To my followers, I apologize for the delayed post.
The day started off like all others - breakfast in the hotel and then drive to work. I checked out of the hotel because I was staying at a hotel right across the street from the airport so that I didn't have to deal with traffic in the morning.
Work was a series of summary meetings and then I was able to get some other work done that was started to become a backlog in my email inbox.
The previous post I left a cliffhanger, mostly because I wasn't sure if the "special event" I was told about on Wednesday was going to work out. It did.
After work, the team took me to Facility 3 which is a small pub right beside the office. It was a small group - two project managers, certification engineer, the CEO and his son who is working for the company.
From there, I followed one of the project managers to a city called Wiener Nau Stadt which was about 30 mins away. I thought it was odd that we were doing 130km/h on the highway that had 100 posted. However that is the limit for trucks, the limit for cars is 130 (confirmed by my gps later on).
The special event I was told about was a 4.5 km team race. The company I am visiting had several teams entered and some people couldn't make it. One of the project managers said that if I wanted to run in the race, I could. And so I did.
I got my bag with a team shirt, bib (with my team number) and a timing tag for my shoe. Since I was changing hotels, I had all my stuff with me so I could change at the stadium.
Once at the stadium, Andy (project manager) helped me find the rest of the teams for the company. Andy wasn't running. I knew some of the team members (recall the guy who used to work at Bombardier, the guy who came to Winnipeg with test samples and now the CEO and his son) many of which were surprised to see me at the race. When in Austria...
The race went through the streets of the city. We started in the stadium, went out and around the village square and then back. I posted a time of 21:30 which is pretty decent for an old fart like me who hasn't run track or cross country in over 15 years. I placed 837 out of around 2200 participants.
Each team consisted of either 3 or 6 runners and your cumulative time was then used to determine the winner. We placed 45th out of 119.
After the race, the stadium area has a big party with beer and food for sale. After a beer, a frankfurter and talking with many people who were interested in where I was from and why I was in Austria, it was time to say goodbye (since it was 10:45pm).
I made my way back to the car and then made the 1 hr drive to the airport, some of which at 130km/h again. At the airport, I parked the rental car in the surface return lot and then proceeded to search for the rental counter to return my keys. After 15 mins (and three trips around the parking garage) I finally found where I needed to go.
It was then a short walk (across the street) to the hotel. Shower and talked to Lola (more like she talked to me because I was too tired) then went to sleep.
Today started off with breakfast at 7:45am local time (12:45am home time). I then walked to the airport (2 mins) and then proceeded to check in, check my handicapped roller bag and get through security and passport control.
At the gate, another passport check was conducted - this time to verify against your boarding pass. And then, once boarding there was another check. It wasn't very efficient and made the boarding process much longer than it needed to be.
The flight to Toronto was routine and 8.5 hrs.
I watched a movie (The Founder, a story about the founders of McDonalds, good movie), did some work, at some pasta for lunch (quite tasty), had a nap for a couple hours and now writing this blog that I will post during my 4 hrs layover in Toronto, unless I can get an earlier flight.
I must look like a trustworthy and helpful guy since the Austrian lady beside me has asked me to help her get her bag from baggage claim because she has a sore wrist and shoulder. We will see how this goes - she doesn't speak English other than "thank you" and had to get the flight attendant to translate her request for me.
Update - we got the lady her bags, she was very thankful for the help.
I also was successful in getting on earlier flight that leaves at 4:30 as opposed to 6:45. That makes me happy so I can get in at 1am Vienna time, not 3am...
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