Beauty and the Beard:
Bound to Wander

For our second day in Vienna, we took it pretty easy. We just climbed 200 figgin feet off the ground  at a gym called Kletterhalle Wien. That's pretty much it. Both of us have been climbing for a while now, but we're used to climbing like 12 feet in the air. We walked in, completely intimidated by the size of the walls. Aaron guessed it was around 200 feet. Pretty close. 60 meters. We only climbed easy stuff, but we were totally pumped. After 3 routes, Aaron couldn't really close his hands anymore. Also, most people were lead climbing. It's a different kind of rope climbing than we're used to. Kaylea's certified, but Aaron's only done it once or twice. We stuck to the little top rope we could find. It was a little disappointing that the climbs were so difficult, but that doesn't cross your mind when you're 200 feet in the air. All you can think when you're that high is "I'd really like to finish this route so I can come down....

While walking around, the first thing we noticed about Vienna was the cleanliness. The other European cities we had seen so far had a lot of litter, and a distinct "human" smell. Like a constant crop-dusting. Munich wasn't as bad as the others, but their's something pristine about Vienna. It's almost as if they wash the buildings. No litter. No beggars. No smell. It was also less of a tourist town than we expected. There just weren't as many people here. When we first arrived in Vienna, the receptionist told us about a music contest festival thing that was going on. Apparently it was going to be a pretty big deal, so we decided to walk by. It wasn't as big of a deal as we were expecting. We got there around noon, and there were maybe 100 people walking around. There was live music, but it was only one stage. We were in and out in about 20 minutes. Being from Austin, Kaylea was disappointed. We bought some ice cream, and decided to make our way to a p...