Austria- Traveling

Sunday-Monday, August 2-3, 2010

Traveling through different time zones really messes up your sleeping patterns. For example: It is currently 12:19 AM on Tuesday, but it is 6:19 PM on Monday in NC. Because both of these days basically consisted of traveling, I’m going to lump them together as one post. So the flights were fairly uneventful. I finished reading Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil, which I thought I had lost on the plane ride to Oklahoma, but had actually put into a pocket in my suitcase that I overlooked when originally looking for it. The in-flight movie from Dallas to London was How to Train Your Dragon, which I had just seen the day before (two days before?), so I focused instead on finishing the book. After doing so, I then found out that my laptop will survive the full run of The Dark Knight, but only if I turn the screen onto the lowest brightness setting. I got the entire middle row of the plane to myself, because there were few enough people on the flight that the person sitting in my row could move up to the row in front of us, which was empty. That made sleeping a lot easier, but I only think I got 5 hours. I’m not terribly sure.

We arrived in London, got on our plane to Vienna, and I was seated across the aisle from the cutest Austrian guy: long wavy hair, scruffy facial hair, tight jeans, traveling with his mother and younger sister (I think). We got to our hotel at about 10PM Austrian time, and then went out to a local bar (have I mentioned that I’m legally able to consume alcohol in Austria?), where I had a beer. We got to see a little bit of Eisenstadt on the way to the bar, but I’ll get a better look at things tomorrow, because we have rehearsal early in the morning. That said, I’m going to head off to bed now.

Before I go: My parents are probably mildly distressed at the moment, because they got me a phone with an international plan to take to Austria with me, so I could text them/call them/whatever. However, I have been unable to do so since we left Dallas, because that was the last time I had service. The phone hasn’t had reception the entire time we’ve been in Europe, and I’m not quite sure what to make of that, but I’ll send them a facebook message when I’m able to. The time hasn’t even changed on the phone to reflect the fact that I’m like… 6 or 7 timezones away from my usual one (depending on whether you interpret Central Standard or Eastern Standard to be my usual one). So they might be a bit worried, they haven’t heard from me in… 16 hours? Which isn’t really that big a deal when you think about it, except they were expecting to.

Anyway. Rehearsal in the morning. Goodnight!

PS: I was a bad little international traveler, and the first thing I ate in Austria was… McDonalds. I rarely ever eat McDonalds at home, so this kind of fits into my sister’s only-eat-at-places-you-can’t-eat-at-while-at-home rule… but only kind of. The menu was very different, though… I had broccoli and cheese nuggets. And Coca-Cola, because they use a different formula in each country, and I wanted to see if I could taste a difference. I’m not sure if I imagined it, but I think it did taste differently.