Well, I’m glad I chronicled the heady days of Vienna for my personal history book, because it is a real come down this weekend. Things continue to be a challenge with the Canadian hotel, so we decided that Markus needs to go home next week. He leaves tomorrow for, hopefully, only 8 days. I have to say that I’m rooting for a success, because I’m just not ready to move back to Canada. I am crazy obsessed with cracking this second language thing and, overall, life here in Europe is good. I love that people here do not spend their time, energy and money focusing on ‘stuff’ (last week’s jewellery drooling aside), I adore not having a vehicle, I’m meeting people in circumstances I have never encountered before, (which is greatly expanding my perspective on the world), and of course I am soaking up travelling to new places. Life is far from perfect here, and life is certainly not bad in beautiful Victoria, I’m just not ready to return to my old world. Keeping my fingers crossed.
On the plus side of things, we had a lovely weekend. Annie was so excited when we got home…she had the biggest grin on her face. We spent the day yesterday wandering around enjoying all of the Christmas festivities. There is a skating rink just around the corner from our house, and the lights and pretty trees are all turned on.
And today we went tobogganing! It was so fun. Tobogganing here is different than in Canada. You drive part way up the mountain and then hike the rest of the way. It should have taken about an hour to walk up, but with a toddler and a very out of shape Mommy, it was closer to an hour and a half. But well worth it. The trees are incredibly beautiful covered in snow, and the view from the mountain top is stunning. At the end of the hike is (always) a rustic restaurant where you get to eat back all of the calories that you expended on the climb. Oh well.
After our hearty lunch Markus and Annie went on one toboggan, and I went on the other one. It is a real exercise in concentration, as the path isn’t all that wide and there is a drop off on one side and lots of fellow hikers going up with children and babies on the other. Luckily, we all made it alive.
I didn’t take the camera, as our previous one broke the last time we went tobogganing, but here is a (closed-eyed) shot of Annie at the top of the mountain taken on the cell phone. Still cute I think.
So overall I’m continuing to be positive and feel much better about the time alone with Annie than last time. You’ll be the first to know if it isn’t going well!