I said I had a bit of news, so here it is. Now there is a saying in consulting circles that you never believe something is going to happen (a project, or a trip) until you are sitting on the plane there. Bearing that in mind, Laura and I have two bits of news

The first bit is the relatively unsurprising (at this stage) one that Laura is pregnant. All going well we should have a screaming, pooing, attention seeking, sprogling who’s mind we can warp come next May. The second bit of news is that the child will not be born in Dublin. Part of the reason for this is that any child born in Holles Street Maternity Hospital would of course be a Dub, and as a pair of good Munster people that just isn’t on. Instead we are planning to move from Dublin. When I tell people this they automatically assume we are going back to Laura’s home city, Cork. We are not going there, or to my home city of Limerick. Instead we are off to Austria in January. I bet you didn’t see that one coming!

What is happening is that I am taking up a new job with my employer, and I will be moving to Vienna (which is the HQ of the company’s Central Europe market) for two years, give or take. That means new country, new job, and new baby. I think we have stacked up the challenges there for 2010.

Laura and I were in Vienna on Thursday and Friday to look for a place to live. Our timing was great, as the city showed off it’s Winter best with snow and the full Christmas show. It won’t be like that all the time, but I believe it is great in the summer as well. We didn’t find a place to live, but we have decided on what type of place (old style vs new) and where (one of the inner districts). Hopefully by the time I start work there early in January we will have something decided on. This is going to be a huge adventure but one we couldn’t pass up, and we are both very excited about, and looking forward to everything 2010 has in store for us.

Posting will continue where with stories of how we are getting on with the new sprog, and the new country. I do need to see if I will change the name of this site to berg.net

For now I will leave you a few pictures of the city.

They were selling Christmas trees every where (imagine on Grafton street). We loved the small (<1m) ones.

Vienna has over 30 Christmas markets. You have to stop and look at the stalls, and sample the Glühwein. It’s what I would call a guillotine drink – it will take your fucking head off.

This is me enjoying the aforementioned tipple. Two were enough to make you feel really, really wonderful.

As I said everything was decorated for Christmas, and we got several centimetres of snow. It was bitterly cold as well (-11°C with the windchill).

When in Rome Vienna, you visit the famous cafes, and try their kuchen. We dropped into the Sacher hotel, though we had our cake in the Demel Cafe. Also excellent.