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 ...

I love to eat. I enjoy healthy foods but also the occasional (or frequent) unhealthy food. I gave up meat when I was 20 years old. The nightmares from my childhood upbringing on the farm and the trips to the slaughterhouse caught up with me. I never missed meat; not even for a second. However, I still eat fish and seafood. I thought I could kill a fish or a prawn if I had to, so in my eyes, it was a fair fight. I learned to love vegetarian meals when I moved to California. Healthy eating was part of the lifestyle. Salads tasted amazing and meatless pasta dishes were creative. Plus, veggie burgers were up and coming and more and more soy meat substitutes were available at the supermarket. There was soy sausage, soy 'cold cuts' and even soy minced meat. I was in vegetarian heaven. Seafood and fish were also incredibly fresh, inexpensive and readily available. I had my food-life all figured out. Even once I moved back to Europe, I learned how to navigate around the meat-heavy ...

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)

The title of this post could also have been '5 weeks vs. 2 weeks'. Once you are used to having five weeks vacation (or even six weeks when I lived in Germany) it is very hard to drop down to two weeks of paid vacation. via GIPHY How do you not go insane on only two weeks of vacation? You plan your time off work very carefully and strategically - especially when you want to do trips overseas, which for me meant 'going home' to Europe. When you live abroad, going home is essential for not feeling gutted and not suddenly crying non-stop due to homesickness. It is one of the worst emotions I have ever felt. Yes, it gets better over the years but especially in the beginning those trips back home are necessary for the expat's/emigrant's well-being. Some companies that I worked for didn't even allow its employees to take these two weeks at once. Flying to Europe for a week is possible but very exhausting. Coming back and feeling relaxed after a one week trip ...

Check it out! http://neuh.com/die-oesterreicherin-cornelia-miedler-beschreibt-ihr-leben-in-la-im-buch-lalien/

My most recent trip over Christmas and New Year’s took me to the Caribbean and Miami. One place was good for the soul the other... well, we were in South Beach - ‘nuff said. In the late summer of last year, my friend Atilla told me about a trip he was planning to Miami for New Year’s and that he wanted to take tack on a few days in the Virgin Islands - since he was in the area and all. He said he was looking for a travel buddy. My ears perked up. Travel you said? I’m in!! And so the planning started. We had evening meetings, weekly phone calls and daily emails. Where are we going? What are we gonna do? What hotel are we gonna stay at? Do you snore? Do you have some weird habits I should know about before we embark on this adventure. No? Well, we’ll see. The excitement was building. Takeoff was December 24th. Atilla was already in Miami. We met up at the airport. On my way to meeting him, I caught a glimpse of a ‘new’ destination on the departure announcement screen: Havana, Cuba. F...

I have two hours to kill before my flight to Europe. So I thought I could write a vacation anticipation blog entry.  It's my first visit home in almost two years. Usually when I go home, hardly anything has changed. Which is what I like about it. Although sometimes changes creep in that seem small to people who live there but are huge changes for me. Starbucks started to pop up all over the place in Europe a few years back - followed by CPK, Subway and the like. The Europeans embrace it like they did McDonald's and Burger King. I did not. It's not that I'm against those institutions but when I go back home, I want to see home. Not something I see in America every day. I want the original pizza, the authentic dumpling and the desserts that are specific to each region. I understand that in a globalized world, cross-national changes are inevitable. I just hope that each European city and region can remain true to their roots... So, we'll see what this trip has in store...

Since moving to the US, I encountered one of the biggest differences in comparison to Europe in the working world. The cliche term 'rat race' fully applies to the corporate engine.  When I went to university in Los Angeles, I kept hearing 'you will be overworked and underpaid for the first two years.' I always dismissed this remark. Boy, were they right! Sure, there are jobs that give you the big bucks right away (my lawyer friends do pretty well for themselves) but for Joe and Jane Average like me, it's quite difficult to survive. I currently work in the internet business and most of my co-workers came straight out of college. They work 9 hours a day and get paid next to nothing. That's why most of them still need to live with roommates. Having roommates is something that I only associate with going to college back in Europe. There is no one I know back home who has a roommate. Even my boss - who just left the company - had a roommate and she was in her 30s!! ...

For the past nine years or so, there has been a music festival in the desert near Palms Springs called Coachella. (I have no idea where that name comes from). This year, I went for the first time. My friends and I  rented a house about 10 minutes from the festival area - pool and jacuzzi included :).   The drive from L.A. to the desert took about 3 hours - 2 hours for those with a faster car. The drive is not a scenic by any stretch of the imagination. Bare hills, shopping malls, a giant casino structure, windmills... but oh was it worth it! Most of us shared a room with 2-3 other people. My roommate whacked our other roommate with a pillow when he wouldn't stop snoring... We drank Jack in the jacuzzi and BBQed us some burgers (shrimp for the non-meat eaters like me). It was a blast!  Over three days, more than 30 bands and DJs perform on 5-6 stages set up on a polo field. Some of the stages where in tents, some outdoors. The tents were all named after deserts - Gobi, Sahara, Mojav...