Video Update May 2014

Ecksfiles Video Update May 2014 from Matt Eck on Vimeo.

Leadership Akademie Video

Here is a video from the Leadership Akademie team project that I mentioned in our last post. If you would like to see more pictures of our team at work check out our flickr page.

Central Europe Flood: Viennese Danube

There has been some major flooding around central Europe this week. The Danube was out of it’s banks and causing major damage in towns across Germany and Austria. Fortunately for us Vienna has really good flood-protection measures in place. None the less we are watching it pretty closely and ready to go if we need to.
Here is a video I took yesterday showing the swollen river and where it is in relation to our home.

Danube Flooding 2013

Here is a before and after shot. Keep in mind that usually the water is about three feet below that grassy area.

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Here are some other pictures of the river near our neighborhood.

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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).

"Bulgarian" Guests: Our Week in Pictures (Mar.24th-Mar. 30th 2013)

Last week we were visited by our old roommates from Russia-Randall and Joy...

...they have been living in Bulgaria and made us a tasty Bulgarian meal while they were here...

...we showed them around the city and helped Randall find where his grandparents lived when they served in an international church here.

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).

Musical History: Our Week in Pictures (Mar.17th-Mar. 23rd 2013)

This week Liz and I finally got some time to enjoy some of the musical history of the city...

...we enjoyed a concert at Schubert's birthplace for a date night...

...and we spent a family day in the the "House of Music"

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).

Our Week in Pictures (Mar.10th-Mar. 16th 2013)

A few random pictures this week...this is the central station in Veinna (Wien Mitte)

And this is our subway station...as you can see it's gotten colder this week.

We ended the week on a high note with our BTCP class meeting at our apartment for a concetraited weekend of class.

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).

Our Week in Pictures (Feb. 17th-23rd 2013)

As you can see it snowed again last week...

...and I got caught out in it one day..

...but that didn't keep me from teaching BTCP!

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).

Our Week in Pictures (Feb. 10th-16th 2013)

Last week was cold and snowy. The snow started Tuesday morning early when Matt was at the church...







...and went through Wednesday night when Matt was a heading to the Oasis refugee ministry center.















Liz and Naomi managed to keep warm though :)

















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!

A new spin on an old tradition

Viennese Melange served on a traditional sliver platter

Coffee is a big part of Viennese Culture.  Legend has it that the first coffee houses sprung up in Vienna sometime after 1683 when the hastily retreating Turkish army left large amounts of coffee in their wake.  Since then it has been a cultural tradition to sit for hours in a coffee shop, playing cards, talking politics, and especially reading the paper. It’s no surprise then, that Christians would take advantage of the Vienna coffee culture to gather study and discuss the scriptures.  A few years ago, in fact, some friends of mine started a Bible study group in one of the Vienna Starbucks locations. In the next four years they have expanded to all but three of the eleven Vienna locations. What’s most exciting is that because of the open nature of the groups it has become a non-threatening venue for all types of people to explore the message and claims of the Bible. From time to time the SBUXfellowship has asked me to help out with teaching some of their leaders and before we had to leave Vienna for our visa purposes, Liz and I were looking at helping out with this group in some way. Just recently we had one of the leaders over at our new apartment and he mentioned that one of the three locations that they didn’t have a study was only a block from our place. I said,” That’s funny, I’ve been praying about starting a bible study.”  So since then we have been praying about starting a study at the Starbucks in Millennium City mall. I’m really looking forward to see what God will do with this. Please be praying that people who might not normally feel comfortable going to a church might come and hear what God has to say to them through His word.

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.

The Snow Globe: Invented in Vienna!

Snow globe museum in Vienna - latimes.com

First Five Days in Vienna

So right now we are in an internet cafe, since we don't have email access at the church where we are staying. It is a rainy afternoon here, and we plan to find a "kaffeehaus" to hang out in after a quick run to the grocery store (I am trying to get used to going to the store every two days now, since everything must be carried home). The first few days here, we walked a lot and took in some sights to stay awake. It also helps that there is lots of awesomely strong coffe here! I've been learning some German with a cd-ROM program I have and also by reading signs, food labels, and occassionally picking up a word I hear in public. Matt and I have been doing some more planning and preparations for the summer college team that will be here in 2 1/2 weeks. Russ and Adam have also been a big help in that!

We had the opportunity to volunteer at the refugee ministry on Thursday. While Matt chatted in German with a young man over Connect 4, I unexpectedly got to resurrect my high school French! I talked with a man from Algeria for a long time (actually, listening a lot)about the things he had gone through on his journey through France, Italy, and finally, to Austria. We also talked about God, and about how being here in Austria feels like a ray of hope for this man. Please pray for him and that he would find his hope in God. Other than that, we are just adjusting, meeting with our team (Russ and Adam), getting used to no AC and lots of secondhand smoke again. It is an adventure, and Matt and I are so glad to be doing it together! Thank you so much for your prayers! Please keep them coming!