Weeks 10 & 11... a "staggered" approach to leaving...

Hi everyone! Hope you're all doing well and looking forward to a little more freedom - let's hope that the current situation remains manageable.

COVID arrangements here are easing, which is good and we've both now had two jabs which gives us some confidence. Having had one in the UK and one in Austria, has resulted in a certain amount of mystery as to how we get a unified record in at least one country, but hopefully that will be sorted out in good time. Like it or not, it is starting to look like that will be important in the future. It certainly makes a difference here, although easy access to testing is a big part of how things are being managed - it's certainly comforting when you got out somewhere to know that everyone has had to demonstrate that they are COVID free to get through the door.

I am at risk of just telling you about our adventures in the mountains, which have continued over the last couple of weeks. And so instead, I will largely leave it to your imagination. A friend responded to a more detailed description by saying that "it sounds very Sound of Music", which may be a fair representation, although there hasn't been much singing! There has been plenty of very pretty wild flowers (see link below), cows with bells round their necks, and the Fluchtochtltisch! The Fluchtochtltisch is a special table. It's for when a party decide that it really is time to leave the hut, and then have a cheeky small glass of wine on their out... presumably to soften the blow of leaving! It translates as "escape table" and enables a sort of "staggered" approach to leaving... if you get my drift! (An "ochtl" is a 125ml glass of wine, being an eighth of a litre).

Much of my time recently has been consumed with producing an item-by-item inventory of all the possessions that we will be shipping out, along with replacement values, all for insurance purposes. The source material for this task is a couple of photos of each room that the bro-in-law kindly took and then, of course, the internet for the valuations. Shopping for everything you already own is a strange activity. It is also astonishingly time consuming and tedious. But it's good to know that, apart from furniture and kitchen items, most of what we own is stuff to enable adventures in the great outdoors. It's amazing how much you can miss your favourite rucksack... and your mountain bike, and your inflatable canoe, and... etc

We have really enjoyed our temporary accommodation. We feel that we got really lucky and it has been a great place to stay. But we now find ourselves looking forward to something more permanent, filled with our own belongings. The kitchen here isn't particularly well equipped, indeed last night on a call with Mum and Sister it was pointed out that our campervan had a better equipped kitchen! To illustrate, on arrival we discovered that there are no place mats in the apartment. We're loathe to buy anything that we have at home so we quickly made some using cardboard from the recycling, some paper napkins, plastic bag and some micropore from the first aid kit! 😂 They are serving us well!

We've done some more food and drink research over the last couple of weeks:

• Anna tried the orange drink that is ubiquitous in Vienna bars. An Aperol Spritzer... it took a while to figure out exactly what it reminded of, but Anna got there eventually: Sanategen vitamin tablets! That one was probably a one off for us...

• This week I discovered that our nearest supermarket is in fact a Turkish supermarket, which resulted in much excitement, a lot of reminiscing about my PhD fieldwork and the purchase of a huge round of Börek for the freezer.

• Apparently Vienna was, up until 10 years ago, not a great place to be a vegetarian. These days there is a vegan burger shop on every corner and it is home to a Michelin starred vegetarian restaurant. We'll save that for a special occasion, but fortunately they have a somewhat less fancy "bistro" version, which we visited last Saturday (Tian Bistro am Spittelberg). It was absolutely fantastic! Definitely our best eating-out experience so far. (...although the beach bar in the middle of the Uni was also brilliant). So, visiting veggie friends - you will be well served at our place (as always) but also if we go out!

Have done a bit of catching up with people (sorry if you're reading this and some of the text seems familiar...!) I have particularly enjoyed corresponding with a friend who is currently receiving treatment in hospital. It's great that keeping in touch can be so easy. What would we do without the internet...? Well! I say that, but we've had a few items of real post recently, including some little stones from the shore of Crummock - what an incredibly thoughtful gift!

For those of you we've not caught up with recently, I hope we get to do so soon! Until then.

The punchy bits at the end!

• I had a call with the new incumbent of my old job. It was funny how much I could recall, despite never thinking about it. It was good to provide a bit of insight, but it's definitely his job now and I think he's going to ace it, which is great! I wish him the very best of course.

• I've been thinking about my future a bit too and am considering going back to university. I've found a particularly fab looking Masters course (taught in English). Too late for this year, but I'll apply when the time comes... But they only take one or two folk of my advanced years, so I will need to steel myself for disappointment...

• Pressing on with German on Duolingo and planning to sign up for a course soon - holding out for face-to-face instead of doing it on zoom.