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12/3/2006 12:00:00 PM
Vienna
Safe and Sound in Vienna

Safe and sound in Vienna

We made the long journey to Vienna from New Zealand and arrived safe and sound. The term long in this case refers to the distance covered at over 500 miles per hour.

Howdy,

We made the long journey to Vienna from New Zealand and arrived safe and sound. The term 'long' in this case refers to the distance covered at over 500 miles per hour rather than 7-8 miles we were used to for the last year or so. In terms of time, it was a short trip of over 40 hours compared to 6 days from Tonga to New Zealand, not even 2 nights and we even 'outsourced' the navigation and skippering to Emirates airlines ... that's the way to travel and it reminds me why some people hire crew for night watches ... :-)

The trip overall was good, though it started a bit hectic. Despite the fact that we allowed 2 ½ hours for check-in, we made it onboard the flight from Auckland with about 5 minutes to spare ... we were either the last to board or the second to last, we are not sure. We lost most of our time trying to get our luggage to Austria. Having traveled a lot but mainly thru the US, we are used to the US regulations of 32 kg / 100 lbs per LUGGAGE ... well the bad news for us was we flew thru Asia this time and the regulations going westbound are  20 kg / 45 lbs per PERSON ... the first bag I put on the scale weighed in at a whapping 36 kg / 110 lbs. Clearly, this was going to be an issue since we did have 10 bags to get to Austria. We asked how much it would have been for excess luggage and the check-in lady said 85 NZD ... not too bad I thought until I found out that was per KG rather than the total. In not too accommodating manner, she recommended that we had enough time to sort thru and throw stuff out or leave it in NZ ... our begging for forgiveness and Austrian charm got little leeway and we ended up with 6 bags left-over and that needed to be shipped with cargo. Just so you get an idea, we had extra bags totaling 160 kg / 350 lbs which would have been 13,600 NZD ... cargo ended up costing us about 1,000 NZD ... still too much for poor cruisers but there was little we could imagine to leave behind to restart our lives ... remember this all came of a small boat with already limited space; we lived with the absolute minimum of clothes anyhow. The rest of the flight was quite comfortable, Emirates is a friendly airline with good food and they even give you an extra meal when hungry ... this ain't Southwest peanut cargo ... HURRAY.

In Vienna, we were welcomed by my dad, his wife, Niki's mom and a friend of ours. They were very happy to see us though we were quite a bit jet lagged ... Benjamin especially was cranky for the first hour but a little snack got him back into the hyper mood we were all in after reuniting with our families more than a year, 8,000 sea miles and a lifetime of experiences later. They were also quite excited to only have to pack 4 bags rather than 10 ... today we are off picking up the remaining 6 bags and man am I glad to get an extra pair of shoes. In the rush at the airport, we didn't sort the bags, so whatever bags made it on the airline first, came with us ... Niki didn't get extra underwear (no I didn't get my wish ... your imagination may prevail what that was ... she bought new ones) and I didn't get my extra pair of shoes.

The last 3 days we have been busy moving into the apartment Niki's mom had found for us and Niki's and my family had spent endless hours getting ready for us. It was pure luxury when we got here ... apartment ready with a stocked fridge, car waiting for us, cell phones ready, you name it, our families had thought of it. We cannot say thank you enough times to them for all the work they had put into our arrival in Vienna. Talking about cell phones, we have officially reached the status of 'land lubbers' again with both Niki and I having Austrian phones and here we go with our numbers for your reference:

(deleted from website for spamming reasons)

For international calls, Skype might still be the least expensive option and here are our Skype usernames in case you shouldn't have them already:

(deleted from website for spamming reasons)

Starting next week, life starts to take its normal course, I will be looking for work and Niki will be looking for a school for the boys. By the way, congrats to Niki, she has officially outdone me on the job search front, since she has work already lined up to start in mid January ... I am proud of her and will have to start to cook again I guess ... feels like in the early days of our relationship when I was a poor student and Niki worked ... not sure I get to sleep in until 10 anymore.

All the best from TheSchmids family. We miss Lawur and our cruiser friends already though there is still plenty of catching up with family and friends to do before we are really getting 'oceansick' (rather than homesick).

Robert and Family

PS: It is OK again to hit reply ... :-) ... we have regular email again and though we forward our Winlink email account, please stop using the ki4dfx address if you can. Thanks.

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