Front view of the Schloss Wasserburg.
Weird to think I was in Austria this morning. Pretty tired after 18 hours of travelling, and I have lots of e-mail to wade through over the next few days. A belated HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Allison and Jodi! I was unable to host their virtual party this year since I was away; many thanks to Paul Kwinn for hosting
what looks like was (and still is) a wonderful bash!
I wasn't able to get online while in Austria because the
Schloss Wasserburg had a special internal phone system. I worked on a Blathering trip report offline anyway, for uploading when I got back home. And HEY, now I'm allowed to ecstatically announce that my music group,
Urban Tapestry, has been invited to be Guests of Honor at
Filkcontinental in Germany Sept.30-Oct.2nd, 2005, woohoo! And yes, I can now confess that this was my original motivation for starting to learn German. :-)
Anyway, here's my Austria Trip Blathering, Part 1:
The trip out to Vienna was easier than we expected. Our flight left from the new terminal at the airport, so we got to check out the new space. Very nice, much more natural light and less claustrophobic than the other terminals. It's still under construction, so we had to take shuttle buses to part of the terminal; supposedly eventually everything will be connected up so shuttles won't be necessary.
An aerial view of Schloss Wasserburg (does not show
the entire property). Photo from this page on Holiday-home.com.
Is it my imagination, or are seats somewhat closer together on Air Canada planes? In any case, I didn't get much sleep on our overnight flight, mainly because the fellow behind me had long legs. Every time he shifted position (which appeared to be at least once every few minutes), I could feel his knees in my back. Ugh.
We had a one hour layover in Frankfurt, which turned out to be barely enough time. Our connecting flight gate, despite being one letter higher than our arrival gate, seemed to be on the other side of the airport. We ran past all the shops and restaurants, down several long hallways and arrived just as our flight was boarding. Whew.
Ginny was kind enough to pick us up at the Vienna airport, and the three of us took off for Wasserburg. The Schloss Wasserberg was about an hour's drive away.
Gorgeous property, with a pond and lots of forest around to explore.
The family obviously have had a strong interest in horses, judging from the horse-themed statues, paintings and books inside and outside the building:
These horses came trotting over as soon as they saw us, obviously hoping for a treat:
There was even a trampoline:
And there were lots of places to sit and hang out, like this one:
There were two dining rooms, but here is the one we used the most often:
Part of Jeff's and my room:
What you can't see in the photo: a sitting table with mirror, gorgeous wood cupboard with foldout desk table (I'm sure there's a proper furniture term for this), small coffee table and two chairs, bathroom with tub and sink, adjoining smaller room with another bed, cupboard, work desk, sitting table with mirror, chairs. We didn't realize that the bed was actually two twin beds pushed together until later that night.
Schloss Wassburg itself was big enough that I kept getting lost the first few days, taking the wrong staircases and hallways...but hey, if I kept walking I eventually got to where I wanted to, and always saw interesting things along the way. The first floor included a sitting area with fireplace, fridge with snacks and drinks, sauna. The kitchen, dining room and sitting rooms were on the second floor. Our bedrooms were on the third floor. Also in the building were staff quarters and the family's private quarters.
We ended up congregating in the evenings to chat, play games, exchange stories about what we had done during the day. Sometimes in the library:
Sometimes in one of the other sitting areas, like this one:
A pingpong table in the most fancy rec room I've ever seen, with gilt and red velvet chairs lining the walls as well as oil portrait paintings:
Fun to snoop through the books, which were mainly in German, though I found a few in French and English. There were also lots of interesting drawers and shelves to snoop through. I found a stone hand in one of the boxes, for instance:
How cool is
that?
In the
next Blathering: practising my German language skills!
Wednesday, November 17, 2004 at 9:51AM 
