Short days and even shorter nights

Greetings from Graz! Three flights, two S-Bahns, and two trains later... my body is a little confused as to what time it ought to be. It's nearly 5:00 pm here, but all of Tuesday lasted a matter of hours since I lost three hours on the flight from Seattle to Toronto and another six between Toronto and Frankfurt. Dinner (woohoo, airplane food- see pics) and breakfast (more airplane food!) were on each side of an hour or so of pseudo-sleep.

The flights themselves were relatively uneventful. The movies in the seat kept me from going stir-crazy on the first two flights. On the last flight, Frankfurt-Vienna, I worked on grammar and talked to the man next to me. BTW, Lufthanse has great breakfasts- Muslix with a kinda ultra-runny yogurt, and that for just an hour long flight!

The real adventure began when I got to Vienna. Two rather large duffel bags + backpack + small duffel- and they were doing construction around the "mitte" transit station. I made it through the first half of ticket buying in German, and then it broke down and I started apologizing in English (generally they forgive you when they realize just how bad you are at German). Turns out I had to grab the underground light rail to the main train station. Got on the correct train with help from a nice lady who grabbed a bag for me, confirmed that I was on the right train, and then told me not to worry about my ticket because I was four stops away from the train station. I thought I saw a ticket checker get on at one of the stops, so I bailed and waited for the next train. I was still thinking of ways to explain that I hadn't realized that I needed to buy a ticket before getting on the train when I arrived at the Bahnhof.

Trains relax me. An older gent insisted on helping me load my bags ('giv mir die große') and I was shortly glued to the scenery passing my window. I realized that it might have been cheaper with the cost of the two train tickets to just fly directly to Graz, but the scenery on the train was totally worth it!

Anyhoo, here I am waiting for pick-up. sorry for the long post!