Day 22: Slow Loris

This morning I was not greeted by the normal breakfast crew, but instead Steve and I enjoyed a large breakfast together in the hopes of a cheaper lunch. After a full meal, I headed upstairs to pack while Steve checked his emails in the Lobby. I had quite a nice room this time around. It was also nice because I was on the first floor and could actually use the University's wifi from the across the street.

A really nice place

After packing, Steve and I took the street train from our hotel all the way to the Opera house to journey through the Saturday morning marketplace. Imagine every fruit for sale, and then invent some more and you would have half the place figured out. The other half is a yard sale without grass, and the most random electronic, porcelain and plastic goods are for sale. Steve and I looked around for a good hour, but didn't find anything of interest, so we headed to Stephenplatz for a cheap lunch.

Steve found a working type writer at the flea market

Still full from breakfast, and Steve low on euros after buying some souvenirs, we tried the local McDonald's euro menu. It tasted identical to its American counterparts.

A view of the bustling city center

After lunch, Steve headed for the bicycle rental place and I headed back to the hotel to collect my things. Steve returned from his bike ride and left for the airport a little before me. I organized my things, and left about 30 minutes later. On the short walk to the metro it began to rain harder than I could ever imagine and my luggage took on quite a bit of water. I sprinted for the station and got out of the rain while waiting for the metro. I went a few stops before getting off to catch a real train to the airport. For just 1.80 euros I was on the train for about 25 minutes and arrived at the airport with more than enough time. While on the train, I had a difficult exchange with the ticket collector, as I showed him the ticket I had just purchased, which he claimed was not good enough. It then took several minutes and some uncomfortable German/English conversation before he understood what I saying (I had my student ticket for the metro and this second ticket for the train). He finally punched my ticket and let me enjoy the pleasant rural countryside.

Upon arriving at the airport, I checked in after seeing Rachel and Dylan doing the same. They told me they had moved to an earlier flight, but having a connecting flight at the Frankfurt airport in a few hours, joining them would not be that helpful, so I decided to stick with my itinerary. As I handed my luggage over to the airline representative, he claimed my baggage was just a little too heavy. Clearly, the water weighed my stuff down too much. Consequently, I had to remove the shorts I have yet to wear from the front compartment and drag them around for the remainder of the evening.

With my carry on bag bursting at the seams, I headed to the gate. In the Vienna airport, they don't have one single security checkpoint, but rather individual ones at each gate. After waiting in line to get to the gate, I waited for some time before the flight preceding mine, to Stockholm, took off. At this point they said I had to leave and go back through security in order to wait for my excursion to Frankfurt. I repeated the security process before waiting for my first plane of the day.

Unfortunately, my plane was delayed several minutes, and we were off the ground 45 minutes after we were scheduled to leave. We landed in Frankfurt, but my hour layover had been reduced to mere minutes. As I ran through the airport from gate 28 to gate 5, my name was announced over the PA system demanding my presence at the door. I arrived just as the attendant was closing the door. She let me down the jet way...which was actually just a staircase leading to a bus. The bus drove us 10 minutes down the tarmac until we reached on 40 passenger plane quite a ways away from "Gate 5." Knowing my checked luggage was unlikely to have moved as quickly as I had, and as far as I had. I became incredibly stressed. As some relief, I had the whole row and the entire row behind me all to myself. Sure, the flight from Frankfurt to Friedrichschafen was just 30 mins, but it was still nice to recline and rest. [A side note on Airplane ettiquite in Europe: In the States, planes travel from the gate to the runway, wait in line, pause, then take off...here you drive to the runway and launch into the air without stopping.] We landed shortly after taking off and as we walked off the plane I was relieved to see my luggage exit the plane! I grabbed it from the baggage claim minutes later and met Jenny and Stefan in the waiting area.

Stefan drove as caught up on what had happened since his visit to the States last Summer. We were on the road for just 40 minutes before we arrived at his Flat in Dornbirn. From there we enjoyed the end of a local football game on TV while I tried a beer and some very nice Schapps that Stefan spoke highly of. Afterwards, we walked five minutes around the corner to a local bar that Stefan's friends were already enjoying. After some drinks and dancing, the place closed around 2. We then waited for a free shuttle to take us five minutes down the road to Conrad Sohm, the local party place. After another mix of familiar and new music, Jenny and I shared a cab with others back to the city around 3:15.