Thought it was about time I tried to sit down and actually do an update! But where to start.......the flights, I guess. The flight from Sydney to Taipei felt SO long - we boarded the plane and then had to wait for an hour so I actually dozed off and missed the take off! It felt like we had already flown forever and we were actually still in Australia flying over Darwin (hit quite a rough patch of turbulance but only for a few minutes).....flew over Indonesia and the Phillipines and then up to Taiwan from there. Our flight was late coming in, of course, so I didnt have much of a wait there until the flight to Vienna, and that flight (even though much longer) actually went by quite fast, probably thanks to my trusty sleeping tablet! I couldn't see a thing when we were landing, it was SO foggy and stayed that way for the entire day.
I made it through the airport by following everybody else and was most impressed with myself that I managed to change some Euro notes into coins (thanks SO much for those Katta!) so I could get a trolley thing so I didnt have to carry my pack. Met Josef as I was coming through the customs part of the airport, and had more than one second glance from a number of people at my thongs! The drive from the airport to Mannersdorf was quite creepy actually cause there was fog everywhere and there's a lot of flat land with those thin, tall trees lining the side of the road...reminded me of something out of a movie! The towns here are adorable, they are all so small with little roads, and the houses are so close together. No surprise then that everybody knows each other!
We skipped the party on Friday night, but went to Vienna for the christening on Saturday, which is quite different to how we do them back home - it's actually a special service in the church just generally for family. Of course I didn't understand a word but the priest seemed nice and was getting the kids that were there involved. We all had to file by and draw a cross on the baby's head with our finger. Yup, it was a Catholic church! But it wasn't intense so that was a good thing! Saturday night was the basketball tournament which was fun to watch, and we went out to dinner afterwards but I found that really hard because no one was speaking English so I didn't understand a word.
Yesterday we met Josef's brother and his girlfriend for lunch and then went to this little Christmas market where we stood around and drank the mold wine (hot wine with spices) which I managed one mug of, but after that couldn't drink too much more of it - tastes better than ordinary wine but it is most definitely still wine! We met some more friends there and then went out to get something small to eat and drink some more before we went 'bowling' - just 3 aisles at the back of a local pub and only 9 pins.....but it was heaps of fun, we drank some more beer and had a boys vs girls match which went better than I expected! It was nice cause although most of the night was in German, it was a smaller group of people which makes it not so bad. And we did speak some English here and there....but beers and bowling made for a good night that didn't really matter what language we spoke - laughing is universal!
Planning on heading into Vienna later today and then coming back on Wednesday to hang out with the friends from last night to watch some big soccer game. But right now I'm about to try out my hairdressing skills by attempting to cut Josef's hair....will let you know how that goes!!!!
Miss you guys!!! xxxxxxx
