and now i'm on my own

It all started when I decided to clean out my inbox and finally go through the 200+ emails that have been sitting in there since 2008. I was almost done, with only a few pages left to go, when I opened one that led me to a website of strange hotels all across the world. Because it was from my mom and I would’ve felt bad not looking through it, I began the slideshow of hotels, glancing at the pictures and skimming the locations. Many of them stood out, but it wasn’t until I saw ‘location: Linz, Austria’ that I stopped for a second and realized this hotel was terribly close to me.

DasPark Hotel isn’t really a hotel, it’s a giant cement drain pipe that’s been cut into three pieces. A back was put on one end of each drain pipe, a door was put on the other end, and a double bed and small table float somewhere below the middle and viola: three separate ‘rooms’.

Naturally the second I saw this I knew I had to go, so I reserved a room for two nights when I didn’t have classes, bought a two way train ticket to Linz, and let it be for a few weeks, hoping that everything would work out. I planned to go alone for various reasons: to see if I could do it, to see if I could be with myself for a few days, to see what would happen.

A few days before it was time to go, I realized that this lovely drain pipe of mine was not directly in Linz, but on the top of a small hill in Ottensheim, a tiny town about 10 miles northwest-ish of Linz. Okay, no problem.

I’d recently signed up for couchsurfing.org and asked some people from the area if they knew anything, if they could help me out. Someone told me to bike from Linz to Ottensheim, which I would’ve loved to do – if I trusted myself biking from one town to the next in a foreign country that speaks a language I still can hardly make heads or tails of.

Another option was to take the train from Linz. Someone else said there was a bus. This was more than enough options for me, so of course I let the trip slip from my mind again, just writing down the street that the ‘hotel’ was close to and glancing at a map of the city.

After my weekend in Budapest, I came back to Vienna for a German class and left the following morning (Tuesday) for Linz. I made it to the train with seconds to spare - I can thank my mom for my amazing time management skills - and thought I was good to go. My ticket was stamped and I watched the green country side fly by. I had no idea what to expect.

Every single person in Vienna had told me I was crazy and I couldn’t deny that they were right. Most of the conversations about this trip ended in something along the lines of, “…wait. So you’re going to Linz, by yourself, to go sleep in a drain pipe in the middle of nowhere…even though you don’t speak German and know absolutely nothing about this city?” and that was usually the point where I’d throw my head back and laugh wildly. Half of it was because of the craziness of the whole situation, and the other half was pure excitement.

I really do love traveling by train, as I’ve said before, I think everything about it is great. You never know who you’re sharing your compartment with, the scenery is beautiful and it always reminds me of Harry Potter and his friends going to Hogwarts. So of course I had two loud, obnoxious, pimply, over-cologned 18 year-olds in my compartment. That didn’t even bother me, I would’ve been alright with that. The only part that really stresses me out is I never know where to get off. The voice that announces the next stop is so crackly I can’t understand a word they say, plus it’s usually in German. Well I managed to sneak a peek at their tickets and saw they were going to Linz, so I got off where they did and found myself successfully in Linz. Victory #1.

I asked at the information station about trains going to Ottensheim and was told they come quite often, so I took off to explore Linz for the day, it was just after noon. I made it about 20 feet out of the train station before I promptly turned around to find a map, and it took me wandering around for about 15 minutes before I was able to pinpoint exactly where I was. Okay, I was getting somewhere. I began to wander through the narrow streets and found myself on Landstrasse, the main street leading from the city center to the main train station. Turns out, the city’s not that big.

I walked around with my nose in the map half the time, hoping that I looked at least slightly cultured as I stared at old buildings and walked up to the castle. It didn’t take long before I shoved the map in my over-stuffed backpack and just wandered the streets. There were so many outdoor cafes, museums, and of course a huge church. I went into the OK museum and there was a room filled with spray painted x-rays, which I absolutely loved.

As 5 p.m. rolled around, I decided to head back to the train station and head to my drain pipe. My feet were hurting and I decided my black sandals were definitely not coming on my 2-week EuroTrip at the end of this month.

Ready to buy my train ticket, I was told that the train does in fact go to Ottensheim, but from a different station, on the other side of the river. Okay, great. What about a bus? Yes, yes, I could take a bus, one was leaving in just a few minutes. Perfect.

We sit in Linz traffic for all of 10 minutes and are out of the city. It’s a great view, but this is one of those ‘what-am-I-doing’ moments, because I realize I have absolutely no idea when to get off. Does the bus stop at every stop, regardless of if you press a button? Is there even a button to press? I didn’t see a button. No button.

Of course there was a button. There’s always a button.

Of course I didn’t press it, and of course I watched the huge Ottensheim sign come and go, and then I got that sinking feeling in my stomach that told me I was not in the right place anymore.

Someone else pressed the button and I was too shy to ask anyone what to do, so of course I lept off the bus, turned right, and began walking as if this was exactly where I wanted to be. I made it about 10 steps and looked around, realizing I was surrounded by grass fields, trees, and a few car dealerships. Perfect.

I make my way to the car dealerships, thinking maybe there’s some kind of sidewalk that I can take and just walk back into Ottensheim, I mean I could see it in the distance, it couldn’t be that far, right? I made it to the end of the car dealerships and realized that there is not a sidewalk along the highway, and unless I planned on walking in a soft, muddy field or in the 3 foot ditch filled with trash and overgrown reeds along the side of the road, I was not walking to Ottensheim.

Okay, no problem. I walked back through the car dealerships in the opposite direction. I’ll just get myself to the river, I know the room is close to the river. Well, to do that, I’d have to cross this highway/freeway/whatever. Yeah, when was the last time you saw a crosswalk on a freeway?

I spotted a middle-aged couple in the car lot and went up to them, crossing my fingers they spoke English. “Sprechen Sie English?” …silence. Nope, no English. Definitely not English speakers. Hand signals and my broken German it was, then. I asked them where the river was and they told me. Just as I had suspected, across the freeway. I smiled and thanked them and turned to walk away, not sure where to go from here.

Thankfully they stopped me and asked if I planned on walking to the river. We pretty much played charades, and I got across the point that I needed to go to a campsite and showed them the street name I had written down. After more charades and broken German, they told me there was not a chance I was walking there and offered to give me a ride. Thankfully, I hopped into their car and repeated “danke” at least 30 times.

Bless their hearts, I’m so glad they did because that would’ve been a very, very long walk. They dropped me off in what was the center of this tiny town, I thanked them, and they went back to the car dealership to look for a car for their daughter (tell me my German isn’t getting better, I understood them when they told me that). Victory #2!

Through a series of camping signs and some more wandering, I finally stumbled across the drain pipe that I would call home for the next two nights. I tried to enter the code I was given online and it wouldn’t work. Of course not, that would’ve been too easy. I called the number that was taped to the drain pipe and told them my problem.

DasPark Hotel has two locations, by the way. One in Austria, and one in Germany. Of course I wanted to stay at the one in Austria, but of course I had managed to reserve the one in Germany. Thankfully there was no one else staying at DasPark for the next two nights, so the nice couple who run the hotel got me a key and it wasn’t too long before I was settled in my room. Victory #3!

I dropped off my stuff and since it was still light out I decided to explore this little town. There’s not terribly much to see, I quickly realized. It’s a town with a population of about 4,500. It’s one of those places where you’re walking down the road and know everyone you pass. It’s that town where you wave to everyone and know everyone’s business. It’s that typical town where people are really into biking and running and outdoor activities. It’s not that place that tourists go. It’s not that town you can wander around in for hours. It’s not that typical town where there’s people walking around sightseeing.

I was definitely out of my element. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing here. The people in this town had absolutely no idea what I was doing here. I was back in my drain pipe by 8:30 and had brushed my teeth and washed my face by 9, in bed by 9:10. Living the life, eh?

Since it’s not an actual hotel room, there’s not a bathroom in the room – I think that’s a good thing. So whoever stays there uses the facilities of the campsite nearby, and goes to the little cafes for food. Yes, very cute, but I’m still terrified of the dark and refused to go pee once the sun had set.

I got more than enough sleep and spent the next day lounging in the sun, reading, journaling, and wondering if I was going to have some kind of fantastic revelation about myself and where I should be going with my life and how to get there. Naturally nothing of that sort happened, I just dozed in and out of consciousness while reading and eating freshly baked bread. Not that I’m complaining, of course.

In the early evening I was given a tour of Linz/Ottensheim via car and went to some of the highest points overlooking the city. I had dinner on the roof of the Arts Electroical Center, a big fancy-shmancy technological museum that was (thankfully) already closed for the day.

After meeting a couple other people, I was given a ride back my drain pipe where I fell asleep rather quickly, although not happily, because I really, really had to pee.

I woke up early the next morning and used the map I had acquired the previous day to make my way to the train station. I wasn’t going to risk taking the bus again. I would figure out a way to get from one train station to the other, I mean it can’t be harder than anything else I’ve already done on this trip.

I got into Linz with no problems and managed to orient myself rather quickly and it wasn’t long before I was back in the city center, enjoying lunch and calling it an early breakfast. I wandered through the streets some more but was anxious to get back home and get rid of the heavy backpack I’d been lugging around for the past 3 days.

I caught a train back to Vienna (thank you, whoever invented open tickets) and was back in my room just before 1 p.m. I still can’t really believe I somehow managed to pull this whole thing off with so little planning, but it definitely has made me thankful for the kind souls in this world. Sometimes the good will of other people is all we have to depend on, it’s what got me through this journey safely.

Honestly, I am incredibly happy I did this. I would definitely do it again and am almost looking forward to another solo journey, but I think it’s important to keep them short. If I’m alone too long, I get too lost in my own thoughts, and that’s not always a good thing.

"To keep your wits about you in a strange city, it is necessary to have a place to be alone,
to hide from the new and strange voices when they get to be too much."

Elias Canetti, The Voices of Marrakesh

I wish I could bang out 2,000+ words this quickly for my school assignments.