Monday, January 17, 2011

Hostel-Goers I Have Known

About to set out for another tour of Munich, and will try to bring back some photos this time.  In the interim, I haven't mentioned enough about some of the other travelers who have been sharing my rooms.  It's one of the best reasons to stay at a hostel, after all.

In Vienna, a group of 5 from Moscow showed up at 1 am one night, having only the next day to sightsee before driving back home. I'm told it's a 24-hour drive, about the same as D.C. to Fargo, but that it would be better if those darned roads in Poland weren't so bad.

One of the group kept coughing as I spoke with him, and eventually said the whole group had been in the hospital with pneumoniae (pronounced NOO-mo-nee) for a week while they were skiing in Switzerland.  Hmm.

In my room now I have two guys from Seoul, South Korea who don't say much, but I understand their names to be Jing Swoo and M.J., the latter since he doesn't expect anyone to be able to say his name, I think.  Robert from near Dresden in Germany is here for a conference.

Last night I met someone named Anna who is down here from Berlin to try to get accepted to an acting school.  Her interview is tomorrow I think, but her English was about as good as my German, so neither of us are sure.

A drunk guy who was playing pool came up to me at my table, stared for a few seconds, and said, "nice map, man."  It was the same one every one of the guests got when they checked in.  I'm not certain that he actually cared, but it was all the sentence he could manage to string together, so I tried to be encouraging.

I've also met two old friends from Mexico, one of whom still lives there, and the other who met up with him from Barcelona.  Francisco and Pedro, I believe.  They were pretty wide-eyed about Vienna.  Someone from Uruguay too.

Off to the Frauenkirche...

2 comments:

  1. This post makes me laugh out loud.
    Also - have you given up keeping track of your walking miles?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have, but have needed to catch up since doing it in Munich was too difficult with their slow machines. So, by request, here are the latest tallies:

    Friday the 14th (Vienna): 14
    Saturday the 15th (Vienna and Salzburg): 10
    Sunday the 16th (Salzburg and Munich): 9
    Monday the 17th (Munich): 11
    Tuesday the 18th (Munich): 14
    Wednesday the 19th (Nurnberg and Heidelberg): 5.5
    Thursday the 20th (Heidelberg): 3.5

    Grand total: 96 - I'm almost to Jamestown from Fargo...

    ReplyDelete