Another Month, Another Challenge (#amac)

This is the third of 4 weeks of my challenge.
Want to read the first Week? The daily new location challenge: Week 1

The daily new location challenge: Week 3

A lot of times I was interested to go to a talk or some events, but often I was just too lazy or I decided to do something else. In this challenge you have no excuses. Everyday you have to do something new and it really helps to write about it publicly, otherwise I would surely not be as consequent as I am now.

15th Day (Monday, 23th April 2018)

From Monday to Wednesday there was a Science-Festival in Vienna. There were four different venues and each had its own topic during that time, where local scientists of universities and different science institutions explain their current research progress. The Pub Aera had the topic “Journey to the brain”.

Dr. Ruth Herbst from the Medical University of Vienna explained how the connection from brain to movement via motor neurons works. After that Univ.-Prof. Peter Jonas from the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) Austria told us about the new innovations in brain physiology of his research group, like Nanophysiology or “Flash & Freeze”. Pretty fascinating! Those techniques help us to understand the internal communication of neurons.

16th Day (Tuesday, 24th April 2018)

I could have gone again to another talk, but there was an excurstion for TU students to the Planetarium Vienna, which contains a big room shaped like a hemisphere or dome and they can project the sky from all different points on the earth and can also navigate to past moments. It has a hell lot of oppurtunities you can use, if you are astro scientist (the thing with the telescopes and physics; no hand-reading or flat world). They also offer a cheap program of science lectures in all different fields.

They use about 6 big projectors that are arranged around the hemisphere and have an big analog projector from Zeiss in the middle, that projects the stars as little light points on the right positions. The light is transferred via fiber glass and hence the stars seem to jitter a little bit.

They told us about the three different coordination systems that are used in astronomy.
Pretty interesting, but we were rather stoked about the end. They showed a little movie with different animations on the whole ceiling and my friends and me just imagined to do a huge party and use this for party music and colourful visuals.

I have to be honest: this was the first little faux-pas in the challenge. The description said that it is a technical tour, but we just sat there for 3 hours and tripped to the stars.
So, it is not really a new location and the fact, that I sat on a random lawn in the huge Prater park before the visit does not really change much.
BUT: The whole challenge is not about the strictness (although you need a little bit to succeed; writing about it helps a lot). It is about learning, connecting and knowing your local environment, so for me it is totally ok.

17th Day (Wednesday, 25th April 2018)

"Really!? I've already been here for a concert”, I said as the entrance of The Tunnel came in sight and I have begun to realize, that I have some bad luck in this challenge.
Damn.
Anyway, it's all about the action, baby!

Because the offer of free science talks at the Science-Festival is so nice, we just participated again and chose another topic “Bricks of life”, therefor we also went into another restaurant, Tunnel, which also had a little stage in their basement, where we enjoyed the program.
Both talkers work in the Max F. Perutz Laboratories in Vienna, which also seems to be pretty interesting for my own studies because I study medical informatics at the Technical University Vienna.
I liked the first presentation by Dr. Martin Leeb very much. He talked about stem cell differentiation and some bio mechanism in the body.

Basically I was never really interested in medicine in my youth. It began with the decision that I have learned French instead of Latin. Afterwards I declined the offer in my technical high school to participate in a new department called Bio-Medicine. In university suddenly I began to regret my noobness in Latin, but the more I think about it, the more I think that is was exactly that way, which made my personality and my interests. In electrical engineering in high school I learned a ton that can be useful in different areas and as I knew the area better, I became more interested in other fields. Never regret!

It was hard to do nice photos with my phone so here is a photo of an old stylish retro piano, which was hanging on the wall. Enjoy!

18th Day (Thursday, 26th April 2018)

After a busy day I was on my way home to find something new and I had to study for a Test on Friday and was in a hurry, but I didn’t want to miss the challenge.
I went to an Indian restaurant to drink a Mango Lassi. That was kind of strange because it was more expensive than I thought and all the people were eating in groups very romantically and me, I just was sitting at the bar drinking my small Mango Lassi and hoped, that the waiter will let me pay soon so that I don’t have to sit there for a long time.

I don’t want to fail completely this week, so I planned something special. Last week I attended a speak about hitchhiking through the world in the university. Gala, my girlfriend wanted to go to her home town in Serbia and we talked about going there by tramping.

19th Day (Friday, 27th April 2018)

Let’s gooooo! At 4pm we found a good place at a fuel station to wait for cars passing by to the highway and made a sign with the 3 big stations until our arrival in the South of Serbia in Sokobanja, a little spa town with a thermal spring.

It is basically one road from Vienna to Nis, which is located in the area of Sokobanja, or as I prefer to say chocobanana. We never really did this so we just stood there with our sign and hoped that someone would stop for us. After one hour there was a guy, Andreas, who said that he can give us a lift to Györ in Hungary and from now on there was no way back.
He brought us to a gas station at the highway and as Gala went to the toilet someone just saw our sign which I leaned against the wall and asked me if we need a ride to Budapest.
With this guy called Miki we had a great talk with. He told us that he works in there for a Korean hotel and restaurant as a driver for people who have to go to the airport. So he just came back from the Vienna airport and was happy to have some good company for the rest of the ride.
As the sun was setting we thought that it would be the best idea to just chill in Budapest for the night. Often people think that there is a great difference between Buda and Pest, the two parts of the city which are seperated by the Danube (FYI: the 2810 km long river that also crosses Vienna and goes from Germany to the Black Sea; also flows through Bratislava, Belgrad and Györ; 37% of the Danube is a international boundary(oh man I wish I could make boxes like on waitbutwhy.com for my deep thoughts and research(that would be great))). So I made the experience that Pest is a little cheaper and has party and everything you need in the night. We were chilling at the park with the Ferris Wheel (is this just European satisfaction for these things?) and drank some beer. Some people said that drinking alcohol is forbidden everywhere in the city, but at this place they didn’t give a fuck, so like a million people were chilling/drinking/smoking in the green and at a collection of bars and booths. In Buda we just went to this huge castle and the whole city part was literally dead. It seemed like that is just the tourist place in daytime.
We didn’t allow ourselves to have a big party because he had to get up early again to make all the way to Serbia so we went to our hostel which was almost free (10 bucks).

20th Day (Saturday, 28th April 2018)

After a little breakfast in a park close to our hostel we made our way to the beginning of a highway that led out of the city to our basic highway. After an almost hopeless hour a young couple which was going to vacation in Szeged (close to the Hungary-Serbia border). We planned to wait at a rest station again to get another lift. It was difficult again to find someone who was willing to take us or even goes the right way because many people went to the East, to Romania.

We convinced two well-dressed ladies to take us to Serbia. They were heading to a wedding, but were kind enough to free some space on their back seats. The best thing is that they didn’t cross the border with 2 hours waiting time. Just at the right moment they turned right to another smaller border crossing, which saved us a lot of time.

And… the next gas station, which was definitely the most frustrating one!
We already researched, if Uber exists in Serbia (it does not) and some guys said that they can give us a ride, but as we got our stuff they just were gone. Great people being great..
Finally a Serbian businessman said that he almost would go to our final destination. From there on the only problem was his busy driving style. I would love to give him a headset, then he would not hold his phone and call partners the whole trip. Sometimes he just was looking at photos on Telegram or started to write something down on paper while he pinched his phone between his head and shoulder or he was just mad and stopped at the emergency lane. A power nap was impossible. Thanks god we survived this! After that symphony of honks from other cars Galas father pick us up for the last way to Soko Banja.

Finally there we just ate something. I mean you don’t just eat something in Serbia. To make Serbians proud you have to stuff meat into your stomach until you almost puke. If you want to have a diet, I warn you to go to Serbia!
Afterwards we had like the best sleep ever.

21th Day (Sunday, 29th April 2018)

What can you do in Soko Banja?
In this little Spa town you will be happy to just relax and walk through the nature. What a pity, that there is a lot of waste close to the paths.
We walked on Galas home mountain, called Ozrin. On top was a little ruin with an really awesome view above the area.

Another thing is to just sit somewhere and eat. I really can recommend Pljeskavica. It is a fine meat patty, which is often eaten in a burger. I know it from an Serbian restaurant in Vienna. The thing is that you just have to pay about 150 Serbian Dinar for this meal (118 Dinar = 1 Euro). So we ate a lot, drank some beer and payed the same price like for one dish in Austria. In Serbia I just felt like a millionaire.

We also bought Raki with honey (Serbian Schnaps) and had a good night visiting a pub and a place that looked really fucked up, but Gala knew some people inside and they were told great stories, played some music and those were the only people, who switched instantly to English the moment I arrived because I have no clue of Serbian. How we left this place in brightness you can read in the next post.

PS: Sorry for the delay of that week. I try to upload the last two weeks as soon as possible. I invested so much time into that challenge+blog that I had to study and do a lot of shit.

I am new to Steemit, so it would be really helpful if you have any tips or feedback for me. Please help me share this challenge with the steemit world and upvote if you like it!