I think I may have mentioned it about 1,000 times so far, but I really love the weather here in Vienna.  I love how it’s generally pretty cool (not counting July and August), I love that rain is just a fact of life (pretty much everyone carries an umbrella everywhere, all the time), I love the snow in the winter, I even like how cold it is, and for how long, once winter arrives.  (I’d much rather be cold than hot, and bundling up to be outside makes it even nicer to come back into a cozy house.)  And although I miss thunderstorms (they’re pretty rare here — we get only a few per year), I do really love the wind.

Vienna gets very, very windy.  Often.  The wind whips right down out of the mountains and across Vienna.  It rattles the windows, and howls through the window frames and under the doors.  (It really does.  I’m not being poetic.  And I love the German word for the sound the wind makes — raunen.  It’s perfect.)

We had another very windy night, the night before last.  Even with only a few windows in the house cracked open a bit, the doors around the inside of the house blew closed in the night, the wind moaned outside and the rain splattered the windows.  It was a great night to be snuggled up at home.  It’s just the middle of September, but fall is definitely here and winter is already on its way.  (The high temperature here yesterday was only about 55, and that happened around 7 this morning.)  I love it.