An early breakfast and exit from the All You Need 2,
followed by the U-bahn to the S-bahn thing. I swear I
thought it said S7, but it really said something like S4,
and only when we whooshed by the south train station did
I figure that out, so a backtrack was in order, so our
time cushion was lost, and when we finally made it to the
airport, we had only moments to spare. It must have been
amusing to see these gray eminences running through the
tunnels as though the Cossacks were after them. But we made
it on time and were greeted by smiling Austrian Airlines
faces and blue Austrian Airlines umbrellas for the taking. I
prudently refrained from grabbing one - I have enough
knickknacks and didn't want to be saddled with one for the
rest of the trip.

After coffee and pastries and warm greetings all around,
the first order of business was the safety training,
something I think should be offered to elites and others
who might find themselves in the exit row - and actually,
to people in general who might want an extra edge in the
unlikely event of a water landing or an emergency of any
kind. Travelers are woefully uninformed about what would
actually be required of us in such situations.

The life rafts - how, if at all, would they be propelled
in the water? How would we get on in the first place?
Imagine this big floppy thing, which repositions itself
every time someone attempts to board it, and then, even if
there's land in sight, here it is, spinning and twisting and
pitching and yawing, how to get there? The excellent
overview was only that, but now we have some idea of what is
entailed in a water evacuation.

Exit door operation. Now we are confident we could handle
the things - 40 lb, something over what your average FTer is
accustomed to heft on an aircraft, is manageable after all.

Perhaps most importantly, the slides. In an emergency, long
pants, natural fabrics, jeans if possible. Flat shoes with
toes covered. We learned how to jump without being injured,
to control ourselves during that terrifying 5-second ride,
to help others on the ground. And we got to experience it:
our group had 4 opportunities, plus one on the overwing
exit (much harder to do, as you end up several feet above
the ground). Even in the simulated situation, there was
some anxiety involved - but now we've done it and know that
we can do it again if we have to.

A stimulating and exhausting session, and we were ready for
our generous lunch of local specialties: hugely abundant
servings of roast pork in a salty brown gravy and this odd
bread dumpling made out of leftover caraway rye bread and
eggs. I saw this later elsewhere, so it must be well liked,
somewhere. To go with I had a bottle of a sparkling beverage
flavored, supposedly, with Alpine herbs.

Then on to the maintenance hangar, which was heaven for
hardware geeks - I'm not one but found it interesting anyway
with the opportunities to see aircraft of famous people and
to peek into the spare engine room and various other places
that the public doesn't see.

And the now-obligatory behind-the-scenes baggage handling
tour - an impressive operation, with huge input and output,
and it's a wonder so few pieces go missing in proportion to
what gets delivered reasonably on time and intact. Funny how
many of these I've attended lately - it's almost as though
the airlines are trying to reassure their most frequent
flyers that it's okay to check a bag.

Operations headquarters is a treat for the IT people, with
the mind-boggling amount of data that has to be collected
and collated in order to get us where we need to go.

Finally, the bus tour of the tarmac. We were treated to some
beautiful takeoffs and landings and some less beautiful
statistics about the airport, and then it was time to say
auf wiedersehen, and to the Hilton, where I had a nice
corner room. Vienna with its terrific public transport is
easy to get around, especially from this great location.

Off to Figl's for drinks and a nice Schnitzel buffet.
Ottakringer dark was the order for the day, though some
oddballs had glasses of Zweigelt (okay) or Blaufranksch
(more okay) instead.

Appetizers: sliced beef with raspberry vinaigrette and
mozzarella and tomato salad, both homey and filling.

Soup course: I was one of the few to get leberknoedelsuppe,
whose dumpling was enormous (there are pictures out on the
Web someplace) and quite like what I used to make for myself
back when I was a Teutonic boy [g]; I forget what the other
soup choice was.

The buffet: pork and chicken schnitzel, of which I had the
former, quite nice though not so nice as made to order, but
what can you do about that; kummelbraten, good but not
fatty enough for my taste - probably too fatty for others;
schinken (ham).

For afters, a respectable strudel and a warm chocolate cake
that unfortunately tasted as if it had been made with whole-
wheat flour in a polite nod to health concerns.

Jollity aplenty, but suddenly an alarm rang simultaneously
in several Hilton Gold and Diamond heads, and we lit out of
there at 2215, hardly pausing to say "until tomorrow," and
well before the festivities had ended.

We hopped on the bus to the subway and back to the hotel,
hoping we'd get there before the executive lounge closed!

We returned to the lounge at quarter to, only to find that
the staff had cleared the booze. Somehow we managed to get
a couple bottles of Blaufranksch; when we were done with
these we were gently encouraged out by such methods as the
cleaning person vacuum around us: to be fair, it was at
least ten after when we toddled to our respective homes.