Austria trip day one
Today was a travel day, but it's worth describing anyway. This isn't as eloquent or as evocative as I'd like it to be, but I've been awake for god knows how long and I think I can cut myself a break.
We took a taxi to Logan around 6pm EST. Our taxi driver juggled a cell phone, a Blackberry, and a CB radio all at the same time while he was driving us there. The names he mentioned were 'Mike" and "Tiny", which made it sound a little like he was part of some kind of Forties taxi-based crime syndicate.
The security line was the longest I'd ever seen it; everything was so jammed up that people were at risk of missing their flights, and the staff had to pick people out by flight number to bring them through in time.
I wore my new boots, which may or may not have been a good decision. They are slower than is ideal to take off and put on.
I wasn't anxious going through security, which surprised me -- though not unpleasantly. Little signs are popping up everywhere that I'm just better.
Our seats were near the front of coach, but we didn't have windows. My family was across one row on the left, and then I was in the aisle on the right next to two strangers. One was an unremarkable-looking man who kept his earbuds in for the entire flight, and the other was a male-looking Asian person of somewhat indeterminate gender who had silky black hair down to their ass, numerous piercings (some of which were stretched), and Doc Martens. They and I must have made an amusing contrast sitting next to one another, given that both of us had a gender-nonconforming sort of an appearance but they were clothed very dramatically and I was wearing the good old button-down and jeans uniform.
The first flight was from Logan to Heathrow. (That's Boston to London, for those of you who aren't familiar with airports.) It lasted about seven hours. I spent the first hour adjusting to the plane, the second hour futzing around on my computer, the third hour having a minor emotional meltdown over writing -- more about that later -- and the remaining hours playing Scrabble with dad, recovering from crying, and deeply regretting the fact that I cannot sleep on planes.
I wish I'd thanked the guy sitting next to me for putting up with my crying. He definitely noticed, but he didn't say anything. He was pretty chill about the whole thing.
The entire Logan-Heathrow flight experience was disorienting, almost surreal. I couldn't see any windows, and after we'd taken off we stopped accelerating and there was no turbulence. I felt disconnected from time and space. That plane could have been buried underground or being nuzzled by sharks at the bottom of the ocean or balanced very cautiously on the top of the Empire State Building and I would not have been able to tell the difference. It was a little like being on a movie set, a big, can-shaped movie set lined with seats, one that you know is meant to give the sense you're in the air but doesn't quite achieve it.
When we arrived in London, it was about 8:30 or 9:00 in the morning. It felt like three in the morning. I'd reached that point of exhaustion one often reaches at sleepover parties rife with stimulus where one is so tired that the tiredness ruptures like plastic wrap being stabbed with a knife and doesn't really register as tiredness any more and one becomes uncontrollably and unpleasantly euphoric. The strangest things were charming.
We went through security a second time, because, I suppose, the British air system doesn't trust the security protocols in other countries. At the recombobulation area after the X-ray machines, there was a panel set around waist height with buttons with faces on them arranged from sad to happy so that travelers could rate their security experience.
We sat around in the American Airlines Admiral's Lounge for a while at Heathrow. I ate more pastries than was probably wise. I was hungry, and they were free, but they didn't taste all that great.
The second leg of the flight was from Heathrow to the Vienna International Airport. We took a bus to the plane and climbed stairs on wheels up into it. I don't know if I'd ever done that before. I don't know if I'd ever even set foot on airport tarmac before.
While we were boarding the plane and stowing our carry-ons, this tinkly pretentious sort of waltz music piped in through the speakers. All of the flight attendants were cheery and British, which made me feel even more surly and American than I had before.
During that flight, which lasted about two hours, the sleep-deprived euphoria faded and my body suddenly remembered that sitting for hours at a time when I'm supposed to be horizontal and unconscious typically makes me feel like shit.
I did not quite fall asleep all the way at any point during the flight.
When we got to Austria, I didn't really care for a while. We took a taxi to the apartment. I saw some things out the window that intrigued me, including large industrial something in the distance, lots of graffiti, and what looked like very diverse architecture. It looks like Vienna has a lot in it worth seeing.
The apartment we're staying in is on the second floor (that's the third floor in the U.S.). It's much larger than I expected. Everything is oddly proportioned in a somehow European way: the toilet seats are thin and flat, the furniture is low, and the beds are very very hard with very very soft pillows.
We went food-shopping at a little place down the street from the apartment. I felt like I was going to pass out, but I didn't, and we got bread and Nutella and ravioli and various other edible things. This is the first time I've been somewhere that everything's labeled in another language in, I think, four years. I took a German class a while back, but I've forgotten most of what I learned there, so I can understand maybe ten percent of what I'm reading.
Then we got back and I slept for a while. When I woke up, I felt like death, so the rest of the family went and got dinner without me. I had bread for dinner instead. I'd gotten to the point where I didn't care what I was eating as long as it was food.
That's really all that happened today. It's not that much written down, but it was incredibly tiring. I have some more to talk about, but I'll talk about it when I'm coherent and it's not ass-o-clock in my head.
We took a taxi to Logan around 6pm EST. Our taxi driver juggled a cell phone, a Blackberry, and a CB radio all at the same time while he was driving us there. The names he mentioned were 'Mike" and "Tiny", which made it sound a little like he was part of some kind of Forties taxi-based crime syndicate.
The security line was the longest I'd ever seen it; everything was so jammed up that people were at risk of missing their flights, and the staff had to pick people out by flight number to bring them through in time.
I wore my new boots, which may or may not have been a good decision. They are slower than is ideal to take off and put on.
I wasn't anxious going through security, which surprised me -- though not unpleasantly. Little signs are popping up everywhere that I'm just better.
Our seats were near the front of coach, but we didn't have windows. My family was across one row on the left, and then I was in the aisle on the right next to two strangers. One was an unremarkable-looking man who kept his earbuds in for the entire flight, and the other was a male-looking Asian person of somewhat indeterminate gender who had silky black hair down to their ass, numerous piercings (some of which were stretched), and Doc Martens. They and I must have made an amusing contrast sitting next to one another, given that both of us had a gender-nonconforming sort of an appearance but they were clothed very dramatically and I was wearing the good old button-down and jeans uniform.
The first flight was from Logan to Heathrow. (That's Boston to London, for those of you who aren't familiar with airports.) It lasted about seven hours. I spent the first hour adjusting to the plane, the second hour futzing around on my computer, the third hour having a minor emotional meltdown over writing -- more about that later -- and the remaining hours playing Scrabble with dad, recovering from crying, and deeply regretting the fact that I cannot sleep on planes.
I wish I'd thanked the guy sitting next to me for putting up with my crying. He definitely noticed, but he didn't say anything. He was pretty chill about the whole thing.
The entire Logan-Heathrow flight experience was disorienting, almost surreal. I couldn't see any windows, and after we'd taken off we stopped accelerating and there was no turbulence. I felt disconnected from time and space. That plane could have been buried underground or being nuzzled by sharks at the bottom of the ocean or balanced very cautiously on the top of the Empire State Building and I would not have been able to tell the difference. It was a little like being on a movie set, a big, can-shaped movie set lined with seats, one that you know is meant to give the sense you're in the air but doesn't quite achieve it.
When we arrived in London, it was about 8:30 or 9:00 in the morning. It felt like three in the morning. I'd reached that point of exhaustion one often reaches at sleepover parties rife with stimulus where one is so tired that the tiredness ruptures like plastic wrap being stabbed with a knife and doesn't really register as tiredness any more and one becomes uncontrollably and unpleasantly euphoric. The strangest things were charming.
We went through security a second time, because, I suppose, the British air system doesn't trust the security protocols in other countries. At the recombobulation area after the X-ray machines, there was a panel set around waist height with buttons with faces on them arranged from sad to happy so that travelers could rate their security experience.
We sat around in the American Airlines Admiral's Lounge for a while at Heathrow. I ate more pastries than was probably wise. I was hungry, and they were free, but they didn't taste all that great.
The second leg of the flight was from Heathrow to the Vienna International Airport. We took a bus to the plane and climbed stairs on wheels up into it. I don't know if I'd ever done that before. I don't know if I'd ever even set foot on airport tarmac before.
While we were boarding the plane and stowing our carry-ons, this tinkly pretentious sort of waltz music piped in through the speakers. All of the flight attendants were cheery and British, which made me feel even more surly and American than I had before.
During that flight, which lasted about two hours, the sleep-deprived euphoria faded and my body suddenly remembered that sitting for hours at a time when I'm supposed to be horizontal and unconscious typically makes me feel like shit.
I did not quite fall asleep all the way at any point during the flight.
When we got to Austria, I didn't really care for a while. We took a taxi to the apartment. I saw some things out the window that intrigued me, including large industrial something in the distance, lots of graffiti, and what looked like very diverse architecture. It looks like Vienna has a lot in it worth seeing.
The apartment we're staying in is on the second floor (that's the third floor in the U.S.). It's much larger than I expected. Everything is oddly proportioned in a somehow European way: the toilet seats are thin and flat, the furniture is low, and the beds are very very hard with very very soft pillows.
We went food-shopping at a little place down the street from the apartment. I felt like I was going to pass out, but I didn't, and we got bread and Nutella and ravioli and various other edible things. This is the first time I've been somewhere that everything's labeled in another language in, I think, four years. I took a German class a while back, but I've forgotten most of what I learned there, so I can understand maybe ten percent of what I'm reading.
Then we got back and I slept for a while. When I woke up, I felt like death, so the rest of the family went and got dinner without me. I had bread for dinner instead. I'd gotten to the point where I didn't care what I was eating as long as it was food.
That's really all that happened today. It's not that much written down, but it was incredibly tiring. I have some more to talk about, but I'll talk about it when I'm coherent and it's not ass-o-clock in my head.