Five years ago today I arrived in Austria.
I remember the pre-winter sky being impossibly blue. Nine degrees and sunny was pretty good for that time of year.
I was there on an adventure – a quest of love – a gamble.
I had no idea what was to come.
I could not have imagined that five years later I would still be here.
It has been…
- Amazing… Frustrating…
- Enriching… Confronting…
- Welcoming… Lonely…
There have been times I have cried deluges of tears and yearned desperately to go home;
There have been times I have felt more alive than ever before.
There are people here that I plan keep forever;
There are people in Australia that will always lie within a splinter’s distance from my heart.
Five years is a long time. Five years is no time at all.
Happiness is not a state of mind that can be judged by a single incident. Happiness is the culmination of many incidents – the ups, the downs, the highs, the lows. The troughs in my life are not so far apart. Don’t worry, it’s not so dramatic as all that.
Home is where my heart is. My heart is here. My heart is in Australia. I have learned that it can be in two places at once.
Where I will be in one year, two years, five years… I don’t know.
But let’s open a bottle of wine, speak some bad German and remember how lucky I am.
an aussie in austria 