October in Vienna is very charming. Since I've been living here, I've definitely had more time to explore each season in this city. This month has been unexpectedly warm and sunny, which encouraged us to go out for walks, spend time outdoors, or choose tables in café gardens instead of taking a table inside. And while outside, I admired the color change of the leaves on the trees - this is one of my favorite times of the year, and I never stop being impressed by how nature changes.

Talking about more everyday life things, for the first time October was not the start of the academic year for me. To be honest, after graduating in June, I completely forgot about studies and didn't even realize that I usually went back to university this month. This year, instead of going back to uni, I went back to dancing - after a 5-year break, I went to contemporary dance class! Well, I still lack regularity, but I'm slowly getting back to it.

Autumn is the time of year when everything slows down and nature prepares for winter sleep. The reason I say this is that, along with nature, my creativity and my inspiration went to sleep. I'm going through some kind of creative crisis - for example, I wrote this post three times, and I completely couldn't figure out what I wanted to write. I don’t know what to do about it, whether to let it live and hope that my creativity will return, or to mobilize my sleepy mind to use its creative powers. So far I haven't come to a sensible solution, so if you have any hints I'd love to hear your advice :)

Anyway, I hope you had a lovely October and that you started you November in a great way!

with love

Basia

Time flies like crazy - I've been living in Vienna for over two months now! Although I don't feel it at all, but my sense of time is a bit messy lately, and I often feel like something happened a few days ago, but it's actually been a few weeks. Nevertheless, during all this time I have made various observations about life in Vienna, and I am going to tell you about them in today's post!

This is very intriguing, because I would expect stores to be open longer on the weekend, but they are not. Shopping malls, supermarkets and all sorts of stores are open in general until 6:00 PM, and not, as in Poland, until 9:00 or even 10:00 PM. But even though it might make you think that it makes your life more difficult, it’s not. But if at 5:45 PM you feel like going shopping then you rather have to wait until Monday. And on Sunday everything is closed!

Yes, that's right, you can swim in the Danube! Which at first seemed absurd to me, because how can you swim in a river? Especially since in my mind I had an image of the Warta River from my hometown, which in no way encourages swimming. And here the water is clean and warm, there are little stairs to enter the water, zero currents and zero noise. I'm lucky that I live just 10 minutes by tram from the swimming area, so when it's warm, especially now, I go there very often!

Austrians work 40h a week, just like in Poland, but the hours are distributed differently. From Monday to Thursday they work 9h each day, including 30 min for lunch. That makes 34h in four days (lunch does not count as working time :p) of the 40h mandatory, so then they go to work on Friday for only 6h. This may seem interesting or strange because who wants to sit 9h at work, but the option to leave early on Friday is very pleasant. Disclaimer! It doesn’t apply to every type of job but in most cases it works like this.

And it really is! Most lines during rush hour run every 4-5 minutes, and the subway runs every 2 minutes. Even on weekends, public transportation works very well. This is a very nice change after living in a city where on the weekend a bus or tramway runs every 20 minutes :p.

And that would be it! I think there will be more observations as time goes on, and when I collect a few, I'll be sure to share them :)

I can't believe I'm writing this, but I moved to Vienna. And it's for real! My adventure here began on Monday, April 29th - that day I arrived with the last backpack, and when my boyfriend came to pick me up at the train station I told him that I was finally here permanently and there’s no going back anymore. Two and a half years of a long-distance relationship is a very long time, and I am grateful to myself and him and us together for making it through this time and finally living together after an infinity of going back and forth.

I started quite relationship-wise, but that's not what this post is about ;P today I want to focus on a new chapter, which means life in Vienna. It's a good thing that I arrived just at the beginning of a new month, because I can start it with the thought "a new month in a new place", and thus build new habits and small traditions of daily life.

I will not pull the wool over your eyes - this moving out was not only associated with pleasant feelings. It was also associated with fear, uncertainty and stress. I don't know German, I don't know the people here, I don't have a job yet... a lot of unknowns and difficult thoughts. But (!) I decided to treat it as a challenge and find my paths in Vienna.

What have I done so far? First, I went to a yoga class with a friend and decided to try out a few different places to see which one I like the most and go there regularly. I signed up for a German class! And I decided to make Sundays cake-days!

I'm slowly finding myself in this city and treading my paths – coffee ones, yoga ones, walking ones. There's still a lot to do, but I'm trying to keep a positive attitude! It will be fine :)

with love

Basia

This month in Vienna is slowly coming to an end, and I have one more week left, which I will try to make the most of. But the past three weeks here have made me think, because I spent most of my time alone, with myself and I realized a few things.

First of all, the fact that I didn’t/don’t know how to spend time alone. On the one hand, I am able to find activities for myself, and sometimes I really have something to do, but there were moments when I was finding activities for myself because I couldn’t just rest, I had to do something. Although, in fact, I was afraid that I would just feel lonely being with myself.

As I wrote in the previous post, this time was dedicated to learning how to spend time with myself and treat myself as an actual companion... however strange that may sound. What I mean here is that we often forget that we can be a companion for ourselves to spend time with. And we don't have to look for another person to do it.

In addition, I also realized that as an overthinker I am afraid of the thoughts that may come to my mind when I am alone. Before my trip, I told my therapist that I wouldn't be in Poland for a month so we wouldn’t meet in February and when I would be back I may return to therapy. We both decided to treat this time in Vienna as "putting theory into practice" - everything I've learned so far has to finally be used in everyday life.

I must say that I've kind of fallen into a strange way of thinking – I have to be in therapy until something shifts in my head and as long as the bad thoughts are still there. But in the most realistic scenario, the bad thoughts will always appear, so I just have to start implementing what I've learned, because it won't change on its own.

Coming out of old thinking patterns is not easy, because the brain is just lazy and used to one thing so it won’t want to change it. You need to help it a little and give it more time. In addition to therapy, I recommend Lavendaire's channel, which has a lot of guided meditations that make mornings and evenings more pleasant, and make changing your thinking easier :)

I’m leaving you with some links to her videos! Have a good weekend!

If someone had told me two years ago that I would live in Vienna for a month and that almost every weekend I would go on a trip, I think I would hadn’t belived in it… OR it would have been very difficult to believe.

Gdyby ktoś powiedział mi tak ze dwa lata temu, że w 2023 roku będę miała możliwość spędzenia całego miesiąca w Wiedniu, a moje weekendy będą się wiązały z nieustającymi podróżami, to chyba bym nie uwierzyła… albo byłoby mi bardzo ciężko w to uwierzyć.

This month I’m in Vienna with my boyfriend which is really amazing for us. As we are in a long distance relationship we see each other just for a weekend or maybe for a whole week so having one month together is like a miracle for us.

Ten miesiąc jestem w Wiedniu razem z moim chłopakiem, co jest dla nas niezwykłe, bo będąc w związku na odległość widzimy się zazwyczaj albo na weekend albo na maksymalnie tydzień, więc jeden miesiąc razem jest jak spełniające się marzenie.

On the other hand I will have a lot of time for myself – Vivien works and he can’t take a whole month off so the most of the day I’m going to spend with myself. It’s a challenge for me because I was always avoiding being alone so now it’s time to face it and find a peace with myself.

Z drugiej strony, w tym miesiącu będę mieć dużo czasu dla siebie – Vivien pracuje i siłą rzeczy nie mógłby wziąć urlopu na cały miesiąc, więc przez większość dnia jestem sama. Jest to dla mnie duże wyzwanie, bo często unikałam takich momentów bycia samej ze sobą, więc teraz staram się nad tym pracować, znajdować nowe zajęcia i nie bać się tego.

Not gonna lie I’m excited! All those plans and coming things are amazing, really. In the past I would say that I’m privileged for that but now I know that some of those things didn’t fall down from the sky but they are consequences of my actions and previous choices and decisions. And I am very very veeeryy grateful for that. Cheers to this month and this life!

Nie będę ukrywać, że jestem podekscytowana tymi planami i zbliżającymi się wydarzeniami. Kiedyś powiedziałabym, że jestem uprzywilejowana, ale teraz wiem, że niektóre te wydarzenia nie spadły mi z nieba, tylko były konsekwencją moich wcześniejszych decyzji i wyborów. I za to jestem sobie ogromnie wdzięczna i wznoszę toast za ten piękny czas – cheers!