Jessica's Jauntings: Days 1 & 2

I arrived safely in Vienna yesterday afternoon. The most interesting thing did happen on the flight from Salt Lake City to Paris - apparently every single one of the toilets on the airplane stopped working about an hour and twenty minutes before we landed. This required the flight attendants to rather reluctantly make this unique announcemnt: "We would appreciate it if you would limit your fluid intake so that we do not have to land the plane before arriving in Paris."

It was rather funny.

The flight from Paris to Vienna was rather uneventful, as was the metro ride from the airport to my hotel. And may I just say that I'm kind of awesome when it comes to navigating metro lines. I did have some trouble finding the hotel since the map I printed from Google had two streets that were named the same when they really were named two different things. And the walking directions it had me take were completely unnecessary and out of the way. But I finally made it here:

It's a very nice hotel, typical European style. After I arrived, settled in and checked my email I grabbed a quick falafel from a cart and wandered around the neighborhood a bit and people-watched. Soon though, my tiredness was far too overwhelming and I retreated back to the hotel for a hot shower and some shut eye.

Today I awoke with the plans to meet with our Austrian distributor:

I ended up being late, however, as even though I updated my phone to the proper time zone, apparently Daylight Savings Time wasn't taken into account! And of course the hotel didn't have a clock in the room. Thankfully Michaela (who I was meeting) was very gracious and understanding.

We ended up having a lovely day visiting and chatting. Michaela was the only one in the office that spoke English well, so I only briefly met the rest of the staff. Everyone was very nice and welcoming, and apologized for not speaking English. To which I replied, "That's alright, the only German I know is 'Ich spreche kein Deutsch.' and 'Was ist los.'" So they were a lot better off than I was, and this now marks the second business trip that I've been on where I wished I spoke German!

I spent the better part of the day at Wien Schall, so when I returned to the hotel, I decided to do some sightseeing that was within walking distance. Luckily, the Schönbrunn Palace was just around the corner. What a gorgeous place it was! The palace, an old imperial summer residence, was just outstanding, and the gardens that surround it were gorgeous. There were also many joggers around the gardens, and I just thought, how awesome would it be to live in a place where your daily jogging routine takes you through a piece of history dating from the 15th century?

Here are some pictures!

Das Palmenhaus - The Palm House

Schönbrunn Palace

That's all for now, but rest assured that more will be on the way - I'll probably post them on Facebook at some point.

Tomorrow I'm off to Bratislava and am currently debating whether to take a scenic boat ride down the Danube or take the train. Decisions, decisions...