Lonely this Christmas

There I was last week, surfing around on that new fangled interweb thing when I started to realise how lucky I was. I was able to spend the holiday season with friends and family in London, although I really should have been here in Vienna (I guess I'm also lucky 'cos I've got a lovely boss who let me spend Christmas out there). It then dawned on me that there are probably lots of other people, not just in Vienna, but in cities all over the world, who are away from family, in a strange country, who would probably be spending chirstmas alone (which really can't be that nice). Wouldn't it be nice if the interweb-net thing that I'm surfing could bring these people to gether, so that these people, just like you and me, can spend chirstmas in the company of other people who are in the same boat.

This thought prompted me to do a search for "Expats in Vienna". I came across a pretty cool website, not just one that brings expats together at christmas time, but one that is a forum for expats in Vienna. It turns out that that this website has about 40-50 active members, and they tend to meet up fairly regularly. Reading through some of the posts in the forum, it appears that these guys do lots of fun things like mountain biking, skiing and forigein holidays as well as other normal things like going to the cinema and partying and drinking. Great - just what I need - a bunch of people that I can hang out with when i feel like it, and more importantly, when I'm in the country !

I joined Vienna Expats (VE) and I went out with them on Friday night to Pointers (a bar in the centre of the city). It was really strange to meet some of the people. I felt I already knew some of them, having read a lots of the discussions, thoughts and humour of some of them. It was really cool to have form an idea of the individual Chracters of the people on VE and then to go and meet some of them in person. I struggle with putting together names and faces at the best of times, but add a handle into the mix as well and that can really complicate things! They were a really nice bunch of people and I had a really fun night. Some of the highlights included getting my arse kicked at darts (by a bunch of girls!), playing table football and ending up at my usual Salsa haunt for a but of the old 123, 567 !

All in all, a great night ! Some of us are going bowling this afternoon - I'm really looking forward to it !

Thanks VE for helping to make sure people like me aren't lonely this Christmas.!