The adventure begins

I started work today, and therefore have done absolutely nothing for the past 2 hours, so I've decided to begin posting.

My parents drove me to the Montreal airport on Friday. Once past security I headed to the VIP Maple Leaf Lounge, because my cousin Sandy had given me a guest pass. It was very cool with a ton of food and an open bar. As I sat down in a soft leather chair, I noticed that no one was talking to one another. I decided to introduce myself to the person sitting beside me. His name was Christof. He was an Austrian mechanical engineer, and he was going to be on my flight. One thing some of you might find interesting is that he had just spent 3 years working on composite materials for the Boeing A380. When I boarded the plane I sat down next to an elderly man. He was a Physics professor from McGill going to a conference in Slovenia. The flight was very long, but the food was decent. The movies were surprisingly old, Eragon and Bridget Jone's Diary.

When I arrived in Frankfurt I got completely lost, thanks to some bad directions and complete lack of sleep I ended up going through security twice and passport check three times. To defend myself, the Frankfurt airport is huge with three enormous terminals. The one I was in had 64 gates alone! When I finally got to my gate I sat down next to a bunch of people talking in English. There was a girl and a couple from Oregon and a guy from New York City/Venezuela. The girl from Oregon was going to visit her Relatives in Romania whom she hadn't seen since grade 5. Apparently she wasn't very excited, it sounds like it was a trip forced on her by her parents to reconnect with her heritage. The older couple was going on a trip to Spain and the guy from NYC was going to visit his father. When I finally got onto the plane I had to sit in a window seat beside two Austria guys who didn't speak a work of English, and in front of an angry little German child who kept screaming in German and kicking my seat. Needless to say I was glad when the short flight from Frankfurt to Vienna landed.

In Vienna I grabbed my luggage, strapped it all together and headed for the CAT (City Airport Train) which is a direct (and expensive) train from the airport to the city centre, although after the day I'd had I was glad to pay for the quiet stress free option. When I arrived at the city centre I was met by Heidi, a student who works for the IAESTE program. She took me to my residence and helped me buy groceries.

As few odd things about buying groceries in Austria:
- mustard and mayonnaise come in toothpaste-like tubes
- "normal" milk is 3.5% and un-refrigerated
- the cashier sits down, and you have to bag your own groceries in bags which you have to pay for. Also, the counters are very small so you have to put everything back into your cart, pay, then wheel over to the large window ledges where everyone packs their groceries.

After that I went back to my room to find my roommate. His name is Stephan, he is Austrian, in his mid-twenties and has been in that room continuously for six years. That level of comfort has left his side of the room very messy and smelling of BO. At first he was really awkward but he has gotten a lot better. I will upload photos of my room when I get my own computer hooked up. Friday night I was so Jet Lagged that I went to bed very early in anticipation of an exciting Saturday with my new co-workers.

Well, that's taken about an hour to write, I think it's lunchtime now, I need a good meal after a long half-day of doing absolutely nothing!

I'll continue with a post about Saturday if I have the same workload after lunch.