Heimreise

I'm sitting at our kitchen table, listening to the new Weepies album, waiting for the potatoes to cook so I can have this ready for CM when he gets home from his first opening night in Vienna. The down comforters have replaced the blankets on our bed, and I'm cozy in a fleece—it's fall here! Since I last wrote, I've been to New York and back (8610 frequent flier miles…ka-ching!). I worked all week with the ragazzi of Fanciulla, which was highly entertaining. I did all my New York things: meeting up with friends, drinking too much Starbucks, taking myself to the movies, and eating breakfast alone at Le Pain Quotidien (with bridal magazines to keep me company this time). It was a good week, actually. The work was great, and for the first time it felt familiar. And despite the 95-degree weather AND hurricane, it was lovely to be in the city. Can all my gigs be just a week long, please? Enough time for me to hit up my faves, but not so much that I tally up every minute spent waiting on a subway platform.

Is it possible to be homesick for somewhere I've only lived a month? Because if I didn't know better, I would say that all week I was missing Vienna something fierce, and not only because CM and the Bossy Cat live there. Little things would remind me how much I love Vienna, like the way in Manhattan you never know when your train is going to come, so everybody has to stare down the tunnel without blinking so that they don't miss the very moment the lights of the train first appear in the distance. In Vienna, see, there's a prominent digital display that lists how many minutes until your train arrives, and the train after that. There's no guessing, there's no anxiety. Simply put, it's BETTER. And while it was refreshing to hear my first language all around me (except for all the times I was straining to speak Italian at work), I found my ears perking up when I heard snippets of German passing me on the street. One of my favorite interactions of the whole week was with a tiny red-haired German girl I met on the subway, whose day was made by my speaking just a few phrases of her own language to her.

However brief the time that we've been here, when I found out that the rehearsal schedule had been rearranged and I could fly back to Vienna early, there was no question in my mind that I was flying home. And now that I'm here, I'm sure of it.

Of course, it didn't hurt that I came home to this:



Taken right before he left for the show. He's so dreamy.