London – Graz: Dec 31 (New Year's Eve!)

After seeing the V & A museum on Friday night, C and I headed back to the hostel where we picked up our bags. We then caught the Tube to a shuttle bus station, where we took a bus to the Stansted airport. It was about midnight and we were SO tired…and we had a bit of trouble finding the bus station and figuring out how to get our tickets. But fortunately, it worked out great in the end. We slept a bit on the bus, arriving at Stansted at 2am. Then we found a quiet corner to camp out until about 5:30am, when we went through security and caught our Ryan Air flight.

The flight was a little under two hours, but it flew by as we took turns nodding in our seats. On the plane, I actually saw a friend of mine who studies in Graz! She lives in London, and went home for the Christmas break. Small world…J

We got in to the Graz airport around 10 in the morning, and split the taxi fare between two other people who were going into the city. It was really neat to finally be able to show C my apartment building! And when we opened the door, guess who was there to greet us? My wonderful roommate, who had bought new groceries!! ;-) It was great to see Tiny again after our separate adventures. C and I took a nap shortly pretty soon after (we figured we had around 6 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours… ;-).

And later in the evening, more friends arrived to celebrate New Year’s with us! E and P were there, as well as A & M from Finland. A’s boyfriend was visiting too, so we had lots of people in our apartment. We started with appetizers and a variety of drinks. C got to try Almdudler, my favourite Austrian drink. It’s like a ginger ale, but much sweeter. P brought goulash, which he promised to serve as a midnight snack. (It was delicious!!! By the way, we wouldn’t mind sampling it again…:-D)

Tiny and  L (A's boyfriend).

A & L

Foooooood!!! ;-)

Graz friends around the table...as always. ;-)

In Graz, people can set off their own fireworks, so colourful explosions began to go off around 7pm and didn’t stop until after midnight. But the best part were the city fireworks, which were shot off from the Schlossberg (the hill in the middle of the city). They were fantastic!!! P found a radio station that was playing the Strauss “Blue Danube Waltz” (a New Year’s tradition), and he and E waltzed around our kitchen. J

If you’d like to see a VIDEO of the fireworks in Graz, Tiny took some footage, with the waltz playing in the background. (Maybe I can steal her clip and post it on MY blog…J) Anyway, here is the link to her post. And check out her blog for another take on what life in Graz is like!

http://tinyandteddyseetheworld.blogspot.com/2012/01/first-post-of-new-year.html