Living in Austria with an Austrian husband leads to people often asking me: “So do you speak German at home?” And if I said no, they say: “You should, it’s the best way to learn.”
And they would be right. We should. And speaking the language to a native is the best way to learn. But it is also a double-edged sword, especially when it involves a loved-one.
Summer in Austria equals festival time! On any given weekend there’s usually something going on, be it a small, local event or a bigger, region-wide festival that completely takes over.
I have visited a number of town festivals over the last few years and although some of the bigger ones are a lot of fun, there’s nothing better than simply walking the 10 minutes to the Wolfsberg city centre when it’s our turn. Everyone in town turns out to crowd the streets, catch up with one another and party the night away. But no matter the size or the occasion, there’s definitely common elements to all.
This year I was convinced that I wouldn’t get sad on my birthday.
Birthdays while travelling seem to take place at two extremes. You either find yourself among a bunch of awesome people, and the fact it is your birthday propels everyone into party mode resulting an epic night. Or it’s lonely, in a city among people you haven’t connected particularly well with, which then becomes a half-hearted kind of tragic day.
Damn… what have we gone and done?
After more than a year-long search, and many new discoveries along the way, the inevitable has finally happened – we’ve gone and bought ourselves a house.
A few weeks ago my company held a firm-wide meeting discussing our future growth direction. The content is not important, what is important is that the meeting was (obviously) completely in German.
And then the most surprising thing – I actually understood a lot of it!
Ok, the first part anyway – but that was a good hour!
The town I live in boasts around 25,000 people – that’s in the city proper – if you take in all the outlying areas there’s many more – in Europe one small city is never very far from the next.
Thomas and I have been house-hunting for over a year now, and so far, no such luck. I can count on one hand the number of houses I’ve actually considered as serious possibilities. So here’s what I’ve discovered about house-hunting in a small Austrian town.
My 92 year old grandmother recently had a fall and broke her leg. A broken leg is no fun, let alone when you’re 92. But she’s built from strong stock, my grandmother, so she pushed through the operation and is now part-terminator where the bone used to be. It’s easy to joke and look at the positives after the fact, but it was a tense few weeks for everyone as she endured through the surgery and the risks that come afterwards.
After returning from my March trip to Australia, I was prepared for the steely-wrath clutch of homesickness. I had attended my brother’s wedding, and with his new bride already knocked up, the whole thing had me weepy and emotional even before I got to Oz!
But wait… where is he? Is he hiding? Is he laying in wait, ready to pounce when I least expect him?
Visiting the London area in the past (eg. When I was living in Australia) was always a bit of a lowlight. Not bad, of course, just not as exciting as the rest of the trip.
It was a place that was easy, where I knew the language and had friends to stay with. It was a rest stop, a place to recuperate. Or it was simply the most practical or cheapest place to fly in and out of.
an aussie in austria 