Flight and First Day In Vienna

I made it to Vienna! Of course nothing is easy. I was originally scheduled to fly United to Washington Dulles and then fly Austrian Airlines to Vienna. The weather in Chicago was bad yesterday, and evidently the weather was worse out east. I suspected something was fishy, when I couldn't use automatic check-in at United ticket counter. An agent manually checked me then after a little difficulty but she assured me that I was on my flights.

By the time I got to my gate, the flight had been canceled. I then spend a long time in a long line, waiting to get rebooked. Not too bad, I was going to leave 2 hours later than originally scheduled, but now was going to fly United all the way to Frankfurt. There I would fly Lufthansa to Vienna. I would only be an hour and 15 minutes later than scheduled.

All right, next problem was getting in touch with my new boss who is expecting me to arrive at 9:00 and instead will not see me till after 10:15. He gave me his cell number but I don't think I have it. I don't even have his work number handy and my flight is scheduled to leave in 35 minutes. What to do? So after some difficulty, I call work and ask Judy, my secretary, to call my new boss in Vienna. Of course she has to call his office number. He'a gone home for the day since it's after 7 PM in Vienna, but I have to hope he checks his voice mails in the morning before coming out to the airport.

So I finally get to Vienna, while I'm waiting for my luggage, I hear my name being paged. I guess my new boss didn't get the message. (It turns out his parents are in town this week from Wilmette so he hasn't been into the office nor checked his voice mail all week.) Then I have to wait till every piece of luggage is unloaded from the flight because my luggage wasn't on it. Then I get to wait in another line to report it missing.

So here I sit in my hotel room with no luggage hoping it will show up tomorrow. Lufthansa was nice about it. They gave me a lost luggage package with a nice selection of toiletries and even an under shirt.

Good news is that all my computer stuff made the trip intact and it works with a outlet converter and a power strip. While no wireless, theres is wired network in the room and it's only $7.50 an hour to use it. Bad news is that I was rushed in packing and forgot some important things, like banking account information, connection cords for camera, etc. Oh well.

The bottom line of course is that I made it to Vienna and the housing office arranged for me to see three potential apartments tomorrow and two on Saturday. And now I'm jet-lagged and will go to bed to end my first day in Vienna.