Our Market: Our Week in Pictures (April 21st-April 27th 2013)

We have this amazing market at our U-Bahn (subway) station.  It's so rare in the city to find fresh produce so cheaply.

This doesn't have much to do with the market I just like the sign.

If you would like to see all of our pictures like our Facebook page (top right hand box), follow our twitter feed, or follow us on Instagram (texmeck).

Making Memories: Our Week in Pictures (April 14th-April 20th 2013)

Someone is trying to grow up too fast...

...mommy took a day off this weekend so daddy and Naomi had a day to themselves...

...and with Matt in better health He and Liz finally celebrated their 5th wedding anniversary. 

If you would like to see all of our pictures like our Facebook page (top right hand box), follow our twitter feed, or follow us on Instagram (texmeck).

Spring Celebrations: Our Week in Pictures (April 7th-April 13th 2013)

We finally got to enjoy some spring weather here so we went out for the first ice cream of the season...

...we also celebrated the fact the we received extensions on our Austrian visas... 

...we also celebrated five wonderful years of marriage!

If you would like to see all of our pictures like our Facebook page (top right hand box), follow our twitter feed, or follow us on Instagram (texmeck).

Fall in our Neighborhood

View from our balcony on the national holiday: flags flying from the second largest government housing building in Vienna, with 1467 apartments, located on Friederich Engels Platz

Naomi at our favorite park down by the river walk

The park has a certain old-fashioned charm

Yes, Mommy wears her cowgirl boots in Vienna!

Naomi investigating a pedal on the merry-go-round contraption. Regular trains and subway trains use the bridge in the background.

Naomi walking and running around and around the merry-go-round

This stationary boat houses a school!

Shopping: Bring Your A-Game

Grocery Shopping is a contact sport here in Austria. It takes precise planning and execution and a fair amount of aggression. First,you must always go in with a plan. Not only so that you don't break the bank, but because unless you have a car, you must carry everything home with you. This either means you need to shop every day or you have to have the physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Because Europe is frantically green, you will have to either bring your shopping bags with you or be ready to pay for them at the counter. Aside from your reusable bag and your sparse shopping list you will need to make sure that you have either a one euro or fifty eurocent coin with you. This is so that you can have a deposit for a shopping cart because heaven forbid those would be open for everyone to use. Now you are ready to walk the few blocks down to your local grocery store. Hopefully the weather is not inclement,which would necessitate weather gear and more planning. Once you have made the hike to the store the fun really begins. First you must get your cart. If this is a busy time, which is likely, you will need to watch out for the people both getting and returning carts. Especially take care not to disturb the people returning them, they just went through the ringer and only want to collect their deposit and get out of there. Carefully you put your coin in the slot and with luck your cart will release from the chain of others. Once you are away from the chaos of the front door you can relax for a moment and look t the fresh bread and rolls around you. This is a mine field,however, if you are like me and trying to stay away from carbs. Austrians do not abide day-old bread so there is never a lack of rolls and pastries assaulting your senses. You resist the urge to pick up that cream filled cloche and push on towards the produce. The produce section is the first of many logjams and for good reason. By the price of your item, which never actually corresponds to its exact location, is a number that you must memorize. This is because all of your produce need to weighed and the number tells the scale which item you have.After this you now hit the narrow aisles and now the elbowing dance to find the rest of the items on your list begins. This is further complicated by the store employees who have chosen this moment to stock the store, since no one can seem to arrive at the store early or work late to do this. You scour the aisles realizing either that peanut butter is longer available at that store or that you forgot that this store doesn’t carry the brand of cereal that you like, but for the most part you have what you came for. Don’t get too cocky because the worst is yet to come. Now you make a beeline for the registers. Usually at this point there is only one register open and a line backed up well into the aisles. You shrug off your need for personal space as you know that if you do not aggressively hold your place in line some overly zealous shopper will find a way to cut in front of you. Then you hear the phrase that turns a relatively orderly line into utter chaos, “Zweite Kasse, bitte!” The call to open up a second register has been sounded and now the entire line is bristling with potential energy. We all know that at any given moment one of the employees will come up from their smoke break and then all semblance of civility is lost. During one recent episode of this Liz and I were both in the store, without shopping bags so we were carrying what we had in our arms. I was fortunate to see the clerk come up and was able to stay ahead of the throng. Liz however was caught in the scrum of oncoming shoppers and in a moment of desperation tossed me her loaf of bread as if to say, “Don’t mind me, save yourself!” Once you get to the register you are almost done. You hand them your discount card and pray that you weighed your produce correctly…they will send you back if you didn’t! The cashier runs your items through the scanner at lightning speed. You bag all of the items yourself (your really didn’t think they were going to have baggers did you?) trying to keep up with the cascade of groceries without crushing any of the items you just bought. Somehow you keep up with the pace and pay the cashier when they finish handing you the last item...or face the scowls of the cashier and the people in line behind you. Finally you drearily push your cart back to the pick-up line and look at the line in-coming shoppers. Poor chumps.

International Apartment Hunting 101 Part IV: Moving

Moving options

I could probably say more about apartments and finding them here in Vienna, but this series has gone on long enough and so as promised I will share a little insight about how to (or how not to) going about getting moved here in Vienna.

When we first moved here we pretty much just brought as many bags with us as we could and then made a big IKEA run and that was it. Now that we’ve been here a couple of years we accumulated more furniture and stuff than we could manage on our own so we looked into a moving company. Though we could have rented a truck and had some friends come over and help us over a weekend, we were under a time restraint and so really didn’t have to time to find a rental truck and a weekend where everyone we knew could help. There are a good amount of companies around and they have some decent prices (most charge by the hour) but I would suggest the following to save you some money. First, have all of your furniture broken down to move. The rental company will be glad to break your furniture down for you (and put it back together) but that takes time and time is money…tick tock. Second, make sure that all of your small things are in boxes. Again for the most part we did this but we were running out of time and boxes so I started coming up with theses “ingenious” ways of packing things like throwing them in bags and taping things together. This ended up costing us space on the truck and time because it’s harder to pack and carry irregularly shaped items. Finally, I would suggest asking the company to come and give you a consultation before you move. This was a huge mistake on my part. If they have to give you an estimate then you can agree on a certain price. This keeps them from “milking” the job and taking longer than they need…which I kind of suspect happed in our case. Though, to be honest, I was glad not to have to carry all of that furniture down four floors of stairs on the hottest day in the summer!

International Apartment Hunting 101 Part III: Private vs. Agent

It’s time to continue my blog series on Apartment hunting in Austria. I apologize for the long hiatus, but in the mean time we found an apartment and well; it’s quite the undertaking to get moved around here. I’ll talk about that in another post but let me talk about something that you should consider way before you move, when you first start looking into an apartment.

Here in Austria we you can use a real-estate agent to help you find a rental property. This may sound strange to many of you, but renting is so much more common here and what are the real-estate agents to do? Of course, agents don’t do it for nothing, and they can really add to the expense of finding an apartment. Most apartments here require a hefty deposit up front, usually at least 3 months Kaltmiete or flat rent (without utilities or building costs). Agents usually charge another 3 months flat rent in Provision (realtor’s fee) so going with an agent can cost you 7 months’ rent up-front! Most if not all of that you will never see again (landlords are notorious here for not getting your deposit back to you-we are still waiting on ours, in fact). It’s much cheaper, then, to find an apartment through a private individual. The downside is that private offerings are much more rare and since you are likely not dealing with someone who is a real-estate professional. This means that you are subject to their schedule when it comes to viewing the apartment and much of the time this means that they will book multiple showings at a time. This gives the potential landlord a huge psychological advantage when it comes to any negotiations because group showings tend to have an auction-like atmosphere. The first one we showed up to there were at least 4 other couples there and we were the only one with a small child. It starts getting really hard to be objective in your evaluation as you start hearing others in the group getting excited about certain features in the apartment. The place we finally settled on was a private place but the landlord owns a number of apartments and we were the only ones viewing the place at the time. It was a great experience and we have a really good relationship with our landlord.

International Apartment Hunting 101 Part II: Landlords

The Second Rule of Real Estate (when renting) is Landlord Landlord Landlord

Before I moved overseas I rented apartments all the time, and in the States you certainly want a good company running your apartment complex, but when renting directly from private landlords, which I have found is more common internationally, it is essential to find a landlord whom you can trust. I learned this lesson the hard way while living in Russia. One of my landlords there, in an effort to protect his son who was facing criminal charges, kept his family registered at the place where I was staying. It was not a happy morning when the police came by the house and did a thorough search through my stuff looking for stolen items. Can you say “not cool,” kiddos?

So here are a few things that I look for in landlord when renting from a private person.

1. Character- Are they abiding by the laws as far as you can tell. Do you have a rental contract or is everything just verbal agreement? Is he paying taxes on the place? How does he feel about you registering at the apartment? Sometimes this stuff is hard to find out unless you ask. So ask!

2. Flexibility- Of course you can’t expect to get away with murder, you need to make sure you stick to your contract and get your rent in on time, but are they at least open to negotiation on certain non-essential things like pets or allowing you to get rid of the furniture in the apartment that you don’t want.

3. Availability- This is important. You are going to have problems with the place and you need to be able to get a hold of the landlord sometimes. Again this one might be hard to gauge at first, sure in the beginning they’ll bend over backwards for you, they want their place rented! However, once the deposit is in will you be able to call them when you are having a problem with the stove that belongs to them or you need to find the gas meter so that the utilities guy can read it?

4. Likeability- Now your landlord probably won’t become your best buddy and let’s face it, if your landlord is going to be coming over to check in all the time that might not be such a good thing either, but if you can at least get along with them that can go a long way.

Bottom line, a rental agreement with a private person is not just a contract, it’s a relationship. That’s an important thing to remember. Of course, the relationship goes both ways so I need to make sure I’m a good renter (regardless weather I have a good landlord). After all, who knows what the Lord will do through your tenant-landlord relationship.

International Apartment Hunting 101 (Location)

Part I: Location

This ain't HG TV. Trying to find an apartment overseas can be a daunting task and you would be really lucky if you end up with three awesome places to choose from (don't get me started on all those whiners on House Hunters). I'm no expert, this is only my fourth time apartment hunting internationally over all and second time in Austria, but I've gained some insight into the process and I thought I would share.

Location is a huge consideration and there are so many variables. There's normal stuff like distance to work and quality of the schools, but there are a few different things to consider when trying finding an apartment in an urban environment in Europe.
1. Parks- Not having a yard, you’ll want to find a place that has at least a small park with a good playground nearby. We are really lucky here because Vienna is packed with little Kinderspielplätze. (Now only if Adam Spencer were around to help us find them-it’s a talent only he has.) There are a couple of bigger parks around town and we are certainly looking around those areas. I think it would be a great way to get to know people by going down to a park and playing a game of soccer or frisbee or something. Who knows, maybe we could invite them over to our place afterwards for fellowship…start a Bible study. The possibilities are endless.
2. Public transport- Whether you own a car or not your access to public transport is a pretty important factor. Right now we don’t have a car so for us it is essential. There are three main kinds of transport here in Vienna. First, is the subway or U-Bahn. Over 70% of the population uses this form of transport on a daily basis. So even if you have a car, it’s still a good idea to think about how far you are from a U-bahn station if you want to have other people over dinner or a small group or something. The U-bahn is your quickest form of public, allowing you to get almost anywhere in the city usually in 30 minutes or less. The next two types of public transport are trams and busses. A tram, also called a Bim in Austria, is a lot like those trolleys running on tracks in San Francisco that you see on the Rice-a-Roni boxes. They are great for short distances but not a U-bahn substitute because of their slow speed due to frequent station stops and street traffic. Busses, or Autobusse, are in the same category as trams, but they seem a bit faster to me. What you really don’t want is to live somewhere with a long Autobus or Bim ride before you get to the U-Bahn station. That can turn a 15 minute commute into a 30 minute commute really quickly…or, um, slowly.
3. Shops- Shopping must be done almost daily. This is a result of limitations due to transport (imagine walking home with all of your groceries), and storage (smaller fridges, freezers and cupboards). It’s a really good idea to find a place that is a short walk from some type of grocery store. It’s even better to be close to several stores because different stores are good for different items. For instance, there are lower-budget stores like Hofer (the Austrian name for Aldi), Lidl, and Zielpunkt that have great prices on your basic staples. There are also higher-end grocery chains (Spar, Billa) that have a few specialty items that are nice to be able to get. It’s also not a bad idea to have a DM or Bipa nearby. These are Liz’s favorite. They are kind of like Walgreens or CVS without the pharmacy. Pharmacies are always stores unto themselves and are generally pretty easy to find just about anywhere you are.

While We Are Away

Liz and I are enjoying time with family and friends down here in my home town of El Campo, TX. We've even caught the annual Christmas parade complete with floats, the high school marching band, cowboys, and tractors decked out with Christmas lights. It's great to be with family, especially during this time of year, but we miss our friends and ministry at home in Austria. We have been encouraged lately, however, that in our absence God continues to work in the seeds that we have planted there. One example is in our friend Djudji and our neighbor Melanie. Djudji, a friend of ours from Church, asked if she could stay in our apartment while we are gone. This was a huge blessing to us since now we have someone watching over our place while we are gone. We encouraged Djudji to get to know our friendly new neighbor Melanie. We have been getting to know Melanie for the last few months and have been praying about how we can minister to her and were praying that Djudji could continue while we were away. Sure enough, one night when Djudji was hosting a Bible study group in our apartment Melanie came over to see what was going on. Since then Djudji tells us that Malanie comes over regularly and that they both watch out for each other. Djudji has been sharing the gospel with Melanie and has invited her to take part in a woman's Bible study group. We are thrilled to know that God is ministering to our neighbor even while we are gone. It makes us want to be there all the more, but we are also encouraged that we are here at this time for a reason. Please continue praying with us that God continue to draw Melanie to Himself, and that He would show us His purposes even in our visa difficulties.

A Little Housework Fun, aka, "We Do Things Differently Here in Europe"

It was after lunch and Matt had left the house for an afternoon meeting. Feeling oddly energetic after a full morning of German class, and after having gone to bed at 12:30 the same morning following a late night at the Oasis, I decided to straighten up the home a bit. To me, there isn't a better feeling than clean sheets. "All right," I thought, "Time to change the bedding!" As I ripped off the old bedding, threw it in the hamper, then got out a clean sheet and duvet cover, I thought, "I'm so thankful to have two sets of bedding." Since laundry here is hung up to dry, it's very convenient to have two sets of bedding. I continued in "straigthening-up" bliss as I put on the clean fitted sheet. I remembered how I used to think that our thin, European-style foam mattress which sits on wooden slats fitted into the bed frame was strange, but now I enjoyed how lightweight it was. It was very nice that I could, all by myself, easily and quickly put on the fitted sheet!

Next came the more difficult part: fitting the duvet cover on the duvet. I had never done this myself, since Matt is so skilled at it. "But," I thought, "how hard can it be?" After all, I had remembered Matt saying that it's like putting on a big pillow case. So I unbuttoned the cloth buttons of our Ikea duvet cover and spread the cover flat on the bed. I tried to stuff in the duvet as uniformly as I could, but soon I discovered that there was no way my short little arms could stuff the entire duvet up to the top of the cover, a distance of two meters or so, without literally diving in with my whole body and doing the army crawl. Hmmm...I took a moment to think. Aha! I bunched up the mass of duvet and cover and marched down the hall to the living room. I stood on the couch, and holding the partially-covered duvet above my head, I began to shake and turn the whole mess in a clockwise manner, in order to get all of the nooks and crannies of the cover filled. Twenty minutes later, parched and sweating, I had achieved a small victory!!!

I Love Mop

Sorry if any of you were in suspense, but, "ta-da", we found our mop! It was waiting for us in a hardware store way across town. We were so excited! We were glad to welcome this mop into our home, unlike this woman. Now, who wants to come over and use it?

Our New Place

Yard Sale