I arrived in Vienna last night, with something of a rough start. In Paris, the flight from Boston was 15 minutes late, and for whatever reason they parked the plane maybe a mile from the terminal – the terminal appeared as if it was a tourist sight in the distance. So we took a bus along a few runways and through loading docks and the back corners of Charles De Gaulle airport. Meaning, I missed my connecting flight to Vienna.
So after some searching about I found the right desk (the “Correspondence” desk) to make the new boarding pass. Long story short – insert several dramatic scenes here – sitting at the gate, five hours later, it turns out he wrote me a ticket back to Boston, and not to Vienna. Oh how sweet that would have been to get on the wrong plane and return home, $1,000 poorer for the privilege of five hours at the Paris airport.
But, disaster narrowly-averted, as Bob Weir might say, I got a ticket to the right flight. Of course, I had missed two flights to Vienna while I waited for the flight back to Boston….
Needless to say, my luggage didn’t quite catch up to me until a few hours ago. So this morning, I had breakfast, two meetings, and lunch in the clothes I had been wearing for the past 48 hours. First impressions of Air France are not overly complimentary.
Most amazing observation yet, on this first trip to Europe: The dogs here understand German!! In fact, they understand it orders of magnitude better than me! Nurture over nature, or Viennese dogs are smarter than Notio – we report, you decide.
I’m staying at the Hotel Europa, on Kartnerstrasse, which is a very nice shopping eating pedestrian promenade boulevard. Uploaded a photo from there last night (lots of street musicians everywhere) and another photo from an open-air market where I got a quick bite to eat on the way to retrieve my luggage.
My presentation is tomorrow at 9 AM, and then I can enjoy the rest of the conference.
September 13, 2005