It's another Holiday!

Like I'm surprised.

Only thing is,  my lovely travelling companion is in a foreign country.
Hopefully there won't be any Volcanic Ash complications for her return late tomorrow (Friday) night.
She dutifully called from Birmingham just now to announce her safe arrival.  
Apparently there needs to be some closer scrutiny when it comes to the scheduling.  Best to stick to the Austrian holidays,  as opposed to wondering or worrying about what anyone is doing anywhere else.

This has been a bone of contention of mine for some time,  and as the company that cannot be named is a US firm, they have no qualms in making demands of Ex-pats no matter what the day happens to be in the foreign country.  That is of course,  until they started dealing with the Dutch,  and now the Austrians.   "Op Vacantie"  was one of the first things we learned in Dutch,  and most Europeans have no qualms about leaving their office on a Friday afternoon for four or six weeks,  and leaving absolutely NOBODY in charge of their job in their absence.
As aggravating as that is,  it seems to work for them.  So it makes you start to go,  "hm....are we doing something wrong here?"

Ah well,  the time will pass quickly I'm sure*.

Speaking of which.   SEVEN MORE SLEEPS!

I already have our tickets to take first the U-Bahn (subway/underground/metro....use whatever term applies in your country)  and then the Schnellbahn,  but I'm beginning to think we might save those tickets for when we come back,  since I was just at the Wien/Mitte train station the other day,  and it's a bit of a confusing mess.
Construction is ongoing and so,  I think we'll be going with the smelly cab program.

Don't think I need the stress of wondering if we're on the right train when it comes to catching a flight,  plus there's that tax refund that we need to get when at the airport, and I'm not going to miss that chance.
When we went home at Christmas,  we stopped in to see the good folks at the customs office (or whatever it is)  and they very kindly gave us about €110 back in taxes we had loaned to the European Economic Union with some purchases we had made.
See,  if you buy stuff from certain stores in the EU,  you can get your tax back when you leave.  This is one "tourist attraction"  that we try to never miss.

Dead simple.
Has to be,  if I can do it,  anyone can.

Since the weather is still more or less hanging in today,  I just might head out on new and shiney and tool around some old buildings.  We have a few of those.

I'll try not to race this time.

See,  that's another slight problem that I have.
How shall I put this? 
There's a tendency among sailors that whenever there's another sail boat on the water headed in more or less the same direction,  then it naturally follows that the race is on.
Guilty as charged.
I too have some issues on dry land being passed by other vehicles,  no matter if they have two wheels or four.
This would be OK if I actually had the physical stamina to beat the hell out of anyone trying to pass me,  and there was only one guy on a racing bike yesterday who blew my imaginary doors off,  but I would have beat that bastard too if he hadn't been about 19 and built like Lance Armstrong.  

C'mon!


I didn't seem to have this "problem" in Delden,  but perhaps that was because we were mostly in the countryside,  so I didn't mind so much being passed by little old ladies on their souped up €2000 technologically advanced (sometimes electrically assisted!)  bikes.

Of course,  when it comes to the cars,  it's  infinitely better just to keep ahead of those guys,  'cause they sometimes like to pass a wee bit too close.  There was a really nice Audi SUV that just about lost a passenger side mirror if I figured I could have done it without breaking my flippin' leg.

Oh,  and let's not even talk about manufacturers like BMW,  Audi or Porsche making SUVs! 
That's just wrong!
That's all I'm gonna say.  Missing a mirror wouldn't have been a crying shame.



Happy Thursday.






*by that I mean both until tomorrow night,  and until we go back to Canada for good....just to let you know.








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