First Day Forecast: Partly Sunny and Awesome!!!!

29 January 2011

I arrived in Vienna Austria at 8:30 this morning.  By the time the plane touched down, my thoughts were swirling around and thoroughly mixing the memories of my last few days in DC with the emotions of arriving in a foreign country...to live there!  It made me feel exhausted (or maybe that was the jet lag...) and a little queasy.  Thankfully, I made it off the plane without falling asleep or "losing" my breakfast. 

The Viennese get a thumbs-up from me on their passport inspection process - I zipped through and on to baggage claim.  Being that I had 4 large checked bags, I had to quickly devise a plan on how I would get my bags from the conveyor belt to the car service waiting outside for me.  As fast as I began to wonder, a man came by with a huge cart.  I walked up to him with my best "Sprechen sie englich" to which he shook his head.  Luckily, pointing and nodding are universal and we got the job done.  I walked out confidently and quickly spotted the sign with my name on it.  My driver was great!  He explained the frozen fog covering everything on our drive was not snow.  He even drove me by my new office on the way to my apartment, helped me carry all my bags in without being asked and wished me well in the new city.

Once I stepped into my apartment, I immediately shuffled to the bed and passed out for a few hours.  When I woke up, I stayed horizontal for a while and contemplated the last few days.  I thought about a moment a couple days back as I sat in Pentagon City Mall and saw a tourist very impressed by the 4 story, shiny monstrosity.  It reminded me of when I was young and going to the Traverse City Mall impressed the hell out of me…the TC mall was and is small, but I knew nothing else so like that tourist a few days ago, I was crazy impressed!  Today, nothing in America’s major cities impresses me.  That’s right, this small town, secluded, rural Northern Michigan girl laughed as she realized how great her perspective is today.  Big, fancy malls don’t impress me anymore, crowded NYC streets no longer make me feel lost, and Austria is on its way to also being conquered by my ability to absorb new experiences that are far beyond what I ever imagined existed.

After my nap, I headed out to explore my new ‘hood.  A huge, automatic security door, spray-painted graffiti on several of the buildings, lots and lots of cars…wait a minute, how the hell did I end up in Detroit??  The answer to that question came quickly as I turned the corner to see none of the buildings had boarded up windows and all the signs were in German.  Ok, the universe wasn’t playing some rude trick on me.  I walked for a bit until I saw a store called Muller which appeared to be Vienna’s version of a Target or CVS.  But it was even better; they had everything a Target would plus higher end, designer products you would usually find at Macy’s.  I quickly purchased three things from my shopping list and was pleased to find out pretty much every product has its ingredients written in English on the back.  Score one for the allergy girl! 

When I got back to my apartment and began to work on putting away some of my mess that was exploding out of my four checked bags and two carry-ons, I started gathering up the books I had to bring with me.  Finally, I realized the genius of the Kindle or Nook readers.  When those electronic readers came out, I was adamantly against getting one because I love the smell and feel of a real book.  My relocation to Austria has changed the score: electronic readers 1, paperbacks 0.