When preparing for the Race I wanted to read blogs from folks who were at the end of the Race. Now that I’m at the end of the Race I want to read blogs from folks who are preparing for the Race. I think that’s funny.
I had one of my amazing supporters email me maybe a month ago. She said she thought it should be apparent to anyone who read my blogs from the beginning how much I’ve grown and changed. That was super-encouraging.
So I’ve kinda been thinking about how I’ve changed lately. As our team trained into Vienna last Tuesday, we thought it was the train’s last stop and took our time gathering things to exit. Four of the seven of us were off when the train started moving and FUSE! was separated. I wasn’t quite sure how to react. We have one phone and none of us are all that familiar with Vienna.
Luckily, there was a dude on the platform who was able to inform us that the train would stop just up the way at another stop and we need only get on the subway to the main train station and we would meet our friends. Luckily there are some Austrians outside the subway train who know english and can tell us how to get where we are going after laughing at our ridiculous predicament. Luckily Ian (on the train) thought to turn on Emily’s (also on the train) phone that never really is used because it doesn’t have a local sim card. Janina (not on the train) calls Ian (still on the train) on Emily’s phone and we decide to meet at the main train station at a “central location”. [We later talked about whether we’re short-changing God when we talk about luck. I said no matter what you call it it’s God’s providence and when you know that you’re in good shape]
So we get to the train station and meet up with the rest of the team. Now we have to figure out how to get to Bratislava, just over the border into Slovakia from our current Austria. Ian and Liz start investigating different options. They are told train tickets will be twenty euros which is disheartening because if you add that to the original train tickets to vienna that would make the total long distance travel as much as a plane flight to Bratislava that we chose not to take because it was too expensive. We feel stuck. We decide to eat lunch and then make a decision.
I try to take out some local currency with my team card, but something is wrong and it won’t work. Janina’s team card doesn’t work either. So I take out 200 euros (more than I plan on using through the end of the Race) on my card knowing the team card will work eventually, but we need to buy food and transportation now.
FUSE! grabs some sandwiches, bananas, and water (without gas!). We decide to go to the south train station (Sudbanhoff) where we know the trains leave from and we think maybe the busses might leave from. We walk outside and ask some backpackers walking by how to get there. Janina asks four random people to break a 20 for us so we can buy some bus tickets to the train station, none of them do. I walk into a pizza joint and ask the dude to break the twenty, he refuses. Frustrated, I start looking for something to buy when the guys co-worker walks in and says “What you want two 10s? Here.” Nice Guy.
We buy our bus tickets and take a scenic ride through Vienna, Austria (just another travel day) to the train station. Luckily (remember that one) there is a train leaving in 12 minutes. Ian and Liz by the tickets for far less than 20 euros per person (try less than half).
Tired, we all dozed on and off on the way to Bratislava.
So we did it. We found each other in a random city we’ve never seen. We found our way across the border into another city we’ve never seen. We got lunch. And the whole time we stayed calm. We knew it would work out.
My G-Squad friend Erin was once saying of her growth that now that she has done the Race she can get fifty people into India without really divulging why they will be there (which she did for our squad as all-star logistics queen). Since I’ve done the Race I can work with a team to find each other in a random foreign city. Get transportation across the border. And do it all with a pretty good attitude and in a fairly timely fashion. I don’t know about you, but for me that’s growth.
