We are about to have a week of temperatures around 100f / 39c so I’m posting a photo of me taken on our back porch around this time of the year in Vienna, Austria. In the 1980s or early 90s.
From Malaysia to this. We didn’t own a winter coat between the four of us us, or a closed-in pair of shoes, or a woolly jumper, or warm underwear, or a warm hat or a single pair of gloves, or a solitary blanket for the beds… Shopping kept us broke for months.
But oh, Vienna, what a wonderful place to live for the next 6+ years. We could dine where Beethoven once lived down the street, or walk out of our house into the Vienna Woods along Beethovengang, or ride our bikes along the .Donauinsel (the island in the Danube River), just down the hill.
And — to an Australian, the whole thing about being able to holiday — by car — to the border of the USSR, or Scotland, or the northernmost point of Norway…or just drive for the day to Yugoslavia, or Germany. We did it all.