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.
Spring is a glorious time in Austria – after enduring a long, cold, dark winter, the change is slow at first and then seems to happen all at once – birds tweet happily in the trees, buds burst open, everything turns green, the sun shines and the gloom disappears.
If you’ve read last week’s Honeymoon Sweet blog post, you would know that Thomas and I have been to Piran once before, not long after we first met.
You imagine that when you finally meet your future husband there might be some kind of sign, or at least a night so perfect, never before eclipsed by previous dates etc. etc. I’m sorry to say that it definitely wasn’t the case with us!
To celebrate my 100th blog post (yay) I thought I’d attempt to answer a question I still get asked a lot: What are the real differences between Austria and Australia? And it’s a difficult one to answer, because it’s a kind of same/same but different thing – all the little factors weigh up to create a big difference.
There are the obvious ones – the language, the food, the location, the culture, the weather… I’m not going to focus on those… I’m going to let you in on some of the more subtle differences between Austria and Australia.
I’ve been living in Austria now for 2.5 years. Wow! That’s even surprising for me. And I know what you’re thinking… 2.5 years… she’s definitely fluent by now. Well, I have to admit something… I’m definitely not!
Of course it depends on your translation of fluent. Can I read the local newspaper and work out the story? Yes. Can I listen to the traffic/weather/news report and know if there’s an accident ahead? Yes. Can I have a perfectly normal one-on-one conversation with someone about almost anything? Yes.
an aussie in austria 