Wearing out a pair of shoes (and burning through my wallet)

Many people who know me know that I have a slight obsession with shoes.  Mainly shoes I got form the clearance rack.  That being said it was near impossible to decide which shoes to bring to Europe.  I cut back a few but still brought way too many with the intention that I would probably wear through at least one pair which was fine since I got most of the them for around $10 a pair. 

This past weekend we had a free weekend with 3 days of traveling planned.  I looked at the weather and saw that it was supposed to rain in Salzburg and then be hot and sunny in Venice.  With all the traveling we had planned we didn’t have a place to keep our stuff so we had to pack everything for the weekend in our book bags to carry around pretty much all weekend so I wanted to just bring one pair of shoes and then flip-flops if needed for the hostel showers.  I decided on one pair, my blue striped canvas shoes, which matched everything I was planning on wearing.  I wore the shoes on Wednesday when it rained in Bregenz and decided that they were more comfortable when wet than dry so that was great.  I thought I hated having wet feet but it turns out that I just hate having wet socks so that worked well for this weekend. 

The bottom of those shoes are twine so it turns out they were still wet from Wednesday when we got on the train Thursday afternoon.  I let them dry off more on the 4 hour train ride to Salzburg and they were dry by the time we got there.  Once we got there we had dinner at a restaurant near the train station where I got Weiner Schnitzel for the first time and ordered a Fanta which is the color of orange juice without all the dye in it.  We then found our way to the subway (after we stared at a map for a while until someone came up and asked where we needed to go) and got on the train less than 2 minutes before it left.  We made it to the hostel fine and chilled for the rest of the night. 

 

Dinner at 8:30 after 4 hours of train ride is great.

We woke up to rain while we ate breakfast but it had stopped by the time we left.  The wet streets soaked through my shoes almost immediately and started creeping up the sides and top as we waked to the subway and through the train station to buy Salzburg Cards which granted us free access to many museums and public buses.  We wandered around Salzburg for a couple hours before going to the train station to find another person from our class who was coming out for a day.  Shortly after we got back into the touristy part it started downpouring.  We decided it was past time for lunch but at this point my shoes were soaked and my big toe on my right foot had worn through the top of my shoes (it was a matter of time before this happened since my big toes curl up). 

Beginning of the day, still not too bad.

Meriposa Gardens

By the time we got done with lunch it had stopped raining so we saw Mozart’s birthhouse and museum, contemporary art museum, and natural history museum.  It had started raining again when we were there, no rest for my wet shoes.  After that we went to the fortress where it started raining again and were then headed to Hellsburn Palace and the trick fountains.  From the brochures we knew what bus to take and what stop to get off so we got on the bus and stopped at what we thought was our spot.  It turns out that the bus we were on displayed the stop we just stopped at in the largest text and then the upcoming stops underneath that.  We thought the largest text was the upcoming stop so we got off one stop too late and my wet shoes had to walk a kilometer in the rain back the other direction avoiding slugs the entire time.  We made it to Hellsburn Palace though and enjoyed the grounds and fountains.  The grounds had the Sound of Music gazebo and the fountains were amazing and built in a few years 400 years ago. 

Trick Fountains at Hellsburn Palace.

In Salzburg before I took of my shoes for the night.  I was leaving wet footprints everywhere.

While waiting for the bus to go back downtown for dinner I decided it was time to take my shoes off since the ink was actually washing out of them and my feet looked like prunes.  Good thing I had my flip-flops with me.  After dinner we went to a bar near the train station to wait for our 1:34am train to Venice.  My sopping wet shoes went from the water bottle pocket of my book bag to the floor of the bar and then to the luggage rack in the train compartment.  With 5 people in a 6 person compartment all with their wet shoes off it stated smelling pretty bad in there and some guy sat in the extra seat for about 5 minutes before he left; probably because he couldn’t stand the smell of feet.  We had a compartment full of drunk people speaking German next to us so that made sleeping difficult until we started moving around 2:30am.  At that point no one had taken the extra seat and we decided to just take over the extra seat so we could stretch out a bit and arrived in Venice at 8:30am. 

My shoes were only slightly damp now but definitely worse-for-wear.  The hole from my toenail was bigger and more prominent, there was a small hole near the outside of my left foot, the stitching on that shoe was stretching, and there were lines from where the dye had come out.  I decided that these shoes wouldn’t make it home from Europe but I wore them all morning as we took the waterbus tour around and then went to the island of Murano.  Sleeping on the train, walking around, and being dehydrated made my feet swell so my feet were starting to hurt a bit.  After Murano we checked into the hostel and I looked at the damage to my feet.  There were 3 identically spaced scabs on my right foot so I decided it was time for flip-flops for walking around St. Marc’s square, eating dinner, and taking a Gondola ride.  Venice is much more flip-flop friendly than Bregenz and Salzburg with less hills and more even brick-work sidewalks. 

Venice!

On the way to Murano.  My feet are swollen here but only got worse in the next few hour.  

The next day we went back to St. Marc’s appropriately dressed so we could get in and wandered our way back to the train station getting lunch and gelato on the way.  My shoes stayed in my book bag all day Sunday so my feet were in much better shape.  We spent about 9 hours getting back to Bregenz with our second train delayed by about 20 minutes getting us back at 12:30am on Monday.  

You can't wear shorts and have to have your shoulders covered but you can still wear flip-flops in St. Marc's.

My shoes came out of my book bag before class on Monday and I’m not sure they will be worn again in Bregenz or just thrown out; either way, they won’t make it home and I’ll have more room for chocolate.  Next weekend we go to Vienna and the weekend after that Munich before I have 10 days of straight tourist mode through 3 different countries.  We will see how many more pairs of shoes I end up wearing through (and how much of my bank account I spend).