Back in Vienna for the weekend.

Saturday 9th December 2006; Vienna

It's Saturday afternoon and I find my self at home not wanting to get out of bed. No, I didn't have a late night last night , I've just been enjoying a lazy morning, and now a lazy afternoon - just being !

After the last couple of hectic weeks, it's nice to be able to have a lie in. Most of the week consisted of 5am starts and 11pm finishes, with lots of flying and driving in between. In total, I counted 6 flights and 9 hours of driving, all of the driving being done by me. I have to say that this was quite enjoyable, although it was all in the line of work. My illegitimate sister (it's a long story), who has recently become the proud mother of a little boy named Ralf Ebeneezer (another long story), commented the other day that she loves my life - all the travel etc. I would like to stress that it isn't as glamorous as it may sound. Running between airports, from one hotel to another and having to keep the day job going is hard work and it doesn't help when you miss your flight or get stuck in a hotel that has seen better days.

Both of these happened to me during the past week. The hotel that we stayed in while in Hamburg needed, to say the least, a good clean, new carpets, a paint job, a smoking area and thicker walls. If this wasn't enough, the barmaid got my drink wrong too - there's no point in having a JD & coke, if the barmaid forgets to put any JD in it !

Missing the flight was more embarrassing than anything else. Picture the scene - It was 6:15am on Monday morning, I had just driven my car to the Marriott hotel in the centre of Vienna to pick up my new boss from the hotel. Since April this year, Vienna is supposed to be where I've been living. It's true, I've had an apartment here, and all my furniture and other "stuff" is also here. I have a car here too, but to say that I have been living here is a bit of a stretch. As my cousin quite correctly pointed out to my "you only have an apartment in Vienna, you don't live in Vienna". This, I found, is absolutely true.

Anyway, there I was at the hotel at silly o'clock in the morning, waiting to pick up Lawrence, my new boss, and go to the airport to catch the early flight to Frankfurt. The flight was at 7:50, which meant that we needed to be at the airport by 7am at the latest. By the time we set of from the hotel it was almost 6:30am. This shouldn't have been a problem. A 20-25min drive to the airport would get us there in plenty of time to catch the flight. I knew how to get from my apartment to the airport, and I knew how to get from the Marriott hotel to my apartment, so logic suggests that the most certain way to get from the hotel to the airport would be to drive past my house. Pretty obvious right? Well, that would make sense until you think (for what every reason) that the airport, my apartment and the hotel form a triangle, and hence, there must be a shorter way to get from the city to the airport.

I drove in the direction which I thought I needed to be going in and about 10mins later, I figured out that there was something that was not quite right. Not having a map in the car and Jasmin being safely packed in my bag, I had to rely on my sense of direction and sketchy knowledge of the city to get us to the airport. Normally, this would have not been a problem (I thought I had a pretty good sense of direction), but my current situation was compounded by the fact that the city of Vienna is full of one way streets and that it was also rush hour (yes, everyone in Vienna appears to want to go to work at 6:45 in the morning!)

We spend about 40min weaving through the one way streets in Vienna and finally say a sign for the airport. I figured that the best thing to do would be to follow the signs and we would eventually get there. We did this, and the signs that we followed took me right past my apartment !

We got to the airport less than 5mins after the flight had closed. All was not lost because there was a flight about an hour later which got us into Frankfurt with enough time to make the 3hour drive to Saarbrucken and still get there in time for our 2pm meeting. However, this was probably not the best way to start the week and it certainly wasn't the impression I wanted to make on my new boss!!

Things I have learned by this experience:

(a) I'm still a stranger in Vienna (as far as driving in the city goes).
(b) My sense of direction is not as good as I thought it was (I looked at a map later on and found that the Marriott hotel, my apartment and the airport form almost a straight line !
(c) Jasmin will never travel in my luggage - she will always travel either with me or somewhere where she is easily accessible
(d) I think my new boss thinks I'm nuts !

The time now is approx 14:15hrs and I think it's about time I got my backside out of bed. I've got plenty to do today and I’ve got to still pack for my travels over the next 3weeks in England. I'm booked to fly on the same 07:50am flight to Frankfurt on Monday morning and I really don't want to miss it !