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Alright, welcome back to Asami's world tour, travel, voice log part 2
where I moved from the grassland of Mongolia to Vienna. One thing I did forget to mention in the
last episode is that during these three nights that I was on the horse camping, I was not showering
for three nights straight. You know, just wiping down with, you know, those like
and some dry shampoo. And yeah, you pee and poop in the wilderness, you know, just like find a little
bush and squat style. Yeah, so safe to say that I did appreciate my first shower after those three
nights of not showering. In this layover at Istanbul, I had about maybe four or five hours
layover in Istanbul. And shout out to Turkish airline and their lounge because this was one
of the fanciest lounge that I've been. It's like one of the best foods and lots of space.
And even though I occasionally use lounges, airport lounges when I'm traveling with certain
airlines, it just kind of comes with my perk. But I've never used shower because I guess I'm just
like don't really want to plan for a shower. I usually also don't have that much time in layover
or, you know, when you're like before departure to do that kind of thing. But here I had a lot
of time in layover. So and I really wanted to shower, you know, after three nights of not
showering, even though, you know, Mongolia is very dry. So it's not like I was sweating my ass off
every day, but it's still nice, you know, to hit some water over your skin. So that's what I did.
And I was really surprised at the niceness and the cleanliness of the shower.
Like they gave you everything from, you know, all the amenities, slippers, bathrobes, towels,
everything, shampoo. So I didn't have to use any of my stuff and showered. Like there's no
one hurrying you. You just go up to the concierge and say, I want to use a shower. They give you,
you know, those little beeping device that you get when you are in a restaurant, you know,
the stuff that beeps when your food is ready. And they will beep when your shower is ready. And then
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yeah, off you go. It was so, so nice. Just brief moments on that. But okay, so after Istanbul for
four hours in lounge, showering, getting cleaned up, I was off to Vienna. I have never been to
Vienna. This is my first time. I have never been to Austria for that matter. This time I did an
Airbnb. I think that was a good choice because I wanted to do all of my travel. Like most of the
times what I wanted to do in a city type of travel is just walk a lot and explore the city.
And Vienna is a perfectly beautiful place to just walk around, get lost. It felt very safe,
you know, even when I was walking after sunset, you know, close to midnight, never felt unsafe.
Just all the streets are very clean and very sort of well marked. So you're not really like lost
in terms of, you know, where you are. All the architectures are so fun to look at,
even if you don't go inside. But I highly recommend if you find any churches there to
just, you know, take a look. It's usually free for churches and other public buildings to just
check inside. And, you know, I don't think I would ever get sick of these gothic churches
in Europe. In Japan, or at least when I was a kid and would go to historic cities like Kyoto
and see a bunch of temples, I'm like, okay, same, same, different, right? Like they're all temples,
tomato, tomato. But, and maybe this is how European people would feel about their churches,
but every time I walk in, and I'm not even religious, I'm just like, wow, they really
created this massive structure that feels really special and intimate at the same time.
It's, it just makes me feel a certain type of way. And it doesn't matter if it's like all
embellished or like bare bones. It just, I think there's something special about
in this day and age to still have an entire building dedicated to prayers and
and just connecting. But yeah, and these places, these churches, the nice thing about it is
usually at night and almost every night, there's some kind of classical music concert somewhere
in Vienna. And I do have to say, it is a little bit tourist trap-y type of music selections. You
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know, you get your standard, I mean, it's Vienna, so you cannot miss Mozart. You cannot miss Strauss,
you know. Yeah, like, I feel like I've heard too many of those. But,
you know, if you're not like crazy about classical music, I think this is like, you know, all of your
standards that you've heard before, and it's fun to listen to. And I think, you know, any live music
is usually a good time to enjoy. And, you know, when you're in Vienna, why not in one of those
beautiful churches? So if you are in Vienna and want to sort of have a taster of classical music,
you can walk around, see what they have that night. Usually tickets are available,
like, on the spot. So you could do that. I really liked doing that. So basically,
I would just, like, wake up, get ready, walk around the city, you know, different district,
different neighborhoods, or museums. They had amazing museums, by the way. And come back for
a little nap at maybe four or five, because it's summer, and you still have, what, like, six hours
of daylight after the nap. And yeah, and go off to my dinner and my nightly concerts is what I
did, basically, in Vienna. One other nice thing, really, about Vienna is their cafe culture.
They are famous for that. That's where people gather and discuss, catch up, all of these things.
It's, like, I think it's really nice that there are places to go past, like, 8, 9 p.m.
to have a little slice of cake and coffee. You know, you don't have to drink, although they do
serve drinks, usually. And I, as a non-drinker, I kind of feel intimidated about going to bars,
especially on my own. But cafes, oh yeah, I can just bring my book, my notebook,
and just chill on my own, people watching. And that's basically what I did almost every night
in Vienna, which was lovely. Really highly recommend doing that if you are in Vienna.
And one thing that may be slightly unusual of an itinerary is that I've done
one hike in Vienna. There are maybe 10 or so different what they call city hike paths.
And all of these hikings are sort of in the peripheral of Vienna city, and they're accessible,
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usually, by public transportation. So for me, I went to the one called City Hike No. 1. It's at
Beethovengang, and that's where Beethoven allegedly walked around to, you know, get inspired,
clear out his head, whatnot. I think he did spend a very productive time of his life in Vienna
as well. So he's another, yet another classical musician, like, legend with ties to Vienna.
And just kind of fun to walk in, you know, the same footsteps, although it's probably
probably wasn't paved when he was walking around. And you can go up the hill,
like, through the vineyards, up the mountain hill, and there's a spot where you can
sort of overlook the entire city, the river, the churches, all of that from high above.
You, I think, also have the option to go straight to the top with a bus, but I think what I did was
quite fun, up and down the mountain. Well, not mountain, it's really not a mountain, it's just
a hill, I guess. I saw several cyclists, so I think that's also an option if you wanted to do
that. Yeah, I just went to the top, ate some ice cream and came down the hill and took the tram
back to my hotel, really. And I think I still went to my nightly musical concerts and cafes
afterwards, after a long nap. So if you're in Vienna for more than a couple days and want to
do something a little different than your usual Vienna itinerary, which is probably filled with
lots of churches, museums, concerts, I would highly recommend checking one of these city
hiking paths around. Yep, and I did the Prater, the, you know, saw the old
Conventia, Ferris wheel, and took some photos at the Prater. Yeah, Vienna's a really beautiful city
and there's something about these old historical cities where the layouts just make sense, because
they've been a city for a long time and they had enough time, like they've been the city
since the time they had, like the city still had time to develop organically. I think the problem
with more of the modern cities nowadays is that they erupted into a city in such a short period
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of time. So a lot of these layouts of, you know, whether it's public transportations or
neighborhoods just doesn't make sense because it grew, the population grew so quickly
in a short period of time. Whereas old, old cities like Vienna,
you know, they had time to grow into cities and a lot of the layout just makes sense.
I think that's a really nice thing about Vienna. It's like, these are sort of thoughts I have when
I'm walking around. Oh, and I cannot forget one more thing. Their public transportation system,
like trams, subways, buses, they're all honor system. So there's no like,
that will block you from going into the platform if you don't have a ticket. It's like,
there is a tiny little validator machine that you're supposed to validate and go through,
but there's, you know, there's no nothing physically blocking you from getting into
the platform to use the public transportations. It just goes to show like the level of trust
Viennese people have for their fellow citizens. And it's the kind of trust that I
definitely have never seen in any of the cities I've lived. I don't know, it really impressed me.
At first, like, of course, I bought the ticket and everything. But it's still, if I wanted to,
or if I'm in a pinch and I couldn't find the ticket booth or something,
I still could access public transportation. It's like, that's kind of an amazing city design,
don't you think? So yeah, Vienna was beautiful. It was fun. People were amazing. They all speak
really good English. And German is kind of fun to listen to as well. So again, like I said,
the same thing about Mongolia. But if you're traveling alone, Cities like Vienna is really
good because it's safe to be alone, first of all, even as a girl, even as an Asian woman,
which is not always the case in a lot of the places in the world. And it's safe. It has a
lot of things to do, even day and night, you know, pretty safe to do anything, really. So
highly recommend. The next episode, we'll talk about Prague, where I took the train from Vienna
for a couple of days. Well, not for a couple of days, for four hours to get there. Spent about
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a couple of days, probably could have spent another couple of days in Prague, honestly,
but more on that for the next episode. Bye! That's it for the show today. Thanks for listening and
find us on X at Ego de Science. That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E. See you next time!
