Author’s note: This post covers the day of July 17th. It was written partly on the train to Dusseldorf and partly in Vienna on July 17th. Woo-hoo I’m all caught up!
Today has been a go-go-go-getstuffdone kind of day. I woke up at 7:45, thanks to all that sleep from yesterday. I made breakfast while Smith got ready for work. I packed up all my dirty clothes and tried to go get laundry done. Smith has a washing machine, but no dryer, and I couldn’t pack wet clothes. I had found 2 places that seemed like they might be Laundromats on google, but I wasn’t sure of either of them. So I marked them both on the map and headed out. My suspicions were correct. Wash Wash Laundry didn’t exist, and the other place didn’t look like a Laundromat from the door on the side of a warehouse in an industrial park.
So I rode to the tourist information office, which fortunately was very close by. The same 2 ladies were working there as last week. And they gave me great news that a laundromat named de Groene Golf (pronounced duh-Huh-roon-Holf) was on the same street that Smith lives on. So I rode there, but was a little nervous when the storefront had no washing machines or pictures of anything laundry related, and I saw an old man working at a sewing machine through the window. But thank god, it was a laundromat. The old lady was nice and helped me with the machines. The only English she seemed to know was “It’s nothing” whenever I said “Thank you”.
Clothes were clean and I was back at Smith’s by noon. I packed up and headed down to the middle of town to see the market and grab some lunch. I had a Vietnamese egg roll (named “loempia”), then some fresh fried fish from a vendor that was cleaning the fish, and then selling it either raw to take home, or fried to eat. I also got some other fried seafood from them, that I’m guessing were some kind of prawn. They were somewhere between giant shrimp and tiny lobster tails with a texture and flavor more like the lobster. The market was an interesting mix. Items as touristy as clogs to those as un-touristy as batteries and printer ink cartridges. But overall your typical mix of produce, fresh meat, cheese, bread, fried foods, and clothing. The lamp shade booth was a new one.
After eating I walked around the market and through the center of town one last time. I rode home. The internet was cooperating, so I booked our rental car. Then Smith got home, we finished packing and walked to the train station. That was exhausting for me, because I’m packing so much more than Smith. But we got on the train nonetheless.
The ride was uneventful. We got to our gate an hour and 45 minutes before our flight. Grabbed some food and beers. Then we flew together, for the first time. Smith realized that we had ridden on trains, in buses, on boats, in cars, but never together on a plane. So we did that. Got into Vienna about 11. Picked up our bags and walked out to find a beautiful sight: a man holding a sign saying “PhD Brian Roberts”. Hell yeah. We had ordered a taxi, and it worked like a charm. He walked us out to the black Mercedes. We hopped in. The driver already had the address, so he punched it into his GPS, and 20 minutes later we were dropped off at Moran’s parents’ apartment in Vienna. For 29 euros that was an amazing service.
Once here, Moran’s parents showed us around the apartment. We get free air mattress beds, shower, they’ve offered us food, laundry service, free calling back home. The ONLY downside is that I can’t connect my computer to the internet here to blog. So I will have to find an internet café to post these. Moran’s parents also spent a good 40 minutes telling us about the cool things they’ve done or seen, or eaten around town so I think we have a good list of things to do. Which is great because we did NO planning for this part of the trip.
Well, it’s nearly 1:30, and we have a city to take on tomorrow. I’m going to sleep.
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