Austria August 2009 Diaries
Sunday, August 16, 2009

Saturday August 8th:

• Usually I enjoy the people watching of the airport, but I was surviving on 4 hours of sleep and a 3.30am wake up call so most of it passed me by. I do remember being vaguely outraged that there is no longer a Starbucks at Birmingham airport, merely a (prepare to shudder in horror everyone) Costa Coffee. How hideous :/
• The plane flight was a brisk 1 hour and 45 minutes - just enough time to get stuck into one of my holiday reads, Diary of A Snob by Grace Dent. I do not think these things out. It has a bright pink cover with a lipstick on it and it drew a withering glance from Snooty Times Reading Woman (STRW) next to me... (I realised why later in the week!)
• People don't half get dead excited by the food on the plane. It was sausage and eggs breakfast and I truly think that people believed a guy called Ed in a chef's hat had scrambled the eggs over a hot stove at the front on the plane. Ninnies.
• Ed had clearly scrambled the eggs with evil because they tasted like baby vomit (and I would know, my nephew once threw up in my face). Darren said the sausage was nice, but I am choosy and I wasn't about to gorge on Ed's meat after his sloppy evil eggs...
• STRW prayed to mother nature over her vegetarian option (seriously - God knows why because there was nothing natural there at all), but then thought better of eating it and just pocketed the prepacked muffin into her "fannypack" (ooer, etc)...
• Miracle of miracles - our bags were (specifically) 2nd and 5th off the conveyer belt and we were soon directed to our hotel by holiday rep Peter - the gorgeous Hotel Dorfschmidt...
• Not the Hotel Dogshit as some common as muck on the bottom of the Primark flip flops family tittered behind us on the coach. Savages...
• Hotel was actually very gorgeous - incredibly old, like Madonna, and set at the foot of the Kitzbulehorn Mountain range so we had a view of those dusty peaks wherever we looked. Our room was quite boutique chic (massive walk in wardrobe) with a ginormous (love that word) balcony covered in delicious smelling flowers...
• Of course this means that wasps are drawn to the balcony like a moth to the flame drawn by the fire so while Darren ignores them, I am pirohuetting around all over the place like Billy Elliot (only less graceful and without the Tonys) every time they come near. This means I barely get through a page of Diary... or even Entertainment Weekly (the one with abtastic Ryan Reynolds on the cover)...

Sunday 9th August:

• My much needed boutique chic sleep was rudely interrupted. Monsieur (or Missure as someone at work spelt it in an email the other week! Lumme!) Dazricht of Panteloonemheimer's mattress creaked noisily every time he moved, which was quite often. I tried burying my head in the pillow but the creaks or his snoring (like a sailor on shore leave) soon wafted through. Booooo!!!
• And then my mp3 (Archos) player died - completely kaput. This is obviously a tragedy of gargantuan proportions as it plays movies/tv shows too and I was halfway through an episode of Buffy, where Giles and Buffy's mom eat lots of candy and canoodle with each other.
• And does no one remember that before the hugely overrated Twilight existed (yes I know I liked it initially, but i've seen through the smoke and mirrors now ta very much and tedious plotting and writing is tedious plotting and writing), Buffy had the best vampire love story ever with hunky brooding Angel (who btw would beat Edward Cullen to a pulp)?
• Went to the welcome meeting where Peter Holiday Rep was very pleased to see us. Perhaps he gets very excited to see people not wearing lederhosen because he was soon assuring us that if we required ANYTHING, we could call on him anytime day or night. ANYTIME! Blimey luv, calm down - you might spaffle. I was fingering my ring at the time, so I think he got the message...
• As it was boiling hot (not literally - I didn't boil), apparently the sensible thing to do is go on the keep fit jogging trail up through the forest into the mountains. It was almost treacherous with little "stop drop and give me twenty" exercise signs everywhere. Call me lazy, but i'm not doing star jumps on the edge of a muddy ravine...
• ... so when we got back to the hotel, we made use of the gym and pool. I did some cycling. On a stationary bike. Inside. In austria. If you do not get the irony of this (and my slight misuse of the word irony) then there really is no hope for you is there?
• The pool was nice though. Then we played mario party on the DS, which unlike gargantuan tragedy of my ka-put mp3 player (did I mention that?) is not broken. I was winning as Peaches right until the end when Darren/Yoshi practically molested 2 stars out of me. I don't think that little princess will ever recover :/
• Sat with some nice people at dinner. I regaled them with stories of my office's broken sewer pipes. They were so enraptured that not one of them finished their schnitzel. Awww...

Monday 10th August:

• Made the non-german speaking mistake of buying sparkling water last night from the local Spar (ooo how provincial). Went back this morning to get the one with the different label as assumed it was still. It was not still. Sparkling again! I am completely bamboozled.
• Went up to Rattenberg and beautiful Lake Archanssee today (by cog powered railway Pete Waterman fans). Rattenberg is famous for some nun called Notburga who threw a sickle in the air and it never came down. Personally I think her name is a marketing person's dream, her creaky old bones on display in a church, not so much...
• The lake (set up in a mountain) was proper pretty. It was quite cold as we were right in the clouds. Darren and I bought a value chocolate bar (Spar again) and walked round the like, but after about 6km, I was sick of being attacked by giant butterflies (they are terrifying) so we hiked back and went on a boat trip instead.
• We sat next to a proper noddy on the boat trip though - he kept saying things like "the velocity of the water crashing down for thousands of years has created the most amazing rock formations. Sarah, take a picture". I swear I didn't mean to say "really professor Frink" out loud - or at least not out loud enough for him to hear ;)
• It rained quite a bit - here are 5 songs about rain (in no particular order of brilliance) that I sang to an unappreciative Darren: Rain (Madonna); Naked In The Rain (Blue Pearl); Kiss The Rain (Billie Myers); Come On In Out of The Rain (Wendy Moten) and Here Comes The Rain (Eurythmics).
• The day started with hearing the brilliant Martika's Kitchen, was punctuated by a Tyrolean radio station playing Jolene and La Isla Bonita and ended with a man at the hotel playing Black or White on a zitha. Don't ask!
• Foodwise, the day started with Cinammon Toast Crunch (never had them before, utterly delicious - americans, please send box loads now as not available in England. I will email you address :P) was punctuated with that value chocolate bar and ended up chatting to a lovely family over some barbecue beef. When we asked their son what music he liked and he said "Enter Shakiri", I misheard and said "ooo I like Shakira" before I could even stop myself :/

Part two coming soon! All holiday snaps here!

Posted by Paul 5:34 am  

Labels: austria 2009

1 Comment:

1. DanProject76 said...
   8/16/2009 10:55 am  
   Costa coffee is so much better than the slop they call coffee in Starbucks. Really!

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