It's another odd year, and that means another international vacation to talk about! While I would love to go abroad every year, I'm not Oprah. I have neither the time off or cash flow to make that happen. I choose to do smaller domestic trips in the even years, and blow my entire vacation budget on one big international trip in the odd ones. It balances out pretty well, and until I can find that endless source of Benjamins, it'll do for now.
One of my bestest friends, Brenda, accepted a job with the U.S. Foreign Service last year (remember, I went to visit her in D.C. last summer), and she has since moved to Sarajevo (that's in Bosnia for my less geographically inclined followers). I definitely wanted to visit her before she moves away in 2016, though I'll be honest and say that Bosnia wasn't really high up on my dream travel list. That being said, there are plenty of other cities/countries to see around there, and just getting to see her would be worth it.
It's not a Euro trip without Sweet Nikki G, and this time around we have one additional pretty lady joining in. My friend Megan, who also joined me in D.C., would be tagging along for half of the journey. Now comes the tricky part. Four people, five countries, and vastly differing schedules and commitments. Through a few months of hard logistical finagling, we managed to come up with a schedule that worked for all of us. See if you can follow along:
Days 1-5: Nikki and I in Austria and Slovenia
Days 6-11: Megan, Brenda, Nikki and I in Croatia and Bosnia
Days 12-13: Megan, Nikki and I in Turkey
Days 14-14.5: Nikki and I in Turkey and headed home.
Yeah, this is what happens when you have very fancy friends that have lots of work commitments and various schedules to work around. Oh, and did I mention that Brenda's brother and his girlfriend would ALSO be with us during days 9 and 10? Because, yeah, that also happened.
So, fast forward back to today. Since it's just Nikki and I flying to Europe this time, I really didn't want to drive to Chicago by myself. (St. Louis doesn't have international airport status anymore unless you count Mexico. And I do not.) It's not the drive that bothers me. It's the trying to figure out what to do with my car for two weeks, and the driving home jet lagged by myself parts that I wasn't looking forward to. In comes Amtrak. I've never taken the Amtrak train before, and it seemed like the best possible solution to my problem. No driving, no car to deal with, tickets cheaper than gas, and I can nap/read/meditate if I want to? Yes, please. (For the record, I don't really meditate, but I like that the option was there.)
The one sticking point is that the train ride from St. Louis to Chicago is at least 5 hours, and I really didn't want a 5 hour train ride to precede an 11 hour flight. Not to mention the 2 hour lay over in Istanbul and the final leg to Vienna after that. Blah blah blah. My brother came to the rescue, and I figured out that leaving from Springfield, IL to Chicago would only be three hours. Add in the fact that my brother was in St. Louis right before my trip so he could drive me up to Springfield, and you have the perfect solution. No car needed. (I will end up taking the train all the way back to StL, but that's a whole other story.)
So, Jason brought me to Springfield on Thursday night, I spent Friday catching up on some much needed sleep and spending quality time with my nieces, all leading up to Saturday morning. You know the deal, I don't sleep well the night before a big trip and this time was no exception. I get slightly anxious about traveling when I'm actually already abroad, but I get super worried the 24 hours leading up to it. And add in a curveball of a never before train ride, and yeahhhhh. Long night/early morning.
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| But, check out my sweet packing abilities this time around! The suitcase on the right qualifies as a carry on, though I ended up checking it. |
My brother's girls wanted to come along to see their favorite aunt off on a wild adventure. At least that's what I choose to believe. They may or may not have just wanted to see the train. :) And me being me, I wanted to get there early in case the train was early and to make sure I knew what was up. And of course, I had no reason to get there early. The station was small and all I really had to do was walk through the doors to the platform and hop on the train. I enjoyed some last minute aunt/niece bonding, said my goodbyes and hopped on the train. It wasn't crowded, so I had my pick of seats and had plenty of room for my luggage. An added bonus? There were outlets to charge my phone since I was using it to read with, and I had a great window seat. Though I didn't discover the outlet until halfway through the trip. The seats were comfortable enough for a few hours, and the temperature was tolerable. What wasn't to like?
Pretty much everything else. The kid seated behind me sounded like a Gremlin, and the train creeeeeped along entirely longer than it should have. I mean I likely could have ran alongside it faster than it was moving. We stopped numerous times for 5-10 minutes at a time. And at least one time we started going backwards from the stopped position. I wasn't overly concerned though because I had purposely chosen the early train in the event something like this happened. Our flight wasn't going to leave until 10pm, so I had time for a few delays. But, that still didn't completely work to alleviate my anxiety.
We did have moments of reasonable speeds and picked up numerous passengers along the way, getting so full people were having trouble finding seats. A very nice couple sat next to me, and I spoke at length with the wife about international travel. She told me about all of the trips the two of them take abroad, and I was insanely jealous of their empty-nesting adventures. I hope I continue to have the opportunities to travel for many years to come.
Our train ended up being an hour-ish late, but being unfamiliar with how many stops there were before getting to Union Station, I wasn't able to communicate that with Nikki. She had to wait longer than I would have liked for her to. Fortunately, she's a cool chick and I believe she was okay with it. Hopefully. We spent the rest of the day grabbing lunch with a few of her friends, hanging at Nikki's apartment while she finished packing and did last minute cleaning, and calming my nerves. I just wanted to be on the flight already!
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| Sweet Nikki G! |
People make fun of me for getting to airports early, but dammit, I'd rather be there with time to spare than running around like a damn fool. (Case in point: our connecting flight home from Italy 4 years ago.) And this time it paid off since we didn't have as much time as we thought we would. But, at least it was enough time to grab a bite to eat, stretch as much as humanly possible (I hate long flights) and find our way to our seats, which were in the front row next to the bathrooms.
Hello extra leg room! (This totally sounded like a great idea when Nikki reserved our seats, but what we didn't realize is just how many rude and inconsiderate people would try to use our extra few inches of space to walk from one side of the plane to the other. While we were sleeping. And our feet were up on the wall. Yeah, I'll get to that shortly.)
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| Hello leg room, you sexy beast. |
Turkish Airlines gave us each a little flight kit that consisted of slippers, socks, an eye mask, headphones, ear plugs, toothbrush and toothpaste. It was adorable and came in more handy than you can imagine. Especially since I was sitting directly in front of the TV screen that Never. Turned. Off.
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| This was handy for determining our location in the sky. It was NOT handy when you're trying to catch a few zzzzs. |
We ended up taking off nearly an hour late, and I still have no idea why. The pilots and flight attendants said everything in Turkish, followed quietly by English. But, the speakers weren't the clearest and I could only grab about every fourth word or so. Eventually, the familiar acceleration and lift off said all I needed to know.
The next 11 or so hours were a combination of naps, movies and meals. Some of my favorite things! Just about the time I'd wake up from a snooze, they'd bring around food. And I'm not about to miss out on a meal. Then, I'd be wide awake, so a movie would tire me out enough to start the cycle all over again. I did okay with my seat and only had to get up to go to the bathroom until around 3 hours left of the flight. My back was faring better than I anticipated, but my bum was quickly going numb from lack of use.
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| My Turkish is a bit rusty... |
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| Remote for our TVs. |
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| Didn't realize at first that it came out! |
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| The back side of the remote. Yes, I took a photo of it. |
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| Lots of movies to choose from! |
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| One of our meals: pasta with eggplant, roll, veggies and cheesecake. |
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| Lego Movie! :) |
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| Even though it was bright as hell, I do really enjoy having this little GPS map showing where we were. |
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| Breakfast: eggs, toast, cheese and tomatoes, roll and fruit. (Sorry it was blurry, I tried to take a quick photo so I could eat.) |
Random side bar: It seemed like everyone needed to use the bathroom at the same time. I don't know if it corresponded with after food breaks or what, but everyone got up at the same time. And even though there were 4 bathrooms by us (two in each aisle), some people couldn't wait long enough for their line to move along if the other side had less of a wait. Insert worst part about our seats. Just because we had a bit more leg room than everyone else, it did not mean we had enough room to fit grown ass people between us and the bulkhead. But, that didn't stop old ladies and jerk faces from climbing across us, stepping on our belongings on the floor and using our touch screen TVs as support. Eventually, I got so fed up with it, I put my feet up on the bulkhead and pretended to be asleep. That deterred most people except for one lady who was bold enough to angrily tap me on the knee in hopes I would wake up and move. She did not appreciate the look I gave her when I pretended to wake up. Nor did she like what I said to her. Needless to say, I didn't let her through.
Second side bar: While Nikki and I were awake chatting near the end of the flight, a random guy standing in line for the bathroom reached down, grabbed Nikki's empty plastic water bottle from her compartment and walked away. Anddddd welcome to a foreign country. :/
As we neared Istanbul (our layover was here before heading to Vienna), the flight status on the TV in front of me turned into a camera on the bottom of the plane. We got a super speedy view of the Sea of Marmara beneath us, and then the ground rushing up to kiss the landing gear. And this is where the delightful part of our travels ended and delays, temperature fluctuations and nonsense took over.
Holy hell was it hot. It didn't help that I was wearing long pants and a sweater for the flight, but damn. Going on over 24 hours since I had taken a shower, I was feeling anything but so fresh and so clean at this point.
Because our flight left later than scheduled, we arrived later and had less time to wait for our connecting flight. Which was nice b/c the Ataturk Airport was a madhouse. We figured out where our gate was, then walked around to check out the duty free shops. We wanted to see what was available for purchase when we came back through here in two weeks. We also tried some samples of Turkish Delight, and it was awful. I can't believe Edmund threw his family under the bus for the stuff. (That was totally a Narnia reference, in case you didn't catch it.) I did eventually change my stance on TD, but that's for another post.
While waiting at our gate, they called out for the next flight to Rome, and we realized that our gate must have changed while we waited. We found the new gate and settled in until they announced the flight for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Yes, that's a real place. They indeed changed our gate yet again. I checked with the attendant at the desk because our flight was still listed, and she assured me this was the gate for Vienna. Unconvinced, I sat back down and ended up eye to eye with a guy who had unzipped his pants and was having a hell of a time adjusting himself. I thought that was a pretty good cue to go check the board again, and found that this was indeed NOT our gate, though we didn't have an actual gate assigned.
Back to the desk I went, only to be rebuffed by the same pissy lady who was pretty damn adamant that this was our gate. Five minutes later, she got off the phone, announced via loud speaker that the Vienna flight was at another gate downstairs, and I resisted the urge to punch her in the face. We had minutes to spare to get to our gate (or so we thought), so we hauled ass down escalators, only to log jam into one big clusterf*ck of a situation by an exit.
And from there, ONE lady tried somewhat successfully to check tickets and passports of the dozens and soon to be hundreds of people pouring down the stairs. Luckily, Nikki and I had made a mad dash in front of the hoard, so we were near the front of the pack. Behind us was mass chaos, no semblance of a line, and a bunch of hot sweaty people as annoyed and confused as we were.
It was neat.
Way too much time passed and no one told us anything. Our departure time came and went, but still no word. Eventually they herded us on to shuttle busses like cattle headed for slaughter and drove us from the terminal around the edge of the airport grounds to a waiting plane parked away from the airport. When we arrived at our plane, they didn't immediately let us off since they were still stocking it with food and tp. We waited, begrudgingly, but at least the busses had A/C! Once they let us off, we couldn't immediately board the plane, which made no zero sense. I also didn't feel super stellar about the fact that the engines were going and every person on the tarmac had earmuffs on except for us.
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| I just wanted to get on the damn plane. |
My back had finally started to hurt, which was impressive considering the 36 or so hours since I had last slept horizontally. Our flight left late and arrived in Vienna later than expected, so I was nervous that we wouldn't be able to make the last bus of the night that would take us to our hostel. (I researched this info ahead of time so I knew the best/cheapest route to get to the hostel.) My luggage took about 8 years to come off the belt (in fact, it was close to one of the last ones), so I had a mini panic attack that I wouldn't have luggage for the trip. Lack of sleep and traveling hormones did little to help ease this attack.
We managed to make the bus, which was dark and quiet and gave us time to relax for about 45 minutes or so. The bus route ended at the train station, a few blocks from our hostel, and it was easy to find, despite the late hour and lack of sufficient lighting. It was a quiet street and the front desk attendant was very nice. (If you can get over the dorm-style feel of hostels, they are a great way to spend your nights. The people are always so friendly in them!)
Again, we opted to get a private room (I'm too old to be bunk-bedding it with a bunch of early 20-somethings) and as soon as we got in to our room I wanted to scream. Not only was it tiny as hell, but was easily near 90 degrees inside. A quick chat with the attendant on duty found that our room doesn't have A/C, and we just had to open the window to let in the "chill of the night." Which would have worked if the windows opened further than 2 inches and there was even a remote chill of the night to be had.
I opted to take a cold shower to wash the sweat and the stink of nearly two days of travel off. I immediately felt a billion times better, and went to sleep with a much better attitude. It's amazing how a shower, ear plugs, eye mask, and muscle relaxer can be the perfect combination to end an awful travel day and put you in the right frame of mind for an adventure. I'm so looking forward to exploring Vienna tomorrow!!
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