Travel Tips

After I made my last minute decision to leave Austria and head back to England to study, I began the mammoth task of packing. I put it off a lot and did lots of other things like visit Melk. After much deliberation I sent all the possessions I could by post. Everyhing else I sold or gave away to good homes, I even had an open house sale.

I organized a few different get-togethers for my leaving the weekend before. Unfortunately everyone was dropping like flies with a fever and cold so only a few of us made it to Stiegl's Ambulanz Lounge. However, we still managed to have an excellent time at the Mezzanin on Vienna's Lerchenfeldergurtel (U6 Thaliastrasse) on Sunday 28th September. It was happy hour from 7-9pm with all cocktails at 4 Euros. As you can imagine we tried as many as possible! The photos turned out rather strange due to the funky lighting!

I will never forget travelling with Franca for Admirela's wedding in Bosnia. It was a great experience with necessary coffee and photo stops, Franca's first trip to a mosque, shopping in the old town and eating cevapcici (mmm!) There are also lots of amusing memories, dancing at the wedding party and especially my 4am phonecall when I realized that Mostar has several bus stations and I was in the wrong one!!

Silvia, my recent partner in crime for going out in Vienna, and her friend Anja. I also had an excellent time when she visited London in October 2003.

Very coloured coordinated!! Here I am with two friends Sonja and Gemma. Sonja is one of the coolest Americans I know and I will miss meeting up with her for cups of coffee and chats!!

Gemma is my oldest and dearest friend in Austria. We shared a house for a while and have had many Europeans adventures, the highlight always being Amsterdam and the Heineken brewery also cocktails in Florence and the blue icecream as well as the flags on our shoes and the red,white and blue icecream on the Queens Jubilee, the unforgettable Werbung in Znojmo and the trip to Berlin.

We had lots of fun looking for pictures of Bill's friend Gerald on the big screen in Mezzanin (ok, yes, you had to be there to understand why it was so much fun).

Maud is an excellent climber and we had lots of stress and fun organizing conferences together at work.

A planters punch, banana sunrise and a bay breeze later (plus all the beer from Stiegl) I was following my newly learnt rule that you shouldn't go up a strength of alcohol and then back down again (sounded less complicated at the time), when Silvia suggested we should try and dance anyway even if it was Sunday and the Monday was the start of busy work conferences so it couldn't be a late night. The barman cranked up the music and this is more or less the result... After that it was time to head home to more packing!!

My final leaving party was a trip to local cocktail bar Nostos where we drank a rather large amount because I was leaving the next day and I danced on the table. Needless to say the next morning I didn't enjoy packing!