Skype and Shoes

I missed yesterday because the internet was being very difficult and the only "internet related" thing that worked was Skype.

Tip: Get Skype. If you don't know, Skype is a chat/instant messenger/telephone from your computer all in one. You download it on your computer, and it allows you to talk to anyone in the world. You can either video chat/call another computer if it has a Skype account of you can call a phone line. The best part is it only cost $0.02 per minute or $2.35 for unlimited calls to the US a month. If you want to call home to talk to you family/friends, you will save a lot of money using Skype over phone cards, cell phones, etc.

I also checked my email today, and I had a question from David, one of the students who will be coming over to Vienna this fall. He asked me how often people go on overnight trips from Vienna and if he should bring hiking shoes.

I told him that Vienna is a very easy city to travel in and out of. It is located in central Europe, so you can get virtually anywhere in Europe from there. Rome, Florence, and Venice, Italy, are all a night train away. The Sudbahnhof (South Train Station) in Vienna will get you to Croatia, Slovakia, or Poland. Prague and Budapest are each about 3-4 hours away. If you want to go to Western Europe, it's only a 5 hour train ride to Munich, Germany or an overnight train ride to Zurich, Switzerland. From these two locations, you can go almost anywhere in Western Europe. I once went to Grenoble, France last year via Zurich and Geneva.

If you want to go further (such as a quicker way to Paris or to London or Spain or Northern Europe) you can always fly. It cost about $100 USD to fly to Paris on Austrian Air. There are also always cheap flights out of Brataslava, which is only an hour train ride from Vienna.

Since Vienna is so easy to travel from, people tend to travel a lot, and it is not uncommon for people to take weekend trips.

Pack comfortable shoes. It doesn't matter where you are traveling to, city or the woods, you will have to do a lot of walking. Therefore, regardless if you plan on hiking or not, you should bring shoes you can walk in for a long time. To answer David's question, you definitely can travel to places where there is hiking, so you might want to bring your hiking shoes. But, not matter what, the most important thing is to bring comfortable shoes.