Dear Schatz,

So we finally sold our financial souls to the gods of Austrian real estate and bought ourselves a house.

Well, not exactly a house because we share walls with the neighbors. I don’t know how to translate “Reihenhaus” in English but the internet says it is a “town house” so town house it is. I like its simplicity and the fact that we are the first to live in it. I also like the fact that we can still construct some aspects of the house the way we want it and most of all, I like the fact that we are doing it together.

I still feel like I am going to pass out every time I think of our handsome credit but I must really love the house because I am prepared to close my eyes and stomach the fact that we are in debt for XX years. Everybody says it is just normal here and they also say that if we can’t afford it then who can? 90% of the adult population in Austria has some sort of a credit so it’s about time for us to join the wagon. For most people here, getting that amount of house loan is not ambitious at all—it is perfectly normal.

So,okay…I am convinced.

But doing the painting by ourselves?

That’s AMBITIOUS!

Of course, we didn’t know that. We thought, painting a house shouldn’t be so different from having a walk in the park. Hah! A walk in the park my ass! I haven’t done anything more exhausting than this. I have climbed the Simatai Great Wall in Beijing—hiked for more than 5 hours under the heat of the summer sun. It was a tough hike but painting topped that very difficult physical task.

Do you know that my I am aching from head to toe?!?

And my fingers—they feel like they grew twice their size overnight. My wedding ring feels so tight that I took it off. I will not wear it until I can’t feel the pain on my delicate fingers anymore—my poor fingers! They feel so swollen even if they look perfectly normal. I don’t mind the mess but the pain makes me wish that we had the painting done by professionals instead.

But then again, it is fun. So, maybe, it is okay that we decided to do it by ourselves.  I believe that if you work on something, you’ll value that particular thing more and that’s how I feel about this house—it is already very dear to me.  After painting a wall, I look at it and feel like a kindergarten kid who’s got three colorful stickers for her “art”. No matter how uneven the painting job I did looks like, I am proud so I think you’d understand why I wouldn’t let you repaint the walls and ceilings I painted.

It is a tough job, true, but there’s a consolation and for me that is the fact that you work twice as hard as me and that you are feeling the physical pain from manual work too.

So honestly speaking, I’d rather paint a house with you than to do the ironing alone.

Love you,
Schatzl