As you can see from the post title, I seem to have covered quite some ground this past week - all by train, and as it happened to be, half of my starting trains were already late by about 15-20 minutes (and let's just forget some of the intermittent trains on my second trip this week, shall we?). Coincidentally, those were always the trains at the beginning of my trip... makes me wonder what exactly it is that keeps express trains away from Salzburg. Maybe an invisible force, antagonal to a gravitational pull, so to speak an antigravitational push? Whatever, I'm no physics person, as you might have guessed already. :-)
So with just two roundtrips, I covered roughly 1100 km. I was amazed at how quickly those distances added up when I did the math a few minutes ago. By now it appears that my Austrian rail discount card (provided by my employer, no less!) has already been paid off. And if it weren't for train delays and the increased tension when wondering whether one would make the next connection or get stranded in the middle of nowhere - or Plattling, to be concise - well, apart from the delays, it's really fun and I like traveling by train. So far, at least...
Anyway, my first trip this week took me to Vienna for a meeting-marathon. It entailed leaving home at 6:30 am to catch an early train, then 3 consecutive meetings over the course of 6 hours, virtually no lunch break, but instead a rare (so far!) glimpse into (some variants) Austrian government work. At times it really felt like another universe - and I'm not bashing them here, but one of them admitted that there's a certain government style of doing things. That, and well, the non-government style (employed by the rest of human kind, one might say). So, imagine me, sitting there in the second meeting and taking it all in. Deeply in awe. :-) Lest you think I was too unexperienced in those matters of local customs, I have to reassure you that my colleague was experiencing just the same as I did. To be fair though, these experiences only applied to one of the three meetings, the others were rather normal. That is, until one point in the first meeting where my potential input into a new project was termed as "live subvention". And yes, what it meant was not my work, but actually me, the person. I mean, I knew (and often rehearsed) local phrases (vocabulary, if you will), but THAT was new to my ears and I had to reassure them that it was me that they meant with "live subvention". I don't know about you, but for me that sounds like some cattle transport or exchange of favors for a bottle of brandy or whatever-but-not-work. I was ludicrous. But I think I'm somewhat over it now. Part of that might be due to the extremely delicious curry I enjoyed when the meetings were over and we finally had time to eat something. ;-)
Apart from that eye-opening daytrip to the Austrian capital (note to myself: gotta return for more city-sights and less government-infused meetings), I traveled once more. That second trip took me into a rather small town in Bavaria to attend a conference. Quite a relaxed atmosphere (albeit a packed schedule) and a nice meeting, but just getting there was quite a nuisance - I missed some of my connections (due to above-mentioned delayed first train), so it took me 4 hours to cover the roughly 170 km. But fortunately the hotel was nice and my return trip to Salzburg worked almost without delays. :-)
In between these trips (and long working days), I resorted to relaxing in the evenings - for instance while trying out my new hammock. A note of caution here to everyone: even though the fixture might look pretty short, Murphy's law will always haunt you! In my case, when first laying down in the hammock, I found out right away that the nylon was all well, but it didn't really succeed in making the rest on the balcony's stone floor any more comfortable. Guess I didn't get the rope length right with the first try... ;-) But after some trying and fiddling, it was very goooooooood.
Cheers friends!
Hanna
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