Wochenende in Wien

Fear not – this post is not gonna be in German.

I left work early on Friday and headed for the Student Agency bus. The movie Corpse Bride was pretty good and before I knew it, I was in Vienna, just few hundred meters from the famous Prater. Buying a “Stadtplan” was an ordeal, but I finally managed after about half an hour, and the old lady who sold me the map even spoke English.

After nearly two hours of walking (an hour of which was the historical center, where I visited Stephansdom (St. Stephen’s Cathedral) and really enjoyed the whole Rotenturmstrasse (it pwns Graben, too) I arrived at Wombat’s hostel (the “The Lounge” one). I was really impressed. It’s all rather new in there, all their staff is fluent in English, and one night is just for 17€. An all-you-can-eat breakfast (with various meats, rolls, breads, juice, yoghurt, cheese, …) for only 3.5€ (I’d bought a smallish square of cheese + 4 rolls for 5€ in the supermarket that afternoon). Oh and in case you forget your towel (like I did), you can buy Wombat towel for 6€. There’s also free wifi access, and for those of us without a laptop, internet-connected computers are available for 1€ for 40 minutes.

The next day I arrived at the go club (GO7, arguably the best go club in Europe: huge playing room with many nice table boards with slate&shell stones, floor board, every English go book about 5-10 times, portraits and pictures and many pro players’ signatures hanging on the walls, kitchen, two extra rooms just in case, a wonderful 3-dimensional 777 board (crap, I didn’t finish my game against Lothar), and perfectly located on Mariahilfer strasse (warning: only Deutsch and Norsk versions available atm, someone plz make an English version)) just in time.

After we played one round of a tournament, Takemiya sensei arrived, together with Kenmochi Jo sensei and Kobayashi Chizu sensei. Takemiya sensei commented some of the games, we got problems to solve, and we all generally had a lot of fun. In the evening, mister Kitani, the son of Kitani Minoru, sang a nice English/Japanese song for us. I was very surprised by his advanced English, which was nearly without an accent.

Sunday was more or less similar, but definitely no less fun than Saturday. Too bad I missed the wine drinking in the evening because I had to leave. Also, rumour has it that people were getting fans signed by the professional players on Tuesday. Hell, I’d cut my arm (the left one) off for a fan signed by Takemiya sensei, Kenmochi sensei and Kobayashi sensei.

My journey home was again cheaply, nicely and safely provided by Student Agency.

PS: I got two small presents in Vienna but I didn’t give any. Does it mean that: a) I really rock so people bring me presents; b) I am an asshole because I don’t bring others presents even though they do.