good grief, am still tired!!!

Yesterday I was up at 1:30 a.m., and just couldn't sleep. Insomnia attack, hey. Just after 11, I trundled over to the train station to go to Leibnitz. And for The Venerable, this is how things look there after the renovations. There are escalators, and elevators, and it is bright and cheery. Awesome, isn't it...






So, I always get itchy when I take trains. We call it 'travel fever'. (Oh, goody, a train ride!) This is an intercity travel shuttle. How modern.....





One of the stops was outside our airport. Pretty huge, isn't it? (smile). Some of you have landed at this 'gigantic' place, I know. Heck, Manchester is a behemoth in comparison, but it serves its' purpose....






The area around Graz is fairly low altitude, sort of like a big kettle, with lots of hills and mountains surrounding it. I once learned that it used to be a huge lake at the museum of geography, so go ahead call me a geek. If I recall correctly they even found mammoth bones in the region. So that was very long ago in our reckoning...

And I got to Leibnitz, and no sign of Charly. Which was disconcerting, because I didn't take the phone number with me, and so I thought, oh dear... and so I took a taxi to their street... and couldn't find the house, everything had changed so much, or I am getting forgetful in my old age. So just went on to the hospital. Asked at the nurse's station to find me the number, and called from Peter's room, and Gaby was on the phone. 'Where ARE you?' 'At the hospital, I got there, and couldn't find him.' 'He was there! I can't believe you wouldn't recognise one another!' She said he would pick me up at three p.m. Said, hokay... It was a sort of stressful forty-five minutes, in other words. I hate being unprepared....

So I visited three hours with Peter, and we toured the hospital and ended up on his floor on the balcony so I could have a cigarette outside the day room. It being Saturday, there were a mess of visitors in his room, so it wasn't the best atmosphere to communicate in... They have his blood sugar way down, and have to have him stabilised. He was cheerful enough... This is all not easy for me emotionally, but it was good enough.
Just after three I went out on the balcony to look for Karl. And suddenly his wife Gabi was in the door, saying, 'Aha, I thought I would find you here...' (Yup, am nothing if not predictable...) She said Karl had a phobia about hospitals, so that is why she came over. She saw Peter for a moment, neither of them have ever met him, although I did invite them to see us in the Mühlgasse several times... gawwd, we were all so busy all the time.

So first we cleared up how it happened that he wasn't there. I am getting bloody OLD. And had two connections on my screen, gave him the wrong arrival time, and it turned into a sort of clusterfuck in the planning. And was looking for a white house, and they had it painted yellow in the meantime. It was embarassing. Whatever, we spent a few hours catching up on 18 years, and some of it was sad, and some it was funny, and I realised how much that has been missing in my life lately, to talk civilly about anything. To differ in opinion sometimes, but work through it. The government there could have taken a lesson on what civil discourse IS, if you ask me.

So, for The Venerable and my cousins... I did give them your best wishes, and I think it made them happy to be so fondly remembered. Which I know you do. And yes... we are getting older, no doubt about it. But I think we are doing so with some sort of grace and dignity. And I find them beautiful people. So I picked this photo, because I just know they would give you a toast, and wish you well.

Really good things never last all too long, and I had to come back to Graz. I was in a new sort of train, and optically, it was pretty awesome. Very stylised. A commuter one, but high-tech. And everywhere they have digital displays telling you the date, the time, and what the next stop will be. Absolutely coooool... No more little paper fliers littering everything with time schedules. Loved that. And convenient. Elke doesn't like them because she says the seats are to hard and she can't sleep when commuting. I've rarely slept on trains. I like seeing where I AM....

I don't know... I got home and was so wound up, sleep wasn't an option. So I attended to my e-mails, and before I knew it, it was 2 a.m. So I was up for over 24 hours. Cripes, I haven't done that since my youth. There was so much to savour and process, falling asleep was impossible. But at 2, I finally went to bed.

Hell, I haven't been up for over 24 hours since I was eighteen! And y'know what? I'm going to have to face the fact... that I am getting OLD. Eeew. Gabi, Karl, thank you so much.