It finally looks like it is really going to happen.

At the end of June, we signed a lease to rent our home to three lovely girls who are in the end stages of their time at BGSU. Khloe, Haley, and Sam will be living in their first "real" home, and are looking forward to moving outside of the student area of town. Haley will move in on Aug 1, but the others not until Aug. 20.

That is because we bought one-way tickets to Europe.  We fly, fly away on Aug. 19, first to Chicago, then to Warsaw, and finally to Vienna. And a whole new experience begins. But before we get there, there is much to do here.

We began many months ago after we confirmed with Craig's colleague at the University of Vienna that all was set for us to come. His colleague at the University of Vienna, Evo, is in the chemistry department, and does the same research as Craig and his colleague here in their lab. It's called Bioinformatics, and has to do with RNA sequencing. On our last sabbatical to Salzburg, there was no one directly in his area, so this time, he looks forward to a good collaboration and publications.

Having done this 8 years ago, we were somewhat prepared for what comes after the decision to go. Only taking two of the kids (and no newborn), this trip will be much different, and much easier to prepare for. Which isn't to say it's easy.

As you can imagine, there is much paperwork involved in moving to a different country. This process is a very different animal to taking a vacation to Europe. In Vienna, as in most cities in Europe, you must apply for a "residency permit." Not only is it the law, but you need this document for almost everything. To obtain this essential form, one needs to provide birth certificates, marriage certificates, police background checks, copies of passports, copies of passport-style pictures, financial documents showing you can support yourselves, statement of employment from both current and future employers, statement confirming you have health insurance, and documentation of your flight home. Of course, these need to be in German and notarized.

So, after beginning to assemble documents, and renting our house, the next task was finding an apartment to rent in Vienna. We spent months scouring every web-site we could find. There are many obstacles to finding a place. Rental contracts are long-term, usually at least 3-5 years. This is, in principle, to protect the renter. In order to rent an apartment, you must almost always go through a real estate agent. These folks charge the tenants a commission, even though they are engaged by the landlord. This can be anywhere from 1 to 3 months rent, which can range from $1,000 to over $4,000 per month. Since you must pay this fee every time you move, you can imagine that people don't move very often; a longer-term lease protects the tenants from being forced out of their apartment. In addition, for many rentals, there is a form of rent control so once you are in, you pay the same rent as long as you live there. If you stay a long time, you gradually have more and more of a bargain. For all these reasons, turn-over of apartments is slow, limiting the apartments available. If you want a shorter-term lease, you must go through the agent to see if the landlord would agree to a shorter length. In either case, you can give notice after one year (and not a moment before!), and then must stay another 3 months to allow the landlord time to find new renters.

We found a nice apartment in the suburbs where the landlord agreed to rent for only 1 year (he is American but living in the west part of Austria), without the additional three months. With commission and other fees and utilities, this was about 1,600 euros/month ($2100/month), a real bargain by Viennese standards. It was partly furnished and had a balcony, two bedrooms with a large closet that could be used as a bedroom, and in a residential suburb.

While in the final negotiations, we made one last trip through all our websites and found one new one:  an orchestral conductor and his family were spending the next year in Florida and looking for tenants. Because of the 'rent control', they were allowed to rent the apartment for only the cost of the rent and not make a profit, to preventing it from becoming a permanaent rental. Therefore we found a lovely, fully-furnished apartment, quite close to all the tourist attractions downtown, with no commission to pay for only 1,000 euros/month. The timing was perfect. We quickly arranged a skype tour and spent 2 hours on the phone with this lovely couple. During the course of the conversation, it turned out they have a car that they will consider signing over to us to use and then we sign it back to them when they return. Amazing. We couldn't believe our good luck.  Within a few days, however, they wrote a discouraging email, as the building had changed owners and the new owner strictly forbade sub-letting.  That was a deflating day.  Craig quickly resumed frantically emailing real estate agents.  Incredibly enough, the original apartment was still available and we signed the forms as soon as we got them.

Since this happened recently, we haven't found schools for the kids.  According to our friends there, there are some good schools nearby. The schools themselves or the administrtion are not working during the summer so we may have just a few days to find a school and make the arrangements.  It is at their discretion whether to accept our kids for the year, but we are hopeful.

In the meantime, there is 2 years of maintenance to do on the house, just the usual chores and jobs that you mostly put off. In addition, everyone must visit the dentist and all doctors and get any prescriptions written and filled that may be needed during the year. Belongings need to be sorted for Goodwill, store in BG, or taken along. Two of our bedrooms will just store our things so we will gradually pack things away and move extra furniture in there.

I've taken a brief respite and am visiting Alex and my sister in California.  It's too early to pack many things and I hadn't seen Alex's new neighborhood so we have done many things together.  I explored the Pier's, we have had many wonderful meals in nice places, went to the Redwood forest, saw his office, did some swimming,   I've also gotten to see some friends from our Princeton days, which was a special treat.  I will now spend a few days at my sisters before heading home and into the chaos.

Then it will be packing and packing, last evenings with friends, and all the endless details.  Stay tuned for the next episode of our adventure.  I will be posting pictures so you can all experience this with us.  And if at all possible, come to visit so you can experience it with us in person!