Arrival in Vienna

The trip here was not without hassle.

Route: OKC – Dulles – Frankfurt – Vienna. When I got to DC, the plane was delayed. We finally left about 90 minutes late but made up an hour in the air. End result: a mad dash through Frankfurt, me barely arriving at the gate on time. But I made it. Got an emergency row seat on the flight to Vienna, so lots of legroom.

B picked me up. We were happy to see each other again. It's only been about seven weeks since we last saw each other, a shorter than usual separation, but still.

Weather: a bit hot and a bit steamy. Not Oklahoma hot and steamy, but you could feel it.

Driving home, we saw an exotic car up ahead---Lamborghini, I think. Fly yellow in color. Convertible. Nothing too unusual about that here, except B noticed: "Shit, that's someone learning to drive!“ Sure enough, we saw the prominent L sticker which means "learner,“ along with the URL for the driving school painted on the rear. Wish I'd had my camera handy...

After stowing my gear, we took a walk to a local restaurant. Sat out back in the shade of a huge tree, a nice cool breeze blowing. Had nice catch-up talk along with some garlic creme soup, cordon bleu, and french fries.

Back home for a nap, then out again to a local heurige (wine tavern) where we picked up five bottles of the house white, and sat there sipping a glass in the courtyard.

Then a walk into the vineyards, maybe a mile or so. There's a little cemetery we pass along this path, but we've never gone in. This time we stopped to take a look inside. There were a few people quiety tending the graves, almost all of which are in nice shape---unlike, say, some of the graves at the massive Central Cemetery, some of which are hundreds of years older than the graves here. After a while, you just kind of run out of descendents and your grave falls into disrepair.

B thought maybe famous music-composing guy Gustav Mahler was buried here, but if so we never found his grave. This graveyard is full of expensive monuments and even has an elevated portion, kind of a terrace where the REAL big shots are buried. Even in death, these people want to throw their weight around.

If human beings can ever stop saying, "Hey, look at ME!“ long enough to actually be human, it'll be some kind of miracle.

There was a tiny heurige up in the vineyards, a new one B discovered recently. Unlike some of the monstrous heuriger (all trying to out-do each other) this one was more old-school...a tiny building where the food was laid out, with a table or two inside. The majority of the tables were outside, set along the gentle slope of the vineyard. We could see Vienna far below and it was the quinessential Viennese experience...