In the morning I set off to visit the National Museum. While I had a few other recruits, none of them were interested in being there right at opening as I had been, mostly due to the late bar night the prior evening. Regardless, I was the first person in the door at 10. I quickly realized that I wasn't going to make it very long without any food, so I found a nearby pizza place that had remarkably good slices for a pretty low price. Back in the museum, the displays were awesome. It went forward through time, explaining what archaeology tells us about the prehistoric period and then the Roman through HRE days. This is the exact format that I've hoped for in so many other museums. Unfortunately, it never went any further than about 1600, so all of the history from when it was actually Slovenia was completely absent. I understand that they might be a little touchy with the Yugoslav stuff, but even ignoring that there's still so much ground they should've covered and just didn't. I met up with those other recruits I mentioned from yesterday's trip (they were working their way through a bit behind me) before we went out to get lunch. It was nice to see all the Bled group, and I was once again appreciative of the fact that certain people from the larger night group weren't there. One of the German guys there is heading to Austria on the same train I am, so we'll go to Vienna together.

After saying goodbyes, I ran back to the hostel to grab my laundry that I had put in at 3 AM, taken out at 8, and strewn all over the bathroom to dry since there was no dryer. After putting it all back in my bags and forgetting my water bottle behind, I went over to the train station and got onboard. I was frustrated that they wanted 3 euro for water at the dining car and refused to pay, instead deciding to suffer. German guy gave me some water but the supply was limited and it was a long ride. At one point I decided to fill up my filter with water from the latrine sink, assuming it would correct whatever issue causes train bathroom water to be unpotable. It probably wasn't dangerous but it was terrible, so that wasn't a solution either. We were onboard for 6 hours despite the distance not really being that long - the Slovenian engine looked like it probably hadn't been upgraded since the Yugoslav days, and only once we crossed the border did they shift the locomotive over to one that could drive above about 60 MPH. Even then, it wasn't especially fast. The border also included a very long stop where the Austrian police walked through the cabin but didn't check passports or bags. It's unclear what the goal was since they wouldn't have seen anything out of the ordinary unless someone was open carrying an assault rifle. The ride was nice at first, but the sun set and then we couldn't see any of the scenery. I think we probably weren't going to see anything too mind-blowing - the best sights are all further west in Austria than our route took us - but it was disappointing all the same.

I got into the hostel pretty late, far too late to do much of anything except maybe go to a bar, and I certainly didn't have the energy for that. Jade from Berlin is here and we made tentative plans to meet up Friday at some point, but other than that I have no itinerary at all. In fact, I have no idea what there even is to see in Vienna. Some of it was destroyed in the war but there's got to be a lot of history here and I suppose I'll have to explore. This will likely be 4 nights since it isn't too expensive and today didn't count at all, so three full days seems reasonable. I was thinking of maybe trying to go up to Prague and Krakow before heading down to Budapest, but that seems like it would be pretty ambitious given that I also want to see the Balkan states and, for the first time, it's starting to resonate with me that this trip will have an end date. While I don't even expect to be halfway done, my time is limited in a way that it wasn't a month ago. There's definitely a sense that I don't have quite as much freedom or time to waste as I did previously. Anyway, my next destination is probably Bratislava since it's so close (and you can take a ferry there down the Danube, which I'm looking into), and then onto Budapest before going further south. Bratislava also has the first single-digit hostel prices I've seen thus far ($9 a night!), which I'm loving the sound of given how expensive a few of those Italian stops ended up being.