Oeingang – what’s it all about?

I think you will spend 81 seconds reading this post

After three years of blogging about the UK Referendum of 2016, its aftermath and the process of taking Austrian citizenship, I am looking forward to blogging on a new subject, another one that is close to my heart, namely Life in Austria. I’ve spent almost half my life in Austria, consider the country my home, and last year took Austrian citizenship. And after a couple of years that have been a bit fraught, I am hoping to be able to enjoy my surroundings a bit more again. As I went through the naturalisation process, I tried to explore the hidden corners of Vienna, and remain surprised about how much there is to still discover as well as the Blindflächen that still exist.

Vienna has certainly changed in the last 22 years – I used to visit frequently in 1997/98 when I was a Language Assistant in Judenburg, and then moved to Vienna after finishing my degree in Scotland and two internships in Brussels. From the angry young man of the years around the turn of the Millennium to family father, things have changed. Things that were seemingly constants in my life might now to a certain extent are only distant memories (propping up the bar in various places around the city centre), but all helped to shape my experiences in Vienna. A change of job and profession also helped change my perspectives, given that I found myself deeply immersed in a different culture to the one I had been immersed in when I was working as a freelance translator, playing a lot of cricket with Expats and was not a family father.