This Race That We're In

Yesterday we had a seminar about overcoming fear and reaching one's goals. It was also about becoming a better person by taking action, being accountable and getting rid of bad habits such as blaming others or finding excuses. Of course , this struck a cord with me. We are what we are and where we are because of our own actions. Yes, our parents did a lot as well and I will be forever thankful for helping me become who I am, but as soon as we are adults we make our own choices and decisions.

I, personally, am "not done yet" or "not there yet" because of my own choices that I took in the past. I sometimes wonder if I will ever be done or there, as everything is always in motion and nothing will remain the same. Panta rhei - thanks, Heraclitus. Whatever I have achieved so far, is because I took decision that I enforced as much as I could: I chose to go to boarding school, I chose to study, I chose to take two masters, I chose to move to Vienna, I chose to start working before I finished my degrees, I chose that it is time to look after my body, I chose not to have kids right now...

The same is true about my future, I set goals for things that I want to achieve, and I have dreams for which I do anything I can to make them come true. About some things I am not sure what I want, and that's why I do not have an exact career plan set out. Do I want to be successful? Yes. Do I want to have a family one day? Maybe. Do I want to own a house one day? Hell, yes. Do I want to be able to afford to go into a store and not be obliged to compare prices? Amen! Do I know how this will happen, planed in every single detail? No. But that is not necessary, having such a plan might be helpful, but I don't think it will assure that you make the right choices in your life. Some people are so obsessed with their plans that they let opportunities pass and forget about other things that are much more important, such as friends, family, simple happiness and just living for the sake of living.

One of my colleagues is in hospital right now, because he has had a breakdown and the doctors are assuming that he has the burnout syndrome. He is 28. I wonder how he got there. And then I wonder why I am not there. What makes the difference? He has a normal job, no family, but a girlfriend and a dog. I have a normal job (if I count the part-time job and the part-time thesis writing as one 40-hour-week job), a boyfriend and no dog. Did the dog make the difference? I don't think so. Every once in a while I freak out because I have this urge to finish the thesis and think about all the things I still have to do, I think about everything I need to get done for work and whatever private issues are still open. But then I take a step back and tell myself to turn off the brain and breathe.

I am happy. I love my life. I don't have anyone that I need to be accountable to, beside myself. I don't depend on anyone but myself. There is so much left of my life, why should a stress myself out? Why compare myself to others? There is always something that someone else is better in than me. There is always something that someone else is worse in than me. So what? Life is not a race, and if some people have created a race, I choose not to compete in it. Let them run for their life, I will walk along and enjoy the scenery. Let them drop down at the finish line, sweating and panting, with sore feet and a racing heart. I will get there eventually but I won't have missed what went on on the sidelines, I will be calm and experienced, I might be holding hands with others who walked with me, I will be able to walk a little further, my heart filled with the treasures I collected along the way.

There are and will always be bad situations, there are still so many mistakes to be made - I'll do my best to avoid them but nobody is perfect. At the moment, as I am thinking about what's to come, I am looking forward to it all. And while I am in the thinking mood - I know that the past is filled with my mistakes and with my making others sad. I am not proud that I made them, but I have learned and I hope not to make the same mistakes again.

No race for me.

One Hundred And One

I like to look through random blogs and "get to know" people by reading about their lives. So far, I have been very lucky to find a lot of fun and very different bloggers, but what has always helped me see if I could enjoy reading about them is their lists of things about themselves. Karen's recent post about blogging per se got me thinking about that a bit. One of the latest adds to my list is Sass, whose 100 things about herself (at the very top of her blog) were very interesting and made me come back again and again.

I think I've outed myself as a copy cat often enough, I will just copy that as well. So here are 101 things about me (which I doubt anybody will read from top to bottom, there won't be a test, don't worry), written on the four hour train ride to Tyrol a few weeks ago. Have fun!

1. I’m half Austrian, half American

2. I have brown eyes

3. I have brown hair

4. My shoe size is 38/7.5

5. I have one brother, David

6. I have a boyfriend since 28 Feb 1999, Martin

7. I like to ride on trains

8. I get horribly seasick

9. I love dogs

10. I can drive automatic and stick shifts

11. I’m a pretty good swimmer

12. I’m a pretty slow runner

13. I love make up

14. I live in Vienna

15. I’m 174 cm / 5’8” tall

16. My favorite color is green

17. I need a lot of sleep

18. I would kill for a decent plate of sushi

19. I studied English and American Studies and International Development Studies

20. I’m still not done yet.

21. I’m still fighting with my thesis

22. I like watching babies

23. I don’t necessarily want kids myself

24. I want to go on a trip around the world (as soon as the thesis is done)

25. Martin will come with me

26. I wear contacts

27. I like to take photos

28. My dad didn’t believe me when I said I needed glasses

29. I went to a catholic girls’ boarding school for 5 years

30. I grew up in tiny mountain villages called Bürserberg, Vandans and Gargellen

31. I don’t want to move back to where I grew up

32. I’ve never been a thin girl

33. I suffer from psoriasis and migraines

34. I am very clumsy and messy

35. The only bone that ever broke in my body is my collar bone

36. I never had to spend a night at a hospital

37. I believe in God

38. I enjoy reading a lot

39. I don’t really enjoy working out

40. I have never owned a car or motorbike

41. I worked as a tour guide for US kids in Europe during three summers

42. Now I tell others how to do it

43. I read CVs, conduct interviews and decide whether you get the job or not

44. So far, I’ve employed 160 people out of about 400 applicants

45. My brother is one of the new tour guides

46. I am a blabbermouth

47. Spring is my favorite season

48. One day I’ll write a novel

49. I have a hard time walking on high heels

50. I drink a diet coke a day

51. I prefer to drink from a can

52. I love McDonalds food but only have it once a month max

53. The only time I decorate is Christmas time

54. I can sing the Austrian national anthem

55. I learnt how to play the flute but I forgot how to do the c minor

56. I’d love to know how to play the piano

57. I can’t sing at all

58. I can’t keep a rhythm

59. My favorite country is France

60. My favorite food is Italian

61. I don’t own a lot of jewelry

62. I hate people who walk slowly on the streets

63. I’ve been to five funerals

64. I need sunglasses a lot

65. There are tiny hairs that grow on my nose

66. Many of my socks have holes

67. I need to travel to stay happy

68. I am way to nice

69. My dialect to German is like Scottish to US English

70. I am bad at math, physics, chemistry and biology

71. I speak German, English and French

72. I can translate Latin to German if I have a dictionary

73. I can read Dutch

74. I can communicate a bit in Italian

75. I have a very irritable skin

76. I am very sentimental

77. I am very short-tempered

78. I am not patient

79. I get annoyed by other’s stupidity

80. I like Chardonnay, Merlot, Zinfandel, Rioja, Chianti, Shiraz

81. I like Whiskey, which is dangerous

82. I hate shopping

83. I can’t stand heat

84. My favorite places in Vienna are the MQ, Old University Square and Burggarten

85. My taste in music is very average

86. I have short and stubby fingers

87. I have pretty feet

88. I am not shy but I sometimes get uncomfortable with certain people

89. I give a lot of compliments

90. I am a bitch on the day of my ovulation and on the first day of my period

91. Otherwise I’m friendly

92. As a bilingual, I code-switch frequently

93. I enjoy crime series, my favorite is Criminal Minds

94. I am a so-so snowboarder and can only ski if my life depends on it

95. I don’t get drunk very often, I know exactly when to stop

96. I am not so much of a party person

97. Martin deflowered me and I deflowered him

98. A goose and a duck are the same thing to me

99. My grandma has lots of animals and I spent a lot of my childhood on her farm

100. I can milk a cow (at least I used to)

101. I can cook, but don’t like it – you can taste the lack of love

Flashback 6

This photo is from summer 1998, when our class went on a so-called sports-week to Carinthia (another province in Austria). Every one of us could decide on two kinds of sports they wanted to learn and I chose golf and kayaking. I was the only one to chose golf, out of 60 girls. Oh well, at least I got to know the boys who were doing golf pretty well... :)



What I remember:

• I had a red bikini that matched my red hair.
• The water in that creek was ice cold.
• We shared a two-bed room - we were four people!
• The golf boys were the same as the kayak boys - but they didn't know that I was the same girl.
• We had a lot of fun with the cheap white wine.
• The area was so very beautiful.
• I was scared shit-less going on the big river with the kayak.
• We went to a torture museum.

Drum roll, please

Several news from my life here in this pretty city. Martin's gone again to France (for the last time) and will be back on Friday in a week. He is very fed up with the people he has to work with so it is not really the time of his life. At least they're feeding him well... Wait a minute! Did that just sound like a mother?

I'll be busy anyway this week, as I'll have to work this weekend, so I won't have a lot of time to feel sorry about myself and miss him so much. I think you would call that "denial". At least the week started on a Tuesday, after a wonderful sunny and warm three-day weekend which included trips to the park, cocktails with David and his girl Sara (followed by a lovely tipsiness I enjoyed), and a barbecue at the Danube with some friends and about five million other people. And those others are well equipped! They drag entire samovars and tents and furniture out there and stay the whole day.

(By now you are wondering why I need a drum roll, right?).

I checked the bank account yesterday and to my dismay I have exactly 15€ left this month to invest in pleasure things. Thank God the food is taken care of, otherwise I would be living off potatoes with salt! I guess the new dress, the new underwear, the two new pairs of shoes and the trip to Tyrol are responsible for that... Actually, I don't really mind, I don't really need anything, so I'll get over it. (Ok, now it's a fact, I am in denial.)

However, here comes the drum roll worthy announcement: I have been on a diet and I have been seeing results, so I'll share my excitement with you. Martin's not here to celebrate, and I think the girls at the office are already sick of hearing it. So, every week I'll update the little button I added to the right as to how well I was that week. I will not be posting bad results (that is weight gain), so if there's no update: DON'T ASK ME WHY!

No, for real now: DON'T YOU DARE!!!

And since I can't stand a post without a photo, here's one I took of Sara's eyes. Pretty, huh?

Vienna with Jacqueline & Jim

It only took me what - a week? - to finally upload some pictures about my first family visit from anybody besides my grandparents... (And yes, that undertone should be accusing!)

Anyways, we did have a nice time with the two (for pictures see right). The weather did not always play along, but they both said they were used to that. Unfortunately we didn't have that much time, since I had to work during the week, but we did manage two afternoons and an evening together.

The first afternoon, I think, was pretty exhausting for poor Jacqueline. She'd been up for almost 15 hours and was suffering from a little cold (which I believed she left me here in Vienna :) ), so we just went for a walk around town and had a bit of ice cream. I did try to stay strong, but I couldn't help taking a few bites from Martin's four scoops. He can eat and eat and eat and is as skinny as ever! UNFAIR!

On the second afternoon (Monday) we met up at Naschmarkt, where David had some time to come as well. I love Naschmarkt (although we rarely buy a lot there) and we had a fantastic meal at the Deli restaurant. If you ever come to Vienna and look for a place to eat - go here. Then we showed them our university and the great reading hall. I think our pride was seeping out from every corner...

The last evening was spent eating. I could just as well end the report here. We ate Schnitzel (oh, sorry, should be correct here: we had three Schnitzels each) and J&J decided they hadn't had enough and ordered Palatschinken (Austrian version of crêpes) - see below how well that worked and how much they actually managed to eat. We had a little night-walk and downed a good bottle of Rioja wine at Café Leopold, overlooking the MQ (you should all by now know what that is!).

I hope they had a good time - looking forward to hear Jacqueline's side...

(click to enlarge)

Flashback 5

Last week there were so many little girls in Dirndls that I remembered that I used to have one as a little girl myself. And here's the proof:


Well, I personally don't remember much since I was only three on this picture (that would be 1984), but my mom tells me on the day I wore this dress the first time I was taking part in a kind of procession. On Corpus Cristi the whole village walks to church and the kindergarten kids were allowed to march right in the front. Back in my days, you were only allowed to go to kindergarten when you're four. At the age of three I was definitely an unwanted guest at kindergarten! But I marched right along the other kids nevertheless and nobody stopped me.

Have a nice weekend!!!

First Communion

To keep things in order - I shall start with the communion we attended last weekend. Unfortunately the family visit has ended already, but more on that on another day...

As mentioned before, we were in Tyrol, one of the most mountainous provinces in Austria. What we kind of hadn't anticipated was the rather chill weather, but we made it work... :)


The communion day brought me straight back to my childhood when we had the same traditions and procedures. For example, the kids walk to church from the school yard, right after the priest and his helpers and the brass band. Here's the band:


The mass took about 90 minutes, but it was very cute as most of the kids got to do a special task. Martin's niece, Valentina, got to read a few lines for a intercession. And of course the cute Tyrolean dialect was heartbreaking! Us adults and Valentina's brother, Philipp were up on the balcony of the church, so we had a pretty good view, albeit the distance to the altar. I had a lot of fun with Philipp, "reading" the song book and looking at the few pictures of saints in the back. I taught him to sing Hallelujah, so whenever the people sang, Philipp would chant his Hallelujahs as well. I am a bit proud of myself for holding on to such an active three-year-old on my 4-inch-heels and in a church!


Afterward we went to have lunch in a beautiful restaurant, hidden in the middle of the forest. The food they had was one of the best I've ever tasted and the kids had a lot of fun outside. After that we all proceeded to Martin's brother's house, where we had cake and coffee (not me) and after that we started a barbecue. We all enjoyed ourselves very, very much!

Valentina likes to cook so we gave her a cookbook for kids and an apron etc as a present. But Friday was spent (in Valentina's honor, of course) at a local amusement park for children. That was awesome, except for the part when I got sick from the rides... ahem...

Anyways, for more pictures please go to flickr again, these are only to give you a feel of an Austrian way of doing the first communion! We took about 500 photos this weekend. The two pictures I consider perfect will be posted another time, I won't go all-in in the first round.