The Great Excursion Begins
Okay, I promised my friends that I would try to upload tales and/or pictures to my blog while I was away, and even though I haven’t had a lot of time to do so, I’ve been really wanting to. Now that I’ve got a little free time, I can actually sit down and compose a travel log to let you all know what we’ve been doing thus far.
Ersten Tag – Den Flug
First day – the flight – 22-23 December
The flight was thankfully uneventful. In these days of post 9-11 air travel, one is often on the look-out for just about anything that takes place out of the norm. We had a few handfuls of Turkish passengers, but they were all very cheerful and mild mannered, so no worries there.
That was it; though I think my brother was a tad disappointed. He knows full well that if someone DID show up on the plane that looked or behaved suspiciously, I’m the kind of person to kick their ass out of principle, should they move towards anything other than the aft restroom. I think he was kind of hoping I would’ve gotten myself in trouble rushing to everyone’s rescue over some Arabic guy getting up to ask the stewardess for a bag of peanuts.
The meals were pretty “okay,” but what does one expect for coach airline food? Any airline; it doesn’t really matter which one. But we got dinner, coffee, desert, and then five hours later, breakfast and more coffee. Free drinks all the way, actually, alcoholic or otherwise. And let me say right now that Austrian Airways mixes some pretty heavy-handed gin and tonics! Nic and I were in GREAT shape for most of the flight.
The one really cool thing was that we flew over on an Airbus 330, which has TV monitors in the back of every seat and a remote control in everyone’s armrest. You could select from about a dozen audio stations, six or eight video, each in two to four different languages, and several interactive menus with games (I whipped the computer’s butt in the backgammon game), movies (none of which were what was listed), and best of all: Flight Information!
Those that don’t know me personally, and even a few that do, aren’t aware that I am an absolute aviation geek. If it involves being airborne for more than five minutes, flies faster than 50-mph, or has two or more dials, I wanna know about it. So, when I found this feature, I about wet myself! By selecting the Flight Info, the TV monitor informed me what altitude we were at, how long we had been in the air, current groundspeed, external temperature (which averaged about –80ºF and got as low as -97ºF), miles to destination, etc., etc., etc., in both English and German. It even had a map with the flight path marked on it and a little icon to show you what the plane was passing over. Seventh Heaven, I tell you! After I determined that I could not watch the movie I wanted, I just kept it on the in-flight info station, and geeked my way across the Atlantic for like eight and a half hours.
We landed on the morning of 23 December at 0830 Vienna Standard Time (no, it’s not really called that). My father’s good friend Emil arranged for a taxi to meet us, so we were greeted by an older gentleman holding a sign that said D.I. Palma. Interesting way to spell it, but it got the point across.
The poor guy spoke little to no English so I got kicked into the deep end of the pool with my German language skills. Even though my brother Nic speaks German, he exercises it even less than I do, so I was once again pressed into the role of Family Übersetzer (translator). He took us to a lift, where he told me that he’d meet us downstairs. A few minutes later, we understood (told you I was rusty), and managed to cram ourselves into the small elevator with all our luggage.
Did I mention it was a small lift? I mean, we all took a deep breath to get the doors to close. I actually had to work at turning around just to push the button. It was all worth it, though; you should’ve seen the look on our driver’s face when we came out. It was much like the look most people have when the clown car comes into the center ring and the door flies open.
We got to the Graben, sort of. The Graben is a very old street that stretches from Stefansdom (St. Stefan’s Cathedral) and gets its name from the thousands that were buried under the street during the plague of 1687-93 (Grab is the German word for grave). It is a pedestrian only avenue, so he had to drop us off at an adjoining street. From there we walked onto the Graben, past the Pestsäule (plague column monument), all the while hauling every bit of luggage we’d brought, and on to our hotel, Pension Nossek.
We took a moment and kind of acclimatized ourselves with Viennese amenities. For those who have never been to Austria, or anywhere other than the US for that matter, things are, well… different. Not bad, just not fully what you expect. All of our rooms have bathrooms en suite, meaning in the room instead of a common restroom down the hall. The shower has no curtain, but it does have a glass door, one door, though it looks like it should have two, because it doesn’t fully enclose the tub. For me, a lizard who hates being even slightly cool, the initial draft is murderous.
The really interesting thing is the commode. There is no handle to flush with, but there is a button, two buttons, in fact; one for a mild flush, and one for a stronger flush (Penny calls it the “big boy” flush), as a water saving measure. What’s really different is that the bowl has, well, a shelf. When you do your business, it all piles up on the shelf. It does keep one from getting a cold, eye-opening splash, but since everything is exposed instead of being inundated, it tends to makes one’s visit quite aromatic. And I can destroy a bathroom with the best of them.
As luck would have it, our room wasn’t ready, so no unpacking for us. We left our luggage in my folks room, who did get to unpack, and all went on a walk around the immediate vicinity. We went to a small grocery store at the end of the Graben (all of about fifty feet from the front door of Pension Nossek) called Josef Meinl, where we got some bottled water, chocolate (if you’re going to Vienna, purchasing chocolate seems to be a standard requirement – just go with it), and some apple-pear juice which we later discovered was actually wine. We went back to the room and put everything away, except of course us; our room wouldn’t be ready for a while yet.
We bundled ourselves and girded our loins against the cold, which actually didn’t feel as bad as we thought it would be, seeing as Vienna is the same latitude as Boston, and headed out to show the city off to my brother and his wife. This was actually our second trip to Vienna, so we’d seen many of the beautiful buildings before, i.e. – we knew what to expect! We wandered through the Burghof, the winter residence of the Hapsburg emperors, and off to the Spittelberg area, just west of the Burghof, where we’d heard there was a Christkindlmarkt.
The Christkindlmarkts are truly something to behold. Think of it as an open air market; numerous stands, all bedecked in pine boughs and ribbon, selling candy (oh yeah, LOTS of candy), Christmas tree ornaments, mittens, and Glühwein, lots and lots of Glühwein (mulled wine) and Punsch (punch), all stiffly alcoholic and warm. The object is to drink a lot of Glühwein, then spend every last cent you have on trinkets that no sober person would realistically buy. On top of that, most stands selling Glühwein and Punsch also sell you the mug. Five Euro gets you a piping mug of wine; if you don’t want the mug, turn it back in to the stand and they refund two Euro. Suffice to say, I’m coming home with like four different mugs from my Glühwein experiences (no, not all in one day).
After perusing the Spittelberg area Kindlmarkt, we went to the Kindlmarkt at the Rathskeller, or town hall. This Kindlmarkt was reported to be a more traditional one, and seeing as the Spittelberg Kindlmarkt resembled a widespread and well-organized flea market, we were eager to give it a look.
Wow! This Kindlmarkt was really fabulous! It was an eaters’ paradise, to say the least; about every third stand sold Punsch, Würstl (sausages), pastries, or candy. I think I gave my doctor a heart attack by proxy just looking at everything. Decorations were everywhere, including massive oak trees, one covered with gigantic foot-wide heart-shaped lights and another with similarly sized star lights. The Rathskeller was lit from stem to stern with a large Tannenbaum decorated and illuminated right out front. We picked up a few minor trinkets; I got a beautiful white wool scarf to go with my overcoat, my Mom got a head wrap with fur trim, and we all got Lebkuchen (a kind of gingerbread) and assorted munchies. We hustled our booty off to the hotel and made plans for dinner.
You may have noticed that all of this is taking place during the “first” day. We hadn’t gone to sleep, save for what fitful rest everyone else could get on the plane – I didn’t get any sleep on the plane at all – so we’d been up for about 38+ hours by this point. The best way to reset your body clock is to travel across the pond at night, and stay up during the daylight hours as best you can. By now, the sky had darkened and we were beginning to get tired. We had yet to reset our watches, or even taken notice of them, actually; we were so enamored with the beauty Vienna at Christmastime!
We got back to the hotel (our room was ready) and finished the last of our unpacking then went to dinner at the Esterhazy Keller. My parents had been there once before, and it was a typical Austrian beer hall/restaurant. One had several choices of beer in varied sizes (which is as it should be), and for dinner there was a large display case of salads and meats to choose from. That night they offered a special of Goulasch with Knödel (large Austrian dumpling that is about as big as my cat’s head), which Nic and I attacked with reckless abandon. We toasted my project director and traffic manager Tom Gilhuley, another beer monkey like Nic and myself, ate like we hadn’t seen food for weeks, and headed back to our hotel.
When we did finally get in and check the clocks, it was only like 6:30 pm! It had been dark for almost two full hours. We’d forgotten how far north Vienna was and as the days went by, we realized that it got midnight-dark by 5 pm. We crawled in bed and I think Penny and I were both asleep before our heads even hit the pillows!
I'll post more as soon as I can.
Tschüß! (Later!)
Ersten Tag – Den Flug
First day – the flight – 22-23 December
The flight was thankfully uneventful. In these days of post 9-11 air travel, one is often on the look-out for just about anything that takes place out of the norm. We had a few handfuls of Turkish passengers, but they were all very cheerful and mild mannered, so no worries there.
That was it; though I think my brother was a tad disappointed. He knows full well that if someone DID show up on the plane that looked or behaved suspiciously, I’m the kind of person to kick their ass out of principle, should they move towards anything other than the aft restroom. I think he was kind of hoping I would’ve gotten myself in trouble rushing to everyone’s rescue over some Arabic guy getting up to ask the stewardess for a bag of peanuts.
The meals were pretty “okay,” but what does one expect for coach airline food? Any airline; it doesn’t really matter which one. But we got dinner, coffee, desert, and then five hours later, breakfast and more coffee. Free drinks all the way, actually, alcoholic or otherwise. And let me say right now that Austrian Airways mixes some pretty heavy-handed gin and tonics! Nic and I were in GREAT shape for most of the flight.
The one really cool thing was that we flew over on an Airbus 330, which has TV monitors in the back of every seat and a remote control in everyone’s armrest. You could select from about a dozen audio stations, six or eight video, each in two to four different languages, and several interactive menus with games (I whipped the computer’s butt in the backgammon game), movies (none of which were what was listed), and best of all: Flight Information!
Those that don’t know me personally, and even a few that do, aren’t aware that I am an absolute aviation geek. If it involves being airborne for more than five minutes, flies faster than 50-mph, or has two or more dials, I wanna know about it. So, when I found this feature, I about wet myself! By selecting the Flight Info, the TV monitor informed me what altitude we were at, how long we had been in the air, current groundspeed, external temperature (which averaged about –80ºF and got as low as -97ºF), miles to destination, etc., etc., etc., in both English and German. It even had a map with the flight path marked on it and a little icon to show you what the plane was passing over. Seventh Heaven, I tell you! After I determined that I could not watch the movie I wanted, I just kept it on the in-flight info station, and geeked my way across the Atlantic for like eight and a half hours.
We landed on the morning of 23 December at 0830 Vienna Standard Time (no, it’s not really called that). My father’s good friend Emil arranged for a taxi to meet us, so we were greeted by an older gentleman holding a sign that said D.I. Palma. Interesting way to spell it, but it got the point across.
The poor guy spoke little to no English so I got kicked into the deep end of the pool with my German language skills. Even though my brother Nic speaks German, he exercises it even less than I do, so I was once again pressed into the role of Family Übersetzer (translator). He took us to a lift, where he told me that he’d meet us downstairs. A few minutes later, we understood (told you I was rusty), and managed to cram ourselves into the small elevator with all our luggage.
Did I mention it was a small lift? I mean, we all took a deep breath to get the doors to close. I actually had to work at turning around just to push the button. It was all worth it, though; you should’ve seen the look on our driver’s face when we came out. It was much like the look most people have when the clown car comes into the center ring and the door flies open.
We got to the Graben, sort of. The Graben is a very old street that stretches from Stefansdom (St. Stefan’s Cathedral) and gets its name from the thousands that were buried under the street during the plague of 1687-93 (Grab is the German word for grave). It is a pedestrian only avenue, so he had to drop us off at an adjoining street. From there we walked onto the Graben, past the Pestsäule (plague column monument), all the while hauling every bit of luggage we’d brought, and on to our hotel, Pension Nossek.
We took a moment and kind of acclimatized ourselves with Viennese amenities. For those who have never been to Austria, or anywhere other than the US for that matter, things are, well… different. Not bad, just not fully what you expect. All of our rooms have bathrooms en suite, meaning in the room instead of a common restroom down the hall. The shower has no curtain, but it does have a glass door, one door, though it looks like it should have two, because it doesn’t fully enclose the tub. For me, a lizard who hates being even slightly cool, the initial draft is murderous.
The really interesting thing is the commode. There is no handle to flush with, but there is a button, two buttons, in fact; one for a mild flush, and one for a stronger flush (Penny calls it the “big boy” flush), as a water saving measure. What’s really different is that the bowl has, well, a shelf. When you do your business, it all piles up on the shelf. It does keep one from getting a cold, eye-opening splash, but since everything is exposed instead of being inundated, it tends to makes one’s visit quite aromatic. And I can destroy a bathroom with the best of them.
As luck would have it, our room wasn’t ready, so no unpacking for us. We left our luggage in my folks room, who did get to unpack, and all went on a walk around the immediate vicinity. We went to a small grocery store at the end of the Graben (all of about fifty feet from the front door of Pension Nossek) called Josef Meinl, where we got some bottled water, chocolate (if you’re going to Vienna, purchasing chocolate seems to be a standard requirement – just go with it), and some apple-pear juice which we later discovered was actually wine. We went back to the room and put everything away, except of course us; our room wouldn’t be ready for a while yet.
We bundled ourselves and girded our loins against the cold, which actually didn’t feel as bad as we thought it would be, seeing as Vienna is the same latitude as Boston, and headed out to show the city off to my brother and his wife. This was actually our second trip to Vienna, so we’d seen many of the beautiful buildings before, i.e. – we knew what to expect! We wandered through the Burghof, the winter residence of the Hapsburg emperors, and off to the Spittelberg area, just west of the Burghof, where we’d heard there was a Christkindlmarkt.
The Christkindlmarkts are truly something to behold. Think of it as an open air market; numerous stands, all bedecked in pine boughs and ribbon, selling candy (oh yeah, LOTS of candy), Christmas tree ornaments, mittens, and Glühwein, lots and lots of Glühwein (mulled wine) and Punsch (punch), all stiffly alcoholic and warm. The object is to drink a lot of Glühwein, then spend every last cent you have on trinkets that no sober person would realistically buy. On top of that, most stands selling Glühwein and Punsch also sell you the mug. Five Euro gets you a piping mug of wine; if you don’t want the mug, turn it back in to the stand and they refund two Euro. Suffice to say, I’m coming home with like four different mugs from my Glühwein experiences (no, not all in one day).
After perusing the Spittelberg area Kindlmarkt, we went to the Kindlmarkt at the Rathskeller, or town hall. This Kindlmarkt was reported to be a more traditional one, and seeing as the Spittelberg Kindlmarkt resembled a widespread and well-organized flea market, we were eager to give it a look.
Wow! This Kindlmarkt was really fabulous! It was an eaters’ paradise, to say the least; about every third stand sold Punsch, Würstl (sausages), pastries, or candy. I think I gave my doctor a heart attack by proxy just looking at everything. Decorations were everywhere, including massive oak trees, one covered with gigantic foot-wide heart-shaped lights and another with similarly sized star lights. The Rathskeller was lit from stem to stern with a large Tannenbaum decorated and illuminated right out front. We picked up a few minor trinkets; I got a beautiful white wool scarf to go with my overcoat, my Mom got a head wrap with fur trim, and we all got Lebkuchen (a kind of gingerbread) and assorted munchies. We hustled our booty off to the hotel and made plans for dinner.
You may have noticed that all of this is taking place during the “first” day. We hadn’t gone to sleep, save for what fitful rest everyone else could get on the plane – I didn’t get any sleep on the plane at all – so we’d been up for about 38+ hours by this point. The best way to reset your body clock is to travel across the pond at night, and stay up during the daylight hours as best you can. By now, the sky had darkened and we were beginning to get tired. We had yet to reset our watches, or even taken notice of them, actually; we were so enamored with the beauty Vienna at Christmastime!
We got back to the hotel (our room was ready) and finished the last of our unpacking then went to dinner at the Esterhazy Keller. My parents had been there once before, and it was a typical Austrian beer hall/restaurant. One had several choices of beer in varied sizes (which is as it should be), and for dinner there was a large display case of salads and meats to choose from. That night they offered a special of Goulasch with Knödel (large Austrian dumpling that is about as big as my cat’s head), which Nic and I attacked with reckless abandon. We toasted my project director and traffic manager Tom Gilhuley, another beer monkey like Nic and myself, ate like we hadn’t seen food for weeks, and headed back to our hotel.
When we did finally get in and check the clocks, it was only like 6:30 pm! It had been dark for almost two full hours. We’d forgotten how far north Vienna was and as the days went by, we realized that it got midnight-dark by 5 pm. We crawled in bed and I think Penny and I were both asleep before our heads even hit the pillows!
I'll post more as soon as I can.
Tschüß! (Later!)
posted by The Almighty Mattski | 07:36
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