My New Home Until Bali

For my first four months in Austria, I shared a very small apartment in OeAD’s Kandlgasse international student residence with 3 young women from elsewhere in Europe.  When it became legal for me to stay in Vienna longer than a trimester, however, my room was no longer available.  Luckily, a single apartment in the same complex eventually opened up. What a relief!  I love this modern clean “passive house”  and neighbourhood – my 40-minute walk to school, the organic grocer at the corner, the tram/bus/subway central 2 blocks away, etc. I wasn’t thrilled about the fact that this whole district doesn’t have trees, but I’ve just found a couple in the courtyards in front and behind my new place.  Yay!  I’m even thrilled at the bare vines growing on the wall outside my window –  signs of nature!  Progress! Interestingly, I have mixed feelings about living on my own after 3 years of having roommates.  When I weigh the advantages and disadvantages, however, it’s clear that I’m going to enjoy having my own space for a while.

Disadvantages:

• Single apartments are expensive: including cleaning and administration fees, it works out to $863 Cdn / month.  That’s a lot! For the past 3 years, I chose to have roommates, so I could invest more of my time and financial resources in my art, education, and travel.  This is definitely the main disadvantage, but since I’m here, I’ll enjoy it instead of worrying about it. It was obviously meant to be.
• No more in-home greetings and tourism stories – it was nice coming home to a “hello”, wishing people a nice day, and hearing about various spots my roommates visited with their organized group.  I was lucky – all three were very nice.
• I won’t get as much practice in unconditional love. As you know, my life purpose is to both explore and express my love of beauty and the beauty of love.  I’ve focused a lot on learning how to be unconditionally loving, with definite progress thanks to the resources at RealLove.com . I’ll write more about this soon, but basically, living with 3 young students with very different schedules, personalities, and various levels of cleanliness and consideration was great training ground.  Each time I got irritated (especially when I couldn’t access water because of a sink full of dirty dishes), I got quicker at recognizing the counter-productiveness and selfishness of my internal reactions.  When I return to Newfoundland in July, I may live with roommates again, but this time I’ll look for compatible ones.  Until then, I’ll certainly enjoy being on my own.
• My new room is not in the main building, which means I’ll have to suit-up to do laundry, and only once my hair is dry during the winter months- not a big deal, but a slight inconvenience.

Advantages:

• None of my roommates in the last 3 years have had similar schedules, interests, lifestyles, habits, or life philosophies. After one day on my own, I feel more free to be me – woke up at 6am, played some music, sang, did my guided yoga practice with normal volume, etc.  The walls here are pretty thick, so it’s nice not to feel like I need to be quiet until noon or 1pm, when “normal” students wake up.
• I’m an introvert and need a lot of alone time. After being out and about or at school with people all day (all of which I enjoy), I need my own space to recharge my batteries.  I do my best work, thinking, etc. when I’m on my own. Then, and only then, can I enjoy and do well in public.  Although I had my own room, there were often big dinner parties after my bedtime as well as several house guests in our very small space, and so recharging my batteries was sometimes challenging.
• Allergy-free zone:  I’m hoping my skin issues have something to do with my allergy to perfume.  Europe hasn’t caught on to the scent-free movement.  Sharing a space with three young beautiful social European women meant constantly coming into contact with clouds or perfume or films of it on shared surfaces like the shower, floors, etc.  I even had to buy my own toilet paper as the last communal batch was scented.
• A clean kitchen!!!  Cooking will be so much more appealing when I can access things, have more than a shelf in the mini-bar sized fridge, and not be turned off by the stinky dirty dishes sometimes left there for days.  I like to clean mine as soon as I’m done, but I had to respect that others didn’t.  We’d had a group meeting about kitchen etiquette, but it only helped for a week.
• More sleep: I have an unusual schedule.  I wake up at 5am and am in bed around 9pm.  So dinner parties that started at 8pm right outside my room weren’t fun.  Also, my roommates often came home late at night or in the wee hours of the morning interrupting my sleep with their high heels on hard floors or the occasional dramatic post-party conversations or cooking. It wouldn’t have been so bad if our hours were the same, but alas for all of us, they weren’t (although that also had definite advantages, especially when it came to bathroom use).  Also, our place really echoed, so that didn’t help.  If last night was any indication, my new place is very quiet! Yay!
• Guests: Now that I have a little more space, I’m hoping my friends from the Czech Republic come to visit. For 15 Euros a night, I can get another mattress delivered if they want to stay overnight.

So there you have it.  I have a new home for the next 2 months, and I’m thrilled.  I’ve unpacked, put up my prayer flags, had my ritual house-warming ceremony (smudged it with palo santo smoke, lit a beeswax candle, did a bit of fung shui, invoked my angels and guides to help me fill it with healthy energy, etc.)  For those of you I know like pictures, here’s how it looks.