Onto Bratislava.... almost

The next day I woke up early again and it was very hot. After having breakfast I caught up with the pommy girls. They had done the exact same things as I had yesterday, they even bumped into David (the pommy guy) on his way out.

I had decided to head to go to a museum for the morning then head to Bratislava (capital of Slovakia) for the afternoon. It was only an hour away... so why not?

First I stopped at Stephensplatz and decided to get a good look at the city. So up I went to the top of the Stephenplatz Dom. 343 steps up and it was 37 degrees... wasn't the most pleasant experience... but the cathedral was well ventilated.


I went into one of the main Museums in Vienna. The Sisi Museum, Royal Apartments and Silverware museum (they were all in one place). It was an audio-guided tour, which I am starting to get used to now. The silverware part was quite boring as you would expect, but the Sisi museum was good.

It talked about Queen Elizabeth (Empress of Hungary) who was nick-named Sisi. She was very famous for being absolutely stunningly beautiful, and also for being assassinated in the early 1900's. The museum explained how she came to be Queen by marrying her cousin (... it was normal back then). It went through her life and how she became increasingly depressed when her only son committed suicide. And eventually went on to explain the assassination. Here is a dress she wore.


The Royal apartments were quite good too, you got to see where Sisi and King Franz Joseph lived. You were not allowed to take photos... and they had a woman that was telling people off who took photos... what a crap job :-P

After this I headed to the Südbahnhof (South Rail Station) and got on the train that was about to depart for Bratislava. Now here is where I made my mistake... I decided to use the bathroom.
I was standing there and someone knocked at the door. I said "someone in here", as you do. Then the door was unlocked and a cleaner opened the door. The door was that perfect height and clipped the top of my toe.... which ripped the toe-nail straight back so it was only attached by the bottom. Not the most pleasant experience you can imagine. All the cleaner could say was "Entschuldigen... ach scheißen". At this point there was blood all over my flip-flop so I covered up my toe with some toilet paper and washed my shoe off.
Eventually the cleaner came back with some bandage and tape to tape my toenail down with. At this point I decided it wasn't the best idea to go to Bratislava right now.
If you wanna see a picture of my toe... click here. It's not very pleasant.

So I cancelled my ticket then headed to the Krankenhaus (hospital). The health system works here. Within 2 hours I had filled out a form, had an preliminary exam, had an x-ray, and had my toenail stitched back on by some ER surgeons. And I would consider this a minor injury. They told me that all they could to was stitch it on for now, and wait for the nail to fall off in a weeks time. The most painful part of all of it was the actual injections for the anaesthetic.
I am really getting my money's worth out of travel insurance, because that escapade was 220 Euro ($440NZD).

So, instead of going to Bratislava, I spent my afternoon in a Hospital.... it was air-conditioned which was nice, as the weather outside was near 40 degrees.

After all this I didn't feel like walking about... well it was difficult. So I went back to the Hostel.

I sat down beside a random couple and started chatting to them. They were two Canadians, Nathan was half American, Isha was half Japanese. They had been living in Japan teaching English, and were travelling on their way back to Canada. Nathan was really into movies, in fact he was going back to complete film school in Canada. Now I am also passionate about movies so we talked about all the strange little movies we have seen and talked about our opinions on great actors, directors etc.

It was actually film festival time in Vienna, and they were heading out to watch the 1958 original "The Blob", and asked if I wanted to join them. It sounded like a perfect thing to do... not much walking. We hoped on the U-Bahn and got there. There were heaps of people and it was an open air movie right beside the fanfare.

The movie was cheesy as you would expect for a 1958 Sci-Fi horror. We really enjoyed it and also the audience all clapped at the over-dramatic cheesy ending :-P

After that, we left and went home to bed... I had to get up at 5:30 to catch my plane.

Overall... I enjoyed my time in Vienna, even with the minor hiccup today :)