Moving day...

One last picture from the move... it was so hilarious! Jess and I went to the furniture store where the information lady gave me the evil eye and spoke in rapid German, it went something like this... you are a stupid non-German speaker, I am going to angrily glare at you, talk about you to my co-workers, slam my phone around a little bit, hold the paper that you gave me, act like I have no idea what is going on, then find an English speaker and stare at you some more. Fun. Fortunately, Lisa (Wow, we have the same name... she was so excited) came over and translated for us. Basically, I just handed them my US drivers license, bank card (I may, or may not have) used my "free money". I have been accidentally using this "Quick Laden" savings plan, well, it's not really it's a savings plan. I interpreted the Quick Laden button on the ATM machine as Quick Cash at home, where you would just get 50 Euros right away. Well, every time I tried it over the last four months, money never came out, so I would just do it a different way until money would come out. Most people would have tried to figure out what Quick Laden was, well, I couldn't be bothered to do that. So, it was a forced savings account, the money went somewhere, but I had no idea where. When I did finally call the bank about it one time, she gave me clear, precise directions in order to access the money. Unfortunately the directions were in perfect German. I just gave up. But, the other day when I was with my mom at the furniture store, the Quick Laden option came up as a way to pay, there were hundreds of Euros in there! Ha! So anyways, back to my new best friend Lisa. After I paid (I think) for the second half of the furniture, the "car rental" and the rest of the items she sent us around the corner to find the rental. She told us we had three hours to get the car back and asked if I knew the directions. I confidently lied to her and said, oh of course.

Jess and I walked around a bit and eventually found the area we were looking for, strangely enough, all the boxes were just sitting right there waiting for us. Jess confidently hopped into the MASSIVE moving van when the guy gave me the keys and asked that we just back up to the loading dock. Right between so huge garbage thing and some other poor person's car. She was reversing and I was directing. After about 10 minutes we had moved the van about seven inches closer than it would have been if we just left it where it was... So, off we went! We were cracking up, of course the van was HUGE, a stick shift, it was snowy and Jess had NO IDEA where she was going. Not that I really knew either. I told her to follow the tram tracks, but when it appeared that only trams were allowed, just follow the cars in front of her. I know, precise directions. It was great. So, it all actually went quite well! We started following the wrong tracks, but most trams lead towards the center of town, so we did make it with no major incidents. We parked the van right near my place and unloaded the furniture and managed to get it up to my apartment with little incident.

As we were driving back, we figured out that left turns aren't allowed anywhere and we drove a long ways out of the way. I figured it was just a "tour" for Jess. She was busy driving and the side mirror only hit one sign. Then she panicked a bit and was like roll down the window, fix the mirror. Then, I got a little nervous and kept saying, you're really close to the curb over here... then she would say she's really close to the cars on the other side of her. We determined the van was just too big for the road. Surprising in Europe, right? We did eventually make it back to Moma or Momax, whatever we want to call it... turned in the car, which they didn't even look at. Very successful. And hilarious. If I ever need to move anything again, whether it's from Momax or not, I will be renting that thing, it's way cheaper than the random, lazy mover guy I hired before...

Today is another big day. Goal= Gym, Naschmarkt, Karlsplatz Christmas Market and pants for Jess. She had a "minor packing error". She only brought one pair of pants. One of these days I'm going to show Jess how cool Vienna is... but for now, we're still playing a day in the life of Lisa.

One thing that is cracking me up about Jess's visit is the pure excitement about the availability of pork products and wine. Amazing what Dubai can do to a person!