Vienna at Last

Alright, so I've been in Vienna for over a week now but just now got this Blog set up. Following is the post I wrote on my first night in the city.

Vienna-Day one 8/23/07 11:15pm

So here I am in Vienna. Kinda tired, but not really feeling like sleeping yet. Yesterday I left with my parents for JFK, a bit later than intended but we got to the airport with enough time. Security at JFK was bout the quickest international security I’ve ever gone through, it took maybe 10 minutes and then I hung out in the terminal for a bit. The trip went relatively uneventfully took off pretty promptly hit a little but not much turbulence. With all the icky weather we’ve had I expected delays and turbulence but it wasn’t bad enough for delays and through the flight we were far above the clouds which meant you couldn’t see a damn thing so it was a good thing I got an aisle rather than a window. Both the flight to London and Vienna I was sitting next to families with small children, that was rather interesting to watch but not overly obnoxious as I thought it might get. The layover felt really long given how exhausted I was at that point but I got my german/English dictionary and ate breakfast at actually a rather nice airport restaurant-a croissant, coffee, orange juice and a pastry filled with chocolate that I saved and just ate.

I got a taxi at the airport that took me to the IES center. I managed broken conversation with the taxi driver in very broken german…but I did manage somehow. The autobahn was under construction so we went through town. It felt like a very long ride but that’s probably again because I wanted to find a bed. I left my cello at the IES center and then took the U-Bahn to the hostel. From the U-bahn it took a bit of work to find the hostel, I met up with another confused traveler looking for the hostel, a Japanese medical student with a picture of a naked woman on his shirt. It turned out to be a bit of a hike up a hill…I was very glad how “light” I had packed and was drenched with sweat and out of breath by the time I reached Hostel Hutteldorf. Once checked in I collapsed on my bed for about 20 minutes before taking a numbingly cold shower. I think the directions of hot/cold might be opposite here, since someone else said they had no problem, if anything it was too hot. I then took a 3 hour nap, played foosball and talked withother people staying in the hostel.

There’s certainly a wide variety of people staying here. In my room there’s a dietician here for training of some sort from about 300k from Vienna and 2 girls from Australia backpacking across Europe “the typical Australian thing.” I’ve also met 2 sisters traveling to a techno festival in Hungary, an Iranian who just finished studies in England and is now on vacation and someone who grew up in Pittsburgh, now lives in Texas and is going to Law school in Netherlands.

Tomorrow I meet up with IES and go to Mariazel in the Alps for the weekend orientation. I’m excited to make some connections and get started with the real program, though a little apprehensive as I don’t know what to expect or who I’ll meet. As of last spring Meghan Gerrity was coming too, if she is it’ll be nice to see a familiar face.