The Tourist Visa “The North Pole is melting so where do we go?" "Why, off to the Jungfrau, she's covered in snow. I'll call myself Rudi," the last reindeer said, "and we'll fly down to earth and just park our sled." "But what about visas? They're sticklers, I hear. We can't say we do chimneys and spread loads of good cheer." "No worries, Santa, as tourists we'll go. You'll clip your whiskers and I'll turn off my glow." "But the gifts from the North Pole, so many, so fine?" "We'll get us a laptop and send them online. Then we'll sit in the sun surrounded by snow and your beard will grow back and I'll turn on my glow." And so on the day the North Pole dissipated Santa and Rudolph to Schweiz relocated.
First published in Ex Tempore, An International Literary Journal, Volume XII – December 2001 Third prize in the 3rd Annual Poetry Competition ‘Christmas in Switzerland’ run by Bergli Books, Basel; featured at https://miombopublishing.org/2020/10/22/literary-genius-sylvia-petter-spiritedly-walks-onto-the-podium-of-fame-carrying-poetry-candle-lights/
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Vienna born Australian Sylvia Petter trained as a translator in Vienna and Brussels. Founding member of the Geneva Writers´ Group, she holds a PhD in Creative Writing from UNSW (2009). Her stories have appeared online and in print since 1995, notably in The European (UK), Thema (US), The Richmond Review, Eclectica, Reading for Real series (Canada), the anthology, Valentine´s Day, Stories of Revenge (Duckworth, UK), on BBC World Service, as well as in several charity anthologies, and flash-fiction publications.Her latest book of short fiction, Geflimmer der Vergangenheit (Riva Verlag, Germany, 2014), includes 21 stories drawn from her English-language collections, The Past Present (IUMIX, UK, 2001), Back Burning (IP Australia, Best Fiction Award 2007), and Mercury Blobs (Raging Aardvark, Australia, 2013), and translated into German by Eberhard Hain, Chemnitz. She has led flash-fiction workshops in Vienna and Gascony, France. Writing as AstridL, several erotic stories appeared in anthologies in the US (Alyson Books) and the UK (Xcite) and subsequently in her collection of 17 erotic tales, Consuming the Muse, (Raging Aardvark, Australia, 2013.) In 2014, she organized in Vienna the 13th International Conference on the Short Story in English. In March 2020, her debut novel, All the Beautiful Liars was published as a Lightning Bolt eBook by Eye & Lightning Books, UK. In July, 2020, she served on the jury for English-language flash fiction for the Vienna Poetry School’s second literary magazine to be issued in October. Sylvia works part-time at the University of Vienna in education science, and blogs on her website at http://www.sylviapetter.com where there is more on her and her writing.
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