The time before Christmas flew by, with most evenings and weekends spent at the Christmas markets or in my German class. One weekend a group of us who work in Wiener Neustadt met up at Szilvia's to make Christmas cookies. They were all split up equally so we could take them home and eat them throughout the next week or two. Mine were half gone before I even left the party...
My last day of work was the 14th, and I flew out on the 16th after saying bye to Jasmina, Andrew, and Predrag who returned home for good over the holidays. My flight from Vienna to Toronto was direct and pretty uneventful. It was the first time I flew over Europe during the day when there weren't many clouds. I saw Amsterdam from the sky, with all it's canals glimmering in the sun, and the snowcapped jagged mountains of Greenland.
As we came to North America a huge snowstorm was in full force, but our plane managed to land pretty smoothly in Toronto; one of the only ones that day as most other flights had been canceled. With the chaos and delays resulting from the snowstorm it took me a long long time to get home from Toronto with a Via train, arriving home around 1:30am, which was 7:30am to me, completing 24.5 hours of sleepless travel.
The next three weeks were spent with family and friends. I had a lot of fun and did far too may things to even include an abbreviated list here. One of the highlights was seeing a Cirque du Soleil show in Montreal with my family. It was absolutely amazing, I recommend that everyone sees a show at least once, it's expensive but worth it. Also, while I was home we got more than a few bad snow storms. The photo below shows the snow being removed from my street with dumptrucks the day I arrived home from the snowless streets of Vienna.
My three weeks of holiday were up before I knew it. My return flight was much longer as I had a 7 hour layover in Paris. Thankfully I found a cheap airport hotel and slept through most of it after an uncomfortable sleepless flight from Montreal.I started work the next day only to find that my boss Rakesh wasn't yet back from India and no one knew when he'd be back, or how to contact him. He eventually returned a week later.
Since being back things have been fairly uneventful, a few nights out with friends, and a going away party for Paola, one of our former coworkers who also went with us to Serbia who is moving to the Netherlands.
Some things that I'm really looking forward to now are the Bonbon Ball on the 1st, and a trip to Venice and Barcelona at the end of February when my friend Allison visits from home. The ball is a full black bow-tie, waltzing ball like you'd see in a movie, except it's run by the dessert industries in Vienna, so you get a gift bag of sweets and chocolates, and as well there is also modern music in other rooms. I thankfully didn't take my suit home at Christmas like I had planned, so all I need to buy is a decent pair of dress shoes and a black bow-tie. I'm thinking I'll buy one that you have to tie by hand instead of a pre-tied one, it might be hard to master but it'd be a cool skill to have. I'll be sure to bring my camera and take plenty of photos.
Sorry for the almost complete lack of photos with this post but many are sure to follow in these last few months as I try to cram everything in before returning home for good.
