Airplane | What Up, Vienna?

6Jul/101

paris, franzen style!

Alex was in Chicago for the week at a conference. What was a hip, happenin', globe-trottin' girl to do? Go to Paris for the weekend to see her old college buddy Zachary Franzen, naturally. (Go Badgers.)

We should win an award in holding-the-camera-yourself picture taking.

Now, I had never been to Paris. So I was really looking forward to wine, wine, cheese, wine, cheese and some more wine. However, my host Zach is a bit more of a Coke, Coke, McDonald's, Coke, McDonald's and some more Coke kind of a guy. In retrospect, perhaps, I should have set some more realistic expectations.

I got in earlyish on a Friday afternoon. For that evening, Zach had suggested going to a friend's restaurant to meet a couple people. Sounds good to me! However, we get to the restaurant and a couple of Zach's amis seemed to have multiplied to ten or so of them. And all of these Frenchies agreed upon two things: They liked to drink Heineken. And they really, really loved hamburgers. They loved hamburgers so much, in fact, that they ordered a hamburger for me. They said, "Why would you want wine and cheese and pate? This is the best hamburger in Paris!" Okay, mon frère, I is from a little place called the United States of WEKNOWBURGERS and, even though your country has some of the best goddamned food in the world, something being the so-called best hamburger in Paris, even if it is a 100% true statement, probably means very little. I should just end this paragraph here because you know how it ends. I didn't get wine, cheese or pate. I got a mediocre hamburger. I know you already guessed that. But I had to continue the paragraph so I could tell you everybody ate their burgers with knives and forks. MON DIEU!

The next morning, Zach already had plans to take part in something called the Beret and Baguette Bike Ride.

Zach getting all suited up for the big "Berets and Baguettes" bike ride around Paris today.

The startpoint of the ride was at the Eiffel Tower. I was sans bike so we picked me up a fancy CityBike right outside of our apartment. CityBikes are bike rentals you can find in many, many cities in Europe. The bikes are sometimes crappy but completely rideable when needed. It was a great early morning adventure to bike through the streets of Paris to the Eiffel Tower. When I got there I rewarded myself with pastry. Note the bereted boys in the background.

MMMMmmm. Nothing like a little pain au chocolat in front of the Eiffel Tower on a Saturday morning.

This bike wins.

After a couple hours of hanging out with the bereted and baguetted biking folks gathering for their ride, I was getting a bit antsy. It was almost 10am and I hadn't had a glass of wine yet! Thank god, my new best friend Chris showed up to remedy that. Well, this was really the first time we met but it was pretty much instant bestfrienditude. So I bid Zachary Franzen adieu, then Chris and I ventured off into the city to stir up some shit.

We started off on a mission to find me a hoodie as I made the mistake of dressing lightly for the chilly morning. Then, we got a tad sidetracked with some cafe coffee drinking and crepe eating. Next, our wanderings took us out amongst throngs of tourists. The famous Notre Dame Cathedral was just right across the way but the line to get in was a couple blocks long. So I was going to just have to be content with some nice exterior photos.

Christopher is happy to be amongst tourists in front of Notre Dame!

My new partner-in-crime Chris was not having that though as he decided to eff that line and cut in front of everybody. Even though it seems kind of dickish, it actually is a very European thing to do to completely eschew a line. I have been cut in front of many a time waiting in line for something. Rather, I have elbowchecked many a person trying to cut in line in front of me many a time. Nobody elbowchecked us though and we strode right on through. Suckas.

Shhhh. There is a man in a robe talking about stuff.

Well, Chris is a man-about-town and he, unfortunately, had to leave me to do some of his requisite about-towning. He pointed me in the direction of a worthwhile walking-around area and we parted ways. At this point, it was just before lunchtime and I really needed to make up for the burger fiasco from the night previous. I came upon a pretty nice little area with tiny streets lined with bistros. I would tell you what this area was called, but my gin-soaked memory fails me. Now, choosing a restaurant for what is your only lunch for your short Parisian weekend involves a lot of discerning assessment. After circling a good five block radius, I got really good foodie vibes from a certain establishment. The prix fixe menu looked promising and the decor was nice and didn't seem forced. It was suspiciously empty however that turned out to be just because it was a little early yet. Just after I was seated and working on my wine and olives, the place started to really fill up. I spent the next two hours there eating and drinking. To start, I had the aforementioned olives, then some amazing house-made pate and onion confit, followed by sausage and pommes frites, and finished off with this insane chestnut chocolate pudding whipped cream concoction. It was so fantastic that after every bite of food and drink of wine, I just wanted to high five somebody.

Excuse the olive pits, please.

Merlot, pommes frites, pork sausage and some crazy good mustardy lemony buttery sauce.

Chestnut custard, chocolate and cream for dessert. Ridiculous good.

I met up with Zachary later that day and we spent the rest of our evening rabblerousing our hearts out. We hit a houseparty thrown by another American ex-pat where I met more Americans than I have in my entire time in Vienna. Chris was also in attendance as well as another one of my new Parisian homeboys, Kyle. After hours of imbibing on the things kids worldwide imbibe upon at house parties such as this one, we caught the last Metro train home and called it a night.

Yeah, get those back teeth real good, Kyle.

The next morning, before we had to Le Metro it to the airport, Zach and I tried to get in a bit more sightseeing in the few hours we had left. We killed two birds with one stone and headed over to the Champs-Élysées which conveniently ends with the Arc de Triomphe.

Someone significant standing in front of something significant.

By the skin of our teeth, we made it to Charles De Gaulle in time for my flight. For a few moments, it seemed like Volcano Eyjafjallajokull aka Volcano I'manasshole was looking to keep me in gay Paree for one more night. Every single other flight to Vienna had been cancelled up to that point. I could not have that. When I am in the direction of leaving somewhere, I want to keep heading in that direction. Thankfully, Mr. Volcano decided to do me a solid and allowed my plane clearance to take off.

Au Revoir, France!

Tagged as: airplane, airport, bicycle, blogsherpa, culture, drinking, food, france, friends, paris, sightseeing, travel, trips, weather, zach franzen 1 Comment

10Apr/103

i need a raincheck, england (part one)

One week before I was to leave for London to meet Alex, on my way out the door of my apartment building to meet my trainer at the gym CRASHBANGBOOM my back went out. As I was crumpled on the ground in the lobby, I thought, "Wow, it is indeed like your back has done gone out. What an apt phrase that is!" I somehow managed to gather myself up enough to hobble up the stairs back to my apartment. After a grueling 24 hours, I got my hands on (read: prescribed by my doctor) some pain pills and muscle relaxers which brought me back to the land of the living. Now, I just had one week to recuperate before flying to London. That's possible, right? Right? Come to find out, no, it really is not.

Armed with my drugs (read: PRESCRIBED drugs) and a request for a wheelchair, I headed to LAX Saturday evening. Now, reserving a wheelchair was something I had never done before. And it was really surprisingly easy to do (just call your airline a few days before your flight), completely free (excluding a tip which is up to your discretion) and totally worthwhile. After checking in, I was directed to wait in a little cordoned off disabled person's corral where at about five minutes before my flight was about to board, I was picked up by my "driver." I don't want to say it was worth throwing out my back to have the opportunity to have an excuse to be wheelchaired at lightning speed through the airport in front of every line through secret doors directly to my seat on the plane, but it was definitely the silver lining of the week.

The flight was a Vicodin, Soma and a glass of white wine induced blur. And when we finally did get to London, my brain didn't even necessarily put together that my wheelchair reservation included a wheelchairing through Heathrow. It was a nice and welcome surprise. I was picked up by an Ali G sounding youngster who went above and beyond his duties. He whizzed me through the miles-long airport, through customs, got my luggage, brought me to an ATM, helped me purchase the right train ticket to get into London and dropped me off on the bench to wait for it. And he refused to take a tip which he greatly deserved. So Booyakasha and Respek to you, young man. Thank you.

I made my way to our hotel and crashed in the room. I was still in a pretty deep drug-fueled, jet-lagged travel coma when Alex arrived a few hours later. That night was uneventful. Some dinner was involved. More sleeping ensued. Let me just point out here that this was my first ever trip to London, England or anywhere in the United Kingdom for that matter. We had three days in London and I was still naively hopeful that I could get some touristy sightseeing checked off my list in the morning after a good night's sleep.

Double-decker bus. Check. Driving on the left side of the road. Check. Trafalgar Square in the background. Oh, you betcha. Check!

Double-decker bus. Check. Driving on the left side of the road. Check. Trafalgar Square in the background. Oh, yah, you betcha, we're in London!

Our hotel was really in a great location right on Trafalgar Square. Jetlag woke me up pretty early. When Alex roused, we made our way outside to go track down a nice full English breakfast. We surprisingly had a very difficult time finding a decent place to eat in our area. It was a bit before 8am and it seemed a lot of places weren't open yet. From this situation, one could surmise that London isn't as crazy about breakfast as we are in the States apparently. Finally, we had to settle on this chain that was right next to our hotel. I don't know if it was just an off day for this place, but they appeared to be opening their doors at the same time as they were receiving deliveries for the day and didn't seem to have any sort of back loading dock type entrance. So as we entered the restaurant, we were followed by carts of groceries. Unfortunately, it seemed that we beat the arrival of the potato truck so we were unable to have hash browns. We should have taken that as a warning sign for the quality that was to come. The breakfast was cold and blah. The coffee tasted like burnt dirt. However, I am smart enough not to judge the whole of England on this shitty franchise's version of their breakfast. Better breakfasts were to come.

After that bold jaunt through our temporary neighborhood, I spent the rest of the day convalescing in bed. However, that night we had reservations at Gordon Ramsey's Boxwood Cafe and I refused to miss it. It ended up being well worth it. We had their Monday Supper which was three courses with an amuse-bouche to start. I can't remember everything I had but I do remember I chose a Shepherd's Pie as the entree. The food was all fantastic. And my body managed to even keep it together until the middle of the second and third course. I popped some pills and carried on. I'm a star!

The sum of my sightseeing these three days were as follows: Seeing Buckingham palace on the way to the Gordon Ramsey restaurant. Well, let me say first Alex pointed the palace out to me and then a few blocks later, I see a fancy building and I ask the cab driver what it is and he answers, "Why, that's Buckingham Palace." This makes me wonder how much of what Alex says is really the truth. We also went to the National Musuem in Trafalgar Square. And we ate a great English breakfast in a crypt below a cathedral. That was pretty awesome. So that was it. The rest of my time I spent on the bed watching BBC which really ain't nothing to shake a stick at. BBC is great hotel TV watching.

We just went to a museum. We're so smart now!

Stay tuned for Part Two of our adventures...

Tagged as: airplane, airport, blogsherpa, customer service, england, hotel, london, pitfalls, sick, sightseeing, train, travel, united kingdom 3 Comments

30Sep/094

word of the day is rechnung

That means check, by the way. I have proudly used it twice today. And I'm thinking about going to sit down at a cafe again just so I can drop it thrice.

Enough about that though. I promised I would tell you about my first few days in Vienna and I am now going to deliver.

I made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. My bff Jim Hamilton parked the car and helped me lug in my suitcases. I had one large suitcase which the night before Jim and my friend Cesar lifted and declared the weight to be around 35 pounds IF THAT. They scoffed at the idea that the suitcase was anywhere near the 50 pound maximum. Even though I trusted their supreme non-accredited weight-guessing skills, I brought a bag just in case some clothes would have to be removed to shave off a few pounds. Well, I did not have to do that. However, it was closer to me having to do that than the suitcase weighing in anywhere near 35 pounds. It was 47 pounds and change. Nice, gentlemen. I hope this comedy thing works out for you because your hopes of a lucrative career in state fair weight guessing have just been dashed. I'm writing strongly-worded letters on your... what's the opposite of behalf?

So the LAX to DC flight was mostly uneventful. I had my middle seat switched to an aisle so that was a huge win. I had plans to not fall asleep at all but nature took over and comatosed me for the better part of two hours. I'm glad I got that energy nap because I needed it for the breakneck sprint I had to take in order to make my connecting flight. Well, I had a heavy roller suitcase, bulky laptop bag and a pillow so it was only a sprint relative to that. It was more like a breathing-hard, long-strided shuffle wherein after I got off the shuttle to the correct concourse I alternated between looking at what time it was on my iPhone and counting off the gates as I got closer. I hoped to be able to get something to eat and go to the bathroom. I was lucky to make it on the plane. My luck ended though when I found myself in a middle seat on a nine-hour flight. I think somebody's bad karma must have gotten mixed up with my great person karma. I was sandwiched in between a young nomadic fellow who had a Fulbright scholarship to teach English just outside of Vienna and a veteran of the State Department who has lived in a litany of countries some of which I'm pretty sure she just made up. In between visiting with my plane pals and eating and drinking and Xanax pill taking, I probably slept all of 90 minutes. That Xanax was a waste. Sure it made me not scared about falling in to the ocean but it did not render me unconscious as I had envisioned. I think on the next flight we might have to take my two beers and a Xanax on a full stomach plan up a notch. Maybe three beers, two Xanax and I don't eat for 48 hours beforehand? I'll try it and report back.

So the flight gets in to Vienna about 40 minutes early. I managed to follow the little pictures of suitcases to the passport line to the baggage claim and I even figured out which carousel my bags were on. However, I realized for the first time in my entire life... I had to get one of those cart things. Lordy, I am stumped. Why, the instructions to extricate one of these carts appears to be in a foreign language. As I stood there mouth agape looking lost, a fine young airport employee came to my aid and told me I needed Euros.

"Uhhh, I don't have any!!"

He points to the currency exchange behind me.

So I go to the counter and plop down my $30 and change I have in American. The Frau hands me what look likes Monopoly money and some doubloons. I walk back over to my new best friend and just held out the money to him my eyes pleading help me. He took it from there and soon I had my cart. Carts are fun! Why didn't I know this before? Suddenly it was a party. I got my bags and grand prixed my cart out through customs to the very, very happy open arms of Alexander Platt!! Three weeks and five days apart is way too long. It won't be happening again.

Umm, I know I said I'd tell you about my first coupla days in Vienna. I didn't really get that far. I'm a jerk. Stay tuned. I'll fill you in, I promise.