Vienna, Bratislava, Budweis—Oh, My! | How I Traveled to the Wrong Country and Lost My Phone

TIA HERE with the longest title I think I've ever had for a blog post. To see the cities and get the deets, watch the video above! Below is the breakdown of what it covers.

First of all, let's lay down the basics: My housemate Alanna and I went to Vienna, Austria, for four days. In that time, we visited Bratislava, Slovakia, on the first day and Budweis, Czech Republic, on the second day, while remaining in Vienna for the third and final day. On the last day we left pretty early, so there's nothing much to report from then.


The first night we decided to explore: Slovakia was a random visit decision, and we took a train to get there.

The second day was crazy and hilarious and potentially terrible: Budweis was a mistake, but a happy one, because it was a perfectly nice area. It's a big beer producer historically, and Americans stole the name for Budweiser beer for that reason. But the real question: how did we accidentally show up there?

We had 10 minutes to buy tickets for the right train and we panicked. The machine kept reverting back to German and little did we know that there were no Budapest tickets on it (which is where we wanted to go). We saw something that said České Budějovice. Because we were thinking of going to the Czech Republic the next day, when we saw České we thought yes, Czech Republic, that's where we're going, and Budějovice sounds like it could be Budapest in Hungarian to a pair of kids who don't know any better. We even got on the right train (to Budapest) and showed a woman on there the tickets. In confusion, seeing our tickets were to a different city, she sent us to a man on the platform who sent us somewhere (we got confused and had to ask for directions again, and that person sent us to a help desk area and then those people printed out instructions of where to go).

We rode the train over to Budweis and stayed there for an hour before we realized we were in a different country. Pretty crazy (kind of dumb and embarrassing, but we would rather laugh at our fundamental misunderstanding of basic geography!), and we ended up thinking Budweis was pretty nice, so no harm done.

On the last full day, we explored Vienna, going to two main museums and enjoying the area (besides when I realized I had lost my phone, interrogated countless store owners, investigated every bench, and was turned away from three inactive police stations). We went to the Freud Museum and Haus der Musik, both of which are shown in the video above. I'd recommend both, although I'd have to say that the Haus der Musik was particularly interesting!

On the final day, we flew back not long after dawn. Keep in mind that the special (green) train to the airport from the city only comes every thirty minutes. Don't miss your flight! And with that, I leave you with the video, narrated by me and Alanna.

Edit: Because of exams, the next post won't be up until my winter break begins! I'm sure you'll all be waiting with bated breath.

Much love,

T.