Washington to Vienna to Helsinki

After an "All American" weekend in DC (football, grits, jazz, PBR, driving in a car to go exercise a dog, fried catfish hushpuppies kale and blackeyed peas, Grateful Dead and John Prine, Twilight, and eating mini burgers on Capital Hill in a booth next to Marion Barry) I finally boarded a red-eye flight bound for Austria. My ticket was for a window seat, but when I sat down I realized that the guy who was sitting next to me was obviously with the girl across the isle. From past experience, I knew how frustrating it is not to be able to sit with your friends, so I generously offered to switch seats with her so they could sit together. Then another guy came who was apparently with them too. Instead of sitting awkwardly in the middle of all them, I switched with him as well. So, in a matter of minutes, my window seat became a middle of the center isle seat. I later find out that that they were just part of a big high school group scattered all over the plane, so me changing my seat didn't make that much of a difference to them. BUT, this plane had a awesome feature that made it all okay: cameras on the front and bottom of the plane. Using the TV monitor on the setback in front out you, you could look down and ahead of the plane! It was awesome. I also met a delightful Hungarian women in a fur hat who knew very little English besides "Vonderful! Vonderful!" and showed me pictures of her grandchildren and gave me a hug when it was time to leave. But I did not sleep.
Arriving in Austria the next morning I took a bus to Vienna city center to get the most I could out of my 9 hour layover. Unfortunately, it was cold and sleeting in Vienna, but that didn't stop me from spending a good 5 hours walking around (much to the dismay of my hip). Vienna has the most wonderful storefront window displays to look at, and the entire city was still decorated for christmas (giant red balls the size of Macy's parade floats hanging between buildings, real christmas trees lining the streets (which are mostly cobblestone, pedestrian only) and lights everywhere.
I went to Saint Stephen's Cathedral, the Hofburg Imperial Palace and courtyard, and the Albertina. I then warmed up with an Austrian coffee (I couldn't really tell the difference) in a coffee shop before trying to visit the Natural History Museum (which turned out to be closed). But I did get to go to the Leopold Museum and see the Edvard Munch exhibit (The Scream, etc). I bough myself a pork product in casing from a street vendor to see if it was anything like a Vienna Sausage. It wasn't. It turned out to be exactly like a hot dog, except instead of splitting the bun lengthwise and placing the wiener in there (which, btw, Vienna in German is Wien, hence the name) they take a wooden rod and stick it through the length to make a hole. Then they squirt the ketchup and mustered in there before inserting the frank and capping the ends with two little pieces of bun. The result tastes exactly like a ballpark hot dog, although decidedly less messy.
Then it was back to the airport for my flight to Helsinki. Right before we took off they brought out two fire engine type trucks to spray what looked to be eggnog all over the wings of the plane. Then a guy in a ladder truck climbed up on the wings to makes sure they were properly coated. I'm assuming this was some sort of de-icer, but further research is needed. I am now about an hour from landing in Helsinki!