Pretty Little Things

Vienna is really pretty.

And I mean, REALLY.

Moscow was cool.  You'd be driving somewhere and you'd catch a glimpse of St. Basil's at the skyline, and it'd be all bright colors against a gray sky.   And while Addis wasn't particularly beautiful, it had its moments (I loved the jacarandas), and the countryside was really lovely.

But seriously, Vienna blows them away.  First of all, it's CLEAN. The tapwater tastes amazing.  The Danube may be a little dubious in color (the whole Blue Danube thing is CLEARLY just a good PR job), the air is nice, and it's such a verdant place.

For example -- this is the view from Dan's office, on the 37th floor.  Tough work, huh?

 But it's more than that.  So many of the places just have the warmth of time to them -- roofs that are green with age, public building built with funds that a democratic government could never manage to appropriate today.  The streets are mixed between pavement and cobblestone, even out of the city center.  There are random wrought-iron balconies.  This is just a random bit of the 9th District, where Mom and I were transferring from the bus to the tram.  It's still pretty.

And it's GREEN.  There are just so many parks, everywhere you turn.  The main, tourist ones, but  just our neighborhood has two parks, with playgrounds, ponds, and swimming pools. We went to the zoo last week, which is located on the grounds of a huge palace (Schonbrun, the Versailles of Austria).  We only saw the edges of them, but the formal gardens...it's just amazing.  Huge. Lots of them, and people USE them, to lay out, to play, to have picnics. Cool feeling.

Even out here in the suburbs, it's pretty -- I took the girls on a walk, and then came up on a view all of a sudden, out over the Vienna Woods.  Ten points to anyone who can figure out what the castle-y thingy is in the distance. 

So, while I have a lot of adjusting to do, at least I'm doing it in a lovely place.  

Oh, and another lovely thing: 

Ice coffee here isn't a coffee with ice.  It's a coffee with ice cream.  I have had worse surprises.

Washington nach Wien, Part 2

Continued...

Soon, we were airborn.  And soon, Matilda was asleep.  Turns out that when you put a baby in their car seat at bedtime and put them on a white-noise, slightly vibrating plane, it knocks them out.

  That was a dozen sorts of awesome, because it left two of us to deal with Phoebe.  All things said and done, she did a great job (the Lufthansa entertainment system also gets props, for containing "The Garuffelo, which was watched about 87 times).  Unfortunately, white noise or not, there was no way Phoebe was going to sleep during dinner service, wine service (gotta love European airlines), and duty-free service.  Finally, 3+ hours into a flight that was less than 7 hours, they finally dimmed the lights.  Dan fell asleep, and then I did, and as I was nodding off I noticed Phoebe still peering around like a curious meerkat.  Thankfully, by the time Matilda woke me up two hours later, she was deeply and totally out.

I'm very thankful the plane was only about half full, for two main reasons:  One, I could ask for an extra breakfast, since it suddenly kicked in I hadn't eaten a lot in the last 24 hours.  Secondly, if there had been someone sitting in front of Phoebe, I probably would have gone bankrupt buying them drinks as she kicked....kicked...kicked the back of the seat the whole time.

For those of you in the Foreign Service, you probably know Frankfurt Airport well.  Very well.  Almost biblically so.  I've heard the joke that even God transfers Frankfurt to get to heaven. It's a big, busy airport, and Lufthansa goes to a LOT of places, some of them quite obscure.  So I've been there before, and I've had some marathons to try and catch a change of plane.  Plus, this time, we were entering the Schengen Zone, which meant we had to go through passport control and security.  Honestly, with all the baggage pictured in the last post, why Dan and I agreed to take the flight with connections is a matter for our defense lawyers in the criminal insanity plea.  But we did, and somehow manage to finagle the two cats into one seat on the stroller.  I had a baby on my front and a backpack on my back, and Dan had two carseats around his shoulder and another backpack.  The diaper bag and briefcase were shoved under the stroller, where a tired and bewildered Phoebe sat.  Yes, truly, we did it.  Many thanks to the kind women at security, who were in a totally different class than the TSA morons.

At the Austrian check-in desk, we offloaded the car seats and double stroller through to Vienna, and had a really nice short flight, with Matilda on our laps and Phoebe looking out the window.  We arrived, found our sponsor, didn't find the double stroller, wrote up a thing at Austrian, got the kids cleaned up a bit, and finally made it to our temporary housing out in the 'burbs.  I think it ended up being a bit under 16 hours, door to door.

God bless the iPad.

The worst part of the whole thing?  There was no alcohol waiting in the house when we got there.  THE HORROR, PEOPLE.

A Little Light in the Darkness

We're in temporary housing right now.  It's a big, empty house waaaaay out in the suburbs (does have some pretty views of the Vienna Woods up the street, though).  To get downtown, it's about a two block walk to the bus stop, a 15-20 minute bus ride, and then you can transfer to the U-Bahn or trams to get places in the city center.  So, it's an undertaking.  And while there is a store and some other things around us, they involve trekking up and down a pretty steep hill (sherpa and yak rental optional). It's not easy to go out to dinner, for instance, and "not easy" becomes a special type of hell when it involves small children, who are not easy to take out to dinner in the first place.

There has been a moment in every overseas move when I realize how far away I am.  From a sight seen out the airplane window, to the delight of speaking a foreign language outside the classroom for the first time and being understood, and this time, just thinking about the fact that my old hairdresser was a 9 hour flight away and that I had to find someone new, in a place with little language.  It's amazing what can overwhelm you.  Anyway, this moment hit me late in the dark of night last night, and was compounded both by our isolation and by the fact that I really don't know anyone here.  I haven't been in language training with anyone; I'm not going to the office to meet people like I did before.  It's very different than my other posts, and waking up in the morning and facing a day of no one to talk to but the kids is really staggering. (I'd have lost my marbles by now if Mom wasn't here.  Thank you.)

The only way out is through.  And it takes hard work, sometimes, to settle yourself in.  You have to find people, meet with them, reach out to them, talk to them again and again.  Sometimes this is easy (toddler math: two toddlers are not twice as difficult as one toddler, and the mess of one toddler can, if sufficiently motivated, be greater than the mess of ten).  Sometimes it's not; people, including kids, can take a lot of mental energy from me, and it's hard to go out when I'd really rather be curled up with my book.  But putting out the energy to go see people and invite people over when I might not have really want to is what has helped make such good friends and networks back home, and I'm hoping the same holds true here. 

So, today Mom and I set off, one stroller, one baby carrier, one diaper back, one baby, and one toddler in tow.  First off was the bus; easily found, but Phoebe, who had been VERY excited about going on a red bus, broke down crying, and we got scolded by the driver for getting in the wrong door with the stroller.  So, some drama.  We took that to the tram, which was a lot of fun -- we were FINALLY out of the suburbs, and beginning to see some of the Vienna landmarks I'd been reading about: the lacy Votivkirche, the Parliament building, the Opera, and even a side of the Hofburg, as we made our way to the Burggarten, where the Vienna Babies Club was having a meet-up that day.

It's been 60-ish and raining since we got here.  While the 60-ish part was great, after all the heat in DC, the rain had been hard with Phoebe.  Now it was 75, sunny, no humidity, and we were in a beautiful green park, fenced to the busy Ring Road behind us.  We found the baby group, pulled up a blanket, and I sat down to talk while Matilda engaged in some mutual eye-gouging with other babies.  Mom took Phoebe to get some good running and exploring in around in:

As well as lounging on the statue of an emperor who probably would have had her executed for her cheek.

 

Getting home proved to be something of a challenge, as (logically), the Schottentor bus station was located two blocks from the Schottentor U-Bahn, and around a corner.  We walked around for, oh, a good half-hour, with Phoebe snoozing in the stroller and myself with a 19-lb baby strapped to my chest.  Anyway, we made it home in one piece, refreshed for the weather, the feeling of finally seeing the "mythical" Vienna, and for me, having laid down that first tiny bit of a foundation that will hopefully make this someday feel like home.

Someday = week before packout, of course.

Washington nach Wien

Hi, all. We're here and survived.

Moving day started with four hours of sleep (me) and two hours (Dan). Everything ran late the day of, as seems to be typical of us...but packing up the last minute stuff has always been hard, and apparently it's even harder when you add the kids' last minute stuff. Also, Austrian Airways let me check my two kids, ages 2.5 and 7 months, in online, but for some reason wouldn't let Dan or myself check in.  When I called them to see what was going on, I was told that children weren't allowed to check in without a guardian...sigh.  No kidding?  And yet, there it was.

Oh, and I was also told, rather snippily, that if I had just booked on Austrian instead of United, then I wouldn't be having this problem.  Right.  I'll let the government know about that and I'm sure they'll end the Fly America Act immediately and act in a sensible manner.  Get right on that.  Great reintroduction to European customer service, however!

We had planned on getting to the airport by 3 for a 5:30 flight, with Katie bringing the kids about a half-hour later.  That way, they wouldn't have to stand in line with us to check luggage and argue about seats.  However, due to lateness and taxi issues, we didn't leave for the airport until almost 3:30.  We figured we'd still be fine, since Dulles is pretty close to us.  And THEN, we hit the worst accident I've ever seen on the toll road.  The airport access road was completely blocked off, with traffic funneled on to the already-jammed toll road.  It ended up taking us something like an hour and fifteen minutes to get to the airport, and yes, we missed out flight.

So.  The frighteningly efficient (or is it frightening and efficient?) people at Lufthansa let us chose whether to go thru Frankfurt, or wait till tomorrow's flight.  Since Dan and I were already a little traumatized by the work it took to get to the airport (and getting 6 suitcases to with +/- 1lb of 50lbs), we decided to just go.  Even though I've heard the foreign service rumor that even God transits Frankfurt to get to heaven.

Cats, kids, and car seats not pictured.

The kids are with Katie, and running even later.  I finished up at the ticket counter while Dan waited outside, getting evil looks from a Lufthansa manager who looked a little like an attractive version of Frau Farbissina from Austin Powers.  We finally get the kids and end up on a mad sprint through the airport, complete with carseats, terrified and pissed off cats, and Phoebe having a breakdown when TSA tried to get her to separate from Dan to go through security when I was stuck on the other side, holding a cat who was trying to climb my neck.  It was fun times.

We had so many carry-ons that the flight purser kept trying to get me to check something, so we didn't have to deal with it at the other end.  Given how tired I was, I finally gave in and let him take the suitcase with a change of clothes and the girls' blankets (being a European carrier, they had actually provided them for us).  Then I sat down and got settled, and Dan asked me where the passports were.  Instead of being in his briefcase, as I had though, he had put them in...say it with me now...the suitcase I had just checked.

Yeah.

Thank God the flight was delayed because of weather.  I have no idea if they would have held it to get our passports back or not, nor do I have any idea what we would have done on arrival in Frankfurt, where you have to go thru customs to enter the EU.  The bag, of course, was checked through to Vienna.  In the end, they did get them back.  And it says something about the level of stress I was under to not even fully realize what a big deal this could have been until, oh, today.

While we were waiting to take off, I looked out the window, and noticed the Austrian Airlines direct flight that we had missed sitting right next to us.  We left before they did.

To be continued....