The Christmas holidays have been looming in my mind as the most significant sign that my time in Austria is rapidly coming to an end. When I return from Pittsburgh in January, I'll only have three weeks left in the country, and when you've been measuring your time in months, those three weeks are going to fly by. Every reminder that Christmas is approaching has been bittersweet: I'm certainly excited to see my family again, and my friend from Kosovo has assured me that the dorm is pretty lonely and boring over the break, because most Austrians go home, but I also was not willing to come to terms with the fact that when I return, it will be only to tie up loose ends before saying goodbye forever. I've had a lot of very strong, very mixed emotions in the past few weeks as Christmas drew nearer, and it was with sadness that I pulled out my suitcase on Wednesday and started packing.
But I had the perfect plan to wean myself off of Austria. Thursday night was the dorm Christmas party, where I drank too much punch, talked and laughed with my friends in the dorm, and said goodbye to everyone for the holidays. (Since Friday is the last day of classes at the Hauptuni, lots of Austrians are also leaving this weekend.) I had class on Friday morning, and went shopping for Christmas cookies at the Karlsplatz Christkindlmarkt with Julia, a girl on my floor, in the afternoon, where I also drank my last Glühwein. Then I had one last dinner in the Kuchl, where I said goodbye to the people who were still in the dorm, and went to bed at about nine o'clock because I had to get up at four to make my flights. I was finally ready to go: I had eaten or given away the last of my food, was wearing the last of my clean clothes, and had turned the heat off for the two weeks in which neither me nor my roommate will be in the room.
But when I got to the airport at 6:30am yesterday, I was met with a notice saying that my flight to London, the first leg of my journey, had been cancelled, and that I needed to wait in the already gigantic line that had formed in front of the British Airways ticket counter. During our four hours in line, we slowly realized that because of the snow in the UK, no flights would be able to enter or leave London Heathrow on Saturday or Sunday, and that every single one of those 400,000 passengers (Heathrow is one of the biggest airports in the world, after all) would be trying to find space on alternate flights throughout Europe. Things were complicated. An American family with three little kids ahead of me in line was forced to fly to Iceland for two days, because the first flight to Seattle that could accomodate them all would be leaving Reykjavik on Tuesday morning. A man from Peru had missed the only flight to his destination for the week, so he wouldn't be able to go home for Christmas. By comparison, my eventual solution -- I'll be staying in Vienna until Monday morning, and then connecting in Brussels and New York, arriving in Pittsburgh at 5am -- was relatively tame. I wasn't thrilled to have to unpack my suitcase, do laundry, beg my friends still in the dorm for food, and have to set another alarm for 3:30am, but spending more time in Haus Salzburg is far from the worst thing in the world. And as my friends here were quick to remind me, it's as if the universe wants me to stay in Austria.
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