Day 53 & 54 in the Big Bad Ischl House…

(Thursday, 7 May & Friday, 8 May)

The last couple of days have been a bit up and down. OK, a lot. For the most part we do very well on the being positive front, but every now and then you have a bad day. No real idea why, other than the usual worries, but just a feeling of intense low spirits and lack of emotional and physical energy.

For me, that was Thursday and Mark was fine. In probably much the same way as the bloody C*** virus spreads, Mark had supported me when I was low and somehow managed to catch the low mood virus himself, whilst I was feeling better myself. Sod’s law! 🙄 Although at least we are managing to stagger it, so at least one of us is functioning in some way at any given moment! 😂

Luckily, we had already arranged to get together with some close friends from here in the village. They were coming round for a BBQ and a good old catch up. We’d not seen them properly since early January, as we’d been so busy in February and then the lockdown scuppered all the plans from then on.

We’d missed them terribly and with just their arrival all traces of low spirits vanished and we had the best time, catching up, laughing and watching our respective daft dogs all play beautifully together. It was fantastic and did us all so much good just simply getting together and spend time enjoying ourselves. We may have inadvertantly emptied a few too many bottles of one thing or another, but I think we probably needed that! 😍

We have been so lucky here, not just with our wonderful neighbours and friends here in the village, but also to have been able to join in with a network of ex pats. Some English couples, some mixed English/Austrian couples and some expats from other countries completely, but all of whom have some element of the ‘not born here’ part in common.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that there’s any kind of ‘them and us’ – absolutely not! But much like the skiing fraternity of all ages and who come from all walks of life and yet have that one thing in common, it is also true for us immigrants.

We have all moved here from different countries and have all, at one point or another, had to learn how to adapt to a different way of life. Since (unless they’ve done the opposite move at some point) the natives aren’t aware of the differences, no matter how brilliantly helpful they are, they simply can’t help you unless you know the right questions to ask. For them, of course, it’s just normal life!

For us, we had the best possible opportunities for the transition. We had a very short but extremely helpful handover from the couple who sold us the house. They gave us an absolute wealth of information but I’m not sure we took in the vast majority of it at the time, seeing as we were all a bit ‘rabbit in the headlights’ at the time. 😳 But they did also throw a ‘goodbye and hello’ party the day after we got here and we got to meet so many people, including a lot of the ex pats.

Not only are that group the most incredible source of advice, knowledge, experience and support, they are also now good friends and constitute a large portion of our social life. Since the vast majority of them do more or less exactly the same job as we do, their experiences are all the more valuable.

There is no competition between us and yet we are technically competitors, but instead, we all share our successes, failures, tips, advice and actively support each other whether it be emotionally, practically or just simply information supply.

We really don’t know what we would have done without any of them – our neighbours here in the village, our Austrian friends and our ex pat friends. They have been there for us through all of it, moving here would have been just so very much harder without them and we are so grateful for it.

We are unbelievably lucky and sometimes the ‘downs’ have a way of reminding you of that. 💕

Stay safe everyone xx