We finally made it here to Austria after a looooong plane ride. I feel like I need to provide a little bit of an update, although we have been here a whopping 24 hours. We got into town last night around 7 pm. The airline lost one of my bags...OK maybe not lost, but apparently it didn't make it on the plane. My bag arrived at the house this morning, though, so I only had to suffer through one night without half my stuff. Not that I would have noticed...I fell asleep last night with the light on I was so tired.
So we left San Francisco at 6:50 pm on Friday evening. The flight length was about 10 hours. I fell asleep, woke up for a meal, watched a movie, listened to some music, slept again, watched another movie while eating the second meal, then we landed. We each received a care package at the beginning of the flight with a toothbrush, toothpaste, socks, and a sleeping mask. I thought it was funny that the British were offering dental care...
Our plane flew into London/Heathrow airport, where we hopped a shuttle to terminal 3. We were so tired, we barely noticed the shuttle driving on the opposite side of the road. I was a little freaked out when we rounded a corner and a car was coming straight at us on the right side...the Heathrow airport is exteremly large. Our shuttle ride in between British Airways terminals was 10 minutes alone. The second flight was much more interesting. We flew lower to the ground and were able to see the countryside of 5 different countries on the way to Vienna. We flew over London, which you can't see from the airport, the Northern part of France, Luxemborg, Germany, and a bit of Switzerland...maybe not in that order. We landed in Vienna about 2 hours later. Customs was so much easier than I imagined. We then proceeded to collect our bags, one of which we left without, and were greeted by our host family, the Pöcksteiners.
The Pöcksteiner family is made up of Bodo, Gaby, Julia, and Flo. Bodo is the coach of our team, and Julia, who is considered the best young player in the country at 15, is a member of our team. We then boarded their very European VW van and were off to their country home. The drive was about an hour East of Vienna on the A1 highway. We stopped in Melk on the way to eat at a little restaurant on the Danube river. I had Weinerschnitzel, which was not a hot dog at all, but a fried piece of pork. We then continued down the road a bit to the house. I took a shower and fell asleep in no time.
We woke up this morning at 9. We had a bit of breakfast and then took a bike ride through the town and along the Danube. Bodo gave us a tour of the town he grew up in and we cruised around for about an hour and a half. I took some pictures, but have no internet on my computer, so was not able to post them yet. I will soon hopefully. We then play some basketball on the outdoor court at the house before going to the big community swimming pool, fully equiped with multiple water slides and high dives. Oh, did I mention the weather is AMAZING and I think I may have even gotten a sunburn from the abnormal amount of outdoor activity today.
Once we got back from swimming, we had proscuito and cantalope...one of my absolute favorites, and we attempted to figure out MajicJack. The first few tries were unsuccessful, but we were able to receive a call from Michelle's mom. The time difference is 9 hours.
Later tonight we will Barbeque. I am very excited to be here and to have the chance to let you all know how things are going.
Tomorrow we leave for training camp, which will be 2 weeks at an amazing sports camp in the mountains. I can't wait to get started playing and to have more of a basketball aspect to write about next time. I haven't actually been to the city of Vienna yet, minus the airport, but we will be able to move in two weeks from tomorrow. I'm not sure if we will have internet access at camp, so it may be a few weeks before another update. My email address is AGspencer24@aol.com. If you want my address, we would love to get some packages from the states so feel free to email me and I will send that to you. The next post will also contain a season schedule, hopefully.
Auf Wiedersehen!
No comments:
Post a Comment