It’s getting closer!

Well folks, the birch trees are turning a golden yellow and our days have brisk beginnings indicating autumn has arrived in Moscow! That means, gulp, that December 13th and the arrival of our little girl is right around the corner. We had a wonderful warm summer here in Moscow. The city was much more accessible on the weekends with the Muscovites abandoning the city for their dachas in the countryside and all the restaurants opened their summer patios for breezy dining. We took refreshing weekend trips to Suzdal, a small rural city about 200 kilometers from Moscow and St. Petersburg for the white nights (see photos below).
Vince and I celebrated our anniversary with a long babymoon weekend in Vienna, Austria over Labor Day. We rented an apartment a few metro stops from the city’s center and spent three days touring around the city, the museums, the flea market, the shops, and the woods and vineyards in the hills above the city. It was my first time back in the city in over ten years and while it was refreshing to find my German had not suffered too greatly in the interim, it was altogether too short a trip. The Austrians were celebrating their mushroom harvests with dishes featuring freshly picked chanterelles throughout the city and the delicious opening of the year’s new wine and cider, ‘most’ and ‘sturm’. We spent hours chatting with local vendors at the city flea market on Saturday and attended a Mozart mass at the Augustiner Kirche on Sunday before heading out for an afternoon hike in the vineyards. Monday we toured the design museum and caught up on all the western shopping we have been missing in Russia. With so much left to see and do in Vienna, we’re hoping it or a nearby city shows up as one of our possibilities on the bid list this winter so they can send us back to DC for Vince to learn German before heading to post.
Now in the home stretch in Moscow, we are busy preparing for my departure on October 22 and Vince’s departure about a month later. I’ll be traveling almost immediately to Boston for work meetings for several days before setting up home and office in Atlanta in preparation for the baby. It looks like work can keep me busy right up to delivery, which is a great relief. My knitting skills leave much to be desired, but with a phone and a computer I’m good to go!
We hope we’ll have a chance to see many of you while we’re home. I’ll be carrying my telephone with me back to the States, so you can all continue to use our 703-521-6996 line to contact us throughout our time in Atlanta.