I'll Take a De-Caf

Chalk up my first foreign friend in this, my second European excursion. On my flight to Vienna, I happen to sit next to a delightful Swedish man and we talked for much of the nine hour plane ride. I knew things were going good when he asked another passenger (an American) where row 30 was in German, and I answered back to him in that wonderful language. “Drei-zig ist hier.” Ahh, feels just like the old times. I’ve still got it. Pigeon-German is my specialty.

Anyway, we sat down and got to chatting. He is originally from Sweden, but has lived in Vienna, Paris, New York and various other important cities all his life. Currently he is an antique dealer in Manhattan (and has sold merchandise to Brad Pitt {who is charming and down to earth}, Whoopi Goldberg {a personal friend}, Barbara Streisand {a bitch}, Robert de Niro {unpleasant}, and Harrison Ford {a micro-managing perfectionist}). We talked about history, Lafayette, politics, music, theatre, French wines, yachting, etc. (Let it be known that I had to bullshit my way through half of our conversations. I might like wine, and I can tell a good wine from a bad wine, but that’s about it. And yachting? Please. Not all Trinity grads have been yachting. But he doesn’t know that.). Well, this trip has started wonderfully!

Then my luck ran out. Dammit. This was bound to happen. I got out of the airport, searched for the city trains, and eventually found my way to the center of Vienna… kind of. First, I got lost for about two and a half hours. It seems that in my attempt to get to the city center, I walked in the completely wrong direction. Like, the exact opposite of correct. After multiple “do you speak English?” (In German, of course. I just don’t know how to spell “Sprechen zie English” {that might be right}) queries, I finally found my way there. A wonderful city. Very charming. Not touristy like Prague, yet still has that old city feel. However, I found that I don’t quite have my walking legs anymore and I had to sit down rather often. The problem with that, however, is that whenever I want to sit down I have to sit at a café (it’s too cold to sit outside). That means I have to order a drink. Four cups of coffee and two cappuccinos later, compounded by not sleeping for 26+ hours, I am about to have a friggin’ heart attack. Totally tweaking out over here. My ears are ringing and my legs are quivering (I don’t know if that’s the caffeine or the exercise). Plus, I am burning through money faster than MC Hammer circa 1991. In a vain attempt to remedy the situation, I have barricaded myself in an airport bar where I am drinking terrible Austrian red wine (they are known for their whites apparently. My bad.). Let’s see how long I can keep this up.

Oh, and to top it off, I went to re-load my cell phone with minutes at a place here and ended up accidentally buying an Austrian SIM card. Bottom line, I wasted about 10 euros or so for no reason whatsoever. Fantastic. I’m an idiot. Then the battery died. It took a piece of my soul with it.

No matter. My flight to Berlin is in a few hours and I my blood sugar will hopefully have mellowed out by then. Another glass of the red please.

Cheers,
Matt