I am so back home...

Temperatures have gone down, wind is up. I'm definitely back home.

Vienna felt absolutely grand. Not only is it - or certainly seems, not least
as my favorite haunts are spread out a bit - quite a bit bigger than Riga, I
also noticed how much more international it is. Stockholm already was a lot
more international, but Vienna, now more than ever, feels truly
cosmopolitan. I heard more different tongues, both of varieties of German
and of truly other languages here in a few hours, than ever in Latvia.

Being recognized and welcomed back by some many people in Parndorf (which is
40 km from Vienna, but the way many people from here work in Vienna, as I
studied and study in Vienna, to me it's like a suburb), I once again feel
more at home here than I did before.
Already, it had a great side-effect: The local branch of the Raiffeisen-Bank
will be getting my bank account, for they actually have something that is
customer service, whereas the Bank Austria where I had my account for all of
12 years now proved to be totally inflexible, as if I couldn't be trusted to
pay up. Well, fortunately I can still change without having too many set
payments. My luck, and the local bank's.

Currently, I'm watching a TV program (on German station 3Sat, which is quite
like the American PBS) about the Viennese Ringstrasse, the grand street
encircling the inner city, built on the area where the city walls used to
be. As always after being abroad for a while, I notice how many places I
have actually never been (inside the Opera, for example), and how much
history we have here.
Riga got me to realize how much I am used to places having Roman roots (Riga
was only founded after 1200). In the USA, I don't have problems with it
being different, I don't think that it's "all so new, without history" as
some always say - but to have that in Europe...

Well, I'd still love to go abroad again after this summer, finally make it
to East Asia.
Still, if I knew this would be the case, I think I should try to do some
Vienna tourism.
Then again, I also haven't yet managed to make it to Paris, for example...