The Blithe Traveler

Burgruine Aggstein

In the interests of full disclosure, this photo was swiped from Wiki. Seriously, Burgruine Aggestein is one of the most gorgeous European ruins I have ever seen. And I feel as though I might be closing in on "expert" status on European ruins.

Burgruine Aggstein overlooks the Danube, and perched above the river at 300 meteres, quietly declares itself "impregnable" from attack forces. To which we Broadhurst's reply, sagely, "Ah, yes, maybe, but what happens in a siege?"

I am not sure why, but I feel as though as a family we discuss medieval battle tactics more than the average Joe.

Wiki, our Source For All things declares the Aggstein ruins, "with about 55,000 visitors annually, ... one of the most-visited tourist attractions of Lower Austria." I find this hard to believe since Melk, which we will see tomorrow is just a few kilometers down the road, but one supposes many evils are contained within the phrase "one of the most." And being that it is just down the road from Melk, perhaps it benefits from overflow? I will say, the bus traffic around these two sites took us back to China, where bus tourism rules supreme.

I have to say, despite the frequency of my complaints about being "castled out," I thought it was worth a visit. The wee children enjoyed climbing among the ruins, and Jeff and I enjoyed a coffee at the coffee stand. To each his own. 

Just look at it. It is grand, grand, grand. The fact that this thing was perched on rocks 300 meters above the Danube and built in, oh, probably around 1100 (that would be, like, way, way before the development of the steam engine if you are the sort to keep track of historical timelines), astonishes me. If you have ever been involved in a home renovation project, like, tearing out a bathroom, imagine what it must have been like to raise this fortress almost a millennium ago.

Ah, look! Undefended! The three of us would have been cannon fodder in a battle.

It was a glorious sort of fall day, which made exploring the ruin all the more enjoyable. I suspect in the dead of winter it might not bee such a treat.

Another view. There isn't much really here. I mean, there is a dining hall (where they advertise weddings and the like), and there is a coffee shop, and there is a chapel, but, really, what you have is a nearly thousand year old structure of rocks, plus, whatever your imagination can devise.

I'd go back again in a heartbeat. And if I can sneak back without the children, I would invest in the audio tour. I ultimately find these unsatisfying, as I am always looking to crawl back in time and really see, and feel and smell what these fortresses were like. But, I'd like to have a listen.

The Danube, from Burgruine Aggestein ruins. In the interests of full disclosure, you can take a boat from Vienna to this area. It's a nice way to go, and one I would recommend for any spring-ish sort of visitors.

 

 

Green Acres

Farming living is the life for us. After weeks and weeks of city dwelling, it seemed like a great idea to head for the country-side. There are many "farm stay" opportunities within an hour or so drive. We chose one with horses. Not for the Boy Who is Allergic to All Things Farmlike, but for the rest of us who miss the smell of woodsmoke, the squish of manure under our sturdy boots and the sound of roosters crowing in the way too early morning sounds of country living. Like, the tractor.

The farm-ette came with a few sheep, some goats, a few Icelandic ponies, and enough chooks to satisfy those of us who quite miss their wee chickens. The locale was a tiny little village an easy drive to some major sites on the Danube (including, but not limited to the two we saw: Burgruine Aggstein and the incredible Melk Abbey). For those of you planning a visit (like Loyal Reader Debbie or my dad), you may commence taking notes tomorrow.

The overwhelming feeling by the end of the weekend is that we want to live on a farm again. Jeff and I, because we miss it. The wee children, because the animals are so darn cute. The children have absolutely no idea how much work an actual farm is, and we have no intention of elucidating them any time prior to actually assigning them chores, like, cleaning the sheep pen.

The wee sheep are for eating. This the children understand (Tom is wont to shout "But, it's the CIRCLE OF LIFE, Hope! when she gets mopy about eating animals), but it still made them sad.

Look at those little faces! It made me sad, too. And, in fact, since the children and I started working out a livestock plan, I decreed that while we could have meat chickens on our Farm of the Future, and meat pigs and meat cows, we would have PET sheep. Yes, I knit, but frankly, the whole sheep to shawl thing is a ton of hard work, and I'm happy enough to go with pet sheep.

But. No goats. Pets or meat. Yes, they are cute. But I think they taste rank, and on the pet scale, they don't have much going for them.

The countryside was typically Austria: beautifully tended.

We were able to hike from the farm house to a neighboring village of Maria Laach for dinner in the evenings. We navigated by the church. Is this not just gorgeous?

There were a few restaurants in these tiny towns, and the cuisine was fairly typical. Who does not love schnitzel?

Well, actually, the Gluten Intolerant do not love schnitzel. And, frankly, I think people with taste buds might not exactly love schnitzel. Schnitzel, if you are unaware, is one of the national dishes of Austria. They take a mallet, pound some protein really flat (like chicken, or pork), then bread it and fry it. And serve it without any kind of sauce or condiment (okay, some places put ketchup on the table, but did you really want to know that about Austria? Really. Didn't you have higher expectations?).

On our second night in this darling town, we ordered something from the children's menu for Hope, something from the adult menu for Tom and something different from the adult menu for me. They all turned out to be schnitzel in some form. Tom, the Boy With No Taste Buds, said, "Hey! It's like this whole restaurant is a Children's Menu!" Yeah. Yum. Not. But, we were here to enjoy the countryside; the cuisine was secondary.

 

The farm-ette was host to three Icelandic ponies. The owners had lived in Iceland for a few years, and this mare had been born there and shipped back to Austria. Hope had a bit of a ride on Sunday morning. Yes, she is wearing a biking helmet: I have ordered her a riding helmet for our Christmas trip to Patagonia (<--hey! did you know we were going to Patagonia for Christmas? It's going to be quite the interesting trip, and will include a few days on an estancia where we are planning to do a bit of riding. With riding helmets), so that little problem will soon be remedied. 

If you are concerned about the shoes with no heel, there are no stirrups. It was a cute little beginner saddle with a handle. Exactly the sort of thing I will end up getting for her. When we eventually get a little farm. And a pony. And some pet sheep.

Ah, a girl and her pony. Yes, I think the pony thing will work out just fine.

 

 

Cheating

I am gearing up (yet again) for National Novel Writing Month. The core concept is that writers attempt to generate 50,000 words in the month of November. I have tried this twice before and I have managed to generate somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 words. Or was it 50? Anyway, I have not had much historical success with writing under deadline, other than when I actually was writing under deadline and had to have a book in to a publisher by a certain date.

But, this year I have gathered up a few real life friends (okay, one friend plus her husband) in addition to some virtual friends (okay, okay, one virtual friend, sheesh, I've been recruiting like crazy and nobody is interested) and I am committing to success this year. Surely, with all the words I dash out here, there must be an actual book, with a beginning, and end and a middle (not necessarily in that order) in me? I just need to tap into that book and set it free. November: Setting It Free Month.

Are you wondering why I called this post "cheating?" Because in preparation for the month of November when I must generate 1600+ words a day in order to stay afloat, I thought it would be good to do some warm-up work. The whole Couch to 5k thing worked really well for me, so I thought I would do an October Blog-a-lot in order to warm up for the hand-wringing, wailing and general kvetching that will acompany the typing that I hope will translate into 'writing' for November.

So I committed to write two blog posts a day for the month of October. As a warm up. This counts. See? Totally cheating. 

Tom and Beary, the Early Years. When Hope saw this photo her comment was, "Gosh, Beary was so BIG!"

The other project that Jeff is working on (although I call it the project I am working on, despite the fact that he is really doing all of the work  and I am doing nothing except claiming the credit for the project, because even though it was really his idea about four years ago, I am just getting around to thinking about it now, surely, I can at least claim it was my idea, even though, well, you get the picture), is moving all of our photos over to an on-line server.

I guestimated that there would be about 60,000 photos to move, but I would now guestimate, as we are well into the project (note: I said "we," see, I am all about taking the credit here, although my part at this point entails checking to see how many photos Jeff has uploaded each morning) that there are more. More like fourteen million. Don't even ask me how much memory it entails because it is a number far closer to infinity than my wee brain can wrap itself around.

And so, instead of furiously typing my 2k or so words this morning, I scrolled through early 2003 and 2004 photos. Which is why you get Vintage Beary and random rambling instead of Vienna today.

Here's a more recent shot of the Bear and the Boy. He got smaller, that silly bear.

 

Listening In

My children have spent most of their formative years living in places where their native language is not spoken on the street. They have always had friends who spoke English, and they have always gone to English language schools, but they have spent the majority of their lives ambling through streets and parks and cities and countries and beaches and trains and planes where people are speaking all kinds of interesting sounding languages from German to Mongolia to Chinese to Vietnamese to Cambodian to Swedish. And we had the devil of a time in New Zealand, but that's a different story all together. Net, net, none of what is happening around them is generally intelligible.

New Zealand: 4 million people, 40 million sheep

While we were in the US this summer, we spent some time in a tiny little city called Easton (population 26,000 if you are interested in how I define “tiny.” Let’s face it, after spending three years in a city of 8 million people that was considered “small” I’m disoriented). Easton is a city in transition, gentrifying slowly as it recovers from the collapse of the steel industry in Pennsylvania. In places, it is rough and ready, in places gay and glorious. Easton is the home of the Crayola Museum, Canal Museum, parks, playgrounds and it is a place my children love to go.

While we were there this summer, we encountered another expat family summering there. They were from Korea, living in Seoul. Seoul is of course, a vibrant city of 10 million people, with a massive, efficient public transportation system, crazy busy streets and generally an electric kind of atmosphere. The family were American teachers living in Seoul with their two children, 7 and 9, and none of the family spoke Korean.

As we were swapping tales of living in Asia, the mom mentioned that her children quite missed home (Seoul) and that while they were enjoying their break in the US, her son kept complaining that Easton was “too loud.” That set me back. I’ve been to Seoul and there’s no way you can describe Easton as “loud” as compared to that bustling metropolis. In fact on a scale from 'dead' to 'vibrant,' Easton might fall a little south of six feet under.

“Ah,” she explained to me, “but here he hears people talking and understands what they are saying. So, it’s noise. In Seoul, he just tunes it all out, so it’s quiet.” Fascinating. 

And so we have found the same to be true. Vienna is the largest multicultural city we have ever lived in and people speak English all the time. Every day I’ll be walking along the street, thinking my own thoughts (English!), minding my own business and suddenly, someone’s conversation will intrude on my thoughts: they are speaking English! And I understand them. And I'm hearing them, because I understand them. And it freaks me out.

I mentioned this to Tom the other day. He nodded his head, and said he had noticed the same thing. “In fact, mom,” he continued, “I kind of hate it. When I hear people speaking in English, it always feels like I am eavesdropping.”

 

Moving In

We've been here for almost two months, but I can speak of it now only because I am finally far enough removed from it to do so without trembling. There must be people who are not completely traumatized by moving. I am not one of them. The packing up, the actual day when all of your belongings are shifted from one place to another, the clean up of the old place, trying to work out where things go in the new place. Eh, it leaves me cold. And shaking.

The new place is quite nice, though, and I really do love it here. Now that I pretty much know where things are and we have seemingly aquired enough furniture to sit on, store things and generally manage the westernized sort of life we enjoy, it feels like home.

This is the dining room the day we moved in. You can maybe see what we found appealing about the place. Huge ceilings, it has four bedrooms and the floors are just gorgeous.

Others among us might mention that it is on a tram line, so it can be a bit loud. Not to mention being on a main-ish sort of street, so maybe more than a bit loud. But, I am oblivious, so I love it.

The tiny kitchen is a pain to work it, and I am constantly alert that the slightest mis-step on my part is going to set the whole bloody place on fire, but it's not like I consider cooking one of my core competencies. Now when things go awry, I blame it on the kitchen. Any port in a storm.

The huge windows, the light, the floors, all of that makes the smallish sort of kitchen not so much of an issue. Although, I will really love moving to a country where they believe in things like cabinets in bathrooms. Gah, I miss cabinets in bathrooms.

This photo brilliantly sums up how I feel about moving. Poor child. The day was hot, and dawned with enormous promise. The movers arrived on time, packed up our house at Point A in record time and hit the road to Point B without a hitch.

I'm not exactly sure what happened between Point A and Point B, but there was what can only be described as a huge loss of inertia by the team moving our belongings into the new abode. They were just far, far slower than they had been in the morning. Granted, they were now hauling our things up four flights of stairs, as we are lucky enough to have our building serviced by the smallest lift ever constructed. Nothing, and I mean nothing fit in the elevator.

We barely fit. They put the mirror in so you don't feel entirely squashed, but once we don our winter garb, it's going to be a squish to get it all in.

So, they carted it all up one step at a time.

Oh, joy! Boxes, and packing material and stuff with no place to put it, oh, my! This is the living room. Light and bright, furnished in a style we like to call eclectic boxes.

Since the apartment is unfurnished, and we did not own furniture, we stopped at Ikea on our way. And bought things like beds, dressers, a table and a few chairs, just, you know, so we could live here and not eat and sleep on the floor. I know, I know, we are a spoiled lot.

Check out the sofas. We found them in our previous landlord's basement and he sold them to us for a song. They smelled a bit moldy, but they were cheap! A few months airing out and a little Febreeze and I they will be fine (whew!).

The movers were contracted to move our belongings, and then in what seemed like a a stroke of genius at the time, to build our Ikea furniture once everything was moved in. Well, it would have been genius if it had actually worked out that way. Alas, since it took them about four times as long as they had expected to move our belongings from the truck to the apartment, building time was looking to last until the wee hours of the morning.

Then there was the issue, which I believe I have already mentioned, that I had not packed any food for this moving event, and, drum roll, it was a national holiday in Austria, so there were no food stores open. I had planned for this, in that I planned that we would eat out for dinner. But, with the moving men stalled, dinner wasn't going to happen.

In an effort to expedite the building process, I put the wee sherpas to work:

Hope has always been quite the star helping to build Ikea furniture. She has a knack for it; key, of course, is the ability to follow directions precisely. Any deviation from the drawings, and you are SOL, having screwed in the wrong screw, only to discover that it is the sort of thing that has only one go in it. You try to unscrew that sucker and your furniture will lie in a crumpled heap for archeologists to uncover a thousand years from now.

On this moving day, when I wasn't going to be around to supervise, I handed the directions to Tom and made him foreman. The pair of them did quite well, with, I would argue, a higher throughput rate than the moving guys - who were, I should add, equipped with electric drills and screwdrivers while the rest of us were working with hand tools. In sum total, they put together all of the chairs (8) plus a shelf for my bathroom and a computer table. Well done, wee ones!

You might wonder where the photos are of Jeff and I sitting around drinking coffee while this building was going on. I assure you, we could not find the coffee maker. We were also making like Bob the Builder: yes we CAN!

But, as the sands of time slipped through the hourglass, and the four of us jockeyed for possession of the only Philips head screwdriver, the Weather gods conspired for a little moving day practical joke. Can you see the rain coming? We could. And with it, our chances of getting out for dinner. I should, of course, be grateful that our belongings made it upstairs without getting soaked instead of complaining about missing dinner, but at times I confess to being short sighted.

All's well that ends well, no one starved, the furniture was all snug and dry, and there is no lasting psychological damage associated with the move. In fact, at the moment, I am quite cozy in my dining rooming. I find the sounds of the city quite soothing, and love the proxmity we have to, well, everything. The school is close, Prater is close, I can easily hop a tram or the U-bahn and get just about anywhere I need to go. I am still emotionally attached to my car, but the actual need is slight.

All in all, the here is rather nice, once the moving bit was finished.

 

Hi-ho, Hi-ho, It's Off To Work We Go

Quick flashback to summer time. The weather here has put on his serious Fall Face (cold, wet, generally unpleasant) driving me to spend more time indoors, I'm working on a "photo storage project" that is taking me back through the years (don't be shocked if some early photos of Tom and Beary show up tomorrow), and I am feeling a bit nostalgic.

So, back to summertime we go! Check out the wee children, all dressed up to go to work. Note Hope's pearls. They are not real, but it did make me snort (quietly and to myself when she was not looking) that she fancies herself the sort who can pull off denim and pearls.

Photo below, different work day, but maybe you can get a sense of what they were doing: speaking English (which is something they do rather well, if I do say so myself). They were hired by a Czech company who is creating CDs to teach Czech children English to, well, record things in English. I've read that sentence six times and I am still not sure it is clear. Anyway, they were paid to read out loud and somebody else recorded it.

They were delighted by their working experience. My thought in having them do this, by the way, was to give them a taste of what the working world is like. They don't love going to school, I thought, give 'em a taste of what it's like to work for a living.

Unfortunately, their work environment was a bit cushier than anything I ever experienced in my working days. They got to eat candy, watch SpongeBobSquarePants (in English!) and play video games in between (short) bits where they read out loud. So much for child psychology tactics.

They were paid for their efforts: not a huge sum, and certainly nothing compared to what a child in the US would be paid for this sort of thing. But we let them mange their small income, and they were pretty delighted at the notion of having a paycheck.

They managed to score a second gig after the first one went off well, so while they are not exactly steadily employed, they do have a CV now should they desire to pursue their recording careers in the future. Although, while English speaking children are scarce as hen's teeth in Brno, they are fairly common in our new city, so it seems unlikely they'll be funding their university tuition doing voice overs any time soon.

I've uploaded a sample of the CD to youtube. It was a fairly complex procedure that I eventually cut short by - get this techies - videoing the CD as it played on my computer. Yeah, Luddites unite! Click below if you dare.

Hope: I Like to Skip

Tom: I Have A Dog

Family Fun Day

Looks like fun, doesn't it?

You'd try to turn and run if they were coming at you, too.

I love Prater Park. It is right next to the children's school, it is less than 2 kilometers biking from the apartment. We've already discussed the fab-o play parks. It is glorious.

On any given day, you never know what you are going to see. There is apparently a harness track at one end of the park, although I have yet to discover it. I have seen the cross country course, and it is pretty fine.

The park is a center of sports activity, so there are people biking, running, blading, riding horses, driving horses, walking dogs, playing Ultimate Frisbee, golfing, swimming, playing tennis, hockey, basket ball, baseball, skateboarding, and just enjoying the out of doors all hours of the day and night.

My favorite Prater story: the children and I biked over after school for a little BMX course action; unfortunately, while tearing up the course, Hope somehow  threw the chain off her bike and tangled it into a gosh-awful mess. I'm pretty good with knots (mad knitting skilz transfer to the real world, yes!), but the chain was beyond me. A rather kind gentleman was was hanging out with his son at the BMX course tried to help out, but even though he was a professed bike enthusiast, he was buffaloed.

We decided in the interests of dealing with the approaching rain and dark, that the best course of action would be to lock the bike in the park, wrangle the children home with Hope riding double on my bike, and come back later to bring the bicycle to a repair shop. We waved goodbye to the forlorn little bike with its chain hanging off and headed for home.

I walked back in the rainy, dark (hello children ten years from now! yes your mother did these sorts of things for you!) night, and gathered the wee bike to truck it home. Someone had repaired it.

I'm going to say that again, a little louder: someone had repaired the bicycle.

Can you even imagine? Some random person (although I suspect the kind gentleman who probably trundled off to get his tools and had it repaired before we were back home) saw the wee chained up bicycle with its sad chain and fixed it for us. Yes, I love Prater.

But, wait! There's more!

Prater is also home to the Wurstelprater amusement park, which includes the now-famous-because-I-am-aware-of-it Prater Wheel. The children celebrated their birthdays here. Tom chose to ride the Wheel and see the sights. I chose to go with him. The Wheel is my speed.

The cars are the size of small rooms, and, in fact, there are several cars that are set up for dining. I haven't worked out exactly how one reserves a "dining car," but I am sure it would be the nicest restaurant view in the entire city.

 

This was Hope's amusement ride of choice. Jeff took her. Whew. Seriously, I have re-learned to bike, learned to swim, am skiing with a smile on my face, and will even hike two kilometers on a rainy dark night to fetch back a wrecked bicycle for these children. But I draw the line at this sort of thing.

People. Way up high. Just swinging.

Some people live for this sort of thing.

So, come for a visit. We'll show you around, and let you enjoy Prater however it is you like your parks. Busy, active, quiet, passive, fishing, running, climbing, biking, blading, riding, swimming, flying, it's all there. 

The View

Our apartment is situated over the Danube Canal. Not to be confused with the actual Danube river, although the Canal is quite charming in and of itself.

That bright aqua thing in the lower left hand corner? A pool. There is a pool in the canal. On a boat.  Right under my living room window. I have not really explored swimming in it. It's a strange-ish sort of thing, with limited seating and not a lot of play room for children. It's more of a grownup pool, this pool in the canal.

It's quite well known, and I can use it as a reference point for people who want to know where I live. "Oh," I say, "my apartment overlooks the pool in the canal." And then people can easily find me.

Here's a night time close up. From the apartment, of course. I called this post "The View," so you are getting "views" as opposed to close up photos that might provide any actual clarity. Hey, it's raining right now.

The pool is really cool at night, all lit up. When it was warmer, for those few last days of August, people would swim at night. Now, it's just lit up. Looks good, but unless they plan on covering it, I imagine its work days are over until August rolls around again. I wonder, will they float it away for storage?

Also, from my apartment,  do you recognize the Wiener Riesenrad? We just call it the "Prater Wheel.' It's like the London Eye; one of those seminal, iconic sights that everyone in the world except me seems to know about. Kind of like the Brno Dragon.

But it's a nice view, even if I had to use Wiki to work out what the heck it was.

 

Vienna Night Run

For serious runners, 5 kilometers, or just over 3 miles, is called a "warmup." For the average couch potato, the idea of running that far brings out a strong desire to stick out your arm and yell, "Taxi!"

I am of the latter species.

I ran a bit when I was in college, but my core structure is crooked and running inevitably results in some supporting player in my anatomy going on strike. Around age 25, after doing a few Corporate Challenges through Central Park (5ks) and gimping around for weeks afterward, I consulted with an orthopedic surgeon. The good doctor suggested that I just wasn't built for running and maybe I should try some lower impact type sports. I heard "Hey, stop running!" and did not need to be told twice.

But, like many things in life that I stopped doing for quite good reasons (like biking, because I got hit by a car, and skiing because I basically hate it), children have a way shifting your perspective. We'd been in Vienna but a few days when I met a fellow American with a 9-year old son. She mentioned, offhandedly, that the two of them were planning to run in the Vienna Night Run. As a non-runner, I congratulated her on her enthusiasm, her clearly athletic son and thought no more of it.

Until later that day, a virtual friend of mine mentioned that she was considering starting the Couch to 5k program. C25k is an app that lays out a running program that gets you from non-movement to 5k in about 9 weeks. The wheels started turning. We had about 6 weeks until the Night Run, a friend was planning to run it with her kid, I would have a super supportive on-line group to grouse with, so, why not set a goal and accomplish it, dragging my kicking and screaming 9-year old behind?

And here was the clincher, the run was around the Ringstrasse: we live at  (what I discovered during the race is) the 3km mark. We'd be running right by our house! I thought the whole thing sounded cooler than cool.

The answer to "why not," however, was because my kid had absolutely no interest whatsoever in doing it. None, zero, zip, nada. I wasn't going to be dragging a kicking and screaming kid, I was going to be dragging a kicking, screaming, biting kid. I positioned it six ways to Sunday and he vetoed it absolutely.

But, I'm the mom. I finally pulled out my trump card and mandated. "Lookit, dude, you can do this, it will be a great experience, strap on your i-Touch and let's go!" Ah, a mother's love.

So, we ran. Hope expressed a strong interest in joining, but since she is 7, there were different criteria.  I had done some research before any of us hit the road, and 9 is not an unusual age to run a 5k. Age 7 is awfully young, so my research suggested it would be okay for her to do it if (a) she wanted to and (b) we ran at her pace. So, when she quit halfway through the first run, Tom and I cheerfully waved her goodbye.

Running along the Canal; you can see our apartment from here, and I'd point it out, but I get so confused with left and right and middle and upper and lower, better we leave off and you can use your imagination. You can just see Tom motoring along on the right side of the photo.

Tom was pretty adamant after the first run that this was a stupid idea, we really should quit. And after the second run. And the third. Actually, after every single run he would remind me how much he hated running. Interestingly enough, by Week 3, I was hating it too. Really hating it. I don't like running. I like biking (now that I am over that being-hit-by-the-car-thing). Running is slow, cumbersome, makes my legs ache and my nose itch and, well, I really. don't. like. it.

Running in Prater; the leaves were turning, but the weather was incredible; warm, sunny, not a day of raw, cold fall type weather.

But I was committed to doing this. The idea was to set a goal and achieve, not cop out because we hated running. Although I did think briefly that a lightly sprained ankle might be good timing...

But, no. We were committed. And, as I mentioned earlier, 5k is pretty much a warm up run for the serious runner, so surely, surely the two of us could manage it once. Thus, the two of us strapped on our i-Touches four days a week and grumbling at each other, we'd run/walk/run the program of the day and then hobble sweaty and disgruntled back to our apartment, complaining how much we hated this stupid running stuff. Tom really could not wrap his head around why I wouldn't quit, but one imagines these are where life's lessons are learned, n'est-ce pas?

The good news is that the actual running got easier pretty quickly, despite our grousing. The weather in Vienna this fall has been just spectacular and we didn't have a single "rain out" or other nasty weather day during our entire abbreviated six-week training program.

I promised him, promised, promised, promised, that once this stupid run was over, I was never going to ask him to run again. Never. Not a promise I was worried about keeping, let me tell you, because once the dang thing was over, I swore I would never run another step again. Really. I hate running.

Finally, race day dawned. Although "race" was clearly a misnomer for the likes of us: I had signed us up for the Slow Running group - the group that goes out just before the Nordic Walkers. I had images of the Walkers crabbing up behind us beating us with their walking sticks to get the he%$ out of their way. Tom did, too, and this did not reassure him at all that there was going to be any "fun" at all in this experience.

The weather turned fall-like, in the cold, raw, sense of "fall-like," the day after our last training run, and the forecast for running day was fairly wretched: cold and raining. Yeah. Enthusiasm levels in our household were low. Tom was really nervous about the whole gig, and, specifically about (a) being the very last runner in and (b) finishing at all. When it started pouring at 5 o'clock, I almost cried.

Given the forecast, I secretly consulted with Jeff. I was thinking I really should give the kid an out. I mean, I had forced him into this, and if we were going to end up with hypothermia, I wasn't sure that the key lessons learned were really going to be positive ones. I mean, "I was right all along and my mother is a moron" is not the message you want to sent to your kid. Jeff said I should make the call, but, that since we had done the work, and that the point was to accomplish a goal, perhaps it would be best to go ahead and actually accomplish it, eh, grasshopper?

Aye-aye, captain.

And so we kitted up. By 7:00, the skies had cleared (yahoo!), so it was chilly, but nowhere near freezing and there was no rain. 

Look! It's my map! I love this map. And I finally got the clocks up with timezones around the world. That only took moving to another country to git'erdone.

And headed for the tram. Did I mention that this is a heavily subscribed race? And kind of a big deal. I mean, it's in Vienna. At night. Around the Ringstrasse. There were ten thousand people running. 

Tom and I got off at Heldenplatz. And, oh, my, gah. The energy. The music. The lights. The energy. It was amazing.

I only had my i-Touch with me, so the photos are even crappier than my usual crappy photos. But it was amazing. So many people, athletic people, and just so much infectious energy.

People were dancing, running in place, and just moving. It was an irresistible kind of feeling, and Tom was transformed. We arrived a little bit early, and as we danced around keeping warm, waiting for the elite runners, the fast runners and the medium runners to go off, he said, "Next year, we can come a little later."

Sorry, did you catch that? "Next year??" We hadn't even started yet.

We finally lined up, keeping an eye out for the Nordic Walkers, making sure we shoved our away ahead of that potentially dangerous crowd, and quivered in anticipation. I'm just guessing, but we were about twenty people abreast, and there had to be at least a three hundred rows of people milling around in the starting block (hey, we were the third group to go off and there were 10k people running, so you do the maths).

Finally, finally, finally, the airhorn went off and we crawled forward. We held hands for the first bit (losing him in that mass of people would have been not such a great thing) and finally started running just as we went through the Äußeres Burgtor (outer castle gate).

It was gorgeous. The lights, the music, the green shirts all flickering in the dark. We were off, and we felt great. I know the Ringstrasse fairly well at this point (although I bike around it, please, none of this trotting around nonsense), so I was able to give Tom a commentary on how far along we were. Although, I do confess, I didn't really know the distances (although they are clearly marked on the map above and if I had actually consulted it at any point prior to the race, I would have been well informed). I assumed that our apartment was half way, so we discussed running past it as the half way point.

This is what it looked like from Jeff and Hope's vantage point. They were waiting for us, although, since I had planned to take my mobile and text them when we were close and managed to leave the phone at home, there are no actual photos of Tom and I running. Such is life. Or at least my life. When we got to the start and I realized I didn't have my phone, Tom's comment was, "As usual, mom!" 

We zipped along quite happily, chatting all the way and passing hordes of people. Given that we were in the slow running group, this is not surprising (and of course there were faster runners who blasted past us; there were some people I was convinced were on their second lap and that dude the wheelchair was flying), but I have to say being passed by a 9-year old made a few people groan out loud. And made more than a few runners-taking-a-breath-walking kick start to running again.

I was surprised by how easily we were running and kept trying to get the kid to slow down; we hadn't even gotten to the presumed half way point yet, and I was a little worried he wouldn't have enough petrol in the tank for the end. But, joy of joys, as we passed Jeff and Hope, they were standing under the 3k sign! We were more than halfway done! And so, we kicked it up a notch and ran our race to the end. 5k in 33:00; not exactly burning up the runway, but a good job for a kid. And his mom.

 

The best bit? He loved it. I mean, he really loved it.

I will keep my promise and never make him do anything like this again. But, I wouldn't be shocked if we were running it again next year. I know I will. And I suspect he will, too. But maybe not in the just-before-the-Nordic-Walkers group. We might need to move up a startblock.