Austrian Journal Day 1

Sorry it's been awhile. I've not been in the posting mood and I needed to give the journey some time to breathe.

12/30/05

The Flight

No problems w/ boarding except a slightly delayed flight. We were graciously chauffeured by Mr. Paul Perkins, checked-in, Jake was stripped searched (j/k) and we were off at approx. 9:00PM. First order of business; Lufthansa Airlines are shwaggnal. the food, the movie screens, even some of the staff prompted a barrage of creative uses of the word shwagg by Jake and I. (before I continue, shwagg is trash or something that is poorly done or of little to no use...I've changed the spelling to match how it is pronounced). The TV monitor turned into the shwaggatron. The sesame goldfish were dubbed shwagg dogs and shagg nuggets. I non-affectionately named the entire adventure as shwagg 11 (on a shwagg scale of 1 to 10 this was an 11). Point made. On the bright side, we sat by an interesting Eritrean/American named Iasu (Yesu). He is probably in his 40's, has a daughter and does consulting and education for companies such as Exxon. He flies to Europe about 4 or 5 times a year and typically stays w/ friends in Milan.When dinner was served, poor Iasu was accused of ordering a special meal which he said (and I believe him) that he did not. The attendant was rather rude to him which prompted an altercation and eventually was the catalyst to a complaint letter. All of this resulted in Iasu earning 2000 miles, being offered champagne repeatedly (which he doesn’t drink) and Jake and I making friends w/ the head attendant Teresa Hackett. (full name because Jake got her card)
As Jake and she conversed, it was discovered that she too was heading to Innsbruck and also that she had planned a night in a monastery similar to our plans. We wanted to try to catch up with but I’ll just say now that we never did.

We arrived on time in Munich only to be paged shortly thereafter to go to the information desk. Jake went to discover that Christian had left a msg and would arrive at 1:30, about 2 and ½ hrs late. And here I sit.

Maybe This weekend

I'm not going to have time to write much this week, but I will try to post my first journal entry from Austria this weekend. In the meantime here is a link to the pictures as well as a few I picked out.
hofreiter.shutterly.com