Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Springtime for Österreich

Ahh, the snowbells are in bloom, and if you listen carefully, you can hear the snapping and cracking of half a million Viennese frowns, floating away like ice on the Danube.

It's not that the winters here are so cold, just long, and gray. It's meant a bit of adjusting for me. In Texas, winter comes on a Wednesday (though I hear they've had a few snowflakes this year.) And the skies above Manhattan can be the deepest blue, even on a blisteringly cold February afternoon.

In Vienna, Anette and I will be out for a walk in September, and when she sees her first brown leave of fall, she casts her eyes downward and groans, 'It has begun.'

Fall is nice, but this year we got snow in November. Winter sometimes lasts into April. And while we're at it, June is rainy as hell--hardly a summer month at all. I want a refund! This is very Euro of Me: winter is a great conversational placeholder here, and even the most frozen Austrians come alive when they complain about the weather.

But this year really has been schön okay. Here it is, the dawn of March, and we just had a full weekend of sun. Well, almost a full weekend. It's almost light in the morning when the kids crawl into bed with us, and it's still light when I leave the office in the evening.

I'm getting old and easy to please. Throw me a little light and spring air and I think, 'Maybe my life is really alright for now.'

1 comment:

ken said...

Yeah, they don't tell you that before you move here. I remember my first winter in Milan, I was like, "Where's the sun?" It just goes away for three or four months. I understand SAD now.