Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Leaving Austria soon...

Well, we're now in Vienna, waiting to board a plane to Amman. The flights out here went pretty smooth - our plane from SLC to Denver left 1.5 hours late, so we had to run across the long Denver airport to the other end just as they made the final boarding call. Then, after waiting in Washington/Dulles for a couple hours, we boarded the plane with a dozen missionaries, the BYU Ballroom Dance team and a bunch of girls going to England on BYU sutdy abroad. The flight from DC to Vienna was amazing - the plane had cameras in the nose and under the plane, so in addition to staring at the GPS map and alititude and temperature, I could see white clouds under and in front of me. The cameras were pretty useless at 36,000 feet, but were pretty cool during take-off and landing.
We got to Vienna at 8:30 AM, but our flight for Amman leaves at 10:45 tonight, so we spent all day wandering around Vienna. We saw all the main tourist places (we'd upload our own pictures now, but I packed the digital camera cord in the luggage - the two pictues are both of the cathedral), like St. Stephan's Cathedral and the Rathaus and the Volksgarten (we had a 3 hour nap on the steps of some ancient Greek building there), ate Italian pizza and ice cream (from what we've heard, that'll be the last good ice cream for the next 4 months), and had some Austrian french fries.
Not speaking or understanding German has been both frustrating and advantageous. For some reason, most people we've encountered don't speak English, so we just stare at them and the help us. The french fry lady maybe gave us a discount after being flabergasted by us staring and pointing, and the ticket checker on the train gave Nancy a good reprimanding in German after we didn't stamp our tickets before going on, but he didn't fine us and moved on, frustrated.
We're travelling with about 20-30 other students on this flight - the rest are already in Amman. We're hanging out with the married couples, two of which have little kids. Two of the guys didn't bring their spouses, and two did (besides the two with kids - total of 6 couples (minus 2 wives) on our flight).
Our flight leaves in 2 hours, but the battery on this laptop is slowly dying and the only available plug is the one between the airport tavern and the cigarette vending machine right by the entrance to the bathrooms - not the most sanitary place.
So, have a great day! Next time we post we'll be in Amman!

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