So the time has come, the walrus said...

To speak of other things...

Like tidying. I hate tidying. And cleaning. No actually I don't hate cleaning. I like clean things. But I have better things to be doing than spending my life cleaning.

But today I must clean. Our house is going on the market next week, and the letting agents need to come round on Monday and take some photographs. So today I have to make the place look ship shape and Bristol fashion.

Its such a beautiful sunny day today and I hope that the sunshine pouring into the house will fill me with the inspiration to make the house look pretty.

I might be slightly delusional about that though.

To the hoover!

And a little bit of this to get the rhythm going...

V-26: Playing with bedroom decoration

Some more Pinterest boards from me again today, this time for the bedroom.

As I mentioned yesterday, our current bedroom is purple themed. We have white furniture, a metal bedhead and purple everything else. I love it, I love the purple, but I'm not sure I want to have a purple living room AND a purple bedroom. I might look a little obsessed or something.

One of the problems with the bedroom is that The Beard and I don't seem to be able to find bed covers that we both like. This may not seem like a particularly important thing, we're only talking about bed covers right? Well yes and no. I think bedroom decoration is incredibly important. You sleep in the bedroom. Which means that what you put in there is the first thing you see in the morning, and the last thing you see at night. So it should be comfortable and put you at ease. And noone wants to be angsty in their bed, you don't want to kill your mojo!!

So again, we like dark furniture. I think we're both a bit of a sucker for it. Clean lines though, nothing too fancy (ok, I'd ideally love a gothic vault of a bedroom with fancy finials on everything and curly bits and stuff, but that isn't going to happen anytime soon, certainly not in this flat!). Because we have built in wardrobes that are a very neutral colour we can put anything with them, and there isn't a need for much furniture.

So, bearing all that in mind...

Bedroom Option 1: The Red Option

Back to trusty red... The duvet covers have a fine detail red pattern on. Nothing too in your face, but just enough to lift the covers I think. I quite like the traditional feel to them. I'm not entirely sure about the red accents - I do like the idea of red in the bedroom, but I'd have to see all the elements together to make sure they were the same shades of red. If they're not, then it will be off and it will irritate me!! This could be made more neutral by the removal of the bedspread, changing the curtains to beige and/or changing the under pillows to white.

Bedroom Option 2: The Beige Option

I really quite like this option. I wasn't sure at first, but every time I look at it I warm to it. I think it is because again, it provides a neutral base for some of my existing knick knacks and artwork. It feels quite calm and soothing as well. And, I can dress it up with cushions and some form of throw.

Bedroom Option 3: The More Gothic Option

 I think I like this one most. It is very simple, very black, but oh so me. Whether it is oh so The Beard is another matter, and the bed is a bit of a tricky one. The room is wide enough to accommodate it but will the footboard make it feel more closed in? And will having a bigger bed mean that a footboard won't cause the very tall Beard a problem? Again, this option is quite a neutral one, just not as light as Option 2.

Bedroom Option 4: More Purple

What can I say, I like purple. I'm not sure I'm convinced by this option, for a variety of reasons, not least that part of the whole moving country thing is to do with new starts, and this feels like a replica of what we have at the moment. 

I can't really decide if I'm honest. The bedroom may be one room which I need to leave to evolve organically. Either that or I'll just go back to purple again!

Any thoughts?

V-27: Playing with living room decoration

Virtually that is anyway!!

I have a massive list of all the furniture and things I want to buy when we go to Ikea for our massive spending spree. So I thought I'd create some boards on Pinterest so I could see how they would go together, and give me a better idea about how I might like to decorate our bedroom with furniture and fittings, because I've been completely stumped.


The great thing about the flat is that it is a completely neutral space, so we could do pretty much anything we wanted. We sort of decided that in the living room at least we'd like dark wood furniture, mainly because the piano is dark wood and we want something that goes with it.

The brown rug and silver lamp stand that feature in all three boards are things we already have. 

Living Room Option 1: The Purple Option

I love purple. Our bedroom at the moment is purple, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to have a purple sofa!! We have a large yellow painting and some John Miller prints in our living room, which oddly work well together, and I think would work really well in the living room in this mood board. The Beard's mother just gave us some paintings including one she painted herself, which would also look amazing in this context.

Living Room Option 2: The Red Option

I'm not sure I'm feeling this as much, although it would be nice and homely. I'm not sure how we'd decorate around it, if that makes sense. But I do like the bold colour of the sofa, and how it plays off the dark furniture. The sofa that is featured is not the only red one, but red is the only colour I really like that sofa in. As the sofa we get is determined by comfort not colour, this could well be what we go for!

Living Room Option 3: The Neutral Option

Keeping again with the dark furniture, because I think we both like that quite a bit, this mood board takes a more monochrome and minimalist approach. This is reflected in the sofa in grey, again, if this is the sofa determined to be most comfortable, then this is really the only colour I really like it in. I think I like this more than the red option as a second choice, simply because it is a more neutral space that would work with some of our existing things, like the teal lamp shade we have, and the artwork we have.

Option 1 is by far and away my favourite. The Beard keeps telling me that his ass doesn't know what colour the sofa is, only how comfy it is, so I have to wait until we actually get to Ikea to try them all and make a decision. But it's good to have something in mind beforehand I think, otherwise you end up coming home with everything and anything.

What do you think?

Four weeks to go!

We have just 4 weeks to go before we ship out! The excitement is really starting to build now!

Why Vienna?

When I tell people our plans I am usually met with two reactions. The first is a mix of envy and excitement, then that is quickly followed by puzzlement as they try to work out why we would pick Vienna out of all the places in the world.

The simple answer is that The Beard grew up there, I fell in love with the city the first time I went and there are plenty of potential career options for me out there.

The slightly longer version of the story is inevitably more complicated!

It all started when we went to Vienna in September 2008 to see The Beard's best friend, who was about to move to the UK for a year to do an MBA. I flew in a week after The Beard and they picked me up from the airport, whisked me to Vienna and within about 3 hours (and after a few cocktails) I was proclaiming my love for the city. These feelings only deepened when we went for a walk around the city the following morning.

At first The Beard wasn't sure. I could completely understand - as much as I love Cornwall and think it is an amazing place, moving back there would feel in some respects like a backward step. We talked more about moving abroad generally. He'd pretty much decided he didn't want to stay in the UK, and I was rapidly warming up to the idea of trying a life in another country. But whereas The Beard is more free spirited than me, I have a reserve and caution that can only be described as British, and felt like I needed something a bit more concrete that we could build a new life upon. Add to that my lack of languages - inevitably moving abroad would involve using something other than English.

So I applied for the Civil Service Fast Track to join the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the idea being that if I got in I'd be posted somewhere, but would get the language tuition etc to go with it. That didn't work out (I didn't make it past the personality test), so we started thinking about alternatives. We looked at a variety of options, including Bermuda!

Ultimately I felt some apprehension at moving halfway across the world without any form of support network. Despite being incredibly independent, I only live 100 miles away from where I grew up and although I don't see my parents that often, I know that they are nearby. Moving out of the country is scary for someone who hasn't ever really lived further than the next county on... So Vienna became a real thought that grew in our minds. Because The Beard spent most of his teen years there, he has a good support network in his best friend's family, plus a couple of others.

I appreciate how lucky this makes us. Plenty of people move abroad without such support networks. It will make life a bit easier for us, especially when we don't have jobs, but I don't intend to rely on them solely, but it'll be a nice start!

Once I started looking into further education opportunities and possibilities, I soon realised that in the field that I am interested in academically, there are career opportunities in Vienna. Suddenly it became a properly viable option.

Now we're almost there, I am absolutely sure this is 100% the right step for us to be making. I don't even know whether I will end up with a job in the field I want, but at least I'll be in the right place to figure it all out. And even if I end up working in a bar for the next year learning German and completing my Masters, I'll have still achieved something.

V-29: Its really happening....

We've handed the notice in on our house. It has been accepted. I have begun sorting out the bills. I intend to spend today tidying and starting the packing process in preparation for potential viewings at the weekend (property moves so fast in this city that I'm anticipating people wanting to have a viewing on Saturday if not Friday).

The van is booked, the ferry is booked. My to do list is getting smaller. It looks something like this:

Pick up Pet Passport
Cancel the water, gas and electricity
Cancel cable and mobile phone contracts
Get boxes
Sell furniture and kitchen goods
Sell small stuff at car boot sale (that involves a very early start)
Pack!

I better get cracking!

V-39: The problem with being monolingual

Is that it considerably narrows your employment options.

Today a couple of adverts for jobs I'd really enjoy have been sent my way. One in particular was really up my street, was part time but paid well enough for that to be ok, which would leave me time to do the research I want to do and finish my MSc easily. But there is a problem.
They want someone who is fluent in German as well as English. Which I am not at this precise moment in time.

Looking at the job I completely understand why, it involves gathering information from the Austrian media, and there wouldn't be the time to have to look up 3 words a sentence. I just wish I hadn't given up German after my GCSEs.

Ridiculously both my parents are multilingual (even if that includes dead languages) but my sister and I aren't. I can survive in German and French but no more than that. Next to The Beard (who is a polyglot) I feel woefully inadequate and I am downright embarrassed at how difficult I am finding it to overcome the mental barrier when trying to speak German.

Part of the reason I feel like this relates to my current status in our house as main breadwinner, something which I am unlikely to retain in the short term, because jobs at international organisations are difficult to get.
I have given myself a deadline of 3-6 months to achieve a level of German that is perhaps not quite fluent but is better than average, which would at least broaden my employment prospects considerably. My biggest challenge is just remembering the words - hopefully when I don't have a million and one other things going on I'll have more capacity for that!

For now I have to keep telling myself that this is only a temporary situation, this monolinguistic limbo. At a time when I am feeling slightly overwhelmed by the field I want to move into, adding a language barrier isn't really helping. I just hope that it isn't too late to learn again - once I've got German down I intend to learn French and then possibly Spanish, and of course at some point I will finally learn Swedish properly.

I'm told immersion helps immensely. I really hope that is true!

V-41: Things I'll miss from the UK

The sea
Fresh fish and seafood
The landscape
The language
The sense of humour
Builder's Tea
Cadbury's
Fish and chips
Irn Bru
Scones
Clotted cream
Pasties!
Pints

V-43: The logisitics of moving

Moving house is an expensive business. Even when you aren't taking much of your stuff. When you move across a continent without a car and with a pet it is not only expensive but also somewhat of a logistical nightmare.

Luckily for us, I have extremely wonderful parents who are going to help us. We spent yesterday afternoon working out what size vehicle we'd need, which route to take and where to stay. We settled on a van of some description (preferably under 2.4m high so that it doesn't cost extra on the ferry), going through Germany, stopping at Aachen and Linz on the way. Unfortunately there will only be enough space for 3 people in the van, so because I am the third driver, the Beard gets to fly out on his lonesome. To Bratislava.

The good things about this plan are a) we can take everything we want out there, without having to leave anything behind in storage and b) we can leave earlier than planned to get to the ferry port in the UK because we can leave the Beard to sort out the handing over of keys etc. Not forgetting of course that having a good sized van in Vienna will mean we can save on the Ikea delivery fee and have our furniture faster!

There aren't really any downsides other than the cost being more than we'd hoped, but it isn't as expensive as paying someone else to do it!

It s quite a relief to have it all planned out - it was becoming the biggest headache of the whole thing! And now we don't have to worry too much about selling stuff - if we don't manage to sell it then we could possibly take it with us!

V-46: A new life needs a new flat....

So obviously the most important thing for us to sort out was a new flat. Last week we headed out to Vienna to flat hunt, with a fair amount of trepidation. I'm not the sort of person who can chance things this big, so for me finding somewhere while we were there was quite important.

Having spent literally months pouring over Viennese real estate websites, obsessively checking prices and options, The Beard and I finally narrowed it down to 15 and set about trying to arrange appointments. Which I have to say was harder than I expected. Or than The Beard expected, as it was him that did the majority of the organising. Given that real estate agents work on commission, I'd kinda expected them to be a bit more willing to book appointments, but a good few didn't even bother to reply to emails or messages. Somewhat disappointing really.

The week didn't start that well, owing to our first viewing being cancelled that morning. Thankfully fortune favours the brave, or something like that, and a quick check of the listings page revealed that there was another, larger flat available in the same building we were going to for our next viewing. The real estate agent was only too happy to show us that one as well, and as it turned out, they were next door to each other!

So we went to see the smaller one first, which was ok, but not fantastic. Then we went next door and WOW. It was perfect. Light, airy, plenty of space, built in wardrobes, lovely kitchen. View of the Riesenrad at Prater. Parquet floors. A yellow bathroom. A cellar! Best of all, the price is good.

We both loved it - it felt right. But the sensible parts of us figured we should probably go and look at some other places in other districts, just to be sure. So we did, and to be honest, they weren't a patch on the flat we saw on Wednesday. We decided that we should just take it, because we kept coming back to "it's not as good as the place on Wednesday".

So we took it. We will be living in the 2nd district, near the Canal, Prater and the 1st district. We have 2 U bahn stations within 5 minutes walk of the flat, a tram outside the door. We're on the top floor, with a good view. Prater is 5 minutes walk out the back. The flat itself is 74m2, and most importantly has a gas cooker and a full size dishwasher! The furry monster aka Suki-puss will be welcome too.

Living room

Rest of living room

Kitchen

Other view of kitchen

Us being smug in the kitchen

Bedroom

Bedroom

Glorious yellow bathroom

Walk in cupboard

What do you think? Awesome huh? I am really looking forward to kitting this place out with The Beard when we get there!!

Welcome to The Third Woman

Let me start from the beginning.

Three and a half years ago my partner and I travelled to Vienna to visit a friend of his. He spent the majority of his teen years in the city, and loves the place. Within 3 hours of being there, I had decided that I wanted to live there. And so a seed was planted. We began looking at the logistics and I decided that before I left the UK I wanted to complete some further studies. We set ourselves a target of 2012 to complete the move by, as we both decided that we wanted to be away from the UK when the Olympics started!

It is now 2012. We have now found a flat. Things are getting real.

On April 17th we will pack up the last of our things and get in a car, heading for a new life in Austria. Having spent the last 3 years looking for helpful information on moving to Austria and failing somewhat, I decided to blog about the move, and my first year in the city. So here we are.

Every day for the next 7 weeks will involve another thing to do, some other process to complete. It will be major upheaval, but completely and utterly worth it. The new city will present challenges - finding a job, learning/remembering the language (the Mr is practically fluent but then he's a polyglot and I have a GCSE in German), getting used to a new way of life. But we're embracing the challenge with open arms, broadening our horizons and generally looking forward to something different.

I hope you will follow us in our journey.

m4dswine