The hills are alive.....

With the sound of....

I can finally reveal our big plans for 2012!!

The Beard has now told his boss and workplace about his plans, so that means I can tell you all!

As the video above suggests, I'm getting to live out my lifetime dream of moving to Austria! The Beard spent the majority of his teenage years in Vienna, and I fell in love with the place within about 2 hours of being there in 2008. We've been talking about this, and working it out since then, and finally we have a proposed date and our dreams will hopefully become reality.

Obviously we have a fair bit to organise between now and then, but it's pretty darn exciting!

When I was a kid I loved The Sound of Music (I still do), and dreamt of living in the Austrian alps. I also used to devour The Chalet School books which were originally set in the Austrian Tyrol. I dreamt of chalets and skiing and all that wonderful culture. My great aunt used to run a chalet school in Switzerland and I thought it was such a romantic idea. Living in Austria was one of my childhood fantasies. And guess what? Dreams do come true.

So far I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to be doing, other than my dissertation, so I'm currently applying for jobs and trying desperately to learn some German! I'm not a complete novice in the language, having gained an A* in my GCSE. I still remember a lot of the grammar rules and basic principles, thanks to a pretty good teacher who was really insistent on drilling the foundations of the language into us. Plan Z is to be an English speaking tour guide in the city - when I worked for my MP in my gap year I was an occasional tour guide and loved it.

So yeah. Wir werden von April 2012 in Wien leben.