Jeff Kelty

Feb 27 – March 3

 

Thursday February 28

 

Gail left this morning around 8:30am, Randy and she headed to the airport via the bus you catch just 2 blocks away at the bahnhof. The same trip I’ll be making in just a few days. Gail’s headed to Colorado first to visit Rebecca and then to Tampa, FL on Tuesday to reunite with her siblings. Hopefully those of you in Denver caught her at the service on Sunday. So I’m home alone. Finished and posted the last blog.

After lunch Randy and I head to the UN building for a tour of the facility.

So many of his parishioner’s work either for the UN or the Atomic Energy Commission, which is sort of part of the UN, but not really, I’m told on the tour. I need to see what the UN is all about in Vienna.

We got there a little early for the 2pm tour, so we went on up to the Alte Donue (Old Danube), its where the river used to run and now is a big lake, with lots of areas for camping, and boating and swimming.

We walked a ways along the river and then headed back to the UN.

Barbara was our tour guide, a local high school student who spoke excellent English and who had a wealth of knowledge of the workings of the UN.

The tour was very limited but we got to see in one of the meeting rooms as well as the different areas where the Atomic Energy Commission does some commissioning.

This is one of 4 places where the UN has offices, New York, Geneva, Vienna, and Nairobi. It seems like a really big bureaucracy, but it can’t be easy to keep the world in some sort of order.

And I do believe we are better off because of the work the UN does, than we would be without it.

After the UN tour we headed down to the Prater to see if we can get a ride on the famous Ferris Wheel at the park. Our last 2 attempts have met with bad weather conditions for this giant and very old wheel. This time we are successful. 

Such views and its pretty clear. After watching the movie the other night, “The Third Man” we joke about one not threatening to push the other out of the car.

These are not your little 2 or 3 seaters, but an entire car, which I imagine in the summer, may carry 15 to 20 people. Several of the cars can even be rented and are outfitted with tables and chairs for a dinner on the wheel. It is a true icon of Vienna.

We walk thru the park after the ride and find, yes I have to admit it, a beer garden. The weather is very nice and warm this day, and I only have 3 days left, so a beer garden is in order. We sit and enjoy the park and the warm day, and an original Budweiser made in the Czech Republic, I think, and then continue to walk through this enormous park. It is packed with folks on this beautiful day, and I can only imagine how full the Prater will get as the days become warmer and the Viennese get out of there apartments an into the parks, the cities back yard. We wander for an hour or so and then catch the bus home.

Katrina is entering a fashion show, and she has returned from school with the dress her friend made her. Wow, this can’t be that little girl with that big Katrina smile I’ve known so long. But yes it is, I think the rest of the girls should just go home, Katrina’s got it and should win the whole thing.

Friday February 29

We are up early to catch the train to Salzburg, you know the place, “The hills are alive” “Julie Andrews”, “Doe a deer”, yep the place where the “Sound of Music” was made and supposedly took place. Unfortunately like Colorado spring weather can be fickle in Austria, and this day is gray and cloudy and raining pretty good. But it’s now or never for a trip to Salzburg so we forge ahead in hopes the day will improve, weather wise. It’s a 3 hour journey by train and we travel through some beautiful hilly and farm country. Beautiful dense forest of deciduous and pine and firs line the rails, streams and ponds and the fields are just starting to get the hint of green, of spring. Some of the tree are disparate to bud and bloom too, and are starting to peak out here and there. As the train travels toward Salzburg we even catch a few determined piles of snow, that are melting away.

As we round the last bend, even with all the low clouds, there are those hills Julie sang about, covered in snow. Amazing.

Salzburg sits on the Salz river, hence the name for the burg. With a huge fortress and castle overlooking the valley as a sentinel. It pretty well dominates the top of the hills that overlook all the valley below.

We head there first. It’s a good walk from the train station to the other side of the river, and the rain decides to work us over a bit, its really coming down, we have to resort to umbrella’s and the wind is making that a challenge too. It’s a beautiful town, very touristy, can you guess why? There are signs every where for “Sound of Music” tours. Not for us this day.

We walk down many narrow street, and many places where the buildings are built right into the side of the rock, in fact many of the old buildings were carver out of the rock. Pretty neat.

Ducked into a church that almost the entire inside was carver out of the rock from the 1400’s. Yeah, really old stuff in this town.

We continue our trek up to the castle, a formidable climb, and the rain continues to fall. Not sure we’ll see many vistas today. The castle was started in 1050. Did I mention this towns been around for a while. And continued to be built into the 1700.

Generations hauled and cut and stacked rocks and stones to make this castle so we are gonna check it out. We spend a good 2 hours up here, and as we look off one of the back look out areas, there they are, all those Alps.

We’re looking at Germany, those mountains, and they are snow covered and magnificent. And the weather clears just enough to see them. Not the perfect day, but better than I had hoped for. We can also see the villa where the Von Trapp’s, in the movie lived, and the valley on this side of the hill. Still Salzburg.

We walk back down off the hill of the fortress and into the large square where there is a giant chess board painted on the square floor, another famous attraction of Salzburg, but in the rain no one is playing any chess.

We wandered thru the touristy part of the town. It is what you would expect an Austrian town in the Alps to be.

We have found, Randy knew about it all along, an Augustinian brewery that is famous for, you guessed it, Beer. But they don’t open till 3.

We are wet and tired, so we head in that direction to get some nourishment and a beer. Well you really have to look for this spot and when you get in, it’s huge. Five or six very large rooms and they boast they can seat 1600 people.

Well its Friday, FAC club, in Salzburg Austria and we are right in the middle of it. Too fun. They have all these stalls all around with food, the cheese stall, the bread and pretzel stall, the wusrt and sausage stall, the radish stall, yes I guess very thinly sliced radishes are good with beer, some very spicy are a beer drinkers friend. They have schnitzel and sandwiches and just lots of stuff to buy and snack on with your beer.

And I have got to tell you that this was the holy grail of the most wonderful brew I have every tasted. Ever! It wasn’t beer it was food in a very heavy crockery stein, a delicious treat from monks that have been doing this for the last 400 years. So they got it right. We stayed and enjoyed the festivities and dried out before making the 2 mile walk back to the train station and the journey back to Vienna. A wonderful day to see such a beautiful city even in such nasty weather.

Train travel on these long trips has been as much fun as the destination, and they are fast. This one was going at least 100mph on a good part of the trip and so quiet. It’s just too bad the US doesn’t have such a transportation system. It’s sure a fun way to travel.

 

Saturday March 1

 

Saturday is market time, and this time I need stuff to make the chili for the young adults meeting Sunday night. So off we go, with our bags, 2 wheeled shopping cart and a pocket full of 1 and 2 euro coins. The place is mobbed; its 9:30 and only the most savvy shoppers are here. Randy and I head down the isles and seek out the best of produce. After 3 weeks of watching how its done I jump in this time and help to make the purchases, one kilo of carrots, 2 kilos of zucchini, 3 kilo’s of peppers. A euro here, 2 and a half euro’s there. We load up the cart and the bags and head back. Then it’s off to the Hoffer, grocery store, meat, cheese, canned beans, tomato sauce, comes in a box in Austria, go figure. Now its time to cook. So I make a very big pot of meat chili and a smaller pot of vegetarian chili. While cooking a little storm comes up, well not so little it blew so hard, 80 to 100 mph winds. On the porch above ours, they had left the door open and it blew the glass door into the wall and smashed the glass and it blew all over the courtyard. It’s the same storm that caused that German jet, I’m sure most of you have seen on TV, to have such a wild almost crash landing. What an incredible pilot on that plane to keep it from crashing. Any way, we survive the wind and down pour and the cooking goes on.

At 4 I have a meeting with the Anglican priest Aileen at her home with some other youth people. Aileen has asked me to talk about youth ministry in America and share what I can. 2 gals who are working in Aileen’s church with the youth come and we have a great conversation. We have snacks after the meeting and then the ladies drop me off back at the manse. Odd to drive in the city, 1^st time I’ve been in a car since I came to Austria. The world looks very different out the windshield of a car, than the seat in a trolley, bus or subway.

Randy and I head to a Turkish restaurant for dinner and have 2 different lamb dishes. It’s a new restaurant just a block from Randy and Gail’s place and the owner gives us an after dinner schnapps, he called it, but I think it was ouzo. Strong stuff! Good food!

 

Sunday March 2

 

My last full day in Vienna, Austria. Many mixed feelings, but we will get to that later.

It is a very cloudy and rainy day. Katrina has been at a sleep over birthday party for one of her bud’s so its just Randy and I this morning. The Sunday routine is, get up, check the email, take a shower, dress, do the walk around the Belvedere palace, and then head off to Bible study at the Chattanooga café in Stephen Platz for a little breakfast, a great mélange (Austrian coffee) and study on Mark, if Bill is there. This morning it’s all done in heavy rain off and on. Seems each time we go out, it’s heavy.

As Randy and I come up out of the U-Bahn into Stephen Platz, we see what the nice weather of this past week has brought besides the blooms of forsythia, all the tables and chairs and umbrellas are set up in the square for many of the café’s, its starting to look much more like the squares of so many European cities and towns as the good weather sets in. A couple more weeks and I could be sitting in one of those seats, having lunch or drinking coffee or I dare say a beer!

6 people show this morning, as well as Bill and he has invited an Austrian friend to join us, whose name escapes me. She has visited and lived in America and now lives is Germany with her ailing husband and is in town for a reunion of a choral group she was once a member of. She has even sung in Colorado once with her group, many years ago. Fun to talk about home with someone who has been there as a tourist and a foreigner who lived in the states. Her memories of the states are many good ones.

The Bible study begins as we read around the table in the 8^th chapter of Mark. Good talk and study.

We pay our bill and head up the stars on across Stephens Platz to the church.  It’s pouring again. Randy has gone ahead as he always does, so Ellen and I are on our own to find our way the 3 blocks or so. I pick the correct little street, because we go by a sporting goods store that prominently displace many firearms and knives, the hunting type, in there windows, and each time I’ve gone by it I always thing of the dichotomy of going to church and seeing a bunch of weapons.

Anyways, I digress, it’s a wonderful service for my last in Vienna, and I share many good byes with all the wonderful folks I have come to know during my time here, at the coffee hour. Georges coffee taste particularly good this morning and he has snacks of some very dark and rick Austrian bread covered in butter. How I will miss the great bread

After many good-byes and checking in with the young adults to get a feel for how many are coming, as well as making sure the 6 new young adults that showed up this morning for worship are personally invited to come tonight, Randy and I head for home. Its’ still raining.

The choir has already returned to the manse for lunch and to rehears for the upcoming holy week services. So they greet us with wonderful chicken noodle soup and bread for a light lunch. Roz, in the time I have been here there choir has sung many familiar tunes, can’t remember a one’s name, but it’s so nice to hear them, and again to be reminded how universal music is. There Easter line up is also full of familiar tunes as well.

I get my 2 pots of chili back on the stove and heating, it’s already almost 4.  Geoff and Sophie have stayed from the choir rehearsal and Ellen, Stephen, Elizabeth and Francis arrive about 5, so we all get busy setting tables, making salad, getting ready.

Now the first time I was part of this young adults group at the beginning of the month, I think there were 8 that came, this time as the buzzer, buzzes again and again, we are up to 18 young people that come.

We have to set up the extra table in the living room, but we all gather round the tables and pray for this time. The room is a buzz as you can imagine.

College kids and young adults from around the world, Singapore, Toronto area, Vienna, Chicago, Iowa, Colorado, Germany, England, Australia, and I know I’m missing a few other states too. After we fill up on chili, it was a little spicy, we gather to do highs and lows and to answer the question “what’s the most challenging thing about living in Vienna, Austria”? As you would guess the answers are as different as the young people in the room. Language, culture, school, being so far a way from home, loneliness, the job, the challenge of finding a spiritual network in Vienna.

 

What a way to wrap up my visit in Austria/Europe. Such inspiration and joy in this room tonight in the presents of all this knowledge, ambition, enthusiasm and youth. It is such a hopeful group and we talk and share for several hours, one by one, they head out, to do homework, got to get up early for work, just time to go. The good-bye again are so bitter sweet, some of these folks I have known since my arrival here, others I only met today, or tonight. But we all have this great connection of spirit and faith. How cool is that?

Before the group breaks Randy shares his joy for tonight’s group and his sadness for my departure in the morning. His words of our great friendship are humbling and so heartfelt, I never think I have an impact on others, only of the impact they have on me, and here he is, eloquently telling us of that impact I have on him. I am so touched by these words, and gee, guess what, overcome with emotion, yeah, I cried! Big silly!

But all kidding aside, how special it is to have best friends, people that love and care about you and you about them. Thanks so much to Randy for his best friendship and Gail and Katrina for there hospitality and there love to me. How important it is to remember that we all have an impact on others, because of the relationships we build and the faith we share. What a gift! Thanks to you all!

As I go to bed tonight, I have such a full feeling, and not just of chili. What an incredible month, adventure and people. Thank God!

   

Monday March 3

So here it is, time to go. Arevaderchy(sp), adios, auf wiedersehen, chuice(sp).  I give Katrina a big hug as she heads off to school, I check my email one last time, Randy fixes us a last supper, breakfast, of knockwurst, onions and peppers, and coffee. Finish packing and getting organized and we head to the Sud Bahnhof, (Train Station) 2 blocks away to catch the bus for the airport. My anticipation for the very long day ahead has my stomach all jumpy, airplane travel is just not the fun it used to be, and traveling across continents and cultures always adds a little more stress to the ordeal.

Randy and I walk up to the station and wait for the bus to arrive. In very un-Austrian fashion it’s a few minutes late, its supposed to be there at 8:45 and it’s already 8:50. Maybe it won’t come and it’s a sign from God I have to stay. But no, the Monday morning traffic has slowed it just a bit. So here it is, I have to say good-bye to my friend, mentor, confidant, traveling buddy, again. Why is good-bye so hard? We put my luggage under the bus with the rest of the stuff, one last really good-bye guy hug, and its over. My time in Vienna is over. Randy heads to the Belvedere Palace for the morning walk. I pay my 6 euro’s to the driver, find my seat and I’m once again really alone. We travel past Randy as he turns the corner to enter the gate of the Belvedere Palace. How many times he and I have walked those grounds this months talking about life, our travels, old times, or just in silent thought, how fitting my last look is of Randy and the palace. I am left to my thoughts of this month as we are sitting in that very traffic that made the bus a little late. The view of the city back to the airport is so different. I now recognize things, the T-Mobile building, churches off in the distance, the hills and vineyards around the city we have hiked, the river, the TV tower that marks the area where the manse is. I’m no longer a new visitor to Vienna, I have some history here some new knowledge of a far away place, travel has not let me down again, very cool!

It’s about a half hour trip to the airport; we check in with the delightful Austrian Air attendant, we head to security. In Europe it’s a little different, after you check in and deposit your luggage you then first go though passport control. Someone takes it, scans it, and if you are ok, stamps it with an exit stamp, a Stimple, (Stamp), Austrians are big on stimples. On to the next check point, this one verifies that you have the boarding pass, and the correct exit stamp, and then on to the next one, now here is ware you get to have all your stamps and tickets and passport checked yet again, but you also get to put your carry on stuff on the conveyer for x-ray and go through the metal detectors, the difference is, this is right at the gate. I pass, first try through. So now me and the 238 other passengers all waiting to board this very full 767 Austrian Airlines plane, sit, stand and try to find a comfortable spot to wait.

So why is this plane so full, it was almost empty coming here? For one thing, this plane leaves and get to the states in the same day, and 2, my guess is a lot of folks are traveling to the states from Europe because our dollar is so weak; it’s now more than a $1.52 to 1 Euro, or is it the other way around, money has never been my strong point, so it’s a cheap place for Europeans to go on holiday. For what ever the reason it’s packed. And they are being very strict about the size of your carry-on’s. I watch an older lady and an attendant get into it over her, much too large, carry on. There have a heated discussion, and bring in a supervisor who continues to explain to this lady she cannot take it on the plane with her. After almost a half hour of talking and many terse words from her, she most reluctantly releases he valise to the attendant, grousing the entire time. It is finally time to board, It’s a 2, 3, 2 seating arrangement on this 767 and I have an isle seat in the middle, 3, section all the way in the back. No exit isle available, but at least I have an isle seat. There is a gentleman in the middle seat, and he is determined not to be there, so he finds a way to talk the flight attendant into relocating him in business class. Wish I could understand German; I would have liked to have made that one happen for myself.

On Austrian Air they still serve real food, real silverware, and the drinks both alcohol and non are free. They even pass around a menu before we leave. Now tell me again why none of this works on US flights. The food is a salad, with balsamic dressing, salmon, garlic mashed potatoes, roasted zucchini, and a chocolate pudding thing. And they come around with fresh warm rolls to boot. So civilized.

The ride is bumpy, and ends up being bumpy almost the entire trip, sometimes really bumpy. And when the seatbelt sign comes on, it is only a suggestion, not an order, again Austrians believe, I guess as an adult, you can decide whether you need to sit or not. Or maybe it’s in Austrian law you can’t sue the airlines if you’re dumb enough to not be in your seat when it’s bumpy and get hurt, novel idea!

It’s a 9 hour flight across the pond, and the little TV keeps you abreast of your travel progress as well as gives you a myriad of entertainment choices, from movies, to American TV shows, to video games. There are even 2 chanels that have video cameras attached to the front and the bottom of the plane, so you can see outside. Cloudy most of the way, so not really helpful, but it was cool to watch the plane come in for its landing. The movies and shows are in about 4 languages too.

So I settle in to the airplane ride, a little reading, watching, eating, sleeping, writing this blog, that was a challenge, so little room, found myself typing with my thumbs. Thought I was pretty clever with that one. The time goes slowly but we chase the sun across the planet and arrive at Dulles International about a half an hour early. It’s a warm sunny day, not that I actually got to go out in it, they keep you pretty secure in airports. And we ride the big bus thing, which only Dulles seems to have, to customs. We have to do customs at Dulles. One fellow says, as a connecting passenger they get you right thru, this shouldn’t take long. How I came to dislike those words. As we descended the escalator into this vast room, which is full from side to side and end to end with passengers from many other flights all standing in this giant unmoving line, I knew those words, about getting us right thru, were a lie. We are hollered at by several customs people to move to this side or the other whether you are a citizen or non-citizen.

Never got hollered at in Austria, even when that dude at the mall was unhappy with Randy and I, he didn’t holler, just talked sternly.

Then the word comes back that all the computers are down, and we are all not going anywhere till they are back up. Welcome to America! Finally after a good 45 minutes we see movement on the citizen side of the room. Awesome, but the word comes back that the non citizen side is down for the count, again, Welcome to America. In another 45 minutes the line snakes its way along, like a ride at Disney land, only this line to this ride will hopefully take me to Denver when this nightmare is done. So an hour and a half later I am through this customs debacle but the poor non citizens haven’t moved. Many folks have already missed there connecting flight in the citizen line and obviously many more from the other will miss connecting flight too.

So sad, so unkind, so NOT, Welcome to America.

I think, we, America, really need to work on this. Everyone who is not a citizen is not the enemy! Really!

I get to my United gate with only about a half an hour to go before we load and go. I get my cell phone charged and give mom a call. I figured you should call your dear mother first, before anyone else. She is your mom, for gosh sakes.

Thank goodness for my 4 hour layover. I’m one of the lucky ones to not have to rebook a flight.

We are flying a 777 to Denver, a bigger plane, but sadly just as full, and just as bumpy a ride, and remember we are now on a US flight, and we don’t have the option that as an adult you can decide whether to stand when the seat belt sign is illuminated, so I’m stuck in my seat for most of the 3 plus hours home. Thankfully we take off on time and land 15 minutes early. Even my bags made it through the madness at Dulles and here they come up the ramp, some 30 minutes later, but hey, there here. Hooray!

I call Dan, and he is already waiting in the auto waiting area outside the airport, so 15 minutes later I’m sitting in my truck and we are headed to Lakewood. I let Dan drive; I can feel the sleep deprivation starting to kick in.

About 8:45 I’m standing in the doorway of my apartment, feeling surreal and pretty tired about the last 22 hours. Surrounded by my bags and my memories and a warm waterbed in the other room, with my name on it!

Goodnight!