RAINER'S RAMBLINGS
Vacation
By RAINER ARNOLD

As you read this editorial, I will be in Austria with my wife Paige. We will stay in a small town about half-way between Salzburg and Vienna. This little town is called Sarmingstein. It has no street names and each house has a number. That is how small it is. Less than 200 people. There is one Gasthof and an attached pub. Oh, it has a Hotel and a B&B. It is located right on the Danube and it is beautiful there.

And, the reason I am writing this is not to make you feel bad that I am on vacation, but rather to tell you that I can't get away from work, even while I am on vacation.

As some of you may know I am also the sports editor of the Towns Sentinel. Thus, I have to have my weekly sports stories. Well, I can write some editorials ahead of time, but what about sports stories? Maybe one or two I could write about people or things people do that are not time sensitive. So, how do I fill up the paper with stories. Well, I do have a lady that helps me out a lot. Her name is Becky Landress and she will do more stories than normal.

But, the last time I was in Austria I wrote stories from over there. Sports stories and things like that. I have a computer and I can write and e-mail stories from anywhere in the world. So, that is what I am going to do. I will send some sports stories and maybe even some Ramblings as to what is going on in Austria or in some of the small towns in mountains. I might even catch someone's eye with the things I may come up with in Austria.

Of course, getting back to vacation not really being one. I must say, I will worry about where I can hook up my computer to e-mail things back to the Union and Towns Sentinels. Will the stories and the editorials be interesting and worthwhile? What if my computer got damaged over the past year in my little house on the Danube? After all, it does get pretty cold over there. But, then I did cover it up by wrapping it in two blankets and stowed it away under the bench at the kitchen table where you sit and have breakfast. I hope all is well and then I can be, on a small scale, an international reporter. That would be cool. I think so anyway.

On top of the stories I can also work for the company I do appraisals for. I can access their computers in Atlanta and do online work for them. Thus, I won't have to use all of my four weeks of vacation. That will be nice when I want to take a few days off for Christmas and Easter.

I also will have to go to numerous wineries and test their products so that I might return to the U.S. and sell their products at the store I have in Hiawassee.

So, you see, there is no such thing as a real vacation while you are still working. Look at people here in the USA. They go on vacation with their cell phones. Business calls. They call back. You did not have a real vacation.

I don't think real vacations come if you are still working or own a business. There is always something that needs to be done and vacations are just a thing that we use to make us think we have gotten away from it all. So, I think I will look forward to retirement and the money I will get from the government to live on. At least I hope it will still be there when I retire or I will have to work longer and keep on waiting for a real vacation.