Language learning

Long time, no see, blog....and for good reasons. I spend enough time in front of the computer as it is, and the awesome Austrian healthcare system just generously sponsored my 10 sessions of physical therapy for persistent inflammations in my right elbow, which, no doubt, are a result of too much computer use. And at this point, I am used to living in Austria again, so the urge to write about cultural differences and Austrian peculiarities is not as great. But this last week was one of severe cultural input, and one thing in particular got me thinking today.

When you leave Tucson, point your car North and drive for 5 hours, you end up at a big precipice called the Grand Canyon. You are still in Arizona, people still speak English and eat steaks with baked potatoes, the rocks are still red, the climate is still dry, there are a few more trees. When you leave Vienna, point South, and a little West, and drive for 5 hours, you end up at the Adriatic Sea, for example in Trieste. 

 

There are still mountains and trees, but the climate is warmer, you have driven through the entirety of Slovenia, food-wise you have died and gone to heaven, and people have stopped speaking your language hours ago. Resisting the temptation to digress into musings about the history connected to that drive (after all, it used to be all Austria 100 years ago, and the most direct route, in terms of kilometers, meant crossing the Iron Curtain twice 30 years ago), let me dedicate this entry to the language aspect:

My Italian is pretty darn bad. I learned it for three low-intensity years in school, without too much enthusiasm, thanks to the incredibly tacky Italian book we had, and due to my difficulty cramming Italian between the slots in my brain that I had assigned to Latin and French. Nowadays, I have probably less than 100 words active vocab, food items and musical terminology included. (Passive vocab is a different story: Latin and French are your best friends - but sometimes also your worst enemies - when facing an Italian text.) I can barely hold up my own ordering food, and things go pretty steeply downhill left and right of that. Past tense? With difficulty. Future, conjunctives? Forget it. But whenever I am in Italy, I get to use every single bit of Italian I ever learned and then some. For starters, there simply is no English or German information in a lot of places. 

Civico Museo del Mare in Trieste: You figure it out.

There may be an English menu here or there in the center of town, but the staff are clearly more comfortable speaking Italian, as are the majority of people I interact with. I find myself pulling things out of my brain that I learned more than 15 years ago, and to my utter surprise, people seem to make sense of the garbage I speak, and - this is the critical point - they keep speaking Italian back to me. They take my inelegant efforts seriously, they slow down, they are patient, friendly, and appreciative.

It really got me thinking, because on many days, I witness the exact opposite situation: Steve's German is pretty good. My guess is that when we met, it was already better than my Italian. He is not someone who likes to talk garbage, but his German is good enough he does not have to resort to that. He is just not fluent yet. But when he tries to do anything in German, from buying a railway ticket to asking a question in orchestra rehearsal, he has almost no room for mistakes, or even slight hesitation. Within no time, his conversation partner will switch into fluent English instead of slowing down their German or switching out of Austrian dialect. Which is ok for the railway ticket booth, but gets a little old in orchestra, where people know exactly that he is living here, and even, in principle, want him (and every other foreigner) to learn German. In practice, he gets almost no chance to recuperate from even a small mistake in a German conversation. It doesn't even take a mistake: When he does not hear something properly, say, because of background noise, his request for a repeat will be enough to tip the conversation into English.

There are many reasons for this: People are proud of their English skills and want to use them; they feel awkward speaking high German; they may just be in the habit of switching into English, for other non-German speakers they know; and no, it is not their job to teach anyone German. And of course, language goes the path of least resistance. When what you want to do is "communicate",  all you care about is how to convey your point most efficiently with the means you have. But the bottom line is that it is difficult for Steve to improve his German. Because people simply switch whenever there is a communication problem, they are not used to slowing down and "cleaning up" their native language - dropping the dialect, slang, slurs etc., almost every Italian I met did this - and they have little patience with anything short of complete fluency. Because I realize that I am at fault for some of these points, too, we have decided to make Thursday the day I speak no English. Telling people around us about this has helped a bit, especially those who know us have been a little more patient on German day. But boy, sometimes I almost wish people's English wasn't as good.

Moral of the story? Steve will keep marching on until people give him credit for his skills, and I promise to honor German day as a belated wedding vow. I'll tell myself that I'll brush up my Italian for the next trip (and have to admit at the same time that this is about as high on the list of priorities as learning Spanish was when I moved to Tucson). And finally, this is my advice for any English speaker who is serious about learning another European language: Stay away from the German speaking countries. Go to Italy.

How are we coping with the heat?

One of the first questions everyone asked me after I arrived in Tucson was: "So, how are you coping with the heat?" And my answer was....well, I guess I don't know anymore what my answer was. But here is what it should have been: "What do you mean how am I coping with it? Nobody here is coping with it, all you do is going from an air conditioned house to an air conditioned car to an air conditioned office and back. You should see Vienna in a heat wave!" As I write this, temperatures indoors and outdoors have just about dropped below 30 C, and it is 9:30 pm. Today's afternoon temperature was just around 38 C (100 F) and I was lucky: I had a cool basement laboratory to flee to, while other people went about their usual business on the surface: serving coffee, paving roads, showing apartments to people, sitting at office desks in 4th floors of west-facing buildings, without the luxury of a schedule flexible enough to move their work to a more protected place.

Very few places have air conditioning here. Some cafes and restaurants and a number of our laboratories do. My boss has a noisy, not very effective movable unit in her office. The gold broker next doors to cafe Milano does, but cafe Milano does not, and neither do most offices and apartments. So how do we cope? While in Tucson, from the perspective of a culture in which air conditioning is ubiquitous and overused, and a room temperature above 76 F (24.4 C) is deemed unacceptable, I started to wonder, too: how do the Viennese cope? How did I cope?

I guess, now that we are at the peak of a heat wave, my answer is threefold: First, we know that there won't be 5 months of it. This is by far the most important coping mechanism. We are expecting a temperature drop by 15 C this weekend, it's the main topic of conversation and everyone's silver lining. Second, we get used to it. Humans get used to a lot, and a few hours of 32+(90+) temperatures don't feel that bad when you are already used to a baseline of 28 (82). This is a chance you don't get living and working in Tucson. Third.....I don't know actually how some people cope. I don't know how the construction workers and kebab stand people (next to that grill all day!) and tram drivers cope. I don't know how old or sick people cope, because this is plenty exhausting for healthy, young people. I also don't know how I would cope if nighttime temperatures were to rise by a few more degrees.

I know how I cope in daytime: In 5 years of life in the desert including bike commuting, plenty of hiking and camping trips (including such follies as Death Valley and Grand Canyon in July), some semi-successful desert gardening attempts, and two years in a place with a swamp cooler, I have learned a few things about heat. One, it is cumulative. It makes a difference whether I spend a few hours in a cool cellar or not, it even makes a difference whether I make an effort to walk on the shady side of the streets during the day or not. There is a big difference between 32 C (89 F), 35 C (95 F) and 38 C (100 F), it's not just "all hot" (which was my pre-Tucson take on it). Which means, when it's 26 in the morning, and will be 35 in the afternoon, I close the darn windows. I am lucky enough to have an office in one of those older buildings with 0.5-meter thick walls, and my office stays quite bearable, as long as I close the window by 11 am or so. If I didn't know my pre-Tucson self, I would find it quite incredible that it has not crossed everyone's mind that opening a window may actually warm up a room, and that not every breeze is cool. But I know that I kept windows open as a default in past Viennese heat waves, and I see a lot of open windows everywhere these days, presumably causing lots of needless suffering.

Do I like the idea of a Vienna filled with noisy A/C units the way Tucson is? Not really. I had my fair amount of noise problems with them in the spacious desert Southwest, I don't think it is a good idea for densely built-up Vienna. It would be a great relief for a few days here and there - but people get lazy and in no time, they'd be running like they are in Tucson: all day, every day, out of convenience (I swear, there are people in Tucson who never stop using their compressor, but simply switch from heating to cooling sometime in March), no more getting used to any level of heat, living with a constant mechanical hum. Should I write about the warming climate here and what it will do to those "few days here and there"? Probably not, that'll turn into a whole other entry (and a side research project).

Life in Tucson, in contrast, would be very, very tough without any cooling. Without it, the town would simply not exist in its current size. The few days of Tucson-style heat we get here do get me thinking about life in Tucson 50 or 100 years ago. I look at the thick walls in old Viennese houses with green inner courtyards that are just a couple degrees cooler than the street and think about adobe buildings and what the urban landscape of the Old Pueblo might have been when it was actually old. I see people here at 4 pm, sitting in some corner, panting, with a fan blowing onto them, and I wonder what the diurnal rhythm of work and rest may have been in old Tucson. It must have been a few very hardy people, who lived there. The monsoon still means so much to people now, what must it have meant back in the day! Forget all the gun-waving horseback-riding movie heroes. This is how I imagine the Wild West: a lot of early mornings, a lot of hard work before sunrise, a lot of energy used just dealing with the afternoon heat, and, at all times, hoping for rain.

Bicycling

My first bike in Tucson, with resting white-winged dove.

One of the first things I did in Tucson, in July of 2007, was buying a bicycle. I could not see myself "going native" and commuting by car every day, and my boyfriend at the time, a native of the Pacific Northwest, couldn't see it either. The Ordinary Bike Shop sold me an old-style (but new), black cruiser, which looked, so people told me, "very European", and sported features like a kickstand and fenders, things that were inexplicably rather uncommon in Tucson. I immediately got another piece of equipment which is, in my understanding, an essential necessity for a bike, but proved utterly useless: a bell. It was useless, because off campus, there were not enough pedestrians to ever even need to make use of it, and on campus, most everyone seemed to never have heard of bells being on bicycles, so nobody reacted to it in the appropriate way (which is: realize they are walking on the bike lane and get the hell out of there). Other than the resulting near-collisions, the daily commute to university was really nice: long enough to get the circulation going, but short enough I wouldn't die on a summer late afternoon, and, I found, very good for my general well-being. 

My lucky raffle ticket

A couple of years later, I got my second bicycle (more precisely, I won it with a $2 raffle ticket I paid $1.85 for, because that was all the cash I had on me at the time): a fast, light street bike in my favorite color that was a little too small for me. In spite of fighting a little with its small size, I loved how light and fast it was. Speeding down Mountain Avenue's broad bike lane overtaking everyone, and then slowing down to turn into my street like on a highway exit was one of my daily joys. 

After the breakup with my boyfriend, which also meant a breakup with the car, I came to rely completely on these two bicycles, and learned the following things: 1. It is much better to own two bicycles, when that's your only means of transport. You do not always have the time or means to repair things, so it is nice to have a second bike to fall back on. 2. In a city like Tucson, you can do a lot of things by bicycle - but not everything. For some things, you need friends with cars. This may sound like a disadvantage, and it is, if your shopping list for the night involves 5 big flower pots, several gallons of potting soil, a six pack of microbrews, toilet paper, washing powder, and a takeout dinner at Nico's Tacos. But socially, it is an advantage: "depending" on other people for little services and returning favors to them with the means you have means connecting with them. I am convinced that taking your own car alone everywhere can make you very lonely. Two of the people I met in Tucson and got to know through shared car rides ended up being my best friends there. One of them I sold my fast bike to - she had relied on her only bike for years, and let me convince her that that second bike really makes life easier. The other became my husband. 

When leaving Tucson, I also parted with the first bicycle, since it was heavy and had only three gears, and Vienna has hills. I wasn't even sure about biking in Vienna. Tucson is easy. Yes, there are drivers who act as if they had never seen a bicycle. But, there is plenty of space for everyone and their road stupidity. It almost never rains, snow is a once-in-5-years event, ice and slush are unheard of, and the heat, well, you learn to cope with it. And once I discovered the green goo that seals tiny pinholes in inner tubes, even the cactus stingers lost much of their horror. What I knew of Vienna was what I remembered: fighting for survival on crowded streets between tram tracks and opening car doors, bike lanes ending without warning in shared lanes with everything that's dangerous, insufficient parking, bike theft. Biking was a sport, but not a commuting option competitive with public transport. 

source: http://images.travelpod.com/

I was very wrong. Even on my first bike ride in Vienna, on a snowy spring evening, terrified and freezing on technically the same bike I had left to my brother in 2007 (5 1/2 years and two accidents later, so many parts had been replaced that I did not recognize it), I quickly realized that things had changed. The bike route across Südtirolerplatz was unexpectedly straightforward, and did not even involve using a pedestrian crosswalk. There were clearly designated bike lanes, and even special small bike traffic lights, at the appropriate eye level. I was impressed. 

I am still impressed. Vienna has become a very bike friendly city and biking is clearly encouraged. (That's what a green party in the city government does, I guess.) To be sure, there are more things to worry about than in Tucson: For starters, there is just simply a lot less space on every road. For everyone. In streets originally designed for pedestrians and a few horse-drawn carriages, there are cars, parked cars, pedestrians, tourists (an especially inattentive class of pedestrian, so I mention them separately), many other bikers (I have been in slow bike traffic on Margaretenstrasse, no jam yet, but not too far from it), buses, trams, their treacherous tracks, motorbikes, trucks, construction sites, dogs, and, yes, still a few horse-drawn carriages (I was not so sure about approaching a horse on a bike the first time I was in the situation, but turns out they are rather unphased, by anything). There are plenty of potentially dangerous setups, so, you have to pay attention and bike defensively. (On a related note, I am baffled how many people here bike without helmet.) But the infrastructure has improved so much that bike commuting has become viable, and faster than public transport on my current route. There is lots of new bike parking, there are bike lanes where I couldn't even envision them (Margaretenstrasse is a miracle of efficient use of space), and drivers generally seem to be mindful. I dare to say that if bike theft is common, it's probably because people are extremely casual with locking their bike and the kinds of locks they use. (I hope I didn't jinx anything here.)

A particularly nice thing about my commute is that a good part of it is not even in the described mayhem of road users: it's a relaxing non-stop ride on the beautiful wide path between rows of trees on Ringstrasse. One of the best things about biking there: people know what a bell is. I just ring and watch them jump.

The (almost) year-round astronomy season

Along with the year-round hiking season, Tucson has a year-round season for astronomy. Now, I'd be lying if I said that that was enormously important for me, and I'd also be lying if I portrayed astronomy as an activity that has accompanied me through all the years of my life. But, I was interested enough in it at one point in my late teenage years to have considered getting a degree in it, and I probably wouldn't have become a scientist without that initial astronomy interest. In spite of the rather high horizon, my hometown of Admont was not a bad place for backyard observing (I was puzzled that there were people in the world who had never seen the Milky Way), and I was always happy with what I saw (aside from those clouds that covered the sky just about long enough to obscure the 1999 solar eclipse, I am still unhappy about those). Then I moved to Vienna (and immediately understood the Milk Way thing), and other light-polluted places, my scope didn't move with me, and that was the end of that, more or less. 

But within the last few years in Tucson, astronomy had a little bit of a "renaissance" in my life. Steve is an amateur astronomer, quite a lot more serious about it than I have ever been (but, luckily for me, not serious enough to make moving to a mid-latitude city a dealbreaker), and I could easily participate in his hobby. There were casual outings to Catalina State Park on random evenings, more serious trips to darker sites, with or without a local amateur astronomy group, and visits to some of the professional (and professional-educational) observatories around Tucson. Even during the times we were not so engaged in the hobby, we'd get reminded of it. You can just tell that astronomy is important in Tucson, from the strict rules about lights that keep the professional observatories happy and the sky beautiful, to "Sky bar" on 4th avenue setting up telescopes for people to look through between gin and tonics.

In general, astronomy is a hobby for dedicated people. The situation is something like this: first, you have to invest a high three- to low four-digit figure in equipment, if you want to see anything half way exciting. Second, there is a certain learning curve to using that equipment, and your own eyes, to see those things. Third, in a world full of glossy, color-saturated Hubble images, you really have to dial down your expectations and acquire a "philosophy of viewing" in order to get something out of seeing dim, mostly gray-scale objects through your, say, 8 inch aperture. Fourth, you have to find a low-horizon spot without major light pollution, and the means and permission to transport yourself and your equipment there. Fifth, you have to be able to prioritize a clear, moonless, non-work night over whatever else you may have planned. Sixth, temperatures on such a night should be well above freezing (it is absolutely unreal just how cold you can get at, say, 15 C/60 F, if all you do is stand around), and also not too windy, depending on what kind of money you invested in your mount. And then, if none of this has derailed your burgeoning astronomy hobby, and you've seen Saturn's rings, Jupiter's moons, our moon's craters, and a couple of M something-or-the-other's here and there, you have to keep at it, lest you forget how to use your scope, where you put your star atlas 6 months ago, and what there even is to see on a random September night.

One special thing about Tucson is that you can be a hobby astronomer with a low to moderate level of dedication, because many potential obstacles are a non-issue: clear skies are pretty much guaranteed 9 months out of the year, 45 minutes outside of town you have a pretty dark sky, escaping virtually all light pollution is a matter of sitting on I-10 for a couple of hours, and nighttime temperatures, depending on the time of the year, are bearable to pleasant. Again, luckily for me, Steve invested the high three- to low four-digit number in equipment in the decades before we knew each other. All we needed to do was to casually plan around the moon. Since astrophotography is a whole other animal, I do not have 12 months worth of astronomy photos to show. But here's a November morning-after photo, with the telescope still set up:

Yes, in my last entry, I was sighing about how in Vienna, planning on going hiking is not what it was in Tucson. But when it comes down to it, it is reasonably easy to organize a hike from here, and that hobby is not going to leave us altogether. But astronomy? Well....let's just say, it may be a while until we see the Whirlpool Galaxy again. Most of the major obstacles are up. And Vienna's bright skies, viewed from a street canyon, are not great reminders of a fourth- or fifth priority hobby.

But in spite of that, and in spite of the terrible weather we've had at the end of May (more here), Steve and I had a lucky, unexpected astronomy moment a couple of weeks ago: a glimpse of that triple conjunction of Mercury, Venus and Jupiter. And because I have a much better camera than when I was in Tucson, I took a photo, and it worked out:

Mercury (top), Venus (middle) and Jupiter (bottom)

Not mind-blowing, I know. But when it comes to inner-city astronomy in an unusually cloudy spring, this view is an epic win.

The year-round hiking season

When planning on going to the US back in 2007, there was, at one point relatively late in the process, a choice between three locations, one of which was Tucson. It had made the list of about 6 or so places to consider for grad school somewhat haphazardly, and only when the choice had boiled down to three did it receive more attention. As always with decisions that you know will shape the rest of your life but are too big to grasp every aspect and potential consequence of, there were intimidatingly many factors to consider about the three places. But one thing stands out in my memory, that made Tucson a whole lot more attractive than it had looked at first glance: a 12 month hiking season.

In lieu of wordy descriptions, some pictures:

Tucson Mountains, January

Cochise Stronghold, February

Babad Doag Trail, March

Mt. Kimball, April

Mt. Wrightson, May

Mt. Lemmon, June

Chiricahua, July

Wilderness of Rocks, August

Hope Camp Trail, September

Aravaipa Canyon, October

Pinaleno Mountains, November

Pima Canyon, December

  
Oh, what a wonderful luxury that was: any odd weekend, we'd pick a place, go to the Map and Flag Center, buy the respective USGS map, gather the equipment, food and water, and off we went! In contrast, I distinctly remember talking to my mother on the phone before one of my visits back to Austria, about going for a hike during the three or four days I was going to be in Admont, and she said: "We'll see once we know about the weather." The what?

Don't get me wrong, I do not need balmy weather and Arizona-type sunshine to go hiking. I come from a family with a long tradition of roaming the great outdoors in all kinds of conditions. Walking through a soaking wet, green forest can be a great experience. But...*sigh*....it is just so much easier to plan a hike for any given weekend, when you know that the chance of an all-day rainstorm is about 1 in 730. When you know that there will be a dry place to sit, you will not get stuck in snow or mud, if it rains, you might get wet, but not miserably cold, and there is just not enough water in the air to create the kind of weather that will make you return having seen absolutely nothing of the landscape because the visibility was as far as the next 5 steps. 

Ok, nothing is perfect, and to be absolutely precise, Tucson has a 7-month prime hiking season and a 5-month secondary hiking season in which you have to plan a tiny bit more - for a somewhat longer drive (up one of the sky islands to escape the oven that the low desert has become) or to get up ridiculously early (ideally to reach the turn-around point of your hike at about sunrise, in the hottest time of the year). Both of these can feel like obstacles when sitting in an air-conditioned house in Tucson at the end of May. But in retrospect, now that I am sitting in a heated apartment in Vienna at the end of May, heading into another rainy, windy, 12-degree Celsius kind of weekend, I am realizing that these things were minor inconveniences at best.

Small changes

Things change in 5 years, to state the blatantly obvious. This one is about small things that are not necessarily very important, but that I notice anyway, simply because I've been away for long enough that I see them as a step function rather than a gradual process. So, here's a small collection of little things that changed: 

1. There's this orange stuff called Aperol that everyone seems to be drinking now. I have no idea where it came from and who decided it was THE summer thing on every drink menu, but here it is. I guess eventually I'll have to try it. 

2. Everyone and their grandmother seems to be wearing Jack Wolfskin. It seems to be a little like Eddie Bauer in the US: an outdoor outfitter with a large clientele of people who may want to look a little more outdoors-y than they actually are. It has become a real high street store, so much so that I found myself explaining my old Jack Wolfskin washbag to my husband ("That brand is so popular I'll never wear it"): "when I got that thing 15 years ago, the company was a normal outfitter like all the others..."

3. It is now relatively easy to get your hands on ripe avocados. In 2007, guacamole meant planning ahead for a week; last week, I ended up with moldy avocados instead of guacamole.

4. Commissions for real estate agents (all but a tiny fraction of rentals are in their hands) have decreased from 3 months rent to 2 months rent, continuing a very pleasing trend in legislation which is saving Vienna from becoming a landlord's free-for-all like London or San Francisco.
5. Vienna is a lot more bike-friendly than I remember it.
6. Noodlekebap and Bubble Tea

7. Demmer's Teehaus seems to have a good business model going with the Viennese cafes and restaurants, making ordering tea anywhere a whole lot less risky than it used to be. (You never knew when you'd pay 2.50 Euros for a 0.25 liter cup filled with 0.2 liters of lukewarm water, a sad, low-grade tea bag and a limp, half dried-up lemon wedge on the side.)

But here is one that I think is most remarkable: 8. Somehow, it seems that "Hallo" has turned into a generic greeting for anyone in almost any situation. Why is this remarkable? Well, because that is a true change in language use over the years I was away. In my books, "Hallo" was an informal greeting, for people you are on first-name terms with. For those English speakers who don't know it: formal vs. informal language in German is something that runs like a thread through the grammatical structure of, oh, about every third or so sentence in a conversation, and it certainly reflects in the way you greet someone. Or so I thought. The first couple times after my return someone greeted me with a "Hallo", I felt either flattered ("I must be looking young...") or slightly weirded out ("Am I supposed to know this person?"). Until someone said "Hallo" and then continued talking to me in the formal language, leaving me completely confused. Then I started noticing it between other people, and it slowly dawned on me that "Hallo" no longer implied familiar terms. 

I am wondering why that happened. Here are my hypotheses: a) People don't want to commit to either formal or informal at first glance in a conversation and are trying to "ease in". This would make sense, generally speaking, since the use of informal language seems to be spreading (Co-workers? Playing orchestra together? Looking reasonably young and buying hiking boots? Ditch the "Sie".) and the use of formal language seems on the retreat. b) People do not like "Grüß Gott" anymore (too pious?), are resisting "Guten Tag" (too German?), and "Hallo" is the somewhat clumsy compromise. c) It's a generic greeting in Germany (is it? I don't know...) and since Germans are the biggest group of immigrants in Austria, this is gaining a foothold. But whatever the reason, I am quite intrigued that within 5 years, there has been an actual change in language use.

Spring

Two amazing things have happened since I last posted: 1. I've got my husband back, 2. The city has turned from a drab pile of stone with a lid of fog into a lively bustling place with lots of green.

It happened at a breathtaking speed. 6 Weeks ago, it was Easter, and it was essentially winter. I probably should have written a nice blog entry about the festivities and the customs and the foods, (and probably also how I used to host a non-denominational Easter breakfast in Tucson for my friends). But in all honesty: it wasn't the best Easter I've ever seen. Sure, there were nice things, such as spending some good times with my mother. But I missed Steve, it felt wrong not to have him around. And on Easter Saturday at night, usually the time of a first brave attempt of sitting in the yard, in the warmth of a smaller or larger bonfire, the view from the front porch was this:

Yes, those are snowflakes. Thick, slow-falling, the Christmas kind. The next day, on the mandatory Easter Sunday walk (which really should be about snowdrops and crocuses on the first swampy, defrosting meadows), I had a late shot at some Alpine winter postcard scenery.

 

April 1, 2013, no joke.

Mexican poppies, the quintessential Arizona spring flower.

Now, of course it's not like I didn't know this kind of stuff. Plenty of Admont winters I remember ended sometime in mid- to late April. But intellectual knowledge is only one kind of knowledge. After 5 years of sunshine, I had no more feel for what was supposed to be happening. People around me were getting impatient, telling me all about how spring was supposed to be here by now, but as far as I was concerned, this was simply eternal winter. (Just like in Tucson, in mid-October of 2007, I had no concept of it being "fall", because I had no feel for how the seasons worked there, and as far as I was concerned, it was simply eternal summer.) Not that I liked the eternal winter, it sucked, but so did not having my husband with me. The idea of being married felt just as abstract as the idea that all those sad trees would suddenly, miraculously, start to grow leaves. Staring out any window, into the snow, it felt like the wedding was ages ago and spring ages away. And even farther away, there was a Tucson spring going on which used to be the reality for me, full of spring flowers, canyons flowing with meltwater, nesting white-winged doves and blissfully mild temperatures. Prime hiking season. It felt so depressingly far away that I tried not to think too much about it. Every once in a while, I'd get my heart broken by glorious spring hiking pictures and photos of golden Mexican poppies somewhere on the social networks. But for the most part, I resigned myself to winter and focused on work.

Southern Arizona spring: a field of Mexican poppies on the slopes of Picacho peak.

And then, all of a sudden, the whole thing was over. Within a week, everything turned around. On April 8, after a week of serious snowfall, the sun came out. Within just a couple of days, the snow was gone. And suddenly, on April 14, it was summer. As in, short sleeve T-shirt weather. A day later, Steve came back. On April 21, we took a hike through blooming trees with tender green leaves, over green meadows and forest floors full of wild garlic.  

Spring in Lainzer Tiergarten

And now? Green everywhere. Big leaves. High grass. Blooming chestnut trees. Fragrant lilacs. Lunches, dinners and beers outside. People lounging on the grass in parks. My first light sunburn. All within a couple of weeks. And: waking up and going to sleep with my husband, every day. It all feels perfectly normal. However, it is not normal, but great. Between Steve's return and spring, life has improved by about 300%.