First Day in Vienna

My first day in Vienna is a bit of a blur. It seemed like the longest day in existence. This is probably due to the fact that, for me, it was the longest day in existence. I spent the night before packing and largely unable to sleep. The fact that I was about to leave the United States for the first time, and for three months solid at that, was a little bit difficult for me to wrap my head around. My flight was at 7:00am on the eighth of September. I wanted to be there by 6:00am at least, which left me getting up around 4:30am. I went to bed around 2:00am. When I sleep this little, I somehow lose a night and live one extended day with a brief nap in the middle. I double checked my bags, tried to organize the things I would be leaving at home, said a prayer with my parents, and (already exhausted) headed for the airport.

Are you ever in those experiences where something feels normal, but because you feel that it shouldn't feel normal it feels abnormal? This describes the drive to the airport that morning. It was just a few minutes in the car with my parents. It was altogether ordinary. I went to the counter at the airport, checked my bags, accidentally left my pink Nalgene bottle there (a tragedy, truly), and said goodbye to my parents. It was all just ordinary.

The first leg of my flight was from Sacramento Metro to Washington Dulles. I ended up being on the same flight as a few of the people from my group. I met up with Jessie, who gave me what she had left over of her chicken salad wrap. We noticed Dan, who sat on the other side of the gate and looked somewhat unhappy. Kristian, Carolyn, and Melissa showed up and we all chatted a while. All except for Dan, who stayed on the other side of the gate looking somber.

None of us ended up together on the flight. I stepped onto the plane and sat next to an old woman who eventually put in her iPod and couldn't figure out the volume. In demonstrating how to work the wheel, I ended up blasting Christian Easy Listening in her ear. She later began to sing along to this. At any rate, before the flight even took off the Austrian Airlines stewardess came over and said something in German, which I absolutely didn't understand. At this point I sent a text message to my boyfriend that read something along the lines of, "EPIC FAIL!" This is when it hit me that I was headed for a foreign land.


I spent a lot of time on that flight staring out the window. I also watched Cars in German and The Notebook in German, even though I hate that movie. Every once in a while I would flip to the feature on the screen that tells you where you are in the flight. It was interesting to look at the screen and out the window. "Oh, we're over England. Oh, look. That's England down there." I looked for icebergs while we were over ocean, but it was dark and there was nothing to be seen. The moon was lovely, though.

16 hours after my departure from Sacramento I landed in Vienna. It was 7:40am the 9th September local time, making it 10:40pm Sacramento time. I had been awake now for around 18 hours. I had been instructed to stay awake the entire day if I could and then sleep a normal night. This would ease my transition and lessen the jetlag. This is, I must say, excellent advice. It is also ridiculously challenging.

We were met at the airport by Markus from the Austro American Institute. We took a van/bus to our hotel, the Pension Baronesse, where we left our baggage and decided to go exploring. We met up with Melinda, who had been there since earlier that morning, and we called up to John in another room, who had been in Europe for a while already. Up to this point, I was fairly lucid. It is around this time that things start to blur.

We didn't have to be back at our hotel until 6:00pm, and I knew that if I went back to the hotel early I would fall asleep, which I didn't want to do. It ended up being a lot of walking around in a city that I didn't know at all. It was, however, beautiful. The buildings were stunning. Walking through Vienna was like taking a stroll through my Interior Design class during the chapter on architecture through the ages. Every different style was here. We started out looking for a park, which we found next to the Rathaus. This is basically the city hall. We spent some time wandering through. We found a statue of a knight with very long pointed shoes. He is henceforth known as the Pointy Shoed Man. It's not a very creative title, I know. I later noticed that this statue was a copy of the statue that tops the Rathaus.
It was sitting down on the benches in the park that was the real beginning of the end. At this point I realized that I was absolutely exhausted. From here on out, everything I did was something for which I was just slightly less awake.

Jet lag is awful. I had never been this kind of tired. Counting the hours I had been awake already was both torturous because I didn't really need to know how long I'd been up, and frustrating because I was too tired to do math all that well. I would like to say I never want to feel that way again, but it's a bit of a lost cause as I'll go through it at least once more on the return to the States in December. I am not looking forward to that feeling again.

We eventually found our way to a shopping area with a huge cathedral (Stephansdom). We wandered around and took a few pictures. The architecture was gothic. I have never been a fan of gothic architecture. The large and over-decorated spires are not appealing to me. The gargoyles are even less so. I was more fascinated by everything else around the cathedral. This is where I saw the first really modern building I had seen since getting in to Vienna. There was a dog lying in front of a small building next to the cathedral, which was just such a peaceful scene. There were also street performers everywhere. This was easily identified as a HUGE tourist area because of the street performers. The thing is, most of them weren't actually performing. The street performing there seemed to be people who dress up and paint themselves, then pretend to be statues. Some are better than others. One was a violinist who would play a simple tune every time someone gave him a tip. Another was a man painted entirely silver. The variety of costumes was at least interesting. The silver man was fairly simple. He was dressed in silver. That's about all there was to it. The violinist had on dark clothing with a black coat. Somewhere down the way a bit from the cathedral was a woman in a large billowy dress. She was seated on the ground, her face painted white, keeping her eyes closed. I'm assuming that she had yet to master the art of not blinking.

We eventually ended up back at the hotel where we met up with Markus and the rest of the group. We first went for Pizza where I discovered that Buffalo Mozzarella is amazing. Next we went to the LDS Institute building where I literally fell asleep standing up. Once we got back to the hotel I was out. Thus, the day had passed in a complete blur. I remember bits and pieces, such as attempting to order ice cream in German and failing, or not being able to understand a word of what was happening around me, or Melinda's face when she tried to exchange money in the bank... in German. I was sure of one thing: This would be a grand adventure.