The path to Linz
To say the least, the last 48 hours have been interesting.
Last night Kurt and I left for the small town of Weyer to see Craig and his band Suneral play a gig. Word of advice: when your train is supposed to leave at 18:34 and you see one at the train station that seems to be the right one leaving at 18:38, make sure you're on the right train. If you don't, instead of hopping on the fast train you intended to ride you may end up taking the slow train that stops at every little stop along the way, therefore missing your connection. And trust me, Weyer isn't exactly easy to get to after dark. Look on most maps and you won't even find the village of Weyer.
So once Kurt and I got to St. Pölten and found we had missed the last train to Weyer we were a little screwed. We took the train to Anstetten which was somewhat closer to our goal. From there we found one of Craig's friends to drive the 80 km round-trip come pick us up but, of course, it wasn't going to be that easy. Apparently the way to Anstetten from Weyer is better marked than the way back. Once again we were going the wrong way.
Four or so hours after we left Vienna we finally arrived in Weyer just in time to see Suneral's last two songs. If we had taken the right train we would have been there in about 2.5 hours. Of course my adventure doesn't end there...
I brought along my backpack intending to stay in the area and head to the Czech Republic in the morning. The only sketchy part of this plan is that I didn't have a place to stay while in Weyer. I figured it would be interesting to "wing it". I figured correctly.
A guitarist called "Messy" agreed to take me in for the evening. After we closed the place down we went to what he called the "craziest disco in all of Weyer". It turns out the place was also the only disco/roadhouse-type place in Weyer but he was right about it being crazy. The legal drinking age in Austria is only 16 so I felt very old in this club. A good deal of the patrons were under the age of 19.
Apparently while we were in the club the car with my pack in it departed to an unknown (at least to me) location. This violated the first cardinal rule of traveling: always know where your pack is. Messy, the guy I just met a few hours earlier, assured me everything was fine and off we went to his home at around 3am, still well before the club closed. It was still packed when we left.
So this is how I found myself this morning (ok, it was more like early afternoon) in some other small Austrian town (I never did learn the name of it) without my precious backpack, stumbling around an unfamiliar house in desperate search of a bathroom.
The first person I saw this morning wasn't my new best friend Messy but a guy named Peter that I didn't remember meeting at all last night. Austrian beer is apparently significantly stronger than most of the beers I am familiar with so I was just hoping I was in the right house. Messy woke up not too long later and soon we were off to the train station.
The train leaving Weyer for Amstetten (my only option) wasn't leaving for another hour so I went with Messy to help clean up the club the band had played at the night before (apparently he either works there or runs the place - I never quite figured out the full details on the matter). At 14:03 I was off to Amstetten and then Linz, the only destination available other than Vienna.
Luckily I had a number of a drummer named Jaeger to call in Linz given to me by Pesef, another fellow traveler. Fortunately Jaeger seemed more than happy to take me in for the night.
So here I am in Linz and I have no idea what I'm doing tomorrow. You'll just have to check back and see!
