When friends from home visit they invariably bring Aussie food with them – I’ve got a great stash of the important things – Tim Tams, BBQ Shapes, Cadbury chocolate, the list goes on! And to start with, when I got a new batch of deliveries I would I proudly present it to my Austrian friends or work colleagues with a flourish… but their subsequent delight wasn’t always what I was hoping for.
It is with some surprise, and some trepidation, that I confront the fact I have now lived in Austria for 4 whole years.
4 whole years.
In many ways I feel like I’ve just arrived, in others I feel like I’ve been here an eternity.
I’ve now been living in Austria for almost 4 years. Having a steady job, buying a house and finally feeling like I’m starting to get a slight grasp of the German language… well it’s a little bit scary.
Because it’s gotten to the point where I realise that this is somewhere I might be for a while. A few years, at the very least. The initial suitcase of clothes I brought over has been added to with various knick knacks and other belongings through each visit and each return trip home. My old bedroom in Australia is looking less and less like mine all the time.
And in facing this reality, I just want to say to my friends and family: I’m sorry I won’t be there. Because in the future, there will come a time, an event, a life occasion, a celebration, a sickness, a death… and I just won’t be able to be there.
In mid-September my parents’ long awaited trip to Europe finally swung around. After an organised bus trip through Germany and Austria they wound up on our doorstep to stay for two weeks.
With the transition from an apartment and a tiny balcony, to a house with a huge backyard it was not only the Adventures of Green Thumbs that added additional work to our plate this year!
In this part of Austria they grow a lot of corn – that’s corn for the animals, not corn for people to eat. And every year it astounds me just how damn high those things can grow. So this year, I took a series of photographs to track the height of the corn. And hey, so I’m not photographer, but I still think the results are pretty cool!
There’s something very exciting that happens at noon every Saturday in Austria – and if you’re lucky enough to be near a fire station at the time… well all the more excitement for you!
The first time it happened my first thought was that war had broken out. Because every Saturday at 12, the fire stations test their sirens.
But yesterday it got even more exhilarating – because the first Saturday in October is THE ANNUAL NATIONAL SIREN TEST!
Hold onto your hats people!
So how did we go, you may ask? Did we manage to reap what we sowed following the fails of Green Thumbs Part 1 and the improvements of Part 2… well… in the end the results were mixed.
With the end of summer approaching, we finally got around to ordering flyscreens for the windows in our house. A week or two before they were set to be installed, I was nonchalantly brushing my teeth in the bathroom, windows wide open to let out the shower steam, when I was startled by the sound of an approaching 747…
You guessed right – it wasn’t a 747 like I’d initially thought – no it was something much, much worse.
It was an evil hornet.
Recently we were privileged to be invited to a wedding in the Midlands, England. In my mind this conjures up visions of vast expanses of land and rich estates – a kind of Pride and Prejudice meets Downton Abbey – small towns, cute country lanes, rolling hills, hearty food and wide varieties of dialects. My husband and I opted to add a few days of unplanned driving – the aim was to wander aimlessly, traverse the hills, take in whatever sights we happened across, and eat and drink till we burst. Goal achieved! As I mentioned from my last visit to England, my opinion of the country has changed somewhat from being a boring (normal food, English-speaking) destination, into a familiar one that reminds me nostalgically of home.
an aussie in austria 