Miss Euro Blogger - Bursting the Bubble

My husband and I decided that for this year’s summer vacation, we were not getting on a long-haul flight to visit a far away country. Instead, we decided to take a road trip. We live in Vienna, Austria, that, due to its central location in Europe is the perfect hub for European travel. Earlier this year, a friend told me how much she enjoyed her trip through the south of France a few years ago, where she was able to see the famous lavender fields. We sat down and stalked her Facebook profile to look for her photo album documenting that trip. Once we found it, the decision was clear: that’s where we want to go! We started with the planning and decided to never drive more than six hours each day in order to avoid getting tired. The entire trip was going to be two weeks with the first week focusing on hunting the lavender fields and the second week being lazy on the Cote d’Azur. Therefore, we decided to have the following set stopps along the way, where we were going to book ...

Here are a few teaser photos from my recent trip to the famous lavender fields in the south of France. If you haven't seen them yet in person, put them on your list as a must-see in late June through mid-Juli. Enjoy! All photo rights belong to my husband (and some to my selfie stick)

Nice is a lovely, touristy beach town in Southern France. Graz is Austria's second largest city and very quaint. Santa Monica is the representation of the California lifestyle. I've lived in two of those places and visted one several times as a tourist. And all three have one thing in common: they all were locations where vehicles were used as weapons. The incident in Santa Monica was the one that made me realize that this can happen anywhere. This is how I experienced it:   I heard the fluttering for the first time while sitting in front of my computer to do some research for a paper for college. It was around lunchtime on a regular sunny summer Wednesday in Santa Monica. The noise grew louder and louder by the second. I looked out the window in my home office but didn’t see anything. I walked into the living room where the windows were facing the city center. There, I saw the source of the fluttering noise. A cluster of several helicopters was hovering o...

I don't know what to write about these days. The repeat of the presidential election in Austria? The impending whacky presidential election in the U.S.? The increase of hatred and race-related crime in Europe and the U.S.? Brexit? Each topic seems to be too political to be discussed on what I consider to be a light-hearted blog. From a marketing point of view, I want my readers to feel good after leaving my page. I don't want them to feel down or reminded of how f-ed up the world is at the moment.  Image from Pinterest.com In the midst of all the 'heaviness of life' is the whimsicality of the Euro Cup finale playing on TV as I write this. Who will win? Portugal or France? Do be honest: I don't care. And I am sure a lot of other people also don't care but they dive into the unimportant distraction that is soccer. And why not? Does it make us bad people that we are not glued to the TV thinking of all the injustice that goes on in the world? I don’t think s...

The horrible terror attacks in Paris last Friday took many of us back to that fateful September day in 2001. Most of us were not directly affected by the attacks (luckily) but it became obvious that the world changed that day... --> I moved to the U.S. on September 21st, 2001. Ten days after 9/11. It was an odd feeling to move to a country at war. Growing up in Austria and also living in Germany for a few years, I had a certain ‘idea’ of what war meant. Elderly neighbors and family members had been witnesses of World War II. I grew up in a house that had – as was required by law – a bunker you can go to in case of an air raid. Sure, my parents used it to stock potatoes and it had no door – but what was required was there. What did it mean when America was at war? Not much for the regular citizen who didn’t have a family member in the armed forces. Only when I turned on the news was I reminded of the war. The day I arrived at the Los Angeles airport, LAX, the day I arr...