Night bus in Vienna
I went and worked at one of the other hostels in Sydney a couple of months back. It was a pretty good time. On the first night we somehow got into a conversation about falling asleep on late night transport in foreign cities.
One had a London story, one had somewhere in South America, my contribution was from my time in Vienna.
“you know how to get home right Dan”
“yeah, sure, of course”.
A trip that should have taken me 15 mintues, turned into a 4 hour ordeal. When my friend Alex had left, he said “haha you’ll be out til 5am”. Even though I left the place reasonably early, the time I walked in the door was right on 5am.
So I should have taken one bus just a few stops down the road, and then changed for a quick journey, and that would be that. All right, that’s that. Right, what’s that?
However, I vaguely remember thinking “I’ll have to get off soon”. Long after, I woke up, completely disoriented and pressed the stop button. I had no idea where I was, but it looked somewhat similar to Campbelltown. I went to the nearest bus stop, but eventually saw a bus turn the corner and realised I wasn’t even waiting in the right place.
I finally got a bus back into the city. I had a 24 hour ticket, so I had no reason to explain where I was, why I was there or where I was going. I also didn’t have much idea of any of these, but got on the bus and tried to keep sleep away. I opted to get off the bus where I had first come into town (Sudtiroler Platz), but once I got off I walked numerous blocks in the wrong direction. I walked past a hostel, thought I could just stay the night there, but I didn’t have my passport and they might have wanted that to check me in.
I went to a nearby bus stop to consult a map, and that didn’t really give me any clues. The suburb I was staying in (Kardinal Nagl Platz, 3rd District) had been abbreviated on the map to KNP, and I was in no state to comprehend that.
I thought about waiting til the normal buses and trains which had been so good to me in the daylight hours started up again, and settled down for a snooze. The crazy thing about this is that at no point did I feel unsafe. I had been in Prague a few days before, walking around in broad daylight, and was fearful that every moment may be my last.
After a while sleeping on this hard bench, I looked down the road, saw some taxis, got in one, got it to take me to the door, forked out the cash and went straight to sleep.
This is the only real misadventure I had in a month of travel. I think that is a great success. I had an extensive coverage of travel insurance, but didn’t have anything to use it on, however, I don’t think I would travel without it. There is so much that could go wrong, I guess I was just lucky.
About the Author
Daniel Boyle Founder of @sportslashlife. Australian living in Chile. Freestyle footbag player and passionate sports fan.
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