Update #3

Been too busy this weekend to do the finishing touches on the UK blogposts I was going to write about, so I'll just describe the week that was.

All week, I've been preparing to leave to go to Sweden. Lisa and I are going to WWOOF on an organic farm in Enkoping, and I wanted to make sure I had all the bits and pieces. In addition, it's harvest season, so Lisa has been working at the Lagerhaus and I had been helping on the field.

Last minute, I decided to stop in Thüringen on the way, to hang out with some old friends for a couple of weeks. I wanted to leave on Friday, so on Thursday, I went back to Vienna to get the stuff from Lisa's apartment that I wanted to take to Sweden. Because Lisa was at the Lagerhaus, her brother took me to Leopoldsforf train station to get the train to Vienna. Leopoldsdorf doesn't have a ticket service of any sort, you must buy the tickets on the train. The conductor was in my carriage but she seemed too lazy to get out and check any tickets, so I didn't end up buying one, and just got off on the first station in Vienna. When I got off, however, I realised that I had forgotten to bring the keys to the apartment, so I had to Whatsapp everyone and let them know that I had, very typically for me, forgotten the keys and had to return to Kopfstetten. I had to buy a ticket from the machine and luckily, Lisa's brother would meet me at the Leopoldsdorf, drop off the key and I would take the next train to Vienna.

We did that, wasting almost a whole hour in total, and on the way back to Vienna, the conductor walked past me, looked me in the eye but didn't ask for a ticket and I never brought it up, so I got to Vienna free again.

I got the stuff from the apartment, and a new case for my phone, and headed back. I packed my stuff, and got ready to leave. I wanted to hitchhike, and I'd planned for it to take two days, I planned to arrive on Saturday evening. Lisa dropped me off at the Schönfeld-Lassee train station, I took a train to Vienna, and then made my way to the Hütteldorf, as suggested by hitchwiki.org.

It didn't take long for me to get my first ride and get on the way! My sign said "Kiwi going to Germany", because I felt like it would be beneficial for my sign to say that I was 

1. From New Zealand
2. An English-speaker

My "Kiwi going to Germany" and my stuff

However, the guy that picked me up didn't really read my sign, he just stopped to pick me up, he did, however, think it was cool I was from New Zealand. A pretty interesting guy, from Südtirol, in Italy (but the Austrian-German-speaking part), he lived in Vienna but worked near St Valentin as a tour guide at an old concentration camp. He dropped me off at a rest-stop, not too close to St Valentin, but that got lots of traffic.

At my first drop-off, in Oed

The next guy was one of the more interesting rides I've ever had. Again, not sure that he read and comprehended my sign in it's full entirety, we definitely got along right from the start. He was a Kurdish guy from Turkey, but had grown up in Romania. As he told me, the Turkish population in Romania is not particularly sizeable.

He could take me to Nürnberg, which was amazing, that was about half my journey complete right there! However, just after Passau, there was a border control, and they pulled us aside and checked our passports, his car and quickly interviewed us. We didn't have anything illegal and weren't doing anything wrong, and once they understood I was a hitchhiker, they were less confused about why a New Zealand with a Swedish working holiday visa and residency card was travelling with a Turkish Romanian who was going to Paris.

We stopped at a rest stop to get some lunch, and it turned out to be quite a nice little stop. I got one of my favourite Austrian comfort foods, Leberkäse, and I have to say, it was definitely one of the more generous slices I've ever had and accompanied it with a Radler, with dark beer (which I don't recommend). My new friend got an egg sandwich type thing, but when we sat down outside to eat, he decided he would get some potato salad as well (he was a vegetarian), so went back inside. He came out with nothing, and I asked him about it, and he said the chef had told him he would make him something special. He went inside after a few minutes, and came out with a massive plate of pasta, mixed with scrambled eggs, with large helpings of various salads on the side. He had brought two forks with him, because it was too much for one, and the chef had only charged him €5!

After we were done, we went in and said our thanks for the fantastic food, and headed out again. Unfortunately, it turns out on the motorway, there wasn't really a good stop close to Nürnberg, so he dropped me off a bit west of Nürnberg. Now that I was in Germany, I thought that having a sign that said "Kiwi going to Germany" was a bit pointless, as I was already in Germany, so I wrote a new sign on the back that simply said "North/Nord" on it, as I was going pretty much just heading North.

Just in front of the Fun World Casino

After only about 15 minutes or so, a fancy newish Audi stopped, and a sort of business-type stopped and asked me about where I was going, in German. We discussed it, decided it would work and put my bags in the back. I introduced myself and he asked where I was from. As soon as I said I was from New Zealand, he switched to speaking in English and turns out, he liked the fact that I was from New Zealand. He had spent some time in Australia and really enjoyed it and as a consequence, he really wanted to go back to that part of the world.

Arrived safely in Jena

He was heading to Leipzig, but in the end, he made a special effort to drop me off in Jena, which was my goal. I had made, what I planned to be a 2 day journey, in a single day, in less than 12 hours. I found what seemed to be the only hostel in Jena, and luckily, got there just before reception closed.

The guy who checked me in seriously thought I was the coolest person ever. He loved that I was from New Zealand, that I speak German and that I was hitchhiking. He offered to help me with my stuff after checking me in, but he only took me sign and showed it to other people. The only other guy in the dorm was a young Russian kid, very shy because his English was not particularly strong, but a really nice kid nonetheless. He offered me a beer after an hour or so of us sitting in near-silence on our respective electronic devices, and we had a small chat. He was in town for a science conference, and had an extra weekend just to look around a little bit.

In the morning, I checked out and went to get a breakfast at a cool cafe called "Stilbruch", where a good friend of mine had formerly worked in the kitchen. I just went there on her recommendation, and it was super-busy, but the food was great. Afterwards, I went to the supermarket, as I'd forgotten my shower gel in Vienna, and I also bought a bottle of wine. I took the train to the small town where I was meeting my friends, but they couldn't pick me up until the early afternoon, so I sat at the small town train station and drank a whole bottle of wine to myself.

Needless to say, when they came to get me, I was pretty drunk.

We had some more drinks, had a barbeque, had a nice time, and I had a sleep. We had some stuff to do on Sunday, luckily I didn't feel too worse for wear, and so I've been busy and only really found time to write this update at the very arse-end of the weekend. Hopefully I'll be better organised next week and get up a couple of posts about the UK as well.

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Update #2 - week ending 09/07/17

I thought it was going to be a fairly average week, and I suppose in some ways it was, but there is definitely a bit to write about!

Early on in the week, I went to a Greek restaurant with Lisa's family, very idyllic, picturesque setting, overlooking the Danube-Oder canal (which connects with neither river, ironically enough...it was begun by the Nazis to connect the Danube in Austria with the Oder river in Poland, but it never got very far). The food was pretty good, the service was excellent Austrian service (pretty slow, but very friendly and personable, and it gives it more of an atmosphere of being there to enjoy yourself, just to relax, because there's no need to rush) and the setting was phenomenal.

View of the Danube-Oder canal

After that, Lisa and I got dropped off in Vienna (it's just outside the border), because she had an exam and I wanted to go to the Finanzamt (the Tax Office, more or less) and to do a bit of shopping for new running/sport shoes and some other stuff for Sweden. The Finanzamt was not the smoothest of operations this time; last time, my German was strong enough to get myself a code so I could log-in online, without Lisa's help, but this time, it was a bit more of a struggle. Unfortunately, we weren't able to do it online, and I went to ask why, but they asked where I lived, and when I explained that I didn't live in Vienna anymore, and wanted to use my girlfriends' parents' house as a postal address for my tax stuff, they said I would need to go to the Finanzamt in their district, not in Vienna.

Lisa's aunty has since assisted me, ringing the Finanzamt in Lisa's parents' district and finding out that I hadn't submitted a document detailing my earnings for the year. It is the kind of thing your employer can do, and I assumed mine had, but had not. It's not a problem, my boss did give me a copy when I left, and Lisa's aunty will submit that, and then I should be able to apply for my tax refund. A lot of effort for what I imagine will barely amount to €100, but I am proud of myself for going to the Finanzamt by myself, and at least making myself understood and moving the process along a bit.

After that debacle, I bought some shoes, that was alright, then I went to look for a device I'd send in the window of a store, when I was walking with Lisa, not so long ago. It was the kind of store that sells watches, and various electronics, home goods, odds and ends, but mostly electronic in nature. The item I wanted was a USB energy bank, for storing energy, that was equipped for collecting solar energy, as well as the more conventional USB charging. It was €20, which I judged to be an appropriate price, and I quite liked the idea of buying it at a local, small business. I spent ages in the hot sun looking in the windows, trying to find it again, but I really couldn't see it. I went in to the nicely air-conditioned shop and the owner automatically asked me (in German) what I wanted. I was a bit nervous, made worse by his brusque manner, so I just replied that I was "just looking, thanks". He then told me I could look from outside and gestured to the door.

Although I'm sure if I'd described what I was looking for, he would have assisted me, but my German isn't the best and he didn't seem the most patient of assistants. Moreover, I'd decided that I no longer wanted to support this business, and more specifically, this guy. I'll still be keeping an eye out for this kind of device, because they will be absolutely fantastic for hitchhiking, especially because in today's world, the phone is extremely essential, and if I am stuck somewhere overnight with no power, which happens sometimes, it is all to easy to run out of power. My phone is more than just a source of music (although it is the main thing I use it for), I also use it for navigating (even offline, if you've got a map open in memory already, it will update your real-time position on top of it; fantastic if you have to walk to the exit of an unfamiliar town/city and you don't have access to data or wifi) and as an emergency device (for contacting the police, friends, whomever I please).

I published the first 2 blog posts about my recent hitchhiking trip to the UK...if you haven't already read them, please do! Post #1 and #2. I will continue posting them twice a week, or maybe once a week if I am posting about some current travels.

Speaking of which, probably the most exciting news of the week...the camp I used to work at in Germany has asked Lisa and I to come back for a camp! My favourite camp of last year, the horse-riding/cooking camp. The horse-riding is neither here nor there for me (although I can ride horses both with, and without, saddles; I learnt when I was WWOOFing on a horse farm in Nordrhein-Westfalen), but the cooking camp is amazing. It's a bit of stress for the counsellors, when it's your turn to do a cooking project or whatever, but there is incredible food all week long. And I love food.

I had to write to the farm in Sweden where Lisa and I will be WWOOFing, to make sure they would be ok if I arrived a bit later (and they were), and Lisa had to make sure she would be done at the Lagerhaus where she has a summer job (she will be) but we made it work and we're very excited. And, I have agreed to do a camp the week before as well, which will be nice too.

Poster for the Seefest

Lastly, we went to a concert (Seefest) at a cool little pub, next to a little lake in rural Austria, which I've been to a few times with Lisa and her parent. The first band were a cute group of young kids, I'd imagine from about 11 to about 14, singing some of modern pop music, all in English except one song in Spanish.

Overall, a pretty awesome week!

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Update #1 - week ending 2/7/17

Well, it's been a busy week as far as this blog is concerned!

Pretty much launched all of it today, the Instagram, the Facebook and the blog itself!

Still learning about Blogger and how it works, got some ideas about how to make the blog itself better, more navigable and in more of a format for future referencing, like a real diary.

Aside from that, did some cool stuff this week - most importantly, got my phone back from Switzerland...I've been using a 3rd-party computer-based application to upload to Instagram, which is far from ideal, so now I can use Instagram the way it was intended again.

It was incredibly hot in Vienna this week, and I spent the early part of the week pretty much just melting in Lisa's apartment, although we did have a bit of a trip down to the Finanzamt...when I worked in Austria, I paid taxes as if I'd worked for a whole year and had only worked 5 months, so I could claim some of the taxes back. We'd been trying to do it online, but because I am no longer officially registered in Austria, we weren't able to get a code sent via mail to log-in online, so I had to go in person.

I went with Lisa by bike; her with her on bike and I took a Citybike (an incredibly cool service here in Vienna). We locked up her bike across the street but we decided she would go return the Citybike to the nearest station while I went in to get started with the bureaucracy, because it was close to closing time (it closes at 12 in summer). It took her a bit longer to return, because by the time she got there, the station was full, so she had to wait until someone took a bike. As it happened, my German was good enough that by the time she got there, I'd got through most of the process, and she just had to help me fill out a form. Haven't been able to do the process online, though, so might need to go back in this week.

Check out the Instagram or Facebook to watch a video from yesterday...Lisa and I went to the sports field in the town over, with her brother, to kick around the rugby ball, but on the way, we went to check out a bunker in the fields that Lisa's dad had told us about. It was smaller than I expected, but pretty cool nonetheless.

On the way to the bunker

Lisa in the bunker

Me on the bunker

About to pass

So, in the next week, look forward to the beginning of my trip to the UK. I have drafted up a number of posts already (but still got a lot of work ahead of me...it was 3 months, after all - mostly hitchhiking), so I think I will be publishing 2 a week, possibly more.

Congratulations if you read this, you may be the only person to have done so. 😬

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