An unexpected holiday

Posted on November 8, 2013 by admin

There are a lot of holidays in Austria, but since the UN celebrates a slightly odd combination of Christian, Muslim and Austrian holidays, we have a really hard time keeping track of the local ones. Some mornings, we venture outdoors only to discover that Vienna is like a ghost town — shops closed, sidewalks nearly deserted, lots of open spaces on the trains and buses — even though it’s a weekday and a work day for Dan.

Having the boys in school hasn’t helped us learn the holidays much. The school is open many (but not all) of the days when the shops are closed, and the school doesn’t provide any kind of an official calendar of the school year (even though we’ve asked). We’ve learned to read the notices at the school very carefully. But sometimes we still miss that a holiday — not just at the shops, but one from school — is coming up.

For example, even though this is our third November here, we didn’t realize that November 1 is one of those “big” holidays in Austria. One of those days where the shops are closed, and so are the schools. There were no signs, no notices, at the school. I had this vague thought that November 1 is a big day in the church, and I noticed, last Thursday (October 31), that several shops had signs up saying that they would be closed on Friday. It wasn’t until nearly 10:00 that night, after trick-or-treating that my brain connected the dots and it truly occurred to me that the school might be closed Friday. We texted another parent, who (thankfully) responded very promptly, and it turned out that indeed the schools would be closed Friday. No school. A surprise holiday for the boys.

As much as it’s great to have an unexpected day with the boys at home (almost like getting a snow day!), my brain doesn’t switch gears well for last-minute things like that. And, while it was an unexpected day off for the kids, Dan still had to work, so instead of feeling like I had a surprise holiday, I felt more like I had a surprise 11 hour day of intense work ahead of me.

But, I adjusted. We spent the morning at the park and had a great day. (Dan and I marvelled at the astonishing ability kids have to get up early on days off and sleep in when we have to be somewhere — even though they didn’t know they had the day off when they went to bed the night before, both boys were up before 6, when we’d been dragging them out of bed after 7 every other day last week!)

We’ve been here 2 1/2 years, and this still happens to us, just like it did that first year. Just when we’re starting to feel like we’ve kind of got this figured out, just when we’re starting to feel a little cool, this happens to remind us that we haven’t really and we’re not.

It’s ok, though. That’s just how it is. And Liam’s teacher, when I explained it to her, felt pretty bad about it and promised to write down the rest of the days when the school is closed. So maybe … MAYBE … this unexpected holiday will have been the last.

A foreigner’s Halloween in Vienna

Posted on November 7, 2013 by admin

More or less, we’ve found a place for ourselves here in Vienna. We know our neighbors, we have friends, the boys attend a great school, we’re learning the customs and the language. In the more than 2 1/2 years that we’ve been here, we’ve learned how to make ourselves comfortable here. And while the internal sense of “otherness” never really goes away, I don’t walk around feeling constantly out of place (anymore). We’re not locals, but we’re not tourists. We live here, we’re not just visiting.

So it’s been a while since I felt really “foreign” here in Vienna. But nothing will remind you of being from elsewhere more than celebrating a holiday that doesn’t really exist where you now live.

That’s how Halloween felt for us this year — almost like we were having our own little celebration of it. Halloween is catching on here, but slowly, and only with certain demographics — mostly older school children, teenagers and college students (who don’t need much excuse to celebrate anything). There are a few painted pumpkins for sale at the grocery store, and a few gift and flower shops have a few black and orange items for sale, but mostly, Halloween is only vaguely thought of in Vienna.

Undaunted, and wanting to bring my kids along in some of my favorite family traditions, we decorated, had costumes sent over by Grandma, and planned to trick-or-treat again. Halloween morning, the boys chose their favorite Halloween shirts to wear to school, and when we arrived, we reminded the teachers that it was Halloween. As the only Americans at the entire school, my kids were the only festive ones, which was a little weird. I really wanted to enjoy Halloween to the fullest, though, so after I dropped the boys off at school, I stopped by our local toy store to ask them if they would fill up some Halloween balloons (bought on Amazon — no such thing in Vienna) with helium. They were happy to help, and actually had a small but good selection of costumes and Halloween items. I picked up a bag of fake spiderwebs (and spiders!) and a battery-operated flashing jack-o-lantern (since our actual jack-o-lanterns were already beginning to fall apart). Surprisingly, for such a non-holiday here in Austria, they were having a bit of a run on Halloween items at the toy store, and my balloons caught a lot of interest. The shop keeper insisted that I come back next year to do my Halloween shopping, instead of shopping on Amazon — “We will have lots of things next year!” she assured me. So it looks like it may actually be catching on more and more.

We celebrated this year, again, by getting in our costumes (Liam, who had been practicing in his earlier in the week around the house, happily refused to wear his on the big night) and heading out to the “American area” of Vienna, out near the American school on the western edges of the city. For the first time, we didn’t get lost getting out there, and even met a young woman on the bus who emigrated here from McLean, VA (just like us) the same year that we arrived. Our trick-or-treat experience was almost identical to last year. We visited about a dozen houses before the kids got worn out. Some of the houses were spooky and festive, while some were so plain and quiet that we wouldn’t have known to stop by unless we’d seen other kids there before us. Again, the average age of a trick-or-treater was very high, and we only saw a few little (elementary school aged) kids, and only one other as young as Liam. Also, like last year, the older, Austrian kids did not do a good job of waiting and being patient with the little ones, and they again demonstrated a penchant for showering the neighborhood with shaving cream and silly string. And, again, there was very little parental supervision of the older children (American and Austrian alike — not surprising, as kids over the age of 8 or 9 here typically travel all over the city on their own). And that is all fine, just different. We had a really nice time. We visited friendly people who chatted with the boys about their costumes, and we spent the entire evening speaking entirely in English (which was a fun change for an outing). We met one group of Americans that had set up a bonfire and a table of hot cider and soup for trick-or-treaters and their parents. It was, definitely, a different experience than we would have had in the States, but a very fun and pleasant one.

Truly, though, I miss home and my family on Halloween. Decorating the house in preparation for my boys’ arrival at home made me wish they could be around my mom, and my sister, and my entire family on Halloween. My family really does Halloween very enthusiastically. I felt like I was channeling a bit of that with my spooky decorations (which the kids just loved). I wish we could trick-or-treat with family, stopping by the houses of people we know and love, or hand out candy to other dressed up little ones. I wish the boys’ school had a parade or a party. I wish that most of the other kids trick-or-treating were little, like they are, and that everyone was in costume. I wish they could see the fantastic, over-the-top way that someone always decorates their house. I miss Halloween at home.

I really was reminded of being “from somewhere else” on Halloween, but there were so many little things that were so nice. Finding the cobwebs and spiders at the store, having the shop owner help me out by filling the balloons, the teachers at school making a point of wishing the boys “Happy Halloween!”, the jack-o-lanterns and spooky decorations at the houses we visited, the warm, inclusive feeling of being among other Americans (even if they were strangers, it didn’t feel like it) on this very American holiday. And we were lucky to have great trick-or-treating weather on top of it all (no snow this year!). Halloween is a day I miss home, most certainly, but we had a great, and festive, holiday here this year, as well.

The Fourth

Posted on July 4, 2013 by admin

I’m not a person with a ton of Independence Day traditions. I’ve always done something to mark the holiday, but I have almost always found that my plans for the Fourth of July have come together at the last minute (if they come together at all).

Even so, I have so often been fortunate to celebrate the day with family and friends, whether hanging out at my Dad’s, being at the beach, going to watch fireworks, pulling over on a bridge at the GA/SC line to watch the fireworks over the river, chasing a terrified dog down a dark street lined by trees full of fireflies, or, most recently, flying home with my boys to be with our family in the States. I have varied and bountiful memories of July 4th, and all of them, woven together, make up my very loose idea of Independence Day traditions.

Being away from home, we wanted to do something to mark the holiday, especially because, since the boys are beginning to be old enough to understand such things, we want them to have some idea about the Fourth of July. Fireworks aren’t a possibility, and neither did we find any convenient displays of American flags or red, white and blue anything. We settled for celebrating with a version of a cookout (made indoors): hot dogs (served in buns, American style, with ketchup and French’s mustard), Cheetos, potato chips, watermelon, lemonade and ice cream. (The boys are not interested in eating hot dogs in buns. I fear we will have a lot of work to do in the realm of repatriation when we move home.) It was really nice, and it did feel appropriately festive.

I don’t feel lonely or forlorn at being away from home on this day. But I do feel very aware of my American-ness. Like any imperfect family (and all of them are), for all of our collective national dysfunction, I am proud to be a part of it. The ideals on which my country was founded are wise, and the spirit of my fellow Americans is strong. We are neighbors, we are family, we are a community, and I am proud to be a part of that. And although I’m not exactly sad, I do miss it. Today, on a day that celebrates my nation and my people, I am not among them, but my heart is home.

Christmas in June

Posted on June 7, 2013 by admin

Yesterday, Liam and I were building a train track, and, as usually happens, we ended up just one piece short of what we really wanted to build. After a bit of trying to make it work with the pieces we had available, and then, failing that, trying to convince Liam that perhaps a redesign was required, I remembered that we had some extra train track pieces stored in the closet. They’re in the closet because they’re for the Christmas train, not the “regular” train.

Every January and February, I slowly start to squirrel away the Christmas decorations and toys. I do it stealthily, and gradually, to attempt to avoid an all-out uprising in favor of keeping our Christmas decorations up until summer. Understandably, the boys love their Christmas stuff, and they generally object to having it put away. With a few exceptions (both Liam and Benjamin have several Christmas-themed stuffed animals that stay out all year because they are so dearly loved) the decorations and toys get put away eventually. (I stand firm in the face of adversity because I really belive they’re more special to all of us if they only come out for a little while each year.) The manger scene, the Christmas train, the Santa books — all of it eventually gets boxed up and put in the closet.

But yesterday, to solve our engineering problem with the train, I decided to retrieve a single piece of curved track from the closet to complete our creation. Ta-da! Success!

Kind of. Because, of course, Liam quickly figured out that where there was one piece of the Christmas train, there would be more. And he began to ask, very sweetly and “Please please please!” if I would get the Christmas train out for him. And, as kindly as I could, I explained that the Christmas train was put away for the season. But he persisted in asking for it.

And, after a few minutes, I went ahead and got it out. Not because I was frustrated or overwhelmed with his asking (which was actually uncharacteristically respectful) but because, why say no? Sure, it’s not Christmas. Yes, it’s June. The Christmas train has been put away for about 5 months now, so it seems plenty special to get it out and enjoy it again.

And so, we had Christmas train construction and play time last night. We got out the rest of the track, the Christmas train, the gingerbread cookie decorations (note — not real cookies), the Christmas wreaths for the train set and, of course, the little plastic Christmas trees that go with the set. Because, why not? Christmas is great and it’s really nice to just say yes once in a while for no real reason. Liam is so happy.

(The only unintended consequence is that Liam now has us counting down how many days until Santa comes . . . oops!) Merry Christmas to all (in June)!

Tag der Arbeit

Posted on May 2, 2013 by admin

We get different holidays here. No Thanksgiving. No Martin Luther King Day. No Presidents’ Day or Columbus Day (although I don’t think I’ve ever actually gotten either of those last two off of work). No Fourth of July. But, of course, we get other holidays — St. Stephen’s Day (the patron saint of Vienna, also, conveniently, the day after Christmas), Austria Day (similar to America’s July 4th), a smorgasbord of religious holidays (Good Friday, Easter Monday and Whit Monday for the Christians, a few of the Eid holidays for the Muslims) and May Day/Worker’s Day/Labor Day.

It’s a little weird “celebrating” a socialist holiday, coming from a country where the term socialism is so vilified (though we Americans have our own Labor Day in September, we just don’t think of it in the same way). Regardless, I’m not going to complain about a day off in the most beautiful time of year here. We intended to spend the day outdoors, enjoying May in Vienna. We gave Liam the option of choosing our activity for the day (since B got to choose on Sunday) and he chose, surprisingly, to stay home.

So we did. Per his request, we watched a movie (with popcorn), we played video games, we played hide & seek, we raced trucks all over the house, we watched tv and we had macaroni & cheese for dinner. It was lots of fun and very restorative. We had a great day.

I’m also using May Day as an ironic, if unintentional, opportunity to change some things about my blogging habits. We have been here more than two years — beyond our initially intended stay. With very few exceptions, I have blogged nearly every day that we’ve been here. I was determined to be religious about it to avoid only writing on the days that I felt most inspired to write — usually the best days. I wanted my chronicle of our travels and adventures to be honest, and I felt that for it to be truly honest, I had to require myself to write, every day, regardless of how much I wanted to or how easily the words came. And I think I’ve done that — I think I’ve accurately captured the thrills, the failures, the struggles, the homesickness, the occasional boredom and the personal discoveries that this journey has brought about.

And so, I think I’ve kept my promise to myself. I promised myself 2 years of daily records, and I’ve done that.

I’m not going to stop writing. I love recording the myriad details of this adventure. I love that these little nuances will be memorialized for the future, for myself, for the boys. I love that I’ve been able to be a help to others taking on this immense challenge by giving them a window into the reality of this process. I will continue to write, to record, to capture, to share.

But maybe not every day. So yesterday, I marked Workers’ Day by not writing. My blog was silent for the first time since my intentional Christmas holiday. It’s a liberty I’m going to allow myself more and more going forward. I hope to keep the honesty just as vivid, but allow myself more space to breathe, to rest, and to enjoy our last year here.

Dyeing eggs in Austria

Posted on March 29, 2013 by admin

This is, oddly, already our third Easter in Austria, although we haven’t yet been here two years (thanks to the weirdness of the calendar magic that determines the date of Easter). The first year, our Easter celebration was a little improvised and strange, and didn’t involve dyeing eggs at all because we were living in a tiny temporary apartment with no kitchen table and I would have lost my mind if I’d even attempted it. Last year, we had a really nice Easter, and we even colored eggs, but for that we used the dye I had bought in the US before our departure and had intended to use that first Easter but didn’t (which was also down to all of our things being literally on the ocean when Easter passed by — egg dye included).

As a result, this, our third Easter in Austria, was the first one for which I had to figure out how to dye eggs without familiar supplies from home. My initial hope was that there would be a lovely display of Paas dye kits at the grocery store checkout, but no. Easter eggs are a big thing here — the Easter markets sell hundreds (if not thousands) of hollowed out, intricately hand-painted eggs. The grocery stores sell pre-dyed packages of 10 hard-boiled eggs (because eggs here come in tens, rather than dozens). But I hadn’t seen any way to dye them at home. (And food coloring is NOT a thing here, so that wasn’t an option.) When we were in Salzburg last weekend, I saw some relatively familiar-looking boxes of egg-dyeing supplies, but not wanting to carry it all the way home, I opted out . . . only to come up empty everywhere I looked in Vienna.

Thursday morning of this past week, I still hadn’t come up with a plan and I was running out of time. B had painted eggs in school, so that was my fallback strategy, but I imagined that was going to be more frustrating than fun, in general. So Thursday afternoon, I gave up, went to a grocery store and literally started digging through an Easter display, somewhat alarming the grocery restocking guy. But I found what I was looking for! A flat, thin package of 6 envelopes of “egg ink”. The instructions were, of course, entirely in German, but I went for it, anyway. Not knowing how much “ink” I was getting per envelope, I got two packs, and had Dan pick up 20 eggs on Friday.

Of course, this being Austria (where the organic eggs come stamped with their farm of origin, which is fantastically cool) all of my eggs were brown, and I didn’t know how that would impact our plans. I sat down with Google Translate and came up with a rough idea of the directions, including a helpful guide as to which of the dye packets would work on brown eggs.

My next job was to boil the eggs. Which seems simple, but I couldn’t remember if the eggs needed to be prepared any special way, so I asked the Internet, and came up with a fantastic new method for hard-boiling eggs. 17 eggs (which is how many would fit in the two pots I used) and not a single crack! (I had no idea if they were actually successfully hard-boiled, but they were, at least, more cooked than when I started.) In fact, when I went to douse the eggs with cold water at the end, to stop the cooking process, I was surprised, after covering them completely in a cold water bath, to come back moments later to a pot of hot water! The eggs held so much heat that they reheated the water on their own — it took 3 cold water baths to keep them cold.

Then I set up the dye — warm water and white vinegar, plus the dye packet, which really did look like ink spreading through the liquid.

After all of that, we sat down to color our eggs. I had no idea how it would go — whether I’d bought the right thing, whether I’d translated the directions correctly, whether the brown eggs would work, whether the eggs were sufficiently cooked. But, we gave it a whirl, and it was great. The dye was strong and made rich, deep colors on the eggs, very quickly — and no problem that they were brown eggs. Within a minute or two, the eggs were already darker than I’m used to after a LONG time soaking in the dye from home (my family can attest to my propensity for leaving eggs in dye for far too long). So, the only downside to the whole process is that it just didn’t take very long, which made it hard to keep up with the kids’ enthusiasm. (And I think, had we spilled any dye, it would have been a major, and maybe a permanent, mess.) Other than Liam dropping his first egg, pre-dye (which did at least let me know that the eggs had been cooked all the way through), and him squishing one post-dye, we had a very successful time. Our eggs turned out beautifully, and no one even had to be patient, since each eggs was finished before we could get the next one in.

The boys had fun, and it feels very Eastery here now. Our first truly Austrian egg-dyeing experiment was definitely a success, but, as always, also an adventure.

2 weeks, 1 day

Posted on November 1, 2012 by admin

We were so fortunate to have been here to enjoy the Viennese Christmas season last year. It is so lovely — the markets are inviting and festive, the lights make everything seem magical, and the entire spirit of the season here focuses on the religious part of Christmas and being together, rather than on shopping.

Plus, it starts early, and without the guilt of short-changing anything else. There’s no Thanksgiving here, and very little Halloween, so once the autumn harvest has been celebrated, the door is open for Christmas.

The first of the Christmas markets open in just over two weeks, and several of the first ones are close to my house. I love this time of year, and I’m excited to begin to enjoy the wonder and warmth of Christmastime.

Leap Day

Posted on February 29, 2012 by admin

I think Leap Day is cool. No matter what claim any other day can make, no day is more rare — we’ll all have fewer February 29ths in our lives than any other day, and we’re currently experiencing one of them.

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The backwards Christmas

Posted on November 30, 2011 by admin

My usual Christmas preparation schedule goes something like this: start thinking about Christmas gifts in August, start shopping in October, suspend shopping for a bit while I plan Halloween and help with Thanksgiving, set up the house in late November, get the tree in early December, finish decorating, wish I had sent Christmas cards, then begin a wild dash to get my shopping finished (starting around the 10th of December) and wrap everything starting about the 21st. Usually, pretty successful (except for Christmas cards, which I always seem to start on too late to actually accomplish).

This year, I have to do everything differently. I still started thinking about Christmas gifts in August, but I didn’t start shopping, because I wanted to wait to see what would be available at the Christmas markets, which didn’t open until mid-November. I started shopping a few weeks ago, but I’m finding that I’m already way behind — stuff that I’m getting for my boys from the US has to be on its way SOON if it’s going to be under the tree (first it has to get here, then it has to get through customs) and the things that I’m sending home have to be on their way soon for the same reasons. I didn’t count on so many of the things I planned to shop for not being available here. And, not only do the toy stores here just not carry a lot of American items, they don’t stock items like they do at home — there aren’t 100 of everything “in the back” — they have what they have, and when it runs out, it’s gone. (I already purchased something I really wanted for Liam and was lucky to get the last one — and that was 2 weeks ago.) The result is that I’m in danger of stressing to the max about Christmas gifts, and it isn’t even December yet.

I know it’s not that big of a deal — if I get really stuck for a gift for someone at home, I can always order from a US company (oh, how I miss quick and free shipping — the USPS is a wonder I never really appreciated) and if I really need something for the boys, I can always shop in person at a store here and hope for the best. It’s more that my rhythm is off than anything — I have a way of doing things that works for me, and I simply can’t do things that way. (That’s been true of dozens of things here, this is just one more.) The holidays really aren’t about the gifts.

Oh, and I still have to figure out the whole St. Nicholas thing, because apparently he comes NEXT WEEK and I have no idea what kinds of things Benjamin will be expecting, because he’s been hearing about St. Nicholas at kindergarten. I don’t want him to feel like he’s missed out on something his classmates are all talking about at school next week. (I don’t even know if St. Nicholas comes overnight before or after St. Nicholas Day . . . I have some homework to do!)

I haven’t started decorating the house yet, and it’s not even possible to purchase a real Christmas tree (as opposed to one that comes in a box) yet, because they typically decorate the trees here on Christmas Eve. Add to that the fact that I don’t even know where I would buy one, I don’t have a car (and I can’t imagine the Austrians would take too kindly to my carrying a tree home on the U-bahn) and I have no Christmas lights yet. (But those are problems for another day.)

It all sounds very stressful, and it is, if I think about it the wrong way. But it’s also really fine. None of that stuff matters all that much, anyway. What matters is that we have a fun, happy, loving holiday season. We’re going to look at Christmas lights (which are amazing here), visit the Christmas markets, bake cookies, open our Advent calendars and get ready for Christmas. I have to keep myself in a good mental place to do all of that with joy, instead of with stress, because only doing 10% of it, but doing it with joy, will make a better holiday (for all of us) than doing 100% of it with stress.

I just have to keep remembering that. And I’d better look up the St. Nicholas thing.

A too-busy weekend

Posted on November 27, 2011 by admin

Thursday being Thanksgiving, Dan took Thursday and Friday off (like we used to do at home) so that we could take a long holiday weekend and enjoy the beginning of the Christmas season (even here in Vienna, today is the first Sunday of Advent, so Thanksgiving or no, it’s Christmastime now). It was a great idea, but, as often happens with these lofty and overly rosy images I have of time off as a family, we’re at the end of the weekend, exhausted, off our schedule and a little grumpy.

We had a great time this weekend (really). We visited some Christmas markets, we all got to take naps (on at least a few of the days), we went out to eat for Thanksgiving, we got some chores done around the house (not as many as I’d hoped), some of us got to sleep in a little (Dan and Liam did — I’m not bitter) and even went to the zoo today (and saw the pandas for the first time, which was amazing). It was a fun, packed weekend. The boys rode on rides at the markets, I did a little Christmas shopping, and we got to spend a lot of time together as a family, which was wonderful.

Really, we had a good weekend. Really. But we did too much (and we didn’t even do all of the things we had planned — we do a pretty good job of sticking to a schedule unless it’s labelled “vacation” or “holiday”, in which case everything goes out the window). So, here we are, trying to get ready for our upcoming week and it’s an hour past the kids’ bedtime and they’re just getting out of the bath. We got home from the zoo this afternoon completely exhausted and frozen (never trust a Viennese weather report) and by 8:00 we had two kids (who refused to nap earlier) passed out on the couch — too late to be a nap, too early for bedtime. Benjamin and Liam are still hanging on to the colds they had last week, and now I think Dan & I are getting sick, too.

I’m really glad we had some time off, got to spend so much time together, and took a break from our normal routine to explore and do some fun out-of-the-ordinary things. But this was not the recipe for a restful holiday. I think I need a vacation to recover from my long, holiday weekend.

A Mommy Abroad

Our big adventure, as a family of three.

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