Life begins!
Summer is officially over in Vienna. Its been a long, glorious, sunny, happy, joyous summer for me but today the clouds have moved in, the rain has been spattering all afternoon and the dreaded Viennese winter that I've been warned of is dropping its first hints of rainy days to come.To be fair i've had it pretty good. My last winter was spent in glorious Tyrol, working the ski season like all the other mid twenties kids who just want to ski and board as much as possible, with a handful of work thrown in amongst the partying and schnapps shots. So i've been acclimatised in that way. But a beautiful, snowy breathtaking winter in the gorgeous ski resort town of Soll is not a Viennese winter. It was a fairytale. A stunning fairytale that has led to me now living in Vienna - where I would never in a million years have thought to live - busting a gut to get my Visa, find a job and figure out how in hell to speak German! A Viennese winter will be the same temperatures (in and around the minus 15 to 20 mark) without the daily skiing session and magnificent scenery to justify it. Vienna is glorious, steeped in history, English speaking-friendly (which helps!!), beautiful architecture on every street corner, an historic palace just round the corner and an undercover nightlife and cheeky side that I feel i've only just scratched the surface of. But in winter? I've been told the streets ice over, the sun hides for 4 months and the urge to hibernate is overwhelming.And why all the fear and talk of cold winters? Because of course, I'm an Aussie. A sun-sand-and-beaches fully warm weather endorsing and embracing Aussie. I'd never even gone to a Lake for a swim before I came here. Why would you? Lakes are dirty holes in the ground and the beach is only ever an hour's drive away. Or so I thought. Turns out, Lakes can be glorious, countries can be landlocked and German is not always the terrifying language of abuse.So this is my little blog to depict the everyday life in Vienna, and the changeover for me. I'm probably going to slip in some tales from 'On the Road' from my tour guiding days as well, seen as thats a huge part of my life. For the most part though, I just want to report and record on how the hell to do this thing. How the hell do you settle into another country? Meet friends? Order food for takeaway in broken German? Find a job that compares to professionally travelling for a living? Translate my skill set into something satisfying and well paid?? Who knows! But we'll find out along the way I do so very much hope!!