Dan and Em's Blog

As I find happens to me all the time lately, Benjamin asked me a question today that made me really think about something I hadn’t thought about in a long time.  So often, I’m explaining something to him, and he’ll respond with, “Mommy what is . . . ?”, or “Why?”  These are very normal questions from a 2 year old, but they can be remarkably tricky for a 34 year old to answer.  I want to be honest and concise, while keeping the concepts simple and refraining from anything that’s going to worry or scare him — and you have to come up with the answer in about 15 seconds.  (And there will probably be follow up questions.)

We’ve been talking a lot about Easter lately around here — what we’re going to do for Easter, how we’re gonig to miss everyone at Easter, how everything here is closed for Easter, how decorated everything is here for Easter.  So, naturally, Benjamin hit me today with, “Mommy, what is Easter?”

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So, Schönbrunn Palace.  Wow.  Amazing.  Unbelievable.  Truly on a scale beyond anything I had ever seen before, or even imagined.  I’m not overselling it — those of you who have never seen it will STILL be amazed by it when you see it.  And we didn’t even go inside — this is just my reaction from seeing a part of the gardens.  Opulent, excessive, beautiful, lush and peaceful.  I loved it.  Easily my favorite place in Vienna so far.

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Today was a quiet day for our family.  Other than stocking up on some groceries (we’re going in to a long holiday weekend here, which means most stores will be closed) we stayed in.  Benjamin took a 3+ hour nap this afternoon (half of it with me accompanying him).  At dinner time, we decided to all go out to pick up our pizza, just for the sake of us all getting out of the house and getting some fresh air.

On our way, Dan was pushing Liam in the stroller, and I was walking with B, holding his hand.  It was a beautiful evening, and I was enjoying the company of my little family.  It was so nice to be holding B’s hand, talking to him about what we were seeing along the way.  I love those moments with him.  He is so little, yet already so grown up.  I see the children in Vienna — they are autonomous so quickly.  They ride the trains alone, and walk around the city unescorted by 8 or 9 years old — much younger than that if they’re being “supervised” by another child, often younger than 10 themselves.  We won’t be here long enough for that to be his experience, but I do know that he’ll grow up quickly, wherever we are.

I love both of my boys so much.  I love the way they are right now, and I know I’ll love it as they get bigger, too.  For today, though, it was just nice to have a quiet day, and enjoy holding hands with my little boy.

Part of preparing for our move involved separating everything in our house into one of four categories:  air shipment, sea shipment, storage and things to pack in suitcases.  The idea is for the air shipment to arrive 10 – 14 days after it’s shipped (to provide things you don’t immediately need in your suitcase, but to tide you over until most of your stuff arrives) because the sea shipment doesn’t arrive for 4-6 weeks after it’s shipped.  Since Easter is happening almost 3 weeks after we left, I made sure to pack everything we needed for Easter in the air shipment.  It’s not a religious holiday in our family, just a tradition, but I was careful to plan to have the things I’d need when we arrived.  I packed up cute Easter hand towels for the kitchen, and stuff to decorate eggs, but most importantly, Benjamin & Liam’s Easter baskets and the things that were to go inside of them.

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We’ve found a place, but we can’t move in yet.  We haven’t gotten our relocation grant, so we can’t go buy a washer/dryer or any other major purchase for the new place.  Dan’s work doesn’t start until next Tuesday.  So . . . . we’re on vacation!  We really can’t do much that’s productive right now — we might be able to later in the week, but right now, we’re waiting for a bunch of other people to do things, so we decided to have our first really leisurely day since we’ve been here.

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Just over a year ago, I came to Vienna for the first and only time before I decided to move here.  I was here for four days — I came to meet Dan on one of his business trips.  I wanted to get a feel for the city and see if I could even imagine myself living here.  I wasn’t here for long, but we tried to get out, see some sights and experience as much of the city as possible.

Sunday morning of my trip here (which was also Valentine’s Day) we got up very early (not easy to do, due to the jetlag) and went to see the Vienna Boys’ Choir.  We weren’t entirely sure where we were going, and we got a little lost on the way.  We came up out of the wrong exit from the U station into a silent little square.  It was cobblestoned and deserted.  We set off, trying to find our way, and encountered a few people making their way to the church that was a little further along the square.  It was quiet, beautiful and perfectly my idea of Europe.  I loved it instantly.  I wanted to know where we were, but we were running late and didn’t have time to explore.  We eventually found our way to our destination, and didn’t get a chance to return.

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One of Dan’s future co-workers invited Benjamin, Liam, Dan, Bailey & I to lunch today with his family at his home outside of Vienna.  We were really excited to get to see some of the area around Vienna, and to hang out with some Americans who had been through what we’re experiencing.  When Scott arrived to pick us up, they had outfitted their car with carseats appropriate to our kids’ ages, so we packed Bailey into the back of the minivan, and we all trekked off to Korneuburg.

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We left behind our first “home” in Vienna this morning.  I already miss it.  We moved into a new place, in another part of the city.  It’s smaller, it’s not as nice, and it’s not as much in the area that we want to be in.  That said, it is really neat to check out a different part of the city, and I think it will ultimately give us a more well-rounded view of Vienna.  It’s clean, it’s safe, it’s near a metro and it has everything we really need.  Benjamin is sleeping in the living room, but he’s happy.  Liam has a gigantic portacrib (I think he’s the only one whose sleeping situation improved) and he’s asleep and happy, too.  That’s what’s important.

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Our stay in our first temporary apartment is coming to an end.  We have to leave by 10:00 tomorrow morning.  It’s been great.  Super-IKEA-ified, really comfortable, really clean, safe for the kids, and the location is super convenient.  It has served us well for our first 10 days here.  (I can’t believe we’ve been here for 10 days.)

So now, it’s on to the next place.  But until 3 hours ago, we didn’t have a “next place”.  (I’m still not sure we really do.)  This past week, we’ve been mostly focused on finding a place for permanent housing (and we’d been kind of hoping we might get that settled fast enough to not have to find a second temporary apartment) so we let the search for tomorrow’s apartment go until way too late.  We do have a favorite permanent place picked out, but we won’t even see a lease on it until Monday, so we need a place for the next little while.

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I mentioned, in a previous post, that the pace of things is just slower here.  Although Vienna is a bustling city, the vibe is just different than home.  That’s fine.  I actually think that I will come to really appreciate this about our experience here, and it’s something I’m already getting used to.  Dan & I were talking today about going back to look at our two favorite housing options.  My first instinct was, “Email them now so maybe we can go see the places tomorrow!”, but then I realized that no matter how quickly we contact them, we’re not going to go look at those apartments tomorrow.  That just isn’t how it works.  We’ll email them today, talk about it tomorrow and go see them Monday or Tuesday (because very little happens here on the weekends — I guess apartment shopping might turn out to be an exception).

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