Markus’ Blog

It’s cold and grey out (only -5°C, but a wind chill of -15°), but we’re having a quite good time nonetheless.

We met my relatives for Christmas day, took the 26th off of meeting people, went to the opera on the 27th and for dinner with my relatives again on the 28th. Tonight it’ll be the first encounter with my friends (at one of my friends’ apartments in Vienna) since summer 2005. Hopefully I’ll be able to meet more of them tomorrow night at the only pub in Korneuburg (Gwölb). We shall see, I still have to phone around a bit.

It’s Christmas Eve, the day we traditionally give and open presents in Austria. We’ll be doing a sort of culturally merged Christmas this year: opening presents the evening of the 24th and doing our stockings the morning of the 25th. My parents have had stockings of their own for two years now (don’t think they have put them to use yet ;-)), after I sent them stockings as one of my Christmas gifts two years ago.

Tomorrow (on the 25th) is also the time for the “big” traditional family get-together at my Grandma’s place. My auntie Irene, uncle Leopold and my cousins Günter and Marion as well as ourselves will show up at my Grandma’s place for yummy, yummy lunch (roast pork with bread dumplings) — to die for and soooooooo unhealthy lololol.

There’ll be a few more presents to open there, as well.

My mom’s sister, Hermi, has also invited us over for a short visit. We’ll be going there some time in the afternoon.

It’ll be a long day, but it should be fun. And that’ll be it for Christmas 2007.

We’ve been following the pre-Chrismas tradition of visiting Christmas markets yesterday and we’ll be going again today.

Yesterday we went to see the market at Schönbrunn. It was quite cold, not so much because of the temperature itself (-5°C), but more because of the strong wind. We were bundled up, but apparently not bundled up enough.

We had originally planned to visit another market yesterday, but were too frozen to do so, despite the hot fruit punches with rum.

Before venturing out to Schönbrunn, we had lunch with my parents and my grandma at the Donauturm, Vienna’s small version of the CN Tower (it looks more like CN Tower than the Harbour Outlook in Vancouver). The food was quite delicious (except for the salmon, which was only average), and the company was certainly nice. The view sucked big time, though. But what else is new in fall/winter in the Eastern (flat parts) of Austria: low fog every day and grey-in-grey all around. Above the fog layer it’s bright, clear sunshine, that’s why it’s beautiful weather in the Alps. Not so much in Vienna or Lower Austria. We still enjoyed ourselves, though.

Today, the plans are to do what we didn’t finish yesterday and to visit two or three more markets — and have more of that punch or some mulled wine (why else would one go to the Christmas market if not for the booze? lol)

We’ll be dressing warmer, this time, too.

We made it, we are in Austria, safe and sound. It wouldn’t be us, however, had there not been some hiccups along the way. I am just amazed how we always seem to be uncovering new ways of making a trip more “interesting”.

In the end it wasn’t so bad and worked out quite well. Way better than last year for our honeymoon. It started in Vancouver, when the Air Canada counter wouldn’t give us a boarding pass for our second leg (Heathrow to Vienna), because the “airline doesn’t allow us to print boarding passes for you at this point.” Our luggage was checked through okay, but we were instructed to go to the transfer desk in London and get ourselves boarding cards there.

That turned out to be a bit more of a hassle than originally thought. We only had 90 minutes to make the connection to begin with, and lining up for a boarding pass was not really the plan. In London we learned that another couple travelling from Vancouver to London and Vienna had managed to get boarding passes for the London-Vienna leg in Vancouver. Quite annoying that we couldn’t.

After taking a bus to a different terminal, we had to go through security again, even though we had just stepped off a plane and had never left the secure area. That’s a Heathrow special, it seems.

Then we had to wait in line for about 30 minutes in order to get our boarding passes from an agent who didn’t exactly look like she knew what she was doing. When she was done confirming with her supervisor that we were good to go, she told us to hurry, because boarding had already started. So, we rushed from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2 — only to find out that nobody was getting on the plane yet. Not only that, our plane ended up being one hour late. Fun stuff. There’s nothing like rushing for nothing.

But the fun wasn’t over yet. We spent an hour waiting for our luggage in Vienna and it never showed up on the conveyor belt. In the end, we checked with the lost and found counter and, big surprise, found our three suitcases lined up nicely against one wall, together with a bunch of other luggage. Apparently some geniuses in London had loaded some luggage in a container where it should not have been and that’s why it was never put on the conveyor in Vienna. It was instead delivered directly to the lost and found area when the error was discovered in Vienna. We weren’t the only ones affected by this. The other couple we had talked to earlier in London (the ones that had gotten the boarding passes in Vancouver) had the exact same issue.

It was a long and sometimes stressful day of travelling, but in the end we got in safe and sound and with all our belongings. And that’s what really counts. Now Christmas holiday can finally start.

Brigette and I had the following slightly odd bet going: if she had passed her CHRP designation exam, she’d buy me a new digital camera. If, on the other hand, she had failed, I’d get her a new Coach purse.

One can tell that she was seriously considering the possibility of having failed. So, that bet would guarantee her one pleasurable experience (passing or at the very least new, pretty purse).

I was fairly certain that she had, in fact, done quite well. I gladly accepted, since I very much wanted a new camera, and I was sure I would get it. lol Besides, I had been telling her that I was positive that she had not failed the test. She wouldn’t listen, so I figured I may as well get something out of it.

Turns out I was right. Of course I was. — You can only be right if you expect Brigette to do well on her exams. (Rule #1: Don’t listen to Brigette when she tells you how she’s not sure she passed.)

So, congratulations to you CHRPy girl, for getting your muchly desired (and deserved) designation. I am proud of you.

And thanks for buying me this fancy new toy from my wish list.

Apparently, writing about the itinerary for our upcoming trip just saved our behinds. This is what our printed itineraries say (from back in May or so, when we bought the tickets):

I looked online and discovered that Air Canada had changed the departure time for flight AC855 from 13:30 to 12:00. That, of course, means that the flight from Vienna to London on January 4 is not going to work out.

So, I phoned up Flightcentre and thought that their solution would be to make us fly out of Vienna at 7:05am on January 4 — which is precisely what we were trying very hard to avoid in May. Leaving Vienna at this early hour means getting up no later than 3:30am to make it to the airport in time. Not such a good solution.

Well, it wasn’t nearly as straight forward as I originally thought. It took several days of phoning back and forth between our Flightcentre representative and myself. Countless options were investigated and rejected. This was, I think the order of solutions:

1. Fly from London to either Ottawa, Edmonton or Calgary and connect from there to Vancouver — not much fun in the middle of winter in Canada; either one of these locations could be quite bad weather wise.
2. Leave Vienna at 7:05am and get up at 3:30am to do so — definitely not much fun for a vacation.
3. Leave Vienna at around 6:00pm on January 3 and lose out time in Austria — not very good, either, but definitely better than the other two options.
4. Leave London on either Saturday or Sunday, but without a direct flight into Vancouver; in addtion to having to change planes twice, we couldn’t even get the last leg into Vancouver confirmed and would have had to risk being wait-listed and not getting on — not good at all: two chances of getting stranded somewhere in Eastern Canada: weather and full planes.
5. And lastly, the version that we picked: leave Vienna at 10:15am like planned, stay in London till Monday and catch the direct flight into Vancouver then. Added benefit: two and a half days of sight-seeing in London.

Yep, that was not the most price efficient solution and it means taking an additional day off at work, but it’s the most “fun” one. And Flightcentre is still going to pay for the first night we are spending in London.

It took a while, but I think we finally managed to solve the problem in an acceptable way. Not ideal (a flight out on the Sunday would have been better), but none the less it’s going to be a good, fairly worry-less trip home. No changing planes on the East coast, no wait lists, no getting up at 3:30am. And extra time in London.

It’s less than a week now till the next big trip — this time back home to Austria to spend Christmas and New Year’s with family and friends. Starting to looking forward to it.

It will be the exact opposite of last year’s Christmas experience:

• It’ll be cold, not tropical and hot.
• It’ll be “old”, well known places, not new locations to explore.
• It’ll be with people I have know for a long time as opposed to new acquaintances.
• We’ll be gone over New Year’s as well.

For my schveetie pie it’s of course going to be the different than for me, given the language barrier, the fact that my family and friends are essentially strangers to her, and all the places are foreign as well. The different climate’s going to be the same for both of us, though.

Here are some photos from two Sundays ago when we had tons of snow here in Vancouver for one full day (yep, that’s how long it lasted). Haven’t gotten around to posting them before. So, here we go.

However, I have to issue this warning first:

Dear wife, close your eyes, you’ll find these gross.

The fountain in front of Bloedel Conservatory:

This is the Big Quarry in Queen Elisabeth Park:

Looks like Greater Vancouver made it into the Austrian News today. The article says that a jury in New Westminster, near Vancouver, found Robert Pickton guilty of murdering six women on his farm. It also gives a few more details about the case and talks about an upcoming trial against Pickton for murdering 20 more women.

It has been in the making for a while (hints here and there), now it looks like it’s official. Translink’s new price structure as of January 1, 2008 has been published on their web-site.

Unlike the last time around (January 2005), this time they are increasing the cost of (pre-paid) FareSaver tickets as well.

I don’t find the increase for a two zone monthly pass (from $95 to $99 or 4.2%) too bad, but at the same time the increase for a one zone pass (from $69 to $73 or 5.8%) seems a little steep.

I am not going to rant how evil Translink is for increasing the price. They have been doing a lot of improvement to the public transit system (new light rail, more and new buses, etc.). What I am going to say, however is this:

They still have a long way to go.

Why? Because there are still not nearly enough buses. I can only speak of the #8 Fraser route, but it is bad, seriously bad. In the mornings, because the buses are often completely packed half way down Fraser street going North and a lot of people get by-passed. Every single day. Sometimes about a dozen of them at one single stop. I wouldn’t be surprised if people actually got passed by more than just one bus. I am not amongst them, because I get on before the bus fills up too badly, but it would sure suck #$!#^% if I were.

At night, it’s similar, but worsened by downtown rush-hour traffic. There frequently are 15-20 minute “holes” between buses, which means that once a bus comes, it’s too packed to pick up passengers. Wait times for the #8 at night (going South) are completely unpredictable. You can get three buses in 30 seconds or you’ll end up without a single bus in 25 minutes — and then get three buses in 30 seconds (usually it’s somewhere in between). It has all happened. And I do end up stranded then, sometimes. (Just yesterday evening was one of these 25 minute incidences.)

So, I am sure people getting by-passed on a daily basis will have a hard time swallowing this fare increase. (“What? Now I have to pay extra just to be by-passed like before?!”)

Apparently not only the #8 is affected. It seems bad enough that the U-Pass (transit pass for university students) is now dubbed Pass-U (pass you), because students end up being by-passed by buses so frequently. (Found that in a comment to a CBC article.)

PS: In case anybody read this far a little “reward”. Are you interested in a paid-for 2-zone monthly pass for December? I only need it till (including) Dec. 18, so there’d be almost two weeks of two-zone traveling left (it’s un-scratched, so it could be turned from a zone 1/2 into a zone 2/3 pass.)

And just for my own reference, I am “saving” the old and new price tables here.

(Read on …)