{"id":1052,"date":"2011-04-24T12:13:46","date_gmt":"2011-04-24T19:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rayivey.com\/wordpress\/?p=1052"},"modified":"2011-04-24T12:13:46","modified_gmt":"2011-04-24T19:13:46","slug":"spring-forward-day-35","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rayivey.com\/wordpress\/spring-forward-day-35\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>

New York\/Vienna\/Brussels
\nApril 15-16, 2011<\/h2>\n

Distance Today:\u00a0 4816<\/p>\n

Distance So Far: 7336<\/p>\n

Very Nice Flight<\/h3>\n

Thank goodness for an exit row!\u00a0 When you\u2019re a big, claustrophobic person like me, extra leg room is everything.\u00a0 I am truly a business-class sized traveler with a coach-sized budget.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The road to Brussels' Arc du Triomphe<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

True, my exit row was completely full and it was three steps from the bathroom, so I had people on top of me the entire flight, but it was worth it.<\/p>\n

The flight even took off on time and landed in Vienna early.\u00a0 Quelle concept.<\/p>\n

The airline was Austrian, and it was run with Teutonic efficiency.\u00a0 The flight attendants\u2019 uniforms were very reminiscent of the Swinging 60s look.\u00a0 The service was polite but chilly.<\/p>\n

The seat right next to me belonged to a nice young woman who, before takeoff, went and fetched her husband and made him sit there instead.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019ll be better for your long legs.\u201d\u00a0 Nice wife.\u00a0 In fact, they were so cute to watch because they were very young and almost painfully in love.\u00a0 At one point the husband was negotiating with someone else near us to switch seats \u201cso I can have my wife.\u201d\u00a0 I thought it was sweet that he put it like that.\u00a0 Periodically during the long flight she\u2019d come over from her seat in the next cabin and crouch in front of us and they\u2019d hold hands and stare with idiotic infatuation at each other.\u00a0 They\u2019re lucky.\u00a0 I hope their passion lasts.<\/p>\n

Each seat, even in coach, had a \u201cpersonal\u201d video screen.\u00a0 I never even opened mine.\u00a0 I was busy finishing Zoe\u2019s Tale<\/em><\/strong> by John Scalzi, which turned out to be just amazingly good.\u00a0 Scalzi gets better and better with each book; he is becoming a science fiction voice to be reckoned with.\u00a0 That and dungeon-crawling my way through the candy-colored Dragon Quest V<\/em><\/strong> on my Nintendo DS kept me busy.<\/p>\n

\"Hey!<\/a>
Hey! Cleveland has an arcade JUST EXACTLY LIKE THIS!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After eight hours we landed in Vienna.\u00a0 What a drag that I didn\u2019t have a direct flight to Brussels.\u00a0 At least on Austrian I get 50% of the miles credited to my frequent flyer program.<\/p>\n

Austria cracks me up.\u00a0 It may just be me, but I swear you can smell the old-fashioned anti-Semitism there in the air.\u00a0 It kept expecting \u201cTomorrow Belongs to Me\u201d to be piped out of the sound system at the airport.\u00a0 I remember the last time I was in Vienna, five minutes into a taxi ride to the airport, the taxi driver was already complaining about the Jews.\u00a0 This was in 2006.\u00a0 Yeah, they\u2019ve really processed the lessons of World War II in Austria.<\/p>\n

Because of the long flight and the six hour time change, I basically lost half a day, the second half of Friday.\u00a0 After a 90 minute layover and a short flight to Brussels, it was almost noon (Saturday)local time when I landed.\u00a0 Keep in mind that I had been traveling since noon on Friday.\u00a0 To say I felt tired and gross would be\u00a0 akind understatement.\u00a0 As I posted on Facebook, I felt like a banana peel left out in the sun on a steaming New Orleand afternoon.\u00a0 The only thing that kept me from being really miserable was that I knew the drill.\u00a0 I am, after all, an expert traveler.<\/p>\n

I checked into the exquisite Hotel Montgomery, a boutique jewell on the edge of the \u201cEuropean\u201d District.\u00a0 \u201cEuropean\u201d District?\u00a0 In Brussels?\u00a0 As opposed to what, the Afghan District?\u00a0 Turns out that means it\u2019s where lots of the foreign consulates and offices are.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A canal without multicolored pinwheels is so dull, n'est-ce pas?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I was delighted with the room, easily twice the size of my room in New York, with a huge beautiful and openable<\/em> window facing the beautiful boulevard circle.\u00a0 At first I worried that the proximity to the busy street would make the room loud, but the windows in the hotel are brilliant:\u00a0 When you close them, all is silence.<\/p>\n

Despite wanting to, resisted the temptation to go right to sleep.\u00a0 I knew the only chance I had to get acclimated to the new time zone was to stay awake for several more hours and go to bed as close to a normal time as possible.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a metro station 100 feet from the hotel, so I popped on down and was at the Grand Place in a couple of minutes.\u00a0 The Grand Place is the tourist center of Brussels, and it had just the right amount of bustle and eye candy to keep me awake.\u00a0 I made my way a few blocks to the Magritte Museum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I have always loved Magritte, even before he helped me win Ben Stein\u2019s money on \u201cWin Ben Stein\u2019s Money\u201d in 1997.\u00a0 I had two big Magritte questions on the show, which helped me secure the win.\u00a0\u00a0 The Magritte Museum is similar to the Dali Museum in Tampa, in that it\u2019s a large exhibit that nevertheless contains very few of the artist\u2019s most famous pieces.\u00a0 Didn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 I saw lots things that were new to me, and several of his cutout doves and images of dark houses under brilliantly lit skies were there.\u00a0 Plus, due to the fact that I hadn\u2019t slept in almost two days and was in practically an alpha state, it seemed appropriate to be viewing all of the crazy-ass Belgian\u2019s surrealist images.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After the museum, a nice long walk back to the neighborhood my hotel was in, a nice dinner, and then blissful collapse in my room.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

My Current Favorite Science Fiction Writers<\/h4>\n
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  • John Scalzi<\/li>\n
  • Robert Charles Wilson<\/li>\n
  • Peter F. Hamilton<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Average Rating: 4.7<\/span> out of 5<\/span> based on 271<\/span> user reviews.<\/span><\/div><\/p>

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