Weeks 3 & 4: Wherever you go, there you are

TLDR: Life is no fun without people

Ground Hog Day

Unfortunately, not much of note has happened in the last two weeks (hence why this post combines weeks three and four). We ate at a nice restaurant and went on some very nice long walks. We even got around to visiting a winery in Grinzing, though the experience was torture because of a windstorm (pics below).

Now we have arrived at the next obstacle: escaping the prison of yourself. I hate to be a downer, but beautiful views and delicious dinners do eventually get old. And no matter all the wealth and beauty you may (or may not be) surrounded by, as the cliche goes, wherever you go, there you are.

It’s a feeling explored in one of my favorite movies of all time, Ground Hog Day. Bill Murray plays Phil Connors, a cynical weatherman who dreams of getting his big break. Insulted that he has to cover Ground Hog day for a small town in nowhere middle America, he’s rude and condescending towards everyone he meets.

But then, he gets hit with a curse and starts to experience the same day over and over for all of eternity. It drives him insane; no matter how many ways he tries to escape the time loop–including via a darkly funny series of suicides–the next morning he wakes up again to the sound of I Got You Babe on the radio, doomed to relieve the exact same day.

Imagine that. The same sequence of events happening, in the same way, day in, day out. Kind of like the pandemic was. Wake, coffee, run, work, repeat. Wait, wasn’t I trying to escape mind-numbing routines?

The movie is a meditation on the value of relationships and the limitations of external circumstances to bring about joy. Phil Connors suffers until he begins to look outside of himself. He becomes interested in learning skills and in learning about people. By taking an interest in the lives of the people around him, commiserating in their joys and sorrows, he experiences a richer, more meaningful life.

I’ve been feeling a little bit like pre-transformation Phil Connors (minus the raging narcissism): bored, irritable, insufferable, drowning in ennui. Oh, another beautiful building! Oh another gorgeous run! Oh another delicious pastry! So what?

I know it’s not a good look. But unlike Phil Connors, I knew this stage would come. Material comforts and novelty can only take you so far. Without friends, it was inevitable that loneliness and boredom would set in. It was actually my biggest hesitation with this whole Living-in-Vienna experiment. I miss my Seattle community. I miss our Sunday potlucks, eating, laughing, just hanging out. No amount of Nutella ice cream can fill that void.

Meeting people

Vienna has a reputation for not being super friendly towards foreigners. The people are stereotyped as being grantig, or German for grumpy. In some ways, that’s not so different from Seattle. Most newcomers to Seattle are warned about the “Seattle freeze,” or the phenomenon of meeting Seattleites who casually say they would love to hang out but never make any actual attempt to do so.

The truth though is that making friends is hard everywhere. It takes persistence, time, vulnerability, and a tolerance for discomfort and risk. I’m not going to learn any meaningful German in the next four weeks, so I figure my best bet is to meet other expats.

I’m using several social platforms: meetup.com, Bumble Bff, and TimeLeft, an app that arranges dinner with you and several strangers that have common interests.

So far, the one meet-up we went to was great. I met a Ph.D student in cancer biology, a student in a biotech masters program, a woman studying corporate ethics, another one studying European business law, and an extroverted software engineer from the UK who loves learning languages. The representative countries included Trinidad, Vietnam, Australia, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Croatia, and Russia. It was so fun, and a great reminder that the world is vast, and full of diverse experiences.

This coming week, I have several IRL meets planned through Bumble Bff and TimeLeft. I hope they go well!

Exploring the city through runs

I mentioned running groups in my last post, and while they are great, most only meet a few times a week. So there is still a lot of time to fill!

One of my favorite things to do in a new city is explore via running. I usually design my own routes manually by googling for popular running routes and tracing courses on Garmin. But because the Vienna Running Collective relies heavily on Strava, I decided to sign up and discovered a really cool feature: the Strava route builder.

This feature will design a route for you using their internal data of popular running routes nearby. You can input your desired length and difficulty level, and in a matter of seconds, it’ll return several options, all of which can be synced to your Garmin device. I love it!

Of course I didn’t have to come to Vienna to discover this, but it’s something I probably would have never tried it in the context of my typical running routine. Strava pointed me to several trail runs nearby, including a seven mile run right from our apartment with 800 ft of elevation gain (!). So far, every route I’ve tried has been great.

It’s clear the running scene in Vienna is amazing: there are many running groups and plenty of scenic places to run. I’ve even been able to keep up my training plan, doing intervals and tempo runs by the canal and adding long run miles by running all the way to Prater (a big local park and where the famous Prater Hauptalle is, where Eliud Kipchoge achieved a sub-2 hour marathon)

Parting Thoughts

No matter where you are, maintaining a healthy sense of wonder takes work. I am by no means suggesting that curiosity can (or should) cure every source of despair, but for those of us lucky enough to have our basic material needs fulfilled, the barriers to joy may be coming from within.

Here’s to staying curious!