If there’s one thing Austrians know how to do, it’s playgrounds. Also hotdogs, but that’s a different post for a different day. Anyway, the playgrounds here are amazing – always meticulously cared-for spaces that include plenty of death defying action for kids of all ages. That’s right, I said “death defying.” I’m talking super steep…
A few weeks ago, I went to pick up The Babe from preschool. I don’t usually stop to chat with the teachers because it’s always chaos at pickup time, but on this particular day the head teacher pulled me aside with a rather concerned look on her face. “Your daughter was talking about seeing all…
Yes, I’ve been MIA for months now. But I’m making it up to you by going back and sharing all the awesome weird things we’ve been doing around here. Like celebrating the death of St. Leopold III, patron saint of Lower Austria, by taking a slide down the side of a 300 year old wine barrel roughly…
Why head to Mardi Gras or Carnivale when you can really let your hair down for Fasching?! Here’s a sample of the Faschingsamstag party going down in my neighborhood this weekend. Please note that one of the drummers is dressed like Super Mario. But hold on to your sombreros (another popular fasching costume), because the real…
They’re really big on social order here in Vienna. This is a place where no one crosses the street until the signal tells them to, and where the local newspaper shames you into cutting your grass by posting a photo of your slovenly yard for all to see. I thought at first that this was…
We are nearly three weeks deep into Christmas festivities here in Vienna, which means every street is lined with twinkly lights and every corner has someone roasting chestnuts on an open fire. But most importantly, it means the miracle of glühwein is upon us. For the uninitiated, glühwein is a hot mulled wine beverage, sold…
I didn’t think anything could be better than a warm croissant, fresh from the oven of your local Parisian bakery. The crackly exterior giving way to chewy, paper-thin layers of dough. The buttery flakes of pastry fluttering down your shirt. The extreme joy when you remember there’s another one in the bag waiting to be…
So what does a year in Austria look like? Well, for us it was a lot of snow, beer, hot dogs, baby butts and playgrounds. Of course, there’s a lot more to this place than that, but moving here with a toddler and then popping out another baby right away has a funny way of…
Please for the love of god, stop making me bag my own groceries. I’m already stressed out by the language barrier, and worried that I forgot to weigh my produce, and feeling sheepish about my conspicuously large, undoubtably American-size haul of goods. Oh, and I’m probably not feeling too good about the toddler screaming in…
Don’t even bother trying to translate. Just come up with your own caption for the giant billboard of (dog? human?) poop.
Unlikely Diplomat 