March 5, 2018 Snow, Ice and once more waiting for good news

March 5, 2018March 23, 2018 Natascha and the Cats12 Comments

Hey lovely readers! Here’s the latest of us trying to get married in Graz:

At the moment, we’re waiting and hoping for the best again. Since the registrar requires a certified translation by a court translator for each of Ralph’s documents, and Apostilles (Legalisation) for each of the same documents, we had to try and get that sorted out.

The translations are underway now, and hopefully, we’ll get them back by the end of this week.

For the Apostilles (Legalisation), we had to send Ralph’s original documents off to the UK via courier. We had to fill out an application form online for it and pay. The next morning (Friday), I had the documents shipped to the UK by courier. Now we can only wait and hope that the documents get legalised and that there won’t be any bureaucratic hurdles. If everything goes as it should, they will send the documents with each Apostille back to us by the end of this week.

And if all of that worked out, the last thing to hope for is that the registrar won’t come up with yet another requirement for certified certificates and/or translations.

This is, or should be the last hurdle now and according to the registrar, we can get married as soon as we have the translations and Apostilles. Which would be, or could be next week even! I’m not counting on that though. Until we have everything back and the registrar accepts it all without another request for certificates, I won’t get my hopes up too much.

Ralph and I will finally be able to relax and just enjoy everything after all of that. I will have my mind in the right place again to blog normally, be more cheerful and communicate more with all of you lovely readers.

As for everything else: It’s March, and like almost everywhere in Europe it doesn’t look or feel like it at all. Here in Graz, Austria, the last couple of weeks have been bitterly cold with nights and mornings temperatures between -18°C (-0.4°F) and -15°C (5°F). During the day, the temperatures didn’t go above -5°C (23°F), often it was even colder. We had lots of snow as well.

March 1, 2018 09-58-58 — Icicles everywhere.

The temperatures increased to around freezing point over the weekend, but it’s been very foggy and overcast.

This was Sunday, the view over the city from the Schlossberg webcam. Today, it looked exactly the same…

It’s mostly for Ralph and the cats that I wish for more warmth. Although it’s lovely and warm in our apartment, and the snow looks beautiful, it’s no fun going outside like that. Ralph is cold a lot more easily than I am.

But even if it’s -100° and raining icicles, Ralph and I will go out to get married if we get our appointment soon! 😂

For now, we’re staying in most of the time. We enjoy being together all the time, every second of it.

Murli is happy, and so are Sonic and Samantha. I’m really looking forward to making our balcony pretty and cat safe, and the windows too. Will be lovely, for the summer breeze to come through the open windows and the open balcony door. All of us will love it!

There will be nice walks in the nearby park, where we can see a bit of the sunset.

March 1, 2018 4:38pm — This is the park near our home.

I will do my best to reply to all your sweet comments. Shame on me… It’s normally the first thing I do in the day as soon as I have time. Hopefully, things will get back to normal soon, once we can relax and all the worrying about bureaucrats is over.

Thank you so much, for always being so kind and leaving such wonderful comments on my blog.

The cats, Ralph and I love you all!

Murli watching the birds from the bedroom window

Sonic on the floor, Samantha on the counter and Murli on the washing machine. They all just love to hang out in the kitchen.

Murli in a cupboard in the kitchen

Murli really loves to hang out on the washing machine recently

Everything · Murli the cat · Pictures · Places

April 6, 2017 This mornings view from Castle Hill and our Mountains

April 6, 2017April 6, 2017 Natascha and the Cats2 Comments

Just thought I’d post todays view from the castle hill webcam to show you today’s weather and view. It cooled down a bit, and a cold wind is blowing, because the mountains got a little bit of snow again. It snowed down to 800m (2624 ft) and our city lies in a valley, at a height ranging from 350m (1148 ft) to 380m (1247 ft).

It’s overcast with a little bit of sun here and there. Right now it’s 10°C (50°F), but it feels much cooler due to the chilly wind. We might still get some rain later.

Here’s the view from 10am:

Since the webcam can’t look behind itself, due to the castle hill rising up higher behind it, here are some photos I took from up there in April of 2013. The mountains you can see in the back are just the lower ones, but they have snow on them, just like they do now. The mountains are all part of the alps, which rise up higher and higher behind the mountains that are visible. But the mountains are not visible from that position, because there’s another valley in between the snowy ones and the next ones.

There’s still more city to the right, but I don’t have pictures of it yet.

MountainsStyria — Source of this map: Von NordNordWest – Eigenes Werk, usingOpenStreetMap dataSRTM30 v.2 data, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30094311

The map above shows my state of Styria. The purple arrow to the bottom right just shows where north is exactly. The other smaller arrow points into the direction of the snowy mountains you see in the photos above the map. If you click on the map, it will be larger. Like I said, there’s another smaller valley behind the snowy mountains. After that small valley, there are the higher mountains. As it shows, the mountains just get higher and higher. All of the mountainous region you can see are the alps. All of it. It’s VAST. And beautiful ☺️ The highest mountain in my state is at 2995m (9826ft) and it’s called the “Dachstein” which literally translated means “Roofstone”.

Here’s an english Wikipedia article about the “Dachstein” (LINK) and a list of the highest mountains in Austria (LINK).

Just thought I’d post about it, because I was talking about mountains with some furends 😺

Murli wants her pic in the post too, just because she’s cute 😂😸

Everything · Murli the cat · Pictures

January 22, 2017 Sunday

January 21, 2017January 22, 2017 Natascha and the Cats5 Comments

January 22 2017 7:56am 04

January 22 2017 7:56am 03

January 22 2017 7:56am 02

January 22 2017 7:56am 01

Another chilly morning, after a clear and cold night. It was shortly before 8am when I took these Ice Flower photos from the kitchen window. It was -13°C / 8.6°F at that time. Murli always sleeps under my blanket all night when it’s that cold lol. The heat is on at all times, but I understand she likes it snuggly warm during her sleep.

From the webcam on castlehill, the view over the city shortly before and during sunrise was really beautiful again.

January 22 2017 7:30am 02

January 22 2017 7:30am 01

The first picture is the view to the East at 7:30am. If East would be the 15 minute point on a clock, the sun comes up at the 20 minute point. The second picture is the view to the West.

January 22 2017 8:30am 02

January 22 2017 8:30am 01

These two pictures were from 8:30am.

Murli and I are both feeling really well! The migraine free phase is still going due to the continuous cold weather. According to the forecsat, the temperatures might go down to -18°C / -0.5°F over night❄❄❄ Depends if it stays clear, or if there will be fog towards the morning. With fog it doesn’t cool out that much.

Murli has continued having her boxpawties all week lol. This one is from yesterday, Caturday. We now have another version, which is the sidebox… She loves running through the “tunnel” that’s created in that way, and she’s had a nap in there this morning as well.

January 21 2017 10pm 01

January 21 2017 10pm 02

So I’ll leave you with that short update, and hope everyone is doing well. Purrs & Pawhugs furends!🐾 Have a lovely Sunday!

Everything · Pictures · Places

January 10, 2017 This mornings snowy view from Castlehill

January 10, 2017January 12, 2017 Natascha and the Cats

This mornings view from the Schlossberg (Castlehill) webcam at 8:30am❄️❄️❄️ It’s foggy + low clouds, so you can’t even see very far. It started snowing again this morning😸

Everything · Murli the cat · Pictures

November 10, 2016 at 5:30pm – Migraine Day

November 10, 2016 Natascha and the Cats1 Comment

Today I woke up with a MASSIVE migraine… It was terrible. It’s been a while since I last had one this horrible. I took my migraine meds instantly, as I always have them beside my bed for exactly that reason. Then I put on my sleeping mask to block out the light. As even the bit of dim light was still too irritating through my closed eyes. Then I just laid there, trying not to throw up and trying to remain calm and lay still, despite the intense pain hammering in my brain and behind my left eye. Poor Murli just remained still herself and didn’t get up to meow for breakfast. It’s amazing, because if I feel really really bad, she notices, and just looks at me with her big eyes and might just make her cute little “purr-meew”. She’ll just wait calmly and patiently near me until I get up.

I fell asleep thankfully, so when I woke up agin an hour later, the medicine had already done it’s job. Those triptans are just really a blessing! Instead of running around with a bad migraine for 3 days, it’s over after an hour. But a migraine that bad will still have an impact on me for the rest of the day. My senses remained sensitive to noise, light and smells all day and they still are. Also tired… I already took a nap in the early afternoon, but I’m already sleepy again.

On to other things… Murli is doing well and isn’t scratching. The redness is gone from her skin now. And I’m going to put some medicine on later when she wakes up from her little nap.

Murli and her fav dish: chicken breast (from yesterday night). But she’s getting the rest of it later ;-)

Yesterday, after the fog cleared, we got sunny weather again, and today as well. But it remained relatively cold. The view was amazing again from the webcam, yesterday and today as well.

From yesterday morning: