Well tbqh I wasn't really sure what to expect with this poll, but I certainly wasn't expecting a TIE between man purses and friggin nitrous balloons.  Interestingly there is one lone vote for whistles, you know who you are, and, unsurprisingly, no love for the airhorn.  Damn that airhorn.




a week in Austria also meant a week with Harrison, who was the worlds best tour guide slash travel companion, pictured here as a 1960's opera singer.

We spent the first day walking around, taking in sights and getting history lessons, and doing some shopping.  I really wanted lederhosen, because, lederhosen, but they are SO EXPENSIVE you guys, the basics cost 300 euro and they go all the way up to 1000 euro for ONE PAIR.  Just wishful thinking for now. 

Dinner was a delicious Austrian tradition: Cheesy sausage with fresh horseradish and spicy mustard called kasekrainer. omnomnomnom













armed with a water bottle full of vodka and a few cans of redbull, we travelled down to the Prater, Vienna’s amusement park on the river.  I was kind of expecting a Santa Monica Pier level of development here, and was pleasantly surprised to find that this was actually a full blown amusement park.  In the middle of the city! fascinating.













Nothing gets you (me) more excited than bright neon lights and glowy things.  Also, pro tip, being at an amusement park drunk is INFINITELY more entertaining.

 We drove go karts, rode the big flippy upside downy one (I think that’s what it’s called) and also rode this really big chair swing ride.  You know that ride where you sit in the chair suspended by chains and it swings you around? well this is the tallest one of those in the world.  It was awesome. 

View from the top

So one water bottle and 2 redbulls later we (mostly me, again) were starting to get pretty drunk.  There was this spooky clown ride that we kept walking past until finally I was like YOU GUYS we have to go in this spooky clown.  What is this spooky clown.  I dragged everyone in assuring them that it would be fun, and it was HORRIBLE.  It was a super janky nauseating “funhouse" that was not at all fun and after I felt a little violated. 

If you ever find yourself in Vienna stay away from the spooky clown. 

After the amusement park we went to a club nearby called Pratersauna, and stayed until sunrise.  

This is where I was faced with the most DIFFICULT DECISION of do we go out to a mega club or do we go get cheesy sausage?? which would you have chosen?? I completely folded under the pressure of such a monumental decision, and we ended up just staying at Pratersauna and eating spicy burgers.

Around 3am there was a silent disco room so we vibed on that for a while before heading home.

The next day, we rented a little putt putt motorboat and coasted up and down the river.  The weather was perfect, so for the whole day all we did was putter about, drink radlers (lemonade beer), and eat a picnic lunch from the turkish market.

Occasionally jumping in the river to cool off. 

The next day we  took a bus to a public pool up above the city where people go to drink and pretend they're in Los Angeles.  Mostly we just drank radlers and napped off our hangovers in the sun.

As the afternoon settled in, we walked to a little vineyard because we had run out of radlers and needed wine.

tweedle dee and tweedle dum

Essential cheese and meat board

We hung out and watched the sunset. It was very relaxing. 

until I saw a scary bug. it was huge. it was the biggest bug ever you guys, and it almost landed on me. I could have been killed. 

Fucking Dora the Explorer over here

The next day we decided to get out of the city.
two trains and a bus later, we were up in the mountains above Vienna.

Our destination was this quaint little mountain resort on the lake in Wolfgang Se, which was about a 30 minute hike from the bus station. 

Unfortunately, upon arriving, we were informed that the resort did not have our room available, because Harrison, in a moment of brilliance, had booked our stay for June instead of July, because he “thought ‘6' meant July.” 

Luckily for us the person in charge was a charming young lady named Kathi, who generously re-booked us in a giant cabin instead of the meager apartment we were supposed to have. 

This place was awesome. There were beds for eight people even though there were only three of us, we had a patio, a balcony, and A SAUNA.

The sauna was a little cramped for three, as you can see, but we still managed to all fit, and used it pretty much every chance we had.  At our finest moment, we stayed in for 15 minutes at 100 celsius.  We deserve a medal. 

By coincidence, our stay in Wolfgang Se happened to line up with the annual summer festival of something something I don’t know but everyone was drinking and eating food.  We went out in the town for dinner before the festivities started, but people were already getting really amped.  

There was yodeling. Oh yeah.  There was yodeling.  You guys think EDM gets you pumped up for going out and partying? Nothing gets you more excited to party and drink schnapps than yodeling.  It's magical.

Ah yes, the schnapps.

Ok full disclosure, I was not prepared for the force of nature that is schnapps.


For starters, when i think of schnapps, I think of something like this:

Which is 15 percent ABV, full of sugar, and generally not that exciting.  Well, everyone in Austria drinks schnapps.  Lots of places are famous for making their own homemade schnapps too, which, at a festival like this one, was a very celebrated presence. 

So we bought a 5th of apricot honey schnapps to enjoy as we walked around the festival after dinner.  

Now, two things.  One, this is not Dekuyper peach schnapps.  This is real, Austrian schnapps, which is around 45 percent ABV which is slightly more than your average hard liquor.  I did not know this, partially because it was SO DELICIOUS it tasted like apricot honey happiness.  

Secondly, when you eat a big meal with a high fat content, such as, say, schnitzel and pie, the fat in your stomach creates a shield which keeps alcohol from passing through your stomach wall into your blood stream. Basically you don’t feel the effects of what you’ve been drinking until the food starts to digest, and then kablooie you’re trashed. 

We walked around the festival, drinking and listening to oom-pah-pah bands.  I was wondering why people were staring with looks of concern and shielding their children as I was casually drinking schnapps STRAIGHT FROM THE BOTTLE for the better part of an hour, thinking in my head that I was just having a pleasant, after dinner digestif.  Harrison helped, of course. 

Then at about the two hour mark, my protective fat-shield broke down and everything started to get fuzzy. 

I voiced my concern to Harrison that, despite having not had anything to drink for the last half hour, I seemed to be getting rapidly drunker by the minute. 

 Harry assured me that i was "not anywhere near drunk by Austrian standards” and that "people drink way heavier than this in the forests of Bavaria" and that I “need to eat three bosna”.  A bosna is an Austrian curry sausage.  It’s really good. 

Harry found a stray cat, and we decided that it should probably eat a bosna as well.  


However, street cats in Austria cannot be bothered with such pedestrian foods.

street cat was not amused. 

Shortly after finishing our bosna (which did NOT make us more sober), we ran into Kathi and some of her work friends, who were out at the festival as well.  They took us out clubbing, and bought us drinks, and the rest of the night gets reeeeally spotty.  

I took about 30 pictures, but they’re all blurry like this one.  After (two?...three..?) bars we went back to some guy's house, where I casually stepped off of his dock INTO THE LAKE.  That's when we decided it was probably time to go home. 

 Somehow, we did that, and passed out.  I slept in Harrison's bed.  We're still not sure how that happened. 

to call waking up the next morning “difficult” would be generous.  Turns out that drinking all that sugar creates an epic hangover (MORE SCIENCE) and we (mostly me) were hurting pretty bad.  We decided to rent kayaks and paddle off our hangovers on the Lake for a few hours. 

It was an effective cure, although I had to take a few breaks to moan and complain while Grace paddled our kayak by herself. 

haAay

We did some hiking, and met some alpaca.  They were skeptical of us until Harrison presented them with flowers to munch on, then they thought we were ok. 

We met up with Kathi, who somehow wasn't sick of us yet.  

Don't ask me how that happened, I figured we would never see her again after I stepped in the lake.

You guys. I stepped in the lake.

Kathi took us to the local spot, which was a farm restaurant where they made their own cider from scratch, called Most.  It's delicious, and more tart than sweet.  And pretty strong. 

Grace made a furry friend.

We got this INSANE meat and cheese board, that was pretty much the most delicious thing I've ever eaten in my life.  Everything on the board was made from animals on this farm.  That square dish on the left is just full of spreadable animal fat.  We ate the WHOLE PLATE it was all gone. Even the fat.  I got loopy from all the food and cider and started chanting "fat fat fat fatfatat", but then Grace got upset and made me stop. 

After all the food we went up into the hills to hike off all the fat and so that Grace could have her Sound of Music moment.  The view was pretty impressive. 

Grace is a little....ahem...behind on her blog posts, but be sure to check it out over there at www.gracehelen.com when she finally gets around to posting these ones, cause I'm sure they're better than mine. 

Majestic as fuck

The next day we said goodbye to Kathi, and headed out back to the city. Next: Berlin!

woo hey guys sorry for the delay between posts!  We've been in Croatia since last Saturday, and the internet in this whole country is super wonky.  Or at least, it has been in the places we've been staying. But never mind that now lets pick up right where we left off, Barcelooooona

We got down to the beach, and apparently Sant Joan Festival is just Spanish for beach rave.

We walked up and down the beach, drinking and listening to deep house playing at the various beach bars.  I got a burger from a pop-up shop, but accidentally got some random drunk Spanish girl all over it. 

and then, after absolutely 0 sleep (no seriously, 0 sleep), a 7am flight to Croatia! and then a 2 hour drive to Novalja for Hideout music festival hooo boy here we go.

we got an adorable little apartment with a cute balcony, where we chilled for about two seconds contemplating the possibility of trying to sleep,  before the inevitable decision was made to go out and get drinks on the beach. 

We got this really sweet lanyard that had the whole festival lineup on it and a map and everything, and I was really excited about it at first.  Then I asked Grace why she was walking 5 feet behind me and she said "because you look like a Freshman".  

This is me realizing that no one else in the town was wearing their lanyards :/ 

This was our local beach bar, where we would come every day when we woke up to kill our hangovers with cheap drinks and refreshing dips in the ocean.  

We were so so SO excited to see Dan, who's first set was on Sunday night, so after a brief dinner and a couple shots of Jager (now it's a party) it was off to the festival!  Grace made me leave my lanyard at home.

Dan played a great set on Sunday, and an even better one on Monday.  The Brits loved it.  Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that? the ENTIRE CROWD WAS BRITISH. 

I didn't realize that British tourists have a reputation in Europe.  Did you?  It's true.  They're, like, really terrible. they're loud and scary and tacky and drunk SO DRUNK you guys just...the drunkest people I've ever seen.

Also, all the British men wear man purses. Just SO MANY man purses a SEA of man purses.  I really don't get it. 

Nevertheless, we didn't let the obnoxious Brits nor their questionable fashion decisions harsh our vibe, and enjoyed Hideout to its fullest potential.  Hideout itself was a funny little festival.  It was fun, and it was crowded (thank goodness for artist wristbands) and it was a little janky.  Like, the little things stuck out as janky.  Like the fact that everyone there was doing nitrous balloons.  They were actually selling them at the bar for 40 kunas per balloon (like 5 dollars).  Weird, right?  Also things like this

This is how you get into the festival.  A bus drops you off in this parking lot, and then you walk down some steps and oh hi you're in the festival now.  No security, no one checking wrist bands or doing pat downs, no line....weird, right?

These are our (American!) friends we met on the first day, Garret Kyle and Matt. We met them at McDarko's, a kebab knockoff of McDonalds.  Actually, McDarko's was quite terrible and disappointing. Not unlike McDonalds.  But they were super awesome and we hung out for the whole week, which was great fun.  

It was 5 straight days, which honestly started to blur together a little by the end,  so here's a montage of some of the highlights wooo montaage

After the festival was over we had one more day left in the town to relax and decompress.  We decided to rent a paddleboat which turned out to be the best idea ever.  Pro-tip: paddleboats are awesome. 

See? Awesome.

The next day we rented a car and began our slow but steady journey down the coast.  This is our beautiful Skoda isn't it lovely?

There was only one problem

IT'S STICK. So, I can drive stick. Technically.  I mean, I was a valet for like 18 months (10 years ago) and totally parked like 3 stickshift cars.  So that qualifies me to drive one 300 miles down a winding coastal road in Croatia, right?  I can totally do this.

Turns out yes I can. Fun fact: when you accidentally downshift a car from 4th to 1st it makes a sound like it's going to explode

 We needed to detox from five straight days of partying, so our first stop was Krka National Park just down the coast.  It's a waterfall park with really pretty hikes and most importantly, big natural lakes you can swim in.

The swimming part was super necessary because it was 85 degrees and we were hungover.  

we went on a hike around the bottom of the park, and Grace took a lot of pictures.

Like, a LOT of pictures.

Like, wat

At some point it stopped really even making sense.

After Krka we continued on down the coast to Split, one of the largest and most touristy cities in Croatia. It was really pretty, but also crowded and loud and British, so we tried to venture off the beaten path as much as possible.  

Great seafood, though.

Grace was pleased with the ocean's sacrifice 

After a day in Split, it was back into the car and down the coast to Dubrovnik, which we opted to do via the scenic route along the coast.

It was a very pretty, scenic drive.

with lots of stops to take pictures, of course.

Oh, also, these. These are prosciutto chips and they are super addicting, and completely essential for any road trip.  The Hobnoblin was pleased and accepted them as tribute. 

Just before Dubrovnik there's a small town called Mali-Ston which is hailed as the "oyster capital of Croatia".   Obviously we needed to investigate this for ourselves.  We found a quaint little shack that was selling oysters on the half shell, and decided we'd better eat 34 of them, just to, you know, make sure they were awesome.  They were awesome. 

After a day of driving, sight-seeing, and oysters, we arrived in Dubrovnik.  Dubrovnik is an amazing city, with lots of history and culture.  We definitely clicked with this city more than Split, which felt a too touristy for our tastes.  

Grace found ways to entertain herself at lunch. 

At night, we would walk around old town for dinner, drinks, and people-watching.  Old town is a walled city center with lots of restaurants and bars inside.  We only really went at night, because it was so swelteringly hot during the day that there was really only one thing to do.

Swimming!! Island hopping and so much swimming! 

I tried to impress the locals with my patented running man cliff jump move, but everyone just thought it was kind of weird. 

It turns out that Grace loves snorkeling.  She had never been before, and when she tried it she was instantly hooked and spent the next 45 minutes puttering around like a  little blonde submarine.  

Also sea kayaking because Croatia

And that was pretty much it! Croatia was a blur of beach, seafood, and crystal clear water.  Next, Vienna!

I was not excited to leave and be in the airport.