Vienna 2023, Week 3 - feeling at home now

As I write this, we're awaiting Mr's arrival late in the night - three weeks on our own are done, and the next three weeks will be a whole-family affair! Cody the dog is at his friend's, and our housesitters are arriving tomorrow to hopefully have a lovely time in Bristol.

So this is what we've been up to this week. First of all, Sunday was the one of the kids' biggest highlights to date: a Bernhard Fibich concert! This is a children's song maker and performer whom we randomly discovered last year when he gave a free concert in a park. The kids enjoyed the concert and I bought two of his CD's there... and those have been playing in the car ever since. They know every word. And so seeing him in person again, getting to be on stage and even sing - absolute highlight!

Since that concert was at the House of Music, we also went in there to explore and found some really fun ways to interact with music - from virtually creating our own sound 'blob' to conducting the Vienna Philarmonic Orchestra...

It was hot again some of the week, and we spent time by the water...

... and when it wasn't hot, we checked out a few cool playgrounds and even did some crafting and dressing up when it rained.

A very interesting day was put on for kids by the Austrian Army, which I really hadn't known much about previously. Other than knowing they basically only see action when there's a disaster (since we're a neutral nation)... but seeing that D(7), being an Austrian citizen, would have to serve if he moves to Austria before he turns 35, I thought it might be interesting to have a look. After all, once he turns 18 he might want to do it for the experience - others pay for gap years...!

And lastly, the big excitement of the week was finding a young hedgehog that seemed utterly lost, was running around in circles by the playground and squeaking its little heart out. I caught it easily - it seemed desperate for some help, and not at all afraid of me - and we took it home, kept it overnight, and delivered it to an animal rescue station the next day. Turns out he was a male (we called him Igor, the Igel [hedgehog]) and will be absolutely fine.

Time for pizza. Look at the size of it!!

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