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The biking and the scenery were fairly uneventful on this day: most of my headspace was taking up with the logistics and worries of biking into a very large city.
The road in was chock full of some actually quite interesting grafitti art. For example:
One thing I was unprepared for on this trip is the feeling of disorientation that I get when I find myself in a city with my fully-loaded touring bike. One minute I'm alone in your head, in the middle of nowhere, singing "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah" to myself over and over again ("...boys becoming men, men becoming wolves..."), and suddenly I'm faced with maneuvering the streets of the one of the biggest cities in Europe.
I've got no place to go, no map, no idea of how safe the neighborhood is and am a bit hungry to boot (thought that's a given). My first reaction was slight panic, but I calmed down and just did what I've done in a bunch of other cities on this trip (though in much smaller places). First thing, I go to the first hotel I see, and ask how much for a room. I never take it, no matter the price, and ask where the tourist office is. They gave me a nice street map to the tourist information office and sent me on my way. So now I've got a few things that I didn't have a moment ago: a map, some directions, a rough sense of how much I'm going to be paying that night and a little bit of human contact to assure me that folks in Vienna are pretty much the same as anywhere else. That calms me down, and now I can go about the business of getting settled without all of the anxiety that goes along with it.
At the tourist office, I give my best impression of a dumb, sweaty and exhausted bicycle tourist who really needs a place to stay (I'm a Method actor) and give my tourist agent a rough budget. I get a place at this hotel (short review: cheap, clean but every employee there was a total asshole. Up yours too, Hotel Attache employees!!!!) for 55 EUR a night, just a 20 minute walk from the center of town. Not bad!
There's a grocery store across the street which just happened to be selling baguettes fresh out of the oven. I get a jar of pickles to go along with it, and 2 hours after first pulling into Vienna, a bundle of nerves, I'm settled with fresh bread, cold pickles and unlimited Internet in my room. Looks like things worked out just fine...
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