Bonus Time

I don't know if it is those weird 1.5 years of mostly being in lockdown that have made me extra appreciative of small pleasures, but just the fact that I just spent a lovely weekend with my love after a rather intense, meeting-loaded work week made me extra happy. The glorious Indian summer weather was an added bonus and Vienna and its surroundings felt positively mediterranean. Also, Highflyer got his October duty plan and the fact that we will have more than one full weekend together next month as well is a treat. Weirdly enough, until two years ago I did not have any friends, least of all BOYfriends who did not have "normal" work weeks with weekends and public holidays off.  Obviously, this is not a given for quite a lot of people working in several differrent professions, but I happen to hang out mostly with office staff and teachers, it seems. Now that I have resigned myself to the fact that airline crews don't have those Mon-Fri nine-to-five-ish jobs (unless in times of extreme lockdown when all planes are grounded and they are at home more than retirees) like the rest of us mere mortals, it always feels like a lottery jackpot when we do have time off on the same days.

Walls...

 

Back in May, when I still had no appointment for my first Covid jab I was very impatient and did not really believe all the experts who promised that very soon, there would be more supply than demand. Needless to say, they were right and vaccination rates have stagnated for weeks at a very frustrating level. It honestly makes me mad that I live in a country with an excellent and reliable healthcare system and still people choose to trust "good sources" from the internet that tell them they should not use the free opportunity to contribute to ending this pandemic earlier rather than...never? The fact that a certain political party blatantly supports anti-vaxxers is as sad as it was predictable in hindsight. The media talk about the divide in society between the two camps and it is true of course that there seems to be this impenetrable wall that no good argument can dismantle. I am very grateful that at least I don't have to argue with any friends or relatives as I would really struggle to totally avoid this topic. I recently saw a flyer outside a supermarket with the date of an anti-vaxxer protest march and a URL. Back home, I googled it out of curiosity and was utterly disgusted by the content on the landing page. Freedom of speech is great and all that, but sometimes!...sigh.

The Little Things

This past weekend we had planned to go away somewhere, preferably redeeming a hotel voucher I allegedly have for the hotel (prepaid) in Budapest my mother and I had planned to stay in May 2020. Well, 3 in-vain long phone calls to Hotels.com later that plan didn't work out and we briefly considered an alternative weekend trip abroad before I thought, hey, the weather will be lovely, we don't have to go anywhere. We ended up spending Saturday at blissfully empty-ish Therme Wien, followed by an ice-cream at Tichy and a lazy Sunday at home, enjoying the beautiful weather in Highflyer's garden and on a short bike-tour through the neighbouring fields. Old Me would have itched to go abroad or at least somewhere, making the most of the fact that Highflyer didn't have work duty, nor father duties. but New Me is like most people these days and enjoys the little things way more than she used to, less eager for an "exotic" change of scenery or some kind of action. It does not help that trips abroad involve filling out of forms and the chance that you might get a phone-call informing you that you were sitting near a person on the plane or train who later tested positive for Covid. For now, a weekend at home is not the worst that can happen. Still, one and a half year since Lockdown 1, the OG edition.

 

Round the Corner

On Saturday was Highflyer's and my second anniversary and I decided to treat ourselves to a night in a nice hotel. It was actually less than 20 km away from his house and I had found it by googling "hotel with pool in lower austria". We also explored the surroundings there and I showed him some places ont the way he had never been to so we spent a lovely 24 hours literally close to home, but somehow in another world and on vacation mode. Sometimes, the best things are nearby and not that hard to obtain, but our minds work in a way too complicated fashion and we think that in order to do something special, it has to be rare and somehow hard to get. Well, I have made it my mission to discover treasures round the corner and fully appreciate them.