Weekend in the West - Part I

I was stressed about the travel and the potential jet lag, so the all-important night-before-the-night-before, I was wide awake for three hours in the middle of the night. That didn’t make it any easier to wake up at 2:30 on Friday morning (not even with the knowledge that it was 5:30 pm EDT when the alarm rang). At least the packing had gone smoothly – I had a small souk bag of things to leave at Howie’s in addition to my carry-on bag. The ride to Zvartnots airport is not far, especially at that time of day, and my host mother had negotiated the taxi fare for me. I didn’t realize that Austrian Airlines would charge for the extra bag – had I known that I could have brought the big suitcase, though it seemed silly to lug it for a four-day trip – and that they would deem my carry-on too big to carry on, but then I didn’t have to worry about finding the left luggage room at the Vienna airport.

I was able to doze through most of the three-and-a-half hour flight and had time for an early-morning stroll in Vienna. The train to the city takes about 18 minutes, and from there it was about a 20-minute walk to Stephansplatz. I had been to Vienna once, years ago, and this walk was from a different direction from the walks I took then, so other than the plaza itself, nothing was familiar. Nor was anything open – but the weather was nice and the buildings are impressive and I had a little walk in the Stadtpark on the way back and drank water out of a public water fountain (I don’t dare do that here) and took the train back to the airport. The A-19 group is in Vienna right now! They have the better part of a day there before flying to Yerevan tonight. Why didn’t I get that itinerary, instead of my short layover at CDG?

The VIE-to-JFK leg was long – I read everything I had brought with me in the bag I did carry on and wrote all the postcards I had brought with me (ever since I discovered that my Morocco postcards never made it to their intended recipients, I haven’t been as enthusiastic about writing, but after writing these, I felt invigorated, so I will be writing some more before I leave here!). No sleep. The hardest part of the journey was the shuttle from JFK to EWR. Stop-and-go all the way – for almost four hours – on Friday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend! No sleep, even though at that point it was bedtime in the Armenian time zone. At least I pulled another magazine out of the carry-on I had checked!

EWR to Princeton went smoothly; when I wondered where I might find a taxi, the driver offered to take me to Howie’s for the bag drop-off and back to Nassau Street. I was so relieved when I dropped off that bag that I didn’t realize quite how tense I had been about it – but I know that figuring out what to put in it (the few winter things that I decided not to leave behind here and some of the purchases I’ve made here) was stressful and not knowing if it would arrive when I did and arrive intact was stressful. Plus, Howie went away for the weekend so I had to figure out how to open his door (which required a phone call – glad he answered!) and having the driver wait – well, anyway, once that was done, I could just be happy to be back at Princeton!