Moving Day!!!

We really get tons of beautiful, natural light in the living room

Moving Day!!!

Dan and I got back from our poor, pathetic excuse of a 5th anniversary get-away, fortuitously aligned with the Deracho thunderstorm in DC, and started packing the house on July 1 (Coincidently, three years to the week from when we moved in).  Since then, life has been boxes and moving, first to temp housing in the US and then in suburbian Vienna.  Now, finally, we have been allowed in our new, freshly painted, renovated, downtown Vienna apartment, where we get to spent another three years in (eventual) box-free bliss. 

It is so heartening to be HOME.  Our UAB was waiting for us, so Dan and I are now sleeping on our own pillows, with our own sheets and coverlet that make the room feel a little more like ours. Poor Phoebe is still without a duvet, due to circumstances mentioned in the last post, but at least she has more of her own toys.  We have our own pots, pans, and plates in the kitchen, and the crowning glory, INTERNET THAT WORKS.  Now, it's still all white walls and mostly bare floors, but it's a huge step forward.

That said, it does look a little bit like a bomb went off...

When toys explode....

Oh.  And there are no closets.  None.  We are transforming a superfluous 1/2 bath (across the hall from a full bath, as we really don't need (inshallah) four toilets in a 1300  square foot apartment) into some kind of storage space, and there are shelves in the laundry...well, room would be an overstatement... -- but that's it.  If you've ever felt like you don't have enough clothes, move to the land of the Ikea wardrobe.  That will solve that problem quickly.  Also, I boggle at the idea of putting in "modern" sinks, with exposed plumbing and no cabinets, in an apartment with no closets.  Right now, all of the spare towels are living on the shelf under my nightstand, but this is not sustainable for three years.

Wardrobes are far superior for hide'n'seek

"Hi Mommy! I found Narnia!"

And we got the green furniture again.  Seriously, what State Department karma do I have that I get the green furniture TWICE? (Those who have worked with me, please don't answer that publicly!)

But still...I like this place.  It's in an old building, with high ceilings and pretty molded "eyebrows" on the exterior.  Our view from the living room is pretty amazing, with one ornate church steeple in the middle of the block, and Stephansdom visible to the far left.  All the rooms get lovely natural light.  The kitchen is big enough, and the living space is honestly pretty huge.  It just FEELS right, like a place we could really live.  I know that I'm still in the falling-in-love stage of expat life, but it's so much nicer than the temp housing.  So much. 

Poor Phoebe, though -- I wish I could explain to her, truely get through, that this is it.  We're not moving again (in a timeframe she can conceive of).  This is HOME -- all of her things will be here, all of our things will be here, and this is a place we'll come back to again and again.  I think she's still afraid that she's going to live a nomadic existence for the rest of her days; six weeks is a much bigger chunk of her life than it is of ours!  And I think she still fears that one day she'll wake up and we'll be gone.  I mean, one day she woke up and her house and friends were all gone, right?  So, to a toddler, I can see that being totally logical.

I hope the fact we now have a playground across the street and a short connection to the zoo will be a start to making things better.  We have had some fun lately -- last weekend, Dan and I took her to the pool, from which she had to be forceably extracted when she started turning purple.

Note Phoebe on the far right; the pigeon is on the far left.

And yesterday, even with the trauma of the actual move, we were able to have a nice evening eating brats along the canal.  She had a blast chasing pigeons in Schwedenplatz and then eating ice cream (after which we considered dunking her in the canal).  I know there's a long way to go before home is really home for all of us, but we'll get there.