Graz

It was a huge relief when I finally arrived at the Frankfort airport. I knew at this point that there was no going back. It took me almost two days to get there and there was no way that I or anyone else could convince myself to buy a return flight with fifteen more layovers with delayed flights. Sunday night, I arrived at the airport at 4:40 or something and made it with plenty of time to walk to my gate for my flight to Chicago- then to Newark. 

The Newark airport is one of those that you have to take a train just to get out of there. My next flight was supposed to leave at like 10. The plane was tiny so they just took our bags to gate check them. I met this guy. He's a cartoonist on his way to Dubai to boost the morale of the troops. I'm not really quite sure about any of the details. Our conversation was cut short by an announcement from the pilot that the door had busted and we needed to deplane so they could fix it. 

My flight was delayed till1 then 2 then 5 and at that point I had to book another flight because I had already missed my connecting flight. I did get on the next flight to Frankfurt and arrived safely. 

They fed us twice during the flight. Once with some nasty chicken pasta. With a salad and a brownie and then again for breakfast with a croissant and some fruit.

The Frankfort airport is really nice. They have these lounges and really great perfume stores that I spent quite a bit of time in trying to mask some of my odoring. 

My next flight was through Lufthansa and gave us these really great sandwiches even though it was a one hour flight to graz. 

This was the only thing that I bought to eat all day. And it totally lasted me all of two days. I swear all their pastries look like a rollup thing. But it was good. 

Here's where I stayed for the first night. It took me maybe five hours to get here. I couldn't find the right train. Once I realized that the numbers on the train mean nothing, I was ok. I rode the train around the middle of graz for a couple hours, met a few interesting people and then decided I didn't want to stay in graz anymore. I took the spielfeld straß train to spielfeld and was sitting in the station waiting for the next train and met Olga. She has two kids; a boy and a girl, both in college. We talked about her kids and she taught me how to say Ljubljana. When we got to Maribor she asked how I was getting to the airport. When I told her I wasn't sure yet, she insisted that I ride with her. There was never a point when I felt like my life was in danger. I was just extremely grateful that I had some kind of guarantee that I would get to the hotel before dark. 

What a relief it was to see the dras center and know that I was in the right place finally. 

Here's the view from the front of the hotel looking at the city or what you can see of the city.