So here I sit in my hospital bed with my new daughter (whom shall be referred to as KB or koala bear as she likes to sleep). What a ride. A switch has flicked in my head and the fact that I have sore lady bits after my drug free labour and have spent the past few days getting to grips with breastfeeding is the most satisfying thing ever. It is so strange - now that she is here, I ask myself “what took me so long?”. I wonder why we didn’t make this sweet creature ages ago. Seeing your baby girl fall off your boob in to a blissed out milk coma in the milky way that only new borns can changes your world. It makes it spectacular. I’m on her time now. She is the boss.

I’ve just realised that it is a month since I came to live in Wien. I am gradually settling in. German aside. I have long held the opinion that to improve my German, I actually need to go back to the beginning and start again. It’s not much use knowing that coffee is kaffee if you can’t remember whether the gender of the word is masculine, feminine or neuter. The der, die, das articles drive me crazy, because so many of the German rules of Grammar that you apply do strange things to the nominative der, die, das and ein, eine, ein. So, if you don’t learn whether the word for something is der, die, das, then you can never speak German correctly. Part of me would love to pretend all the words are “der” but that would not be useful to improving my German. Kaffee incidentally is masculine. So is tea. Tee. der Kaffee. der Tee. Kaffee and Tee are made with water. Water is neuter. das Wasser. Into Kaffee and Tee you put Milch. Milch is feminine. die Milch. Not sure what the logic of that is, maybe it’s because die Milch comes from a moo cow of type female. I have had a few German lessons, but I don’t think much of my teacher. I think so little of her in fact, that I don’t want to go to her lessons anymore, I’d much rather attend a language course in the university of wien during the summer. I have enrolled on it. The other thing about Austrian German is it is quite different to the German I learned in school. I think the German I learned in school is probably the equivalent of the Queen’s English. None of the regional words and certainly no dialects! Cream in my school German is Sahne. Here it is Schlagobers. Bread rolls in my school German are little breads or Brotchen, here they are Semmels. My German teacher mocked me when I told her I asked for Brotchen in bakeries. “Did you get a funny look?”. No was my response. The Austrians probably don’t feel the need to be nasty to me and mock my use of Brotchen, cos it’s pretty obvious I am not Austrian. Don’t ask me the genders for those, my start at the beginning and relearn everything hasn’t got to those words yet. The huzband says that going back to the start is a waste of time. I totally disagree. Last night, I took out a level A1 book and started “Basic German in 30 days” and I relearned lots of stuff that I had completely forgotten, which isn’t surprising, considering my last German lesson was in 1994. I relearned that certain verbs take the accusative form. A coffee is ein Kaffee. I would like a coffee is Ich mochte einen Kaffee. Unless you remembered your lesson about accusative verbs from secondary school, you would look very pigeon German speaking in a coffee shop stating that you would mochten ein Kaffee. Ah, the quirks of language. Back to the beginning is the only way to correct stuff once and for all. That said, I understand lots of German, but I draw complete blanks when trying to put sentences together myself. Things can only improve I suppose. Especially if I continue with the books I have that teach you how to ask for stuff in shops, restaurants at the train station, at the post office etc. Basic stuff. Back to the beginning. No shame in that.

Tomorrow is the first of May. Here in Austria, it is a holiday. Guess what happens on holidays here? The shops close! They all close on sunday anyway, which we have adjusted to, but tomorrow, they will also be closed! Now, consider what happens in Ireland when the shops close FOR TWO DAYS. It happens once a year. On Christmas Day and Stephen’s Day. I am going out to get some groceries in a minute. My list is not long. I think it has about five items on it, and the shops are closing FOR TWO DAYS! I will be interested to note whether the queues are longer than usual or whether they are about average. Will I find aisles stripped of all perishable food stuffs and alcohol. The shops are closing. FOR TWO DAYS! I’m actually glad they will be closed, instead of wasting tomorrow looking at garden furniture and paint at the local baumax, we will venture out into the country side and try to explore some area outside Vienna.