On November 8th I trained from Romania to Vienna, Austria where I met up with Andrea and her son Nathan.  They were on their way to Slovenia where Andrea was speaking at a Ladies’ Conference.  I hitched a ride with them on my way to Croatia to see the Vuletic family.  Now as any self respecting JV missionary knows, if you’re in Vienna for any reason, it’s essential to seize the moment to stop at Starbucks.  Vienna is the only city on our side of the world where gingerbread lattes, fuzzy brown armchairs and Charlie Brown’s Christmas music in the background is an option.  Have no fear, we seized the moment!  

    And it just so happened on December 5th we seized the day again!  Andrea and I were traveling to Serbia, where she was speaking at a youth leader’s conference, when we missed our train.  Now I’ve missed a lot of trains and sat in a lot of cold, scuzzy train stations.  This was different.  We happened to miss our train in, you guessed it, Vienna!  We promptly crammed our bags in a train station locker and headed for the underground.  We happily spent our 8 hr delay enjoying one of our favorite European cities.   We sipped gingerbread lattes in brown fuzzy armchairs, I drew and Andrea knit, we walked down the walking ship enjoying the Christmas lights and window shopping, we went to a stunning art exhibit at the Albertina, one of my favorite art galleries, and of course back to Starbucks one more time before our long night train to Serbia.  Definitely one of the BEST delays I’ve ever had in my traveling life!