Author: hillary

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What Am I Doing Here?

I’m under the weather today, so dipped into Twitter to get an idea for a post. It totally made me laugh, as today’s suggestion is “How did you end up where you’re living right now? What factors will help you choose the next place you live?” Besides being a virtual shrine to Annie, this blog is pretty much all about where I live, how I ended up here, and where I might be going next. Or at least, where I might be going next plays large in my mind, even though I may not write about it as often.

Followers and friends have as much information from this blog about how I ended up in beautiful Innsbruck as I do, so I won’t go into that. So what factors will determine where next we live?

To start, somewhere that I feel comfortable. I think I’ve had enough adventure and life growth experiences for a bit.  Also somewhere both Markus and I can easily work. I’m sure I could find some job here, but when I think of looking for a great career, it gets confusing fast with work visas, language issues, and childcare choices. This part of Innsbruck sometimes feels like it is back in the 1950’s, as I can’t think of a single family with young children where both parents work full-time. It just isn’t really done here, so the system is not well set-up for full-day care.

Obviously I’m not moving anywhere where English or German is not the main language. At 41 my brain is tired and slow and clearly not up to this foreign-language thing.

Markus would need to be able to find a great opportunity, and Annie would need a solid school system for this next phase of her life. (I’m pretty sure home schooling would kill us both!)

Overall, I really think most likely we will either stay here or move back to the West Coast of Canada. I just don’t see us starting totally from scratch with friends and community at this point. Never say never, of course, but that is what my sense is at the moment. In any case, we are here for at least 2 more years until Markus can give the cafe a real chance. After that, well, you’ll know as soon as I do!

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Waste not…

Ryan, in typical Ryan fashion, sent me a rather interesting blog post idea. He forwarded me a link to this image:

Typical North American urinal

He went on to say: “Likely, as a woman, this sight is quite unfamiliar to you. Using round numbers, NA guys see this 2-3 mins. day. I’ve been an adult 20 years so I’ve been awkwardly staring at the fact that 1 gallon = 3.8 liters for easily 200-300 hours.  In fact, a member of the first cohort of the Canadian ‘metrification’, gallons to litres remains the *only* imperial to metric measure I have clearly memorized.”

You seriously crack me up Ryan!

His other point is that apparently American Standard monopolizes NA urinals, while there are a wide variety on offer in Europe. I, obviously, wouldn’t know. What I do know is that when I first toured our new apartment, I was shocked to see this in the main floor guest bathroom:

This is IN MY HOUSE!

I’m not exactly sure why, but urinals make me think of hockey arenas and beer-swilling drunk men. (Must be some scarring experience in childhood I’ve repressed.) They totally gross me out. Markus tries to tell me that they are actually more hygenic than normal toilets. Whatever…if he wants to use it, he can clean it, that’s all I’m saying.

What I do find absolutely confounding, though, is that the regular toilets here have flat bottoms instead of having a bowl-shape like in NA. I’m not going to go into too much detail, but just think about the implications of that for a second. Let’s just say that the toilet brush gets a lot more use here than in NA.

An even more oddly, our newly renovated apartment has three toilets, two of which have a flat bottom and one which is a regular bowl shape. They all look new as far as I can tell. Why would the owners mix it up like that? You would think someone would have a preference for one type or the other and stick with it.

Oh, I could go on…but I can hear the Internet pleas to stop already. I’ll sum up then by saying that this illustrates one of the many, many differences that I never imagined having to deal with. Sometimes the world isn’t as “global” as we would like to think.

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My Hood

Good friend Stacey requested some photos of our new home. I thought that would be a great blog post idea, until I realized that this would require the house to be in a state worthy of having pictures taken that I was willing to post to the Internet. Let’s just say that this level of tidiness happens, um, not every day.

So instead Markus, Annie and I headed out for a short walk behind our house and took some photos. I just love the views from our neighbourhood, Arzl.

Much of our view from our yard is blocked by an old house, but you can see a couple of mountains if you stand in just the right place.

Select view from our yard.
The lane beside our house
At the end of the lane

A short walk up the lane begins a path that first snakes through the cow pastures and then merges with the larger mountain system of trails.

Annie and I by the cow pasture

Pretty Innsbruck tucked in the mountains
Pretty Innsbruck tucked in the mountains

This last picture turned out to be a bit boring. I was trying to capture the awesome hill that I think will be perfect for Annie to slide down on her plastic Rutschblatt. (What do you call it is English? Magic carpet?) I’m hoping the path leading through the pasture is kept up, as I can see many afternoons of Annie and I climbing up and sliding down, and climbing up and sliding down. Repeat until one of us loses the feeling in our toes or bum.

I do miss the views of the ocean, but the mountains are a close substitute in terms of beauty. For all of our personal trials, it is hard not to feel blessed to live in this part of the world. Maybe not forever, but I’m enjoying it while we are here.

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Thanksgiving

For the second year in a row, my good friend Nicole from California, made us a US Thanksgiving dinner. (She will be in London for the actual weekend, so we celebrated early.)

Although Nicole is a vegetarian, she ordered and cooked a huge turkey, enough for two or three times the people attending. (Yeah, left overs!) We had beets and mashed potatoes, salad and lentils, puffed pastry filled with spinach and mushrooms, gravy and enough stuffing (both vegetarian and non) to feed an army. So, so delicious. We ate, as is the tradition, until we were exploding. It was great fun.

Margriet and Philip were there  with Annie’s best friend Chloe and her brother Julian, so she had an awesome time as well.

Other guests included two couples who are Nicole’s neighbours, three locals and one woman from Galiano Island. B.C.! How you go from there to Kufstein, Tirol, is a wonder. We had some good chats about Canada and also about the differences between the school systems. (Both of us, being egalitarian Canadians, are theoretically opposed to the streaming that goes on here in the schools, but also realize many of benefits to the children of this system.)

It was a super evening, although driving home I had to stop to get a drink to keep me awake. That turkey did me in. On the menu for today? Turkey sandwiches! Feels just like home.

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Under the Wire

Today I made a couple of birthday cards, crafted a bit with Annie, and went to Nicole’s for an early American Thanksgiving food fest. Now I’m tired and full and tired, tired, tired. Good night.

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Laternenfest 2010

Another sweet afternoon put on by Annie’s kindergarten for Laternenfest 2010. She was a little put off by her row partner, but other than that, it was lovely.

Annie and Alexander
Lanterns are lit
The gang starts to line up
Singing in the pavillion
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Family Time

This evening Markus was home for dinner, which doesn’t happen every night. I made a chicken, rice and broccoli and we all had fun eating together.

Annie was complaining about the chicken (she would rather just eat the skin), so Markus made her close her eyes, open her mouth and he put some food in, which she ate. Then she asked to play this game more. Mystery Food is a game that Markus and Rebecca used to play, and it is fun seeing it all come around again.

Annie had a grape, a radish, some balsamic vinegar and a candy. For Markus’ turn Annie and I gave him a slice of lemon, an alcohol-filled chocolate, and raisins. I’m the wimp of the family, so they were nice to me with only an orange slice and a spoonful of Nutella.

As an adult, when she thinks back to being a child, I’m sure it is these simple times and experiences that Annie will always remember. And that makes me very, very happy.

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Dangerous Disneyland

I was reading a Dooce post about a television series centered around Americans house-hunting in a foreign country. One episode’s couple were looking at an upper-floor apartment in Paris and, seeing that there were no screens on the window, asked how to keep their child from falling to his death. The real estate agent said to them, you tell him not to jump out the window and he will not jump out the window. As expected, there ensued a long conversation on the post comments about whether or not Americans overprotect their children.

This is something I struggle with almost daily. There is no doubt that parents here are much less controlling with their children. Small children ride a bike, take the bus, or walk to school on their own. Teenagers from about 13 or 14-years-old spend Saturday night walking around the city center until well past midnight. And parents talk to each other (and smoke, of course) on the playground, letting their children go off and play by themselves. When I mention that I have a running anxiousness in my brain, always looking around the corner for where the next lurker is hiding ready to steal Annie, they look at me like I’m nuts.

Sometimes it gets stupid. The culmination was when I saw a man, his child of about 6 on the back of his bike, neither of them wearing helmets, talking on a cellphone, running a red light. Super. My friend, Nicole, and I have an automatic response when we see this type of thing: “safety third!”Austria’s unofficial motto. Lack of fences around dangerous areas, no helmets, construction going on millimeters from pedestrians.

I guess a less paternalistic attitude could lead to children being more independent and able to solve their own problems. And I am more relaxed about always keeping an eye on Annie than I used to be (although that could just be a function of her getting older.) But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to adopt the 1950’s attitude of kicking the kids out the door and telling them to be home in time for dinner. And frankly, I’m O.K. with that. Although I guess we’ll see how it goes when she is the only child wearing a bike helmet in her school. I see some heated fights in our future…but hopefully no trips to the emergency ward. A good trade, I say.

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Bring on the Hört

The next blog-post request from frequent visitors Ryan and Renata was to talk about the grocery stores. Before I came to Europe the first time (11 years ago), I still maintained the movie-induced image of Europeans shopping daily, visiting the market, the bakery, the butcher and cycling home with fresh-only food in their reusable grocery bags. Well, the 21st Century has hit even this part of Austria (mostly). I can go to a store as big or bigger than any Canadian Costco and buy pretty much everything…fresh, frozen and/or massivley processed…all in one place.

However, there still are some differences between N.A. and Europe shopping. For one thing, it is much easier and cheaper to get organic food here. There are very strict labeling laws and the consumers demand it, so it is available.

Meats are also much more varied, tastier and often cheaper. As well as the regular butcher meats, there are fresh sliced meat counters in almost every store with lots of offerings. (They also have these weird pressed meats, but I chalk that up to Alpine tradition and avoid those.)

Austrians must have the highest sugar intake in the world. In even the tiniest store there are at least two aisles of chocolate and candy. (We call the Tirolean women in their 20’s hummingbirds because they pretty much just eat sugar and are still ridiculously thin.)

But I have to say the biggest difference is the cheeses. The last trip back to Winnipeg I went to my mom’s local Safeway and stopped by the deli counter looking to buy some cheese. There was lots of cheddar in many brands and flavours (mild, medium and sharp), mozeralla in balls or blocks or shredded, cream cheeses with a zilllion flavourings and some parmesan. That was it. Now, I have no doubt there are amazing stores in Winnipeg with amazing cheeses, but here they are everywhere. There is an Austrian store chain called Billa, which are really glorified corner-stores, and there you can get at least 20 different types of cheeses. (Actually, and sadly, the worst selection I’ve seen is in my neighbourhood store, but even there I can find over 10 kinds.) Cheeses here are often made from fresh Alpine cow milk (or goat if you are into that) and just taste fantastic. Oh, and here is a little-known fact for you to ponder. Cheese is not orange. NOT ORANGE!!!

But back to Ryan and Renata. One of their favourite haunts here is Hörtnagl, (affectionately nicknamed “the Hört”) a high-end grocery store. There you can find a huge cheese, meat and olive counter, specialty foods, and the all-important Fleur de Sel for a reasonable price. Although you can’t use it as cooking salt, a salad made simply with butter-leaf lettuce, virgin olive oil, sweet balsamic vinegar and Flear de Sel is fantastic and has become pretty much a daily event in my life. (I’ve even adopted the habit of dumping a whole cold salad like this over my hot pizza. Delish!)

My only current shopping problem is that there are a couple of chains of discount grocery stores throughout town. Not only do they have the least expensive fruits and vegetables, but they buy sell-offs of consumer goods and sell them for cheap. So, for example, there was a quality children’s long underwear on sale for under 10 Euros. However, it went on sale on Monday and by Tuesday they were gone. Markus and I did each pick up a pair of Thinsulate ski gloves for 6 euros, but I missed the cheap house slippers. The items usually only come through once a year and are often gone in 24 hours. So now I’ve become obsessed with pouring over fliers (yes, they still have actual paper fliers here) and making sure I pounce on the deals I want. Way to add unnecessary and ridiculous stress into my life.

Anyway, I’ve always like grocery shopping (it was my pretty much my sole past-time in my poverty-stricken university days) and I’m happy to say that even though things have changed, Europe still offers a great experience.

The

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Is This a Choice?

Another busy day, another short blog post. Back to the Twitter feed:

Would you rather be wealthy and ugly, wise and sickly, or beautiful and stupid?

Is this for real? Seriously? There are people in the world who would choose to be stupid? Or sickly??!! (Take it from someone who was in constant pain for 8 months, nothing, oh nothing, is worth sickly.)

I quickly searched the net and there were listing for other answers, but I realized if I have time to read those posts, I have time to write about something better than this drivel that I’m currently writing about. So I’ll just say I go for choice #1, spend all (O.K. most of) my money on worthy causes, and hope that I at least would be sexy ugly.