Flashback June 15-Leaving Vienna and reminiscing

After one tiring day in Vienna, we're off to Salzburg. Vienna is a beautiful city, you can't really fault it for that. But it does mean that there are masses of tourists. I thought there were a lot before. I was wrong. 



Jill and I were discussing it earlier. We loved Vienna, it was a friendly, easily accessible for English speakers and just plain gorgeous. But we're not loving hearing English all the time, sometimes coming from party buses, sometimes fellow backpackers. Also everything is SUPER expensive. Maybe we're just nostalgic for the good old days in Eastern Europe. We tallied up what I owed Jill (she took out currency for each country at the airport) and I owe her just over a hundred euros. So together we've spent under 250 euros for the first week. That's including accommodation and day trips. We really haven't been too thrifty either. If we didn't have so many places that we wanted to see in Western Europe I think we would turn and high-tail it back to Eastern Europe. Maybe spend some more time in Hungary or Slovakia. I feel like we only skimmed the surface there. 

We hitch hiked from Krakow to Bratislava a few days ago. And the country side was so picturesque, all the little towns we drove through were so gorgeous and old. Wish we could've stopped for a bit. We started looking for a hitch in Rabka, just outside of Krakow because we heard it was a good spot to get a ride to Slovakia. It was our only truly rainy day so far so we waited and waited at a bus stop for the rain to stop. It never really did so we took another local bus to a town closer to the border which was a bit of an error. We foolishly assumed we'd get a ride right away to Bratislava and so didn't buy detailed country maps. Rookie mistake. We kept having people stop, say a place and then we'd have no clue where that town was. We passed on a lot of rides that way. Since the rain made hitching a bit miserable we took another bus to Jabłonka which was closer to the border (we were told). Keep in mind every "conversation" we had was in Polish with hand gestures. We had a minor freak out in Jabłonka (super super tiny town) which resulted in us buying real maps. The minor freak out was about our late start in the day and the fact that we weren't even in Slovakia at four in the afternoon. We found a good hitching spot and waited. Got a ride within ten minutes to the border (he drove us past his destination to the border) and walked over. Within thirty seconds we had a hitch. A lovely truck driver who spoke no English. He drove us into Bratislava and offered to take us all the way to Salzburg. We politely declined and he wished us well on our way (we think) and there you go Mom. Hitch hiking can be safe. We always trusted our gut instinct and didn't accept any rides from cars with more than one person in it. And it all worked out. No stories like Uncle Harold and Auntie Beth's yet but I'll keep my eyes open. 

Hitch hiking form

The blue marshmallow church in Bratislava