Dinner
I fell in with a cool crowd of Americans while I was in Vienna. I´ve made plans to catch up with each set of them (they came in pre-packaged pairs) in the next couple of weeks -- here´s hoping that all our vaguely made plans come together. We were staying in a cool little hostel that was a converted apartment with one (open) dorm room and a living room. There were never more than about six people staying on any one night, so socialising was a piece of cake. And an easy introductory topic of conversation was "so just how crazy do you think the hostel owner is?"

Anyway, we hung out doing the tourist thing in Vienna for a couple of days, including the Opera and a Dali museum. But the last night that Ned & Megan were in town, we had a dinner party in our hostel. There was no-one else staying the in hostel that night, so it felt like we had our own apartment in Vienna. Overcome by the excitement of this thought, I began calling it Our Dinner Party In Vienna (probably something like WienWurstNacht in the native German). I was in charge of dessert procurement, and the fine Austrian bakeries enabled me to execute my responsibilities with the greatest gusto. Like all good dinner parties, the conversation flowed uncontrollably, aided by the cheap and ... um ... "robust" wine and the cheap and delicious beer. Topics included what was wrong with America (a topic that somehow reduced me to a supporting role, despite my Trampan tenure), travel plans and destinations, and later on in the night, the inevitable rise of global communism as the only viable form of society. Like I said, there was wine. (Annie, did we agree a date for the people´s revolution? I´ve lost my copy of the minutes.)

As you can imagine, we really felt a sense of camaraderie with each other by the end of all of this. I feel really lucky, like I´ve had one of the highlights of my trip less than one week after landing in Europe.