i woke up way too early (second night of shenanigans and 3-4 hours of sleep) and cleaned/packed up the rest of my stuff. that was painful. leah and emily crashed at my place in one of the vacated rooms and helped me get my stuff out.

after checking in at the hostel, we went over to the flohmarkt, which i enjoyed much more because it was not extremely hot and i also felt much more confident about talking to the vendors. i bought an awesome dress/long shirt thing for 6€ and leah bought a pashima. i was pretty proud of my german speaking with the vendors, especially with one lady who was describing a chinese coat emily was interested in. it was like all of the vocabulary we learned in that chapter in german 101 about clothing.

we had lunch at the naschmarkt, walked by the secession building and karlskirche, and ascended the mountain to krapfenwaldbad. the pool/grounds were almost completely empty, and by the end of our visit i think we were the only people there.

 

that is insane, because it's usually extremely crowded because people just hang out there all day, but it was really cold. we swam for about 5 minutes, which was probably too long. however, we had the amazing view of vienna all to ourselves, and i actually had my camera with me this time, so get jealous of this view:

on the way back, got off at spittelau to show them the hundertwasser factory:

we went back to the center and met justin before his train left at westbahnhof. instead of getting dinner, which would take a long time, we opted for a viennese dessert tour. emily and leah got sachertorte and apfelstrufel, and i got marillen knödel (apricot dumplings with whipped cream and strawberry sauce). i think mine won, it was so beautiful:

(jealous that he missed the dessert tour)

emily liebt sachertorte


on the way back to the hostel, we stopped by the haus des meers, an old WWII-era defense thingy that is now and aquarium/panorama view tower/rock climbing wall. there was a playground there as well.

then we headed back to the hostel and hung out for a little while. the fourth person in our room was there and we talked with her for a while - she is named flora, she lives in oxford and she is backpacking by herself for 6 weeks or so. we invited her out with us. first, we stopped at zanoni & zanoni, the really amazing ice cream/gelato place near my school. our plan was to go to a kareoke bar to hear german-speakers sing english songs really badly, but all the ones we heard were too good at english for it to be that amusing. i didn't enjoy the expensive/small/smoky/boring place we went, and then i took them to dickie mac's, mostly because i wanted to go to dickie mac's for the last time. we played a lot of 10 fingers, which was good bonding, especially with flora. i discovered that the pub's basement rooms were even larger than the first floor, which means that place is HUGE.

we left pretty late, like 3, and satisfied emily's craving for chinese fast food noodles at schwedenplatz, my favorite place for food. there are like two straight blocks of food stands that are great. i do not feel bad about eating the food stand food at all, especially when it's falafel or kebap, my two main european food groups. i am going to cry so hard when i want that in richmond and i can't get it.