So far this trip has been quite the whirlwind. I will attempt to recap a bit now, but since I am in a hotel room in Paris waiting for the b.h. to get out of the shower, I won't have time for much in the way of details.
I didn't sleep a wink on my flight to Geneva. I had a row to myself, and I was tired, and it should have been easy, but it wasn't. On the bright side I got to watch the sun come up over the Alps as we were flying in. The airport in Geneva was ridiculous. There were very few signs in any language, and the directions I got from the rude people that worked there were seriously unhelpful. I waited in line for three days waiting to get a cup of coffee, finally gave up when they shorted the British guy in front of me and then gave him a hard time about it, and wound up at another stand with what I can only assume was much better coffee and what they called a beignet, which was delicious and far more decadent than the ones I have enjoyed in New Orleans. Stuffed with some kind of cheese, it was, and raisins. (That was my first and hopefully last Yoda sentence).The caffeine and sugar combined to snap me sufficiently awake for my next flight. When I got to Vienna, everything was easy and all was right with the world, except for the part where I forgot where I was meeting my ride and I couldn't get the internet to work and my phone was running out of battery. Luckily I am incredibly resourceful and I managed to get in touch and then found the group just in time. Klaus, our leader for the week, met us at a hotel across from the airport with Karl Steininger, whose wine is so delicious that it has nearly brought me to tears on more than one occasion. I nearly hugged the man when we were introduced.
The ride back was quiet. Klaus had one with two of the other women from my area to the train station to pick up somebody else, and it turns out Karl speaks very little English. I didn't know any of the three women who were in the car with us, and I was dozing off (of course) in the front seat when I wasn't trying fruitlessly to engage him in a broken English conversation. He gamely pointed out landmarks at irregular intervals, and mostly we all just starred out the window in disbelief while we drove through beautiful countryside filled- I mean literally filled with vineyards.