Today was mainly a travel day. A tube, a train, a plane, a bus and then another train!
Last night I decided to be good and set my alarm for 6.30am. I was worried about dragging myself out of bed but I needn’t have stressed. I was awake at 2am, 3am, 4am… every time I thought that it MUST be 6.30am, the time had apparently only passed 10 minutes. Therefore, up and nice and sprightly at 6am!
A shower, internet to FINALLY update my blogs and then all checked out by 7.30am. A tube to Victoria Station, then a short walk to get the Gatwick Express – everything ran nice and smoothly. I had everything timed perfectly, I was going to arrive just as the check in opened.
I really enjoyed the train trip, despite the fact that my headphones suddenly broke (no music for entire travel day = grumpy Jess). I love this country so much, even if we did go through the dodgy areas! Its all so green and all the rows of identical houses made me smile… its was all just so clichéd. I really do want to come back to England, spend some more time in London, but also spent some time travelling around the English countryside. On the to do list. Or, I could just move here, its tempting!
My morning travelling was going on schedule until my one and a half hour train trip to Gatwick Airport only took half an hour. Early is good, it just meant an hour waiting around for check in to open! Luckily I found a cafe and had coffee and a toasted focaccia for breakfast, plus time to blog a little. No getting behind this week :)
After spending a weekend talking to myself in an English accent, I attempted early in the morning to switch modes to German. The difficulty of this certainly made me rather apprehensive about my German speaking week ahead. I don’t think I can express how much it means to be going back to Austria though. The year that I spent living there in 2005 changed who I am as a person, I learnt so much and have so many great memories. Most of the other exchange students have all gone back (one even returned to get married!) but its been 7 years now since I have seen my host family. I never really thought it would take that long to get back. I was also looking forward to some warmer weather, I was done with cold drizzle ;)
Check in was nice and quick (for some reason, the online check in bag drop line was twice the size of my line). Then more time to kill in the airport – this involved the purchase of new headphones in one of the shops, yay! And quickly enough, after entertaining myself with my Kindle and iPod, it was time to board the flight to Vienna.
Nothing really interesting to report. There was kindling and ipodding again, and then we were there…. in cold, rainy Vienna. Must say the weather so far is starting to get to me a little. I’ve seen perhaps one hour of sun in the last four days? And I’ve worn the same clothes over and over again because I packed for the summer that is currently hiding away. So many unworn dresses and shorts :( Fingers crossed for warm weather soon!
Took an airport transfer bus to the train station, where I discovered I’d prebought a train ticket that was not due to depart for an another hour and half, arriving at a completely different time from what I told my host family. So I bought another ticket for an earlier train, waste of money, oops.
So began the two and a half hour journey to Graz, the last but longest leg of my journey. There was lots of staring out the window at the grey, miserable looking countryside. It is funny, I have very little memory of Austria like this – I remember either warm amazing Summer or cold amazing Winter covered in snow. I was feeling very nervous and out of place at this point and by the time the train pulled into Graz at 7.30pm I was an exhausted wreck.
And then I walked into the train station, and there was my old host family and suddenly I wasn’t feeling so tired anymore :) It is just surreal being here again. Franz Josef and Ulrike have not changed a bit and Graz was still the same as I remembered it (albeit wet). We went out for dinner at the very same restaurant we ate at just before my plane left back to Australia in 2005, which is symbolic in some way I’m sure. There were a lot of confused half German half English conversations – my German gets me by but couldnt certainly be a lot better!
Then finally back to the house, arriving at 10.30pm. I think walking into the house was when being back hit me properly – lying in my old bedroom, and…the SMELL of this place is bringing back so much to me. Funny how smells can do that. I’m so excited to be here – tomorrow morning is sounding pretty chilled and I’m looking forward to just walking around the house and the neighbourhood and pretending I live here again. So nostalgic right now!
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