want anything else. He smiled and told me it was on the house because I was so nice. Wow, I must’ve had a great cover because I was pissed and annoyed. He then brought the bags over to weigh them. He told me he was going to give me a “great” deal and then charged me 26 euros. FOR NUTS. I was like “is it really 26 euros?” He replies with, “yes, it’s 400g. Are you surprised by the great deal?” I answered with, “no, that’s really expensive.” Then he watched the stupid American girl walk away with the 26 euro bag of nuts she didn’t want in the first place.

I also came across this man who started a conversation with me and tried getting to know me. He has been living in Vienna for 5 years, was living in Italy prior, but is originally from Africa. He told me I was beautiful and asked me on a date at 6:30 pm. I agreed, we exchanged numbers, and I never went to meet him. I am the worst.

I kept walking until I found some Greek street food. I had a chicken shawarma wrap and it was incredible. Seriously the best I’ve ever had in my life. I continued down the streets. I walked for hours. The city of Vienna is incredibly charming. Vienna was always on my list and I’ve seen people raving about the city for years. I watched a lot of videos and have seen a lot of pictures of Vienna, but nothing prepares you for the way Vienna makes you feel. It’s an incredibly energetic city. You just feel good being there. You feel in place. You feel inspired. It makes you want to fall in love with life all over again. There are massive, old, charming, stunning buildings everywhere you look. There are street performers, live music, and horse drawn carriages. I mean it’s truly incredible. But it’s also so expensive there that it feels like you have to pay to breathe the air.

I kept walking until I stumbled upon a park that faced the building Hofburg. There were people sitting all around the park. The whole city is just so crisp and clean and well maintained. I took a seat in the grass directly in the sun and started painting the Hofburg. I found this painting set when I was in Scotland and have been trying to paint something that inspires me in each country. I sat there for a couple hours painting and relaxing.

The sun started going down so I found an authentic Austrian place to finally try homemade Wiener schnitzel. I also asked the waitress for a draft beer of whatever was local to Vienna. 10/10 beer and 10/10 meal. The wiener schnitzel is typically served with cold potato salad that’s very full of vinegar. It’s seriously so good. I walked around the city a bit more after dinner and called Chris for my long walk back to the hostel. I was seriously missing him so much and was struggling so much more than I thought I would.

I stayed at my hostel and hung out with my roommates for a couple of hours. I really liked them and I learned a lot from them. We had these two random American men walk into our room and introduce themselves. One from Minnesota and one from Georgia but they were living in the Middle East currently. They stayed and chatted for awhile and after they left, my other hostel mates couldn’t get over the interaction and said Americans are the funniest. I thought nothing of what had just happened because I guess that’s just my norm. To be fair the only weird part was that they came into our room when they weren’t even staying in our room.

I learned a lot about what life is like in Europe for other people. They were telling me that when a woman gets pregnant, the father automatically gets six weeks of paternity leave unless the mother has a C-section then he will get longer. And the woman automatically gets nine months of maternity leave, but she has the option to take an additional year without pay if she would like to. They also couldn’t believe that in America for a lot of jobs, we have to use our PTO for sick days.

The next morning, I woke again with a game plan to do some more exploring of the city and I really wanted to visit Palais Kinsky. I had almost made it to the Palais when I was walking passed a bus stop and saw this elderly man waiting there with his walker. We made eye contact and he immediately waved at me and patted the seat next to him to come sit. I did as I was told from this little cutie pie of course. He introduced himself as Johan and his 83rd birthday was soon, on 9/11. I spent about 45 minutes to an hour sitting and getting to know him. He’s lived in Austria his whole life but he’s traveled all around the world as he spent many years in the military. He was even stationed in California for quite some time. He carried a worn leather necklace around his neck at all times that had all of his documents from the 1960s. He said he never left the house without it. He told me that he collects American one dollar bills and told me he’s missing one with a number “3” on it. I pulled out my purse and the first dollar bill I took out of it read a “3” on it. He said he’s been looking for the bill for literal years. I offered it to him, told him it was all his and that I wanted to help him complete his collection. He was so grateful. He traded me a souvenir of a card from a Democratic party vote from the USA from many years ago. It was so worn and old I couldn’t believe he was giving that up to give to me. It may sound silly but I’ll keep it forever. I asked him about his family in the area. He said all of his children have passed away and so has his wife. He says he’s alone now, but he has many girlfriends. I asked him how many girlfriends he has now, and he waved off the question, pointed at the church in front of us and said if he told me he’d have to walk in there and ask for redemption and forgiveness. I laughed. He was adorable and he was funny and he was charming. His English was actually pretty good but he did forget a lot of words which he then would just replace them with German words and I had no idea what he was saying. When talking about his children he almost cried and I almost cried too. He then said he didn’t want to talk about that anymore. I just met this man and he meant a lot to me. The encounter meant a lot to me. He told me he had been in love many, many times in his life. I asked him if he had a favorite girl he was in love with in his life. He chuckled and said he did but she ran off with a black man. He said after that he’d wished he could paint his skin. He said she never came back to him.

I left Johan and continued my journey to Palais Kinsky. I finally arrived and it was beautiful. I mean every single building around Vienna had so much detail, passion, and creativity. I spent a lot of the day just randomly entering palaces, museums, galleries, and walking around the many different parks. You could spend days just walking around and never getting bored.

I stopped for lunch at another Austrian place with good reviews and tried some homemade, authentic goulash. Once again, 10/10 so good. It then started pouring rain so I made my way back to my hostel and tried to figure out where I was going next. I had to leave in the morning and had absolutely no plan. I spent some time on video chat with Chris which was really nice. I went back out after the rain stopped and found some authentic apple strudel which is again very popular in Austria. They call it apfelstrudel. It was so good. It’s so funny because the whipped cream in Europe isn’t sweetened and the sweets aren’t actually really sweet. I had to chuckle because I don’t know if you guys remember my friend Sam that I met in London but she said she couldn’t wait to get back to the US to have proper sweets again. Then when she got back home to Texas, she messaged me and said she was happy to be eating real desserts again but then she looked around and realized why everyone in America is so obese.

I made it back to my hostel and planned where I was going today. I wanted to go to Salzburg but it was too late and all the hostels were booked. I had originally planned on going to Prague in Czech Republic anyways so stayed with that plan and that’s where I’m heading now. I’m excited to explore a new city and country once again!

I will write again soon. Thanks for keeping me distracted during this 4+ hour train ride.

Xo,

Kals