Horsey

There seems to be horses and horse carriages everywhere in this city. On the not so romantic side comes several hotdog stands serving horse meat. Prrh!

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Finding A Place To Live

Finding an apartment in Vienna went much easier than expected. It was almost too easy. Bjarni had been on an email list for a while where staff and students from GMI (his new research institute) are posting adds with apartments for rent. We had been looking into one specific add before leaving Denmark, and we ended up making an appointment to see the place the same day we were to arrive in Vienna. I was a bit skeptical to begin with, wanting to see other places before making a decision. I mean, how can one rent a place without having seen anything else to compare it with? We had no clue about the standard of apartments in Vienna. On the way down through Germany Bjarni eagerly argued that by taking this apartment we would save money for an agent, which is otherwise the norm in Austria: You pay an agent one to three months worth of rent in order for him to find you a rental apartment. This apartment was privately owned by some staff at the institute, and thus we would save the agent fee.
Anyhow, we arrived in the city Friday late afternoon and went straight to the apartment, and it looked SO GOOD! Hardwood floors (which I was missing badly in the US), high ceiling, new kitchen with dish washer and washing machine (horraayy!), new bathroom, and a big park around the block. And all this came for a price that was much lower than what we were used to from LA.
The apartment was ready to move into, which was another tempting factor. That meant we could move our belongings straight from the trailer and settle in, instead of moving it to the storage room, which was the original plan.
We thought about it overnight and it wasn’t all that easy even though we really liked the place. My dad would go back the following morning, so we only had Saturday to figure out if we should take our stuff to that apartment or the storage place. After a lot of discussing back and forth we ended up taking it. Yayy!
Now we have unpacked everything and are eagerly waiting for our last boxes from Los Angeles to arrive. The only bad thing about our new place, something which we discovered after moving in, is that it’s quite noisy. We live on the first floor, and apparently there are a lot more traffic during the day than when we saw the place that late Friday afternoon. Other than we are very excited about our new home.

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Danube Canal @ Night

Since arriving we have spend a lot of time walking around to explore our new neighborhood. Not too far from our apartment is the Danube Canal, along which people are running, rollerblading or just hanging out to enjoy a beer among one of the many cafes. We of course also had to try that, and since last week was very hot and humid, a cold beer along the canal was just heaven!

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Endlich gelandet!

Dear friends and family --

Welcome to our new Vienna blog. Different from the LA blog this one will mainly be in English making it easier for those of you following us from Iceland and the States. My apologies to those of you in Denmark, who now have to put up with me writing in English.
So we have endlich gelandet - finally landed. It has almost been a month since we left the US and it's been a crazy hectic but also extremely exciting month. We got to see old friends and family: Bjarni in Iceland and myself back in Fredericia and Aarhus, Denmark. We managed to renovate our old apartment in Copenhagen and then pack all our belongings in a trailer, where everything amazingly was able to fit in. We then hit the road with my dad and Jytte, who generously offered to help move everything, and arrived in Vienna six days ago. We are full of impressions of this new city, and we can't wait to share it with you, so stay tuned.

- Wiedersehen

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