Yes, it really does take hate mail to get me back into the mood to blog again. My sincere apologies! It's summer, I'm lazy and lack motivation, and there's too much to write about. So I'm going to try to write a quick summary of what I've been doing the past...month!
First of all, my vacation - which was awesome. The trip to Europe was quite eventful, actually, when I found out in Quebec that my flight to UK was canceled because of a security threat at Heathrow. Having two *long* layovers is bad enough, but throwing a canceled flight into the mix? Not cool. Actually, I got put on an Air France flight through Paris and arrived in Vienna six hours early so this little issue turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
After arriving on Wednesday afternoon and waiting for everyone else to show up with my parents (who arrived the evening before), amazingly we all managed to find the hotel and arrive roughly ontime - Roland being the exception. But Roland is always late so arriving at night rather than in the morning or afternoon is close enough to give him the benefit of the doubt ;o).
Our hotel was in the outskirts of Vienna in an area populated with diverse international residents from places like Turkey, Balkans, Russia, etc. It was very quiet and the kind of neighborhood that I like to stay in when I visit a city because you get the true flavor of a place when you eat at places that have menus in Russian but not in English :) . We ate at a totally local restaurant the first night. I've been studying Spanish and haven't used my German in a while when I was suddenly with a group of eight non-German speakers with a waiter who spoke no English and I had to somehow translate the menu and take orders to give to the waiter. I had a really rough time! I said "Esta bien" to the waiter a few times, asked for "Agua", and through out some other Spanish words that had to be rescinded. I've heard of Spanglish, but I guess a combination of Spanish and German would be called....eewwww, figure that one out yourself ;o).
Thursday we spent the day in Vienna, meeting up with Leif and old friend of mine from Germany who lives in Vienna now. He gave us a wonderful guided tour around Vienna and then took the boys to a local brewery, where we met up with another pilot friend of his. The tasty, fresh beers flowed forth and we finally went back to the hotel to meet the ladies in a very happy mood :) . Later that night we went to the "fancy" dining establishment for dinner and then Stefan, Roland, Leif, and I took him out downtown for one last time before his wedding. We pretty much checked out a few places but ended up going home relatively early because some of us were dying of jet lag - and feeling a little old to be hanging out with college kids!
After another wonderful breakfast on Friday, four of us headed to the airport to get a rental car while the other four headed to Slovakia so Roland could help Csilla out with last minute preparations for the wedding the next day. Those "cross-border" charges on the rental car were pretty steep but necessary, unfortunately. We headed down the smoothe highway into Hungary and finally to the Slovakian border. Thus far, my domestically abused passport hadn't raised any eyebrows at all but we were given a tongue lashing at the Slovakian border by a guy who clearly had a grudge to beat against US residents (like most of the world does - thanks Bush!). He asked me what would happen if he went to the US with a passport like that and told me to go back to Budapest and get a new one. After his chest-puffing speech, he told us to get going and let us go through to Komarno, our final destination.
After reconvening and backing into Roland's car while trying to park (car accidence are obligatory whenever Vas and I meet up - every single time!), we went to a Wellness Center outside of town that had a big pool, hot tub, and various saunas. We totally chilled out there and even took a nap after lengthy steaming before heading back to the hotel. We went to Roland's brother-in-law's restaurant Cleopatra for a wonderful dinner and drinks. The kids certainly had fun at the restaurant, donning Jack Daniels bartender outfits and clearing off our tables (and the tables of other diners!), playing in the bar, etc. Very cute and they were devastated when it was time to go home!
J. Riley, there's plenty more to come!
You can find evidence of the above all at my picture site.
That dinner the first night in Vienna was so good! Talk about a local place, I think they thought we were oddities...
ReplyDelete