Phone Call To Rita

At 2:15 p.m. yesterday afternoon (January 1, 2022), I spoke (in English, in German, and in Italian) on the telephone with my Austrian cousin Rita at her house in Dornbirn, Austria, to wish her a Frohes Neues Jahr !!! (Happy New Year !!!), as per a decades-long tradition.

Actually, I attempted the actual tradition, but it was actually a day later than the actual tradition was supposed to be. Let me actually explain.

I twice attempted to call Rita, once at 6:15 p.m. and again at 6:45 p.m. (Eastern Time) on December 31, 2021. The time in Austria (Central European Time) is six hours later than here in southeastern Florida, so it was already the next day and the next year there. I reached Rita's answering machine twice, but I only left a message the first time.

My father started this tradition in the early 1980s by calling Rita's husband Hans from our home on Long Island, New York, every year as Hans and Rita celebrated with friends and family members in their home in western Austria. When my dad passed away in 1997, I continued the tradition. I had been calling Hans from my various homes in southeastern Florida since I moved from New Jersey in 1998. Sadly, Hans passed away in 2013, so I have been call Rita directly since then.

(Hans is Austrian. Rita is Italian. To be honest, the only Italian word that I spoke to Rita was "Ciao.")

Since the early 1980s, I have visited my many Austrian cousins across Austria seven times and have gone skiing with them in the Austrian Alps on several of those trips.

In the early 1980s, I think it was 1983, I celebrated New Year's Eve with my father at Hans and Rita's house on the side of a snowy mountain in Dornbirn, Austria, in Vorarlberg, the westernmost Austrian province, with several other Austrian cousins and a few of their Austrian friends. At midnight, we watched the fireworks from above the city.

On December 26, we had flown overnight from New York to Zürich, Switzerland, and then took the train east for about 90 minutes to Dornbirn. We returned home on January 8 after skiing for a few days at a nearby resort in Lech, Austria.

I remember the wonderfully subdued feeling on New Year's Eve as we gently raised our Champagne-filled glasses and quietly spoke the words "Zum Wohl" (a toast which literally translates from German as "to the benefit") and "Prost" (meaning "Cheers") as the clock struck midnight in their living room. We then went outside their home to watch the fireworks explode below us in an array of colors. It is my most memorable New Year's Eve celebration.

On April 10, 2005, my wife and I shared Champagne with Hans and Rita in their house with two more of my Austrian cousins to celebrate our wedding engagement. I proposed marriage on a snowy mountaintop around 11 a m. in Bregenz, Austria, with Hans and Rita nearby. That two-week trip across the northern part of the country, visiting my Austrian cousins in Dornbirn, in Lustenau, in Salzburg, and in Grinzing near Vienna, was the last time I was in Austria.

https://youtu.be/APG_1KSiims