Welcome to Contiki! Day 1: Travelling to Vienna

I have the travel bug again - it's official. Ok, it may have taken the political chaos to truly give me a kick up the ass, but I needed a proper holiday 😁

My friend had been on a couple of group tours in the past and so recommended a firm called Contiki - best decision ever!!! They do touring holidays all over the world - and I wanted to do a tour around Europe, particularly the Eastern side, to cities (bar 2) that I hadn't been to before: I'm going to talk about each one individually though otherwise it would turn into a dissertation....

Anyhow, cut to however much time later, I was on an 8am flight (eww) from Manchester to Vienna, via Dusseldorf in Germany. As you may know, I am not a morning person at all; so having to get up at 4.45am to get to Manchester was NOT NICE!
On my flight from Manchester, I was sat next to a very nice German couple who had the most adorable little one ever! He'd just turned 1 the day before so was in the "podgy cheek" phase, and had a very keen interest in the airplane safety card 😂

I must be honest I originally thought "Well, there goes my chance of a nap" when I was sat next to a baby - but he was so well behaved, only crying during the take off and then went right back to sleep. If anything, it was a whole group of local lads right behind us that caused the more trouble. And I would like to settle that Dusseldorf isn't the usual holiday venue for young Mancunian lads....

In comparison, other than being grounded for about 20 minutes due to a technical hitch, my flight to Vienna was a lot less eventful...

I eventually arrived at Vienna around 2.30 local time, and hopped off the train to Wien Hauptbahnhof (about 15 minutes), en route to the hostel I was going to meet up with the rest of the team. The meet up wasn't until 6, but I needed to know where it was 😅

This was where the fun and games began. I arrived to a large queue with only 2 young staff members at the desk, with only 1 doing any work, and she was mega stressed. I wondered if the other guy was a work experience person, but as it turns out, they're students who volunteer at the hostel in exchange for free board. That explains a lot, but as someone who has worked in customer service roles for a while, it did get my goat....

Oh and some random geezer just decided to jump to the front of the queue and pretended not to understand our English outbursts! Thankfully an Austrian woman saved the day and ripped him to shreds with rapid German...

There was one big fat plus though in all this chaos - right behind me in the queue were 2 young Australians who were on the same group as me, Marnie and Steve (also known as the original Aussie friends)! Yay!! At least I wasn't in this random city on my own anymore.

By the time it was all sorted out though and we dropped our bags in the locker, we didn't have enough time and were too knackered from travelling (they'd been flying for around 24 hours by this point), we didn't particularly enjoy doing anything too touristy; so instead we had a walk around the area of Vienna we were in (not the nicest tbh) and grabbed a drink and some French fries (not chips!).

Making our way back to the hostel, we finally met our Trip Manager, Darius, as well as the rest of the group who would be joining the team at Vienna, including Americans, Canadians and a LOT of Australians (in fact at least 85% of the whole group was Aussie).
After a quick run through of the trip with Darius, we were finally able to check in.... Only to find the room I was sharing with Marnie and Mikaela hadn't been cleaned yet..... Yeah, I would not recommend the a&o hostel in Vienna....

Moving right along, we joined the whole team for a traditional Austrian meal, including wiener-schnitzel and then to Prater Park, a theme park in the middle of Vienna. I didn't stay for too long as I was still reeling from my very early start (and that we have an 8am leaving time the next day), but did go on a couple.

The first one were the Go Karts, and after going on one, I can safety not complain about my car again, as fun as they were - it was weird driving something with no clutch and was pretty uncomfortable.... Having said that though, who hasn't had fun in a go kart?! And I think I did pretty well, overtook a couple of people 😉

Me, Emily and Naomi after Go Karts

The other ride though was a biiiig mistake. It was a roller-coaster called Volare (Italian for "flight"). You enter the strap standing up and then once you're in you can't move - and it's super uncomfortable. You're then tilted on your front and then when you start the ride after a a slow spiral climb to the top, you speed off upside down, round and round, and the rest. I had to bite my lip and have my eyes shut for most of the ride.... The Contiki hastag may be #noregrets, but I think we can make an exception for that ride.... 😳

We only stayed the one night in Vienna before leaving for Krakow the next morning, so I sadly didn't see as much of it as I would have liked. One of my friends woke up super early to get some pictures of the Palace the next morning, and I would have liked to have gone but was WAAY too tired. So I would definitely like to come back, possibly with my parents, and see the sights properly.

Next up: Krakow, Poland, via lunch in the Czech Republic and an emotional stop at Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp.