So, it looks like in a few months’ time we’ll be moving to Vienna. I got a job there and am just waiting for all the paperwork to get paper-worked. I’m excited about this, but also a little apprehensive, because Vienna’s been my favourite holiday destination ever since I first went there as a tourist back in 2003. I’ve since been back another half dozen times. I always marvel at the city’s beauty and find new and interesting places to visit and things to do. The magic has never worn off, but I’m a bit worried that it might once I start living there on a long-term basis. After all, living and working somewhere year-round is not the same as occasionally spending a few days of free time visiting attractions and eating out.
How has it been for fellow Dopers who’ve moved permanently to their own favourite tourist destination? Was it all you’d dreamed it would be, allowing you to live happily ever after? Or did you gradually (or even quickly) become disaffected with your new environs? Tell me your stories, and maybe after a year or so, I’ll come back to this thread and tell you mine.
Well, color me green with envy. I always loved Vienna and went there many times for work when I was at the consulate in Frankfurt. One of the best things is that you’re also close to Prague and Budapest, two other favorite cities.
Well, I spent a fair bit of vacation time on the Big Island before moving here for real about 8 months ago. Sure, there is a difference between visiting somewhere and living there, but as long as you know that - and obviously, the OP does - it’s not necessarily a problem.
Probably the biggest difference one can generalize about is that while you are on vacation, you may spend money more freely - eating out, transport costs, other little luxuries. Real life usually involves a budget. But there are compensating pleasures, like learning where the locals’ favorite inexpensive coffee shop, unknown to tourists, is.
It can also be a little frustrating when you no longer have free time to do all the fun stuff you did while on vacation. On the other hand, there is no pressure: if you don’t have time to take that great hike this week, well - next week, you’ll still be around.
One thing that’s great about living somewhere as opposed to just visiting is that you get a much fuller and more nuanced understanding of a place that no tourist could ever achieve.
Frankfurt is pretty close to where I’m living now (just two stops away on the Regional-Express). We find it incredibly boring so we rarely go there, except when we need to visit some consulate or other to get a visa or renew a passport. Which one were you working at, and when? Could be our paths may have crossed.
I was attached to the Frankfurt American consulate from 1987-1990, but my office was in the annex over by the Army base. Yeah, Frankfurt is a boring place, but luckily my job was to travel to almost every European capital, both east and west. Tough gig.
I’ve been back three or four times since moving away in 1999. I’ll let you know the next time I plan a visit and maybe we can organize a SaskDope festival.
Hubster is an amateur astronomer, and we knew that eventually we had to get the Hell outta SCal. We’ve been many places (he’s retired Army) and after his 20 we landed in SCal.
I found an ad in our paper for “AZ land” and we checked it out in 2000. We scraped together enough to put a down payment on a 36 acre parcel, and dreamed of “someday.”
NE AZ, in the middle of nowhere, no traffic, no smog, no grafitti, no trash, no utility lines, no noise, and the clearest air in the Lower 48. That’s important to an astronomer!
Hubster got sick in 2005, so we made the decision to retire, and head to AZ. Shitload of obstacles, but we’re finally there, and he even has an observatory with a roll-off roof for his telescope!
If the opportunity comes along, grab it with both hands, ahd hang on tight!
~VOW
We’d visited [hipster city in the PNW] dozens of times, and were all ready to move there when my wife got pregnant. All of a sudden our priorities changed, and we were surprised to find we suddenly valued public schools over music venues. Neighborhood farmers’ markets over funky galleries. An easy bike ride to work over world-class opera.
We also realized that with kids, we wouldn’t have the time to do a lot of the quirky things we loved there, and we’re actually having more “family fun” by staying in the midwest (and once the kids were old enough, visiting like we used to!).
If you really stretch it I sort of did. When I was young I didn’t have a favorite vacation destination as we didn’t go on vacation a lot, but when I was 12 we moved to Florida and my favorite outing was to Disney although we never stayed in the Orlando area overnight. Now I have lived in Orlando for 12 or so years and have lived within day tripping distance of Disney for another 12. (I don’t consider Sarasota to be in day tripping distance, which was where I was when I was young, even though we would once a year or so drive all the way up and back in a day. Now I am close enough that I go more than once a month.)
I grew up in Milwaukee, and back in the 60s, it was boring. No Performing Arts Center, no Brewers or Bucks… And that artsy Third Ward? Nope, just abandoned warehouses where those cute cafés and shops are now.
All my schoolmates either hung out in bowling alleys or bars.
So for fun we’d sneak off to Madison… 75 miles away was a funky college town, full of hippies and skaters and street artists. With weed. A lot of weed, that your new best friends would share with you, while they told you about Kerouac and the Beats. And a Student Union on a lake where even a 16 year old could get a pitcher of beer and listen to Steve Miller jamming with Ben Sidran and Boz Scaggs.
My best friends made a plan, to all end up in Madison after college. And we did, we shared a rundown house (rent was $55 each, which included free mushrooms growing through the cracks in the bathroom floor).
Almost fifty years later, and I’m still here… and it is literally a childhood dream come true.
I think when you travel and come to viena for the first time, you will feel it is very beautiful and great but if you move to viena to live. You will find it has some problems. Your initial impressions of this city will be lost. Trust me life is not like a dream :D:D:D
