Two weeks before leaving for Europe, The Mother-in-Law’s House was resplendent with family and friends visiting from near and far to say goodbye.
We welcomed a new house guest – Rudolph Herzog, the celebrated German filmmaker and author, who needed somewhere to stay whilst editing a new film he’s making for the BBC – and the household was tickling with excitement about his arrival; particularly The Mother-in-Law, who went out and bought a new bedside table and chamber pot for him. Because clearly Germans still piss in the 1700s. And so in between watching Rudolph’s brilliant film about nuclear warfare and introducing him to proper cheddar cheese, The Husband and I spent the final weeks before our departure garnering travel tips from him (his father, Werner, used to live in Vienna – our first destination – and his wife is from Greece, where we’ll also be heading) whilst drinking cider and smoking roll-ups for the last time with The Lodgers. (The Lodgers will have moved out of the basement and into their new home, above ground, in another part of the city by the time we return in the autumn.)
On Tuesday morning, The Mother-in-Law dropped us at the train station where we breakfasted on a final coffee and croissant with her at our favourite place, Hart’s Bakery, before beginning our journey to the continent.
We boarded our train and the children helpfully cleared a table of London-bound workers by shouting about something-or-other as The Mother-in-Law waved to us through the window as we pulled away down the track. I felt a twinge of sadness leaving, unlike any feeling I have had before when going away, as if something may change whilst we are gone.
The journey was fast and fun. We switched trains at Paddington and half an hour later arrived at Heathrow airport, where the travelators, escalators and enormous flying elephants draw out everybody’s inner child. Even the grumpiest of parents. We ate boiled eggs and bendy carrot sticks sitting on a window ledge, as the great jumbos trundled across the tarmac as we waited to board ours.
The flight to Vienna was short, thankfully, as I spent most of the journey on my hands and knees retrieving microscopal Playmobil hair pieces from under the seat in front. And when I wasn’t showing the other passengers my tuchus I was spilling Bloody Mary on them; the Viennese business man in the crisp white shirt, tapping away on his laptop and phone, was far from pleased when his entire sleeve was showered in spicy tomato juice. Although he was gracious enough when I offered to pay his dry-cleaning bill whilst mopping at his arm interchangeably with a snotty tissue and the hem of my smelly shirt. Looking back, he probably didn’t want to take my money for fear of contracting MESS.
We left England in the sunshine and touched down in Austria in the pouring rain. But it didn’t matter. This was a new place, full of new words and new pictures and new things to see. And once we collected our family-sized backpack and pushchair, we headed out into the wet Viennese night and into the car of Franz, our host for the next week.