Living in the Now: "Austria does not have Kangaroos"

That's what the t-shirts said at the airport gift shops. No joke.

Apologies in advance for this very short ramble...

It has been a few days without internet access and maybe that is good for me. I am getting pretty tired and am definitely ready to head home and see my family and my puppy! We did, though, have a fantastic (but short) time in Austria. For starters, we flew from Berlin to Linz (Austria) via Munich but our layover time was only about 45 minutes and our flight to Munich was 10-15minutes late as is. My silly travel agent (love you mum!) was truly optimistic but we missed our flight by some time and we had to wait about 5 or 6 hours for the next flight. It was unfortunate because we were going to sight see for that day, too!

Nonetheless, we were picked up at 7:30pm at night by Hermann and Lore and they were such great hosts. Hermann took us to his good friend Ingrid's apartment which is in the most amazing location in Linz. It's right "downtown" and near everything and you couldn't buy a place nicer than this and in this prime location. After her husband passed, Ingrid was able to keep their apartment that was next to and part of the major bank beside it, which her husband was the director of. Anyway, it worked out really well for us! Ingrid was an above and beyond host preparing meals for us and offering up a bed to each of us. We are so greatful to have met her and stayed with her.

Hermann showed us around Linz that night and took us for a beer but of course, us asians not drinking... had some apfel schorle. The next day we walked around Linz and saw a lot of great things and got a great history update from Hermann. We also visited his mother some of the places he lived in and worked at and also drove out to see the mountains at Bad Ischl. Zee really wanted to see them so they planned the afternoon for us to go out there.

The one thing about Austria that I noticed is they love their sweets. We had cake or krapfen (? donuts) that are in season right now and they were amazing but I had my fill all in one day! We had a great taste of Austrian food in Linz. The next morning we were accompanied and seen off at the train station where we journeyed to Vienna.

Our hotel was pretty close to walk to from the West Bahnhof in Vienna and so, that worked out really well too. We couldn't check in because we got to the hotel so early so we just left our bags there and started walking to town. Boy, did we walk. We walked all over the place visiting the main palace, museums, the Stephansdom, Karlsplatz and the Belvedere Museum. It was a lot of walking in 7 hours and so we crashed pretty hard at our hotel last night.

It was a quick tour of Linz and Vienna and definitely only a taste and I will be sure to make plans to re-visit both cities in more detail. For now, though, I am ready to come home and our journey starts today as we wait at the Vienna airport to head to Brussels. We will meet up with Phil from the men's team who is on our same flight tomorrow morning for Toronto. We'll probably have a good dinner in Belgium and head to bed!