Fast Track to Vienna

It's only been a little over 24 hours and I've touched the earth of Germany, Hungary, and Austria already!   Aboard Lufthansa's Airbus, we left on time from San Francisco and arrived seamlessly to Frankfurt airport after 10 hours of flight.  Happily surprised, we were  fed meals despite my initial belief that we would only be served peanuts and soda.  I had loaded up on dried mango,  sandwiches, peanut butter cups, chips, apples, etc. to keep us alive while we made the arduous trip across the Atlantic Ocean, but instead we were served spicy pasta, rosemary rolls, salad, a Tillamook cheese wedge, and a brownie.  Wine was served for free at endless supply! Wow! Movies and TV shows were at our disposal.  I jumped right in and watched The Hunger Games having just read the first book.  Loved it and it killed almost 2 1/2 hours.  I watched an episode of Enlightened, Man vs Wild with Jake Gyllenhaal, a documentary with Alicia Keys and Ruby Dee (great!), and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  Aside from my triggered sciatica, I had a relatively enjoyable flight although Mira and I slept minimally.  My visions of bratwurst and hefenwiezen bier in Frankfurt were not met however, as we had to walk almost a mile to our connecting flight, wait in line to show our passports again, and then get on a bus to drive to our plane for Hungary.  I slept the entire hour and 15 minutes.  Ahhh..... finally.  

My dad and brother greeted us at the airport and whisked us away into the countryside toward Budapest.  The green fields looked very similar to fields at home in Sonoma.  Our first stop: the studio where Dan is building sets for Die Hard 5.  I don't often get to see the sets my brother designs because so often they are far away like this one.  Impressive is an understatement! Wow.  There was no filming that day, but along with my dad and Mira we got to take pictures sitting on the sets, but I can't post them until the film comes out. 

We met his crew and watched him in action for a few minutes.  I'm proud of my brother and it was great to see that those years of drawing cars and building car models paid off!

Next stop was Budapest for like 30 minutes because we were off to Vienna for the weekend! 

Croatia turned out to be too far a drive for my brother who hadn't had a day off in 20 days.  We decided the 2 hour drive to Austria was a better idea.  So that is where I'll end today's blog since it's 1:30 am and everyone just went to sleep.  Jet lag has us up late and up early.  Ugh.

No complaints though.  Loving every second of this trip.   Will post more pics of Vienna tomorrow.

Auf Wiedersehen

Tracy