Arrival -- How we finally got here

Whew! We are in Europe -- finally. We have been dreaming of this adventure since before we even had kids. "Wouldn't it be great to live abroad with our kids someday?" But then you have kids and think, "wouldn't it be great to go to the bathroom by myself?" Traveling with youngsters is hard enough, never mind packing up a house and leaving behind everything familiar. But then something magical happened...the boys grew up. They can pack their own bags, order for themselves in a restaurant, and find their way back to the hotel or apartment. Suddenly a life abroad became a dream again, instead of a nightmare.

So, how did we get here? We needed to pick a country to live in, find a school for the kids, decide what to do with our stuff back home....the list was very long. 

First, we chose Austria, because my mother comes from here, and almost all of her relatives are still here.  I have "cousins" (my loose term for all relatives whether they are first, second or twice removed) in Salzburg and Vienna. My mom has contacts in Salzburg, too, should the need arise. 

St. Gilgen from the gondola

Once we picked the country, we needed to pick the place to live.  We let the school drive that decision. There are many great international schools in Austria. We narrowed our search to Salzburg region and Vienna. Last summer, the boys visited four schools -- 3 in Vienna and 1 near Salzburg. The boys picked the Salzburg school, hands down. The town is on a lake surrounded by Austrian alps. The school occupies buildings all over the tiny town, so the whole town is essentially their campus. They can go skiing/snowboarding every weekend all winter, and sail in the fall and spring. Mason ate his first Wienerschnitzel ever at the Kendler hotel near the school....the deal was sealed.

"We got our residence permits!"

That seems like it was the easy part. Harder was how to live here legally for a year. You can't just move to another country. We needed a residence permit. I'll spare the details, but here are the high points: We hired a consultant. She asked for a million papers -- birth and marriage certificates, diplomas, bank statements, police records, housing contract, school acceptance letters and more -- many with apostiles (an internationally recognized government approval that I had to get the from the California and Kansas Secretaries of State.) She got them translated. We thought Mike had to pass the German A1 test, then found out he didn't (whew!) During our first week here, we went to a government agency in Salzburg with our consultant, and got our permits! (cue the singing angels)

We had found a furnished house online, and my cousin went to look at it for us. She gave us the thumbs up, so we signed a 10 month contract. We looked at it ourselves in our first week here, and we are very excited about it. (We don't move in until September because it is rented for the summer. For two months we are vagabonds.)  There is room for guests!

We opened a bank account as soon as we got here -- I had communicated with the bank, and they were ready for us. They served us coffee and water on a silver tray as Herr Bichler filled out the paperwork.

So, here we are. I am currently near St. Tropez (French Mediterranean) with Santa Barbara friends, and Mike is currently running about 120 miles around Mont Blanc in Switzerland, France and Italy with Santa Barbara friends.  It has been non-stop preparing, packing and traveling. We are all looking forward to a slow-paced week in Zurich starting on Sunday.