More on skating

Posted on February 18, 2013 by admin

After our overly crowded experience at the Wiener Eistraum few weeks ago, we’ve experimented a bit with various times and days to try to find the best time to skate with the kids. So far, the weekend evenings are great! They are much less crowded, and thus easier and more fun, than the daytimes during the weekend. (We haven’t yet gotten over there in the day during the week, but with the number of kids I’ve seen walking in that direction with skates, I’d guess it’s pretty busy.) With a fraction of the number of kids in the evenings (more like 10), and a slightly older average age, there is plenty of space to have fun, and lots of practice penguins. Both of my boys have had a better and more relaxed time on our more recent visits. (As a note, the children’s area becomes a curling rink on weekday evenings, so there’s no children’s area after 4 on weekdays.)

I’ve gone back a few extra times as well — once more with Dan as a date night, and once on my own. We’re really enjoying it. It’s a great way to enjoy wintertime Vienna, and it’s a fun way to get outside with the kids this time of year. Next, I just have to convince Liam that the ice isn’t for eating . . .

A ball at the palace (again)

Posted on February 17, 2013 by admin

Last year, we went to the IAEA Ball, at the Hofburg palace. It was phenomenally cool, and the setting was gorgeous and fabulous and opulent. On the other hand, I had a terrible time finding a dress, I wasn’t able to get my hair to behave, and I ripped my already frustrating dress in the first five minutes after we arrived. And although it might sound ridiculous to let anything get in the way of enjoying a ball at the palace, all of that really dampened my spirits about the evening and the experience (although I did, ultimately, end up having a pretty good time).

What a difference a year makes! Yesterday, we went to the IAEA Ball again, and this year, we had a blast. After the frustration of dress shopping from last year, I planned ahead and bought a dress online from the US. (I figured, correctly, that even buying a dress over the computer and not getting to see it or try it on before I purchased it would be LESS of a hassle than finding a dress here.) It was a good choice. I got a great dress for a fraction of what it would have cost here and got it successfully altered. Just being able to look forward to having an appropriate, flattering dress to wear changed my entire outlook on the evening. Instead of being discouraged and deflated, I was excited and enthusiastic. I was able to do my hair (on the first try!) in a new, functional style that I really loved, and did my makeup in just a few minutes so that I ended up feeling pretty and put together. And then, the kids were happy and relaxed to be staying with Jo and watching a movie while we went out. We started our evening a little later this year, so we were home to do dinner and bath with the kids before we went out. When we were all together and ready to leave, everyone was happy. It was a great way to start the evening!

We arrived at the palace for the ball, and hit our first (and only) real snag of the evening. Dan had to switch out his ornately tied tie for a bow tie (which, apparently, is part of the required dress for the palace) which he had to buy on site. We chalked it up to getting an extra souvenir and got on with enjoying our evening.

We did a little dancing on a floor that was every bit as crowded and insane as last year, got our picture taken, walked around to survey the palace in all of its splendor (the chandeliers are particularly remarkable) and chatted with some friends and coworkers of Dan’s. We made it back to the main ballroom just in time for the quadrille — a large, complex, semi-organized group dance that one of Dan’s collegues aptly explained this way: “There are long lines of too many people. It’s like square dancing. They give instruction, although not quite enough, and then the music keeps getting faster.” Which is, in fact, exactly what it’s like. It was tremendous fun to watch, but it went on for quite a while and, given the lack of appropriate seating in the main ballroom, I eventually just gave in and sat down on the marble steps to watch. There was something fantastically inappropriate, and yet perfectly indulgent about sitting on the floor, in a ball gown, in a palace, listening to an exquisite orchestra frantically playing manic quadrille music for several hundred partially intoxicated revellers who had no hope of keeping up. I thoroughly enjoyed myself (and I started a trend — I was the first to sit on the steps in my finery, but many others quickly followed)

After that, the crowds thinned out somewhat, and Dan and I got to do some dancing ourselves. We danced until it was late, we were tired, and my feet wouldn’t take any more. We came home to sweet kids who had been asleep for hours and a happy (if tired) babysitter. We had a great, magical evening. It was everything that a ball at the palace ought to be.

Living the dream

Posted on February 15, 2013 by admin

I saw a video the other day, currently making the rounds on Facebook, that quoted Alan Watts. It was an audio recording over a variety of pretty, generic images, but the basic point was, don’t chase what will make money, because all that will lead to is the chase of more money. Instead, do what you love, what you’re passionate about, what you would fill your time with if money were no object. It’s a great, philosophical snippet, and (I think) pretty wise. Watching the video, I reflected on my life and situation . . . and I realized that I have the incredibly good fortune to be doing precisely what I want to be doing. I am living the life I would live if money were no object. And that’s pretty amazing.

If I became independently wealthy tomorrow, I would do 3 things differently. I would fly home more often — I would never let more than a couple of months go by without visiting home and being with my family and friends. I would consider moving my horses here from the US, and in the case that it wasn’t a good idea (for their health or sanity) I would find a way to ride here in Vienna. I would go out to eat more often, and I would give Jo free rein to make whatever she wanted when she cooks. But that’s pretty much it.

I am incredibly lucky and I think it’s pretty great. Even given infinite resources, I’d still live in Austria. I’d still have B in his current kindergarten, and I’d still have Liam home with me. I’d live where I live, I’d still choose not to have a car, and (other than going home more often and/or flying my family over to visit) I’d travel to the same places we travel to, and in much the same way. (Ok, if money were really no issue, I guess I’d fly first class.)

How cool is that?!? I’m living the life I’d like to be living. Right now. That doesn’t (at all) mean that my life is perfect, but having that realization gives me great perspective. When Liam’s 2 minute “time out” turns into a 40 minute ordeal, when Benjamin’s chocolate milk ends up all over the floor, when my alarm goes off after a night of not-so-restful broken sleep, when I can’t seem to find the time to exercise, shower and clean the house all in the same day, it helps me to remember that, even with all of the craziness that this life entails sometimes, this is the life that I would choose, given any option. I choose it knowing that it involves difficult moments, sleepless nights and seemingly unending frustrations. I truly wouldn’t have it any other way. This is exactly what I want to be doing, and I get to do it, every single day. It just doesn’t get any better than that.

Essen

Posted on February 14, 2013 by admin

We were running late getting to school this morning. We were late getting out of the house, and then, with lots of new, fresh snow on the ground, B wanted to take his time, walking in the untouched patches and climbing on the piles of plowed and shovelled snow. Even though I generally hate to be late, I let him take his time. It’s the middle of February, and who knows how many more snowy mornings we’ll have this year where we can play in the snow on the way to school? So, we were a bit late — just a few minutes, nothing major.

The kindergartens here serve breakfast to the students, and that’s one of the first things the kids do upon their arrival to school each morning. They take turns, 3-4 kids from each class go to “essen” at a time. Since we were late, and B wanted to eat (for him, it’s really just a snack, since we have breakfast at home), as soon as I got him into his classroom, he turned around and headed back out to eat. It was a nice surprise to see him in the hallway as I was checking the notice board for any new information. And then, I got to watch him have his snack.

It’s the first time I’ve been able to observe him eating at school. He usually does it after I’ve gone. I was amazed to see how well he’s doing, how well he’s adjusted, and what a great job he does of taking care of himself. He found a spot, sat down, and promptly dropped his spoon. No problem — he got up, took it to the dirty dish area, got another one, and sat back down. One of the teachers came by to serve him tea, and he very politely (and in German) said that he preferred water. Then another teacher came by to serve him some bread, which he took, and thanked her for. Then, as he was all settled in and happily starting his snack, I left and headed home. But I was so impressed by my guy. It was so great to see him behaving so well, being so polite and still making sure he got what he wanted. And to see him do it all, in German, like it was no big deal, was a very big deal to me. I’m so happy to have been able to witness a little moment like this, and to see how well he’s doing.

I love the snow!

Posted on February 13, 2013 by admin

I feel like I never know what the weather is going to be like here. The forecasts that I get on my phone are notoriously inaccurate, and relatively lacking in detail. So, although I saw that we were supposed to get some snow here this week, I expected a dusting, or rain (because that’s what’s been happening lately when the forecast has called for snow). Instead, we woke up yesterday morning to several inches of snow on the ground, and it’s pretty much been falling since.

I think this is a great thing. I love the snow. And, having no car and nothing to shovel, there’s very little downside to getting inundated with snow. So, I say, bring it on. My kids agree. Benjamin loves walking in fresh snow. He loves looking back and seeing that his footprints are the only ones through a smooth, otherwise unbroken area of fluffy whiteness. He loves throwing snowballs, making snowmen and catching snowflakes on his tongue. At his preschool, they play and sled outside on snowy days, and that has made snowy days some of his favorites at school. Liam loves the snow, too. He loves to go for walks in the snow (well, he loves to go for walks anytime) and he treks from one slushy puddle to the next, jumping up and down and making himself an icy mess. And he loves to throw snowballs, squish snowmen and eat snow.

Right now, I’m sitting in my living room and watching the snow fall outside. By the time we went out yesterday to play on our terrace (which is open to the sky, but warmer and more sheltered than a real “outdoors” area, so we often don’t get any snow accumulation out there, even when there are several inches elsewhere), we already had 5.5″ on the ground. And, since it’s pretty much been falling since then, and is supposed to fall through tonight, I don’t think the estimates of up to 10″ that I’ve seen seem unreasonable. (Of course, they do a pretty good job of clearing the snow around Vienna, so I haven’t seen any one place with nearly that much accumulated.)

Yesterday, B & I walked out the front door to go to school, and there were already about 4″ of snow on the ground. He exclaimed, “I love the snow! My heart thinks it’s great!” I agree. My heart thinks so, too.

I would like to rent some ice skates to you!

Posted on February 12, 2013 by admin

Most of the time, I conduct my retail transactions here in German. It’s something I do a lot, and the variations are relatively minimal, so I’ve gotten a lot of practice. You walk up, present your item for purchase, you’re given a price, sometimes they ask if you want a bag, I ask if they take bank card (if that’s how I’m paying), I present my payment, receive my change (if applicable), they ask if I want a receipt, they thank me, I say goodbye. I can do that, MOST of the time, without resorting to English.

Every so often I get a curve ball. The other day, I was paying for the alterations to my dress for the ball, and in between telling them I wanted to pay with my bank card and the part where they give me my receipt, they asked me a question. Not a typical question for that scenario, and I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. It turns out that they were taking a survey and asking for everyone’s home town. It wasn’t the usual “Woher kommen Sie?” (“Where do you come from?”) that I know how to answer, so I asked them to repeat it, twice, until they resorted to the standard question, which I knew how to answer. But, most of the time, I do ok.

But every time we’ve been over to the Rathaus to go ice skating, we’ve failed at renting skates. We do fine with purchasing our tickets and getting a locker key, but we’ve failed each time when we’ve tried to rent skates. Several times, we had to resort to English, and the one time we thought we’d managed in German it turned out we had accidentally purchased a pass to have our (non-existent) skates sharpened. We had to go back and fix it, in English.

I couldn’t understand it. I was reading the German right off of the sign! Why wasn’t it working? Why, in this one instance, were we having so much trouble?

So, I asked my German teacher last night, and now I know. I assumed that what I was reading off of the sign translated to “skate rental” . . . because the sign *has* an English translation, and that’s what it said underneath. So I was saying, “We would like skate rental”, which, although maybe not perfect, was close enough. Or so I thought. A more accurate translation of what I was saying was, “We would like to rent you skates.” And, because my German pronunciation is pretty good, I was very confusing. If I’d been butchering the pronunciation, they probably would have huffed at me and rolled their eyes and figured it out. But I was very confidently and correctly saying, “I’d like to rent you some skates, please!”, and then, I would repeat it when asked.

It turns out, “I would like to rent some skates” is a whole different sentence with a whole different verb. I think next time will go a lot better.

Faschingsfest

Posted on February 11, 2013 by admin

Today was the Faschingsfest celebration at B’s school — an Austrian version of Carnival or Mardi Gras. It’s basically a big pre-lent party. Last year, B was sick and missed out on Faschingsfest, so this was our first, and we weren’t sure what it would be like.

We knew that Faschingsfest is the big costume dress holiday here, similar, in that way, to Halloween in the US, except with an emphasis on cute and funny costumes, rather than scary ones. Still, we didn’t know quite what it would be like, and it’s a little stressful to get your kid dressed for an almost-but-not-quite Halloween dress up party for school when you’re not at all sure what he should be wearing. We had to make an educated guess on costumes, and we decided to choose from what we already have (because, if you’re equally likely to get it wrong either way, better to not invest the money in a new costume). B considered his options and elected to go as an Ewok. When we arrived at school this morning, he was very much in keeping with the correct spirit of the costumes — there was a princess, two kings, a knight, two Spidermen, two Batmen, a clown, a penguin, several pirates, a fireman and a Pippi Longstocking. I think he chose perfectly.

They celebrated with games, hot dogs, candy, a puppet theater and balloons. According to B, it was a “great day”. Our first Faschingsfest was a success!

Preparing for the ball (again)

Posted on February 10, 2013 by admin

Getting ready to attend the IAEA ball last year was not fun. I was shocked by the prices of the dresses, seriously disappointed by the selection in my size and discouraged by the terrible customer service in the shops. After several weeks of frustration and failure, I decided to have a dress made . . . which ended up being more expensive and less satisfying than the other options would have been. My visions of feeling like an elegant princess, all fancied up for the ball, dissolved into a reality of having to convince myself that I would have a wonderful time regardless of what I was wearing. I did ultimately enjoy myself, but having to settle in terms of attire certainly detracted from the experience.

This year, I was better informed and more prepared. To start, I ordered a dress online from the US. When it arrived, which took longer than I expected, I was pleased — it fit relatively well and is at least as nice as the dresses I saw in most of the shops here (for 1/3 the price). I was still a bit daunted by the process of having the dress altered, though, particularly because of last year’s debacle. Dan asked around at work, but we didn’t come up with any resounding recommendations that were likely to have the dress finished in time for next weekend’s ball. One friend had some success at a department store, but it was far away, so I borrowed that idea and stopped by a department store (Peek & Cloppenburg on Karntnerstrasse) in the center of Vienna to ask if they would do the necessary alterations.

Success! They do alterations, even of clothes bought elsewhere, and they can have it done by Friday. I took it in on Saturday, and she seemed to know what she was doing (and spoke a little English, too). I don’t know yet how it will turn out, but I’m miles ahead of where I was this time last year. I’m feeling much more hopeful about my chances for a magical evening this time around.

Library train

Posted on February 9, 2013 by admin

Naturally, there are many cultural differences between Americans and Austrians. Austrians are generally more orderly than Americans. They are more careful about disposing of their garbage (and recycling, all of which is separated at the point of disposal here — i.e., there are separate bins for trash, paper, plastic and glass, even in the subway stations). The bus and train systems here operate on nearly an honor system, which is rarely checked (although highly fined for violators). On the other hand, Austrians hate to wait in lines and they almost never form an organized queue for anything. Customer service here is nothing like what we’re used to in the US. And although Austrians greet people in shops by habit and always stop to talk to neighbors and people they know, they almost never smile at or speak to strangers.

One of the most striking differences has to do with personal volume. When in a public space in Austria, tourists and new arrivals stick out because they’re loud. Really loud. Obnoxiously loud. Even speaking at what we consider to be normal conversational volume, we’re likely to be the loudest people around, in almost any setting. I’ve gotten used to this, but it’s still a striking enough contrast to catch my attention. Sitting at Starbucks, having a German lesson, I sometimes have to strain to hear my teacher. She’s not unusually quiet, she’s just Austrian, and they have a cultural habit of keeping the noise down.

Yesterday morning, on the train with Benjamin, I was reminded of this again. We were on the train, packed — standing room only — with morning commuters. Benjamin and I were lucky enough to get a seat, and he was sitting on my lap and playing with a new toy. His new toy is a little robotic fish that flaps its tail fin if you push a button. It’s a quiet, mechanical noise, quieter than clicking the tip of a pen in and out. It was, by far, the loudest sound on the train. People who were talking were doing it in a near whisper, and headphones were quiet enough to be heard only by the wearer. No one was bothered by Benjamin (kids are generally given a lot of allowances here for that kind of thing) but I was reminded of how different things are here. The volume on this crowded morning train was more like that of a library than of a segment of public transportation. That’s just what it’s like here. That’s just Vienna.

Language barriers

Posted on February 8, 2013 by admin

I think that living in a new culture is hard for nearly everyone who tries it, and it’s an extra challenge when the local language is different from yours . . . even worse if it’s entirely new to you. Even now, nearly 2 years in to our adventure here, I struggle with the language. I haven’t practiced enough, and English is fairly commonly spoken here, so I get away with it.

I resist learning German. Much more than I ought to. Part of that is because I find it challenging (although easier and more intuitive than other languages). But mostly, I stick to English because I love it. I love English — not because it’s English, but because I’m such a fanatic for knowing it well. I express myself in English, so my identity is wrapped up in the words I use to define and describe myself. I love to write, and I only know how to write in English. Whatever I need or want to use words for — to be friendly, kind, helpful, clever, interesting, disinterested, warm or distant — I know which to choose and how to use them. Without English, I have no tools. I have no way to place myself into the world, except by just being (and that’s hard, awkward and uncomfortable).

The English language is my medium, like paint or musical composition might be for someone else. I use it to give myself context in social interactions, the way other people use their clothes, hair and makeup. I weigh and evaluate words to feel out the social landscape the way a more savvy person might use body language or social cues. It is how I make sense of my life and express my inner self to the world. Every day, I have to use another medium, one in which I’m a novice. It’s frustrating. It’s isolating. I can’t express ME in German.

So, when I have the option, I use English. It’s a bad habit that I have so much trouble getting over. Most importantly because, in using English, I put those I interact with in the same awkward position that I’m trying to avoid — they can’t really express themselves, either.

A Mommy Abroad

Our big adventure, as a family of three.

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