The First Few Days

We’ve officially been on the road for four nights and already there is way too much to write about. Our first two nights in a dorm room in a hostel just served to remind us how much we want to get off the backpacker’s trail and start blazing our own trail. We are pushing 30, we are too old to be stuck in bunkbeds in a room full of other people in bunkbeds, waiting for the girl from Kansas to finish her 100-minute shower so that we can use the bathroom!!

It’s interesting, though, to see what has changed in the backpacking world since the last time I was in it (6 years ago). One huge change is that so many travellers have laptops now. We thought we would be so cutting edge with our little red netbook, but it’s the norm now. Goodbye Lonely Planet books, hello Lonely Planet website! Even the campgrounds have Wi-Fi.

We were still stuck in Vienna trying to figure out this car thing (more details on that will come from Gully), so for our third night, armed with a brand new tent and new therma-rests, we made it to a campground in the outskirts of Vienna. The first two days of the trip had been sweltering - a sitting-in-your-underwear-in-a-hostel-dormroom-with-five-other-people-and-not-feeling-embarrassed-about-it-at-all kind of sweltering - so it made perfect sense when I saw the storm clouds forming as we travelled by bus to the campground. As we arrived at the bare grass field that passes for a campground in Europe, the sky turned green and the wind started howling. You can close your eyes and just imagine our panic. We put up the tent (for the first time) while lightning flashed all around us and the wind whipped debris into our eyes, and managed to finish setting it up just as the sky let loose and started pouring.

And it has pretty much been raining ever since.

-E

Vienna Autocamp 'Wien West'

Bratislava Autocamp 'Zlate Piesky'

Viennese Urban Workout