Friends / Freunde

After many months, we had a weekend that made things feel like home. On Saturday, Nikolas had his Canadian-American buddies from school come over to play. All morning long he was waiting for their arrival. After lunch he plopped himself down at the kitchen table to watch the clock (which he can't read) until Lucas and Thomas arrived. They played race cars, Play Doh, super heroes, basketball, musical instruments, and that was all in the first half hour. They watched Grinch Who Stole Christmas. And they ate Kinder Eggs and chocolate chip cookies (which they brought with them) and brownies (which Nikolas had made). Nikolas could hardly stay awake through dinner, so tired was he from all the excitement.

On Sunday, after the Fest des Herrn, we headed out to Bergheim, a 'suburb' of Salzburg, to visit with old friends from when we worked at the international school. Way back then, Lynne was the school nurse. She married an Austrian and had two children, lived in Brussels and then England for a while, and is now back in Salzburg. We've been trying to get together since we've arrived, but coordinating a time that doesn't conflict with travel plans, school plans, work plans, and so on, has proved difficult. Also joining us was Felicia and her husband. Felicia was (and still is) the office manager at the international school. We've dropped by the school a couple times over the years and said hello, but haven't spent any real time together.

It was a wonderful time, sitting around eating cakes and drinking coffee, catching up on 15 years of life and marveling at how fifteen years can go by, but connections with people can remain the same. Lynne's children, ages 13 and 15, were marvelous playmates for Nikolas, and after some cake they disappeared into the basement where there were mountains of toys to be discovered. After a while the doorbell rang, and in piled the cousins, one of whom was Dominic, the six-year-old boy Nikolas befriended at the Obama party. Early afternoon cake and coffee stretched into late afternoon cake and coffee, and before we knew it, night had fallen and hot dogs and soup were being cooked up to ward off the hunger of the children still playing in the basement.

It was such a delightful weekend of friends, the first we've had in Austria. It's not that Austrian's are completely unwelcoming, it's just that we aren't Austrian. And that's not saying that Austrians aren't accepting of others. It just takes a while for many of them to open up to outsiders. If we were to stick around for a half dozen years or so, things might be different. We've missed having people around, and it was great to feel like we were a part of something and to feel like we really belonged.