Hello, from Wien! Amanda and I are in Vienna, enjoying the finer things of life such as jet lag and Kebab! We came over for 12 days to find out some more information about schools, apartments, visas, taxes, and anything else we can until they kick us out of the consulate. Speaking of planes, the ride over here was really not too bad, we flew
Austrian Airlines from Washington DC to Vienna (United from DFW to Dulles). Hopefully your are acquainted with airline jargon or that last statement in the parenthesis will mean nothing, which as with most items stuck between to curved lines in a sentence are worth anyways! Back to the story...the food wasn't bad, the service was great, and everyone had their own individualized screens for viewing movies, games, or cameras located at the front and bottom of the plane, as if the views out the 37 windows already weren't scary enough (for those who are scared of flying - see didn't need it again). But I'm not one of those so the ride was fairly enjoyable, except Amanda does not always make the best human pillow so finding a comfortable spot to stretch out and get my beauty sleep was a bit challenging. On this note the airlines have found the magic weapon to get you to upgrade your seats from the tail section (where we were) to business class. Here is how, when you first get on the plane they board you BEHIND the business class so as not to disturb those that have already been seated and served their cocktails. But when exiting the plane with messy hair, red-eyed, cranky, and breath smelling like you have been on a 7 hour flight after they fed you onions for the in-flight dinner, oh yea and they wouldn't let you take your toothpaste on because the tube consisted of 4 ozs of white powdery ooze, back to the story...they walk you THROUGH the business section with the pillows and KING sized linens thrown about in a taunting fashion as if to say, come on, that $500 extra charge each leg per ticket plus $50 processing fee and $2 dollar dealer charge is worth the full size feather pillow and fold out King Size water bed with Enya playing softly in the background. Of course upon peering out of the red caverns that used to be beautifully blue oceans you think, $552 is a good deal!!!
And that was the end of our trip, to start off with we met a very nice Romanian man from Arkansas (no not Phil) which we never caught his name but we have dubbed "our little Romania friend", witnessed an incredible moving site as a battalion (perhaps less or more not sure, it was just a bunch) of army soldiers arrived, presumably from Iraq based on the desert fatigues, all of the travelers, not family, friends, or relatives, just travelers that happened to be in the airport at this time, all stood up and started clapping as they came off the plane. And they all kept clapping until the soldiers were all off the plane and down the corridor, if that doesn't bring you to tears, I don't know what will! Anyway, we need to figure out what we are doing for supper, we met today with some people at the VCS (Vienna Christian School) about re-location, apartments, taxes, visas, cars, etc. yeah it was a lot so anyway, I’m hungry, Tschüss!