Standby Travel to Austria, with a Touch of Rome

Well, that’s it. I can’t get rid of this dumb sweatshirt. It’s too lucky and I’m too superstitious. Twice now, Aaron and I have worn our matching beige sweatsuits while traveling standby and somehow, someway, made oversold flights to Europe, in peak travel season. It really sucks that this is the ugliest of all my sweatsuits. But it’s a small offering to make to the standby gods!

We are on our way to a small monastery about an hour outside of Vienna, called Stift Göttweig. One of my dear friends, Christina, is marrying her Austrian fiancé, and Aaron and I were lucky enough to score an invite to what is sure to be, in the words of Lady Whistledown, “the highlight of the season”. Only Aaron and I are little chaos gremlins with medium income, so we opted to RSVP to the most important event of someone’s life without any clear way of getting there. 

Enter Rome, and beige sweatsuits.

While there isn’t a direct flight to Vienna from Minneapolis, there is a direct flight to Rome. Our original plan was to go to Amsterdam, and from there on to Vienna. But last minute, the AMS flights got crazy busy. But no fear, we were in our lucky sweatsuits (and we have my amazing and creative dad to help us behind the scenes), and we were able to pivot to Rome. And we will even get a few hours in the city before our (purchased same day) connecting flight to Vienna. 

And now, we are sitting side by side in the back of an Airbus A330-300, surrounded by high school art students taking 2 weeks to study the masters in the Vatican, and trying our very best to catch a few hours of sleep. Because tomorrow? The adventure really begins.