Neues Leben in Österreich

I wonder if anyone still actually reads this thing. Since I only post when I am out of the country, I’ve decided to start blogging again. First of all, an update is in order. Since my last post I was, in chronological order, engaged, married, had a son, and taught for the first time. That’s a lot of life-changing events in the last year-and-a-half, and it’s nice that things have settled. Just three weeks ago, I moved to Vienna, Austria along with my wife and son. I was only in Austria for two days when I had to return to the States for my father’s funeral, and I stayed in Nevada for ten days. I returned back to Vienna Monday night, so I’ve been here for almost a week now.

We came to Vienna for a number of reasons. In no particular order, my wife grew up and has family here, the facilities for Byzantine studies are very good here, and I need to learn German for my dissertation work. Regarding that last point, I’m enrolled in a German course at a private school called Deutsch Akademie. My class is five days a week, Monday through Friday, from noon to three each afternoon. I’ve only been in class for a week, but I really enjoy it so far. My German, by the way, is not very good. I took two years of German as an undergraduate, and I’ve read a lot of German as a graduate student, but I’m a long way from being proficient in speaking and everyday situations. The course is at level B2, which is basically upper-intermediate (there are six levels, A1 being absolute beginner and C2 being completely fluent).

One of the big question-marks before we came to Vienna was whether or not I could get a visa. To summarize, US passport-holders who visit the EU are automatically granted a three-month stay. The passport-holder can travel anywhere within the EU (the area where cross-border is regulated under the Schengen Agreement) during this time. We plan to stay at least six months, so this was naturally a problem. My wife is a Polish and American citizen but is also a permanent resident of Austria, so she can stay in Austria as long as she wants. As an American, I wasn’t really sure how this situation would pan out, and in the months leading up to our departure I tried to apply for a visa as a family member (Familienangehöriger). The Austrian consulate in New York City, I’m sorry to say, was not very helpful, so I had to enter the country on the basic three-month tourist visa. Since then, however, I’ve been approved for a family-member visa, which lasts for twelve months and has to be renewed annually (big thanks to Iga for doing this—I would have been completely worthless dealing with the Austrian bureaucracy). Our son, who like Iga has American and Polish citizenship (doesn’t have the latter quite yet but will soon), has also been approved as a Permanent Resident. So far, so good.

This first post has been pretty boring, but hopefully future ones will be better. I’ll be discussing living and “working” in Austria, subjects which I don’t have that much to say about right now, but will in the near future.