Auf Wiedersehen Wien!

It's hard to believe that we left Vienna 6 weeks ago. Our friends back home in DC keep asking me how we liked our summer in Vienna. It's difficult to give a concise answer to that question. In short, we loved (almost) everything about Vienna. A more thorough answer can be seen in all of our blog posts from the summer. Now we just have a few pictures from our last weeks that we want to share with you. We continued doing a lot of site seeing, revisiting all of our favorite spots but took far fewer pictures. The remaining pictures are perhaps not the most spectacular of the summer but still contain some fun memories. Our last weekend we had some of our closest friends from Andrew's work and our neighborhood over for a farewell dinner. Eden and Fox loved being able to play with their friends one last time. They framed this picture for them and gave it to them as a farewell gift. It's on Eden's dresser now and she still gets a little weepy looking at it- wondering if she will ever see her "real" friends again.
Our last week, Andrew finally took us to Cafe Central (he'd been before with co-workers). The kids loved picking out their fancy desserts--Fox had the famous sachertorte while Eden selected the edible swan (we're not really sure what it was made of), while Andrew and I shared an enormous platter of kaiserschmarren. The ambiance was as pleasing as the desserts.

I also took the kids to the Zoom Museum one last time to play in the ocean room.

On one of our last weekends we visited the Lanzier Tiergarten, an enormous nature preserve on the outskirts of Vienna, which the Hapsburgs used as a private hunting ground. We were a little bummed at first because aside from a modest playground and some pretty trees there wasn't much to see. But just as we were heading out, Eden's eagle vision spotted a herd of wild boar. We were able to get pretty close before they ran away. It made the whole trip worthwhile.

Our last Sunday in Vienna, Eden was asked to give a talk in Primary at our church. This is a video of her reciting it outside our apartment that morning. Notice how it appears as though she is reading it from the paper. But rest assured, she had it memorized- and she can't read. Also, she was very offended by the noisy truck that passed by just as she was getting to the good part of her talk. But the church bells--a regular Sunday sound in Vienna that we will never forget--add a nice backdrop to the rest of the talk.

The flight home was long, especially with two little ones and no Andrew to help me. The kids were pretty good though and bore it all well enough. Here they are playing in the Geneva airport. It was only 11am and they had already been up for 6 hours!

When we got home, all was well. The kids spent the next three days reacquainting themselves with all of their toys and the new house. Bela was happy to see his family again and Spike had grown 3x his size while we were away.


Andrew left Vienna the same day as us, except he headed to Croatia for two weeks for an intensive language study program. I missed him, and he feigned miserable for being separate from us that long. But when I saw this picture of the island he stayed on--suffering through language classes, seafood, swims in the Adriatic, and bikini-clad women--I'm not convinced he missed us that much.