September-October 2007

Many times I ask myself if there is any uniformity in my life here Austria. well, the answer is always the same - not at all!I guess that what makes every day unique :). My dear Friends, there are too many things I want to tell you and even more I want you to experience with me. Come, join me on this adventure!

Thursday night, I finish work at 8pm, my little friend Sara (12 years old) and I take our bikes and drive up the Buchberg Hill where all the vineyards of Klosterneuburg begin! Its getting dark, and the closer we get the more exciting all looks like! we climb the hill (in Lt that could be already considered a mountain!) and eat fresh grapes while overviewing Klosterneuburg at night!!! The view really takes my breath away and the grapes are so deliciuos! This bacomes our daily ritual, and one night we decided to get up the hill and eat grapes at midnight and dance like crazy! Done! we blast Gipsy Kings and dance while enjoy all sorts of juicy grapes...ah...crazy, I have to tell you!

Buchberg became kind of a hiding place for me, I go there to watch sun rising and sometimes simply watch the starts and the lights of Klosterneuburg. Actually, I should thank one of my friends from Greece for helping me to find that place!

September here was generous enough to make me happy - sun, blue sky, fresh air, people...At some poing I felt like I am about to burn out from all the things that I am doing but a couple days off helped me to get back to normal. In mid Sept I had a pleasant visit from Prague. Giedrius, one of the Lithuanian volunteers in Prague, visited me for few days and it was great! Two Lithuanians in town! I absolutelly enjoed all the talkings we had, grape-hunting at Buchberg, walkings in Vienna, and simply being a bit Lithuanian :). Then came Laima, another volunteer from LT - now we are two here! even though she is pretty busy in her project we already managed to have couple great weekends together!

One more thing that was taking a lot of my time...I called it 'discover the district'. It all started from a guided tour for Vienna volunteers, we had a tour in 2nd district, former Jewish area in the city. Man, it got my all attention! I fell in love with 2nd district and would come there almost every day to wonder around and simply get myself lost among all the buildings, parks, little streets, coffe shops, bakeries and people...then came 7th district, 23rd, 8th, 9th...once again I will tell you - I LOVE this city!!!

If you knew at least a bit about the layout of districts in Vienna, you would ask me 'what on Earth were you doing in 23rd district???'. Well, there is a reason why I travelled such a long way to that boring industrial part of Vienna: 1st-I was asked to interprete for a refugee from some part of Georgia in a Refugge House in 23rd district in Vienna, and 2nd-that industrial part of Vienna looks great on black/white pics! Refugees? yep. It goes like this..one rainy day in Sept I was looking for a school to signed up for a German course, got lost, met a girl, asked for directions, she was showing me the way, we are about to cross the BUSY street, I am not paying attention, I am making astep forward, the big cars coming, I don't see it, Bernadetta (that girl, my angel) drags me back, she kind of saves my life, we exchange phone numbers and shortly tell about ourselves. I find the school, signed up for a course, a week later I get a call...a call from some lady that told me she got my contact from Bernadetta. COOL. I was asked to interprete for one Refugee. So, I go there, meet cool people,do interpreting Russian-English, come back to do one more interpreting later. That is how I got to know 23rd district and nice peole like Stefan, Bernadetta and others. I have to tell you, one day it would be nice to work in a project with refugees...

My work is a daily thing that starts at 7am and finishes at 8pm. I like it. Sometimes I am tired, but most of the time there are things to be learned, things worth observing. I have mentioned already that I work with the most amazing people! and the people that we take care of...they are more than just random disabled people to me, sometimes you have to stop me for I can talk about them 24/7! And people tell me that the place where I work feels like home...Remeber, once Teresa (my friend from the same town) came to visit me in my project, she absolutelly loved it. same happened to Kathi who had dinner with us one week later. It was so funny, cuz one of the men, my darling Gottfried, he saw Kathi ( a new pretty lady) and came to her 'hallo Kathi, you are so nice Kathi and so on...', then I went like 'Gottfried, darling, who is your love Kathi or me?', then ge went 'sure Kathi!', then I 'What? honey, you can have only one love here' and then Gottfried said in the most amazing lovely voice...'Erika, you are my love'...ahhhh...you should see my Gottfried,he is so nice...

Those people, they can drive me crazy and also make me feel so much...feel things like gratitude, amazement, love, care, sometimes I simply watch them cuz they are so real, so NOT fake...they are who they are.

I think about them a lot, sometimes without even realizing it. The first week of October I spent in Switzerland and even then I was missing Gottfried, Christian and his annoying proposal to get married, Wolfgang and his addiction to coffe, Pauli and his gentelmen manners (one morning he made me special breakfast!!just for me! it was deliciuos omlette!)...ach...

...Switzerland...yep. one more trip that was only a dream. but thanks to an amazing train system and CHEAp night train tickets I got to Zürich on oct 5th 6am. too early, I know...but it was worth everything!!! I finally saw a good freind of mine, my brother Matthias! and I was so kindly hosted by his family in Aarau. and, the most amazing thing was Swiss Pass that allowed me to travel all over Switzerland for 4 days. Trust me people, I saw so much in those 4 days...Cities, hills, mountains, people, towns, tunnels, bridges, lakes, valleys, houses, trains, lakes, rivers, waterfalls...the first day in Zürich i met a gril from Poland and she was also travelling with swiss Pass, we spend the day together and that was a beginning of a new friendship. Later that evening I met Matthias, we went up Ütliberg - a hill from which you can see the whole Zürich! breathtaking!The weather was great all those days, except sat when we wanted to see REAL mountains...it was sooo foggy...well, I still have one reason to go back to Switzerland :). But I absolutelly enjoyed Luzern, Bern, Shaffhausen and Rhein falls (beautiful and powerful waterfalls on the river Rhein). Luzern was the city where I ate roasted chesnuts for the first time in my life...mmmm! then one evening matthias, his parents and I went up the hill by bikes and had dinner outside, grilled sausages. It was undescribable...warm october night, fresh air, sleeping hills of Switzerland, a small valey beneath us, a little house with a dimm light in its windows, and a fading sound of a bell on a neck of Milka cow (I call those cows Milka cows, cause they are brown and white like Milka chocoloat). ach, it was an amazing moment with amazing people!
The last night in Switzerland I was wondering in night Zürich (was waiting for a late train back to Vienna). The city was covered with dark but the lights of caffes and shops would fight the darkness...the light reflecting on the river...the bridges huging the water in the mid of Zürich...I was sitting on a waterfront. sitting and watching white swans silently swimming on Zürichsee, watching the people, smelling roasted chesnuts, watching ligh fog slowly covering the city...I was there, a girl from Lithuania, who was crossing a word SWITZERLAND from her dream list...and when the word had a straight line accross it. that Lithuanian girl smiled looking at foggy sky...she was so happy. And she is happy still.