WELL HELLO THERE WORLD! I AM IN AUSTRIA!

BET YOU DIDN’T SEE THAT ONE COMING.

 

But yeah, this is my first post after being officially on my exchange! feels weird and kind of surreal that I’m actually here!!

but before i get to all that stuff, I’m sure everyone wants a detailed description of how my travel to Austria went?! And if you don’t, then I suggest you stop reading.

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I flew out of Calgary Alberta at 8:15pm on the 17th. Me and my dad got to the airport around 5:30. That’s a bit of a long wait.

But wait I did, considering I didn’t have much choice in the matter. I spent my time finishing “The Office” on netflix, because I don’t think I could handle being away for months and not seeing how everything ended.

I also had to get my very last Tim Hortons because I don’t think I’ll be able to find one here (I definitely won’t).

I boarded on time, and the plane took off with no worries. It was a pretty full flight, but there were some open spots available. I was sitting next to a couple, and something happened or something, but I guess there was some water dripping down the side of the inside of the plane and got the lady wet? That doesn’t make sense, but I wasn’t really paying attention to what was happening. Anyways, the couple got bumped up to a different cabin, and I GOT THE WHOLE ROW TO MYSELF. That’s 3 seats baby, all for meeeee. And I was planning on using them ALL.

to not sleep at all.

I don’t get it. The flight was about 8 hours, and I had lots of room to spread out and be comfortable, and I probably only slept for about 45 minutes or so. I was very unimpressed with myself.

And by the way, British Airways is super cool to travel with. For 1, their TVs have remotes, and their windows don’t have screens to pull down, they have a fade feature that dims the window to black. SCIENCE.

I also love how tiny the cans they give you are. They’re so mini and cute!

 

So that flight was kind of a bust when it came to rest, but there was nothing to be done about it.

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When I got off the plane in London Heathrow, I had to transfer terminals in order to catch my connection. However, it took me several minutes to find which terminal.

There was 13 boards in total, and they switched for 13 more every 20 seconds or so. So it took me quite a while to find my flight information. But once Ii did, I headed downstairs to catch the terminal shuttle.  The shuttle was way too long in my opinion. It was about 10 minutes between terminals, and the bus was so crowded it was pretty uncomfortable. But I got there just fine. Once there, I had to stand in a huge line to go through security again.

Once I got through security, I went to the check the boards as to which gate my flight would be leaving from. And it wasn’t available….. It said it would show at 1:30, and my flight was supposed to leave at 2:15, which means it would begin boarding at 1:45. Terminal 3 is a big place – 43 gates or something like that, and it stressed me out that I didn’t have that much time to find the gate. Thankfully, the gate it ended up being was pretty close to the cafeteria place.

I grabbed some lunch and some snacks and such to through in my backpack for later, and then got onto my plane to Vienna. I lucked out on this flight as well, and the middle seat in my row was empty, so me and them man at the window shared the seat and put things on it  It was on this flight that I made a friend!

This cute little girl was being a little fussy and loud, and you could tell she wasn’t feeling very well. She was yawning a bunch, so you could tell she was tired. But she was having a hard time settling down. And I had the remedy! I leaned over and said “Hey little miss, do you like to color?” and she nodded. So I grabbed my coloring book and pencil crayons out of my backpack and gave them to her. She really enjoyed it, and helped her settle down for a while.

That flight was also very restless, so I was getting pretty tired. By the time I landed in Vienna, I had been awake for over 24 hours, excluding my 45ish minute nap in the plane.

But now was the hard part. Getting from Vienna to Steyr.

I first had to collect my luggage, which thankfully made it all the way through. And then I had to go through customs. This was going to be a little touch and go for me, because I am traveling on a student visa, and I was worried that getting through customs was going to take a while. And it took about 1 minute. So I worried for nothing.

And now I have to get on the train. That’s not scary at all.

I bought my ticket from the airport to steyr, with a change over in a small town bout 20 minutes from steyr. But the train I needed was leaving the airport in about 7 minutes, so I rushed to find my platform. When the train pulled up, my heart sank a little. The train is raied from the platform, so you have to lift your luggage up some stairs into the train. I was traveling with 2 large suitcases, 1 smaller suitcase, and my backpack. I had a lot of things to lift up those stairs. And I was scared of holding someone up or the train leaving while i tried to pick up my second suitcase, or someone taking my luggage that I wasn’t holding as I tried to load the other. Thankfully, there was a train conductor at the top of the stairs who helped pull my luggage onto the train. I found an empty compartment and shoved everything in. I ended up sharing the compartment initially with an American girl on exchange as well. She was in Spain on exchange but had come to visit a friend living in Austria. What are the chances?

She got off 1 stop later, and 3 other people came into my compartment. A man helped my lift my luggage off the floor and onto the overhead racks – mostly so he had room to sit down haha. He was very kind, and asked me where I was going. When I said St. Valentine, he told me that was 2 stops after the one he and his wife were getting off at, and he would help bring my luggage down from the racks before they got off. When they did leave, I told him I would be fine, so he didn’t have to. I also shared the compartment with an older girl traveling alone, who got off at the stop before mine. Once the compartment was empty apart from the 2 of us, she asked me about where I was from, and what I was doing in Austria. She was really nice too, and offered to help me take down my luggage as well, which I declined. She told me she was planning on doing an exchange in Australia, which was kind of cool!

In St. Valentine, I had to get my luggage down the steps again. There was a man leaving the train as well who helped me get my luggage down, which was super nice! But I was stressed again because my connecting train was leaving in 5 minutes, and it was on a different platform. So I had to figure out where to go to get to my connection. Thankfully I did and made it to the Steyr trainstation. At the trainstation pltform in steyr, I was met by Andrea, a girl from the university acting as my “buddy” to help move me in and such. I just about cried for joy when she said “My car is parked just over there” – I was really concerned that we would have to take the bus to my apartment, and I was not looking forward to hauling my luggage onto a bus! She drove me to my “flat” and helped my get my luggage inside. She also met my roommates and chatted for a bit. She is pretty cool, and is a part-time student like me (kind of). She’s writing her Bachelor Thesis for marketing, and is super nice!

After Andrea left, I had to shower. Because I felt (and probably smelt) absolutely disgusting. Plus there was no way I could sleep feeling that gross, no matter how tired I was.

And then came bed time. Finally.

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A bit of a rollercoaster, I would say. Those 2 days both felt really long, and really short all at the same time. But I’ll tell you that I haven’t slept that well in a while.

And the city is beautiful and my room is really nice and my 2 roommates are kind.

It’s a good thing I bought that extra food in London, because I was starving when I woke up.

In other news, somehow I broke a toe on my right foot. I am truly talented.

Also, my suitcases gave me some wicked calluses on my hands from pulling them around so much (especially down the cobblestone roads!)

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Day oneish completed. What a day, indeed.

 

emma.k