Walked in the cold air...

...freezing breath on the window pane...

Every time I hear Vienna by Ultravox, I'm always a little dubious about the descriptions used. I mean, surely it can't be that cold? Geographically it's stuck in the centre of Europe, and it's a heck of a lot further south than, let's say, Moscow. Still, it is indeed a lot colder than Moscow today: a delightful -4. It's a lovely city, although I haven't seen a lot of it yet due to the latest in my travel derailments. More on that later, however.

The journey here was...worrying. I arrived at the bus station in Münich with half an hour to spare, to find that my bus wasnät listed on the departures board and that there was NOBODY to ask. So, I waited in the delightful heated waiting room, and to my delight the bus arrived only 10 minutes late. So, I got on the bus, and found that there was nowhere to sit. I ended up having to wake some poor Austrian girl up so I could sit next to her. The girls in front were highly irritating and had their seats pushed RIGHT back so I had less legroom than an ant would require. I was woken up 3 times - 1st by the girls screeching in front, 2nd by the border guards doing the passport check, and 3rd by a stop at a service station, bizarrely occurring 20 minutes before we arrived in Vienna.

We arrived at about 5am, and after almost vomiting with cold I staggered to the U-Bahn, which was, mercifully, open. I got a ticket and sat in the train for about haf an hour, thawing out, while figuring out what to do. This eventually involved going to the Westbahnhof and locking up my bag, before taking another trip on the U-Bahn.

I was woken up by a knocking on the window, and turned to see a train driver grinning at me and motioning for me to stay on the train. Upon closer inspection I saw that the train was in some sort of station without a platform - just a thin strip for the driver to walk on. About 3 minutes later the train started up, and I heard "Gutenmorgen, schöne Dame!" over the loudspeaker. I sincerely hope I was the only one on that train...

Next I decided it was high time to find the Eurolines office, to book the next stage of my journey...

Hmmm...

In my guidebook, it says that Vienna has no less than THREE Eurolines offices. So, I decided to find one. I looked in the first location - the 'office' turned out to be a noticeboard. Number two turned out to be non existent, so rather than risk the other one in the book I asked a woman in the train ticket shop. It turned out that I needed to go back to where I'd been this morning at 05:00, so I did. I asked if it was possible to book a ticket to Paris, where I'm meant to be tomorrow - no. Prague? No. Anywhere in Germany? No. The only option is Budapest, which sounds fine to me but it *is* New Year's Eve tomorrow.

I don't actually give a damn about New Years to be honest - another year? Wow, what a surprise, didn't see *that* coming. A chance to get drunk? Like I'm teetotal for the rest of the year. However, I did want to see people and be in Paris, which is the one thing that annoys me. I'm going to look into train tickets later today, just in case it would be possible (i.e. cheap enough) for me to get the train to Paris via Germany today/tonight, but I'll see.

I'm now in an internet cafe, obviously, and literally just thought to put my phone and ipod on charge here while I can. That's the one problem about what I'm doing - it's relatively easy to get somewhere to wash (just bung a fiver in the direction of a hostel) and that. It's also easy enough to sleep on the transport between the cities (unless it's a well short journey). Nope, the only thing I've had any problem with is finding power outlets to charge my phone. I tried to pop to Starbucks yesterday for a cheeky latte and a bit of charging, but the queue was immense and people were waiting for seats after they already had their drinks. I swear one of these days I'm going to buy a pair of crutches so I can always sit down...

That's all for now - unless my phone's charge progress is so crap I will have time to write about my Talinn trip.

"The feeling has gone...in my fingers...and my toes..."

I promise, no more Ultravox puns. In this post, anyway.