All right. In the immortal words of Kanye West, who actually may be God - or actually, in the words of Chris Martin (that's twice now I've typed it as "Christ Martin"), who sings the chorus, and that may be the best thing he's done since getting hitched - "do you think about me now and then? cos I'm coming home again." Really, all that past sentence meant to say was this Kanye song is incredible, and so is the Fantastichen Vier, the biggest German rap group in Europe, and so was the Bosnia-Herzegovina entry in last night's Eurovision spectacular, which we toasted to with tall cans of Ottakringer, a bag of pretzels, following another amazing Suzanne dinner of sloppy joes, because they taste like America. These sentences are going out the door but that's because I've been out the door, noon to dusk, I've been doing, I've been in the mountains and the streets! Or in a dorm room watching the Eurovision finale. And let me just say, Bosnia-Herzegovina got robbed, ala John Brown on the White Rapper Show. Ya feel me?
Weirdly, watching Eurovision really put everything in perspective; lately we've been the exploring expatriates, courtesy of another long weekend (Austria loves random Thursday holidays) and the finally improved weather - it was winter all week, gray skies and glum, but the sun finally crept back out and it turned into Spring again. And Europe - there's a helluva lot in Europe. If you've never seen Eurovision - and who would, as it's been pretty irrelevant ever since ABBA - it's basically American Idol, only for the ENTIRETY of Europe, simultaneously a geography lesson (Moldova? Serbia? AZERBAIJAN!?), dance party, and hysterical - every ridiculous bizarre foreign music you've ever seen on Youtube times 10 and broadcast live. Sadly, the majority of contestants had been raised on a steady of diet of Horrible American Pop Music (the tart from Greece took a page straight from Christina Aguelleiaerhhowdoyouspellthat's book with "My secret combination/it's a mystery for you/use your imagination/I'm not easy but I'm true" - apparently her bidnez comes with a Master Lock), but there were a few standouts: Azerbaijan had some devil-angel theme going on with lots of glass-shattering falsetto, France was one bearded dude and his bearded, female back-up singers, Spain was every song you hate to love, and Bosnia created some power-pop, indie-fied anthem though the performance was way too weird to win. Ireland didn't make it to the finals, but they entered a turkey puppet screaming obscenities and basically mocking the whole absurd thing. Basically, if you have a few hours to waste, search for any of the entrants on Youtube and enjoy.
But things have been on an up, and so have I. Got some good news on Wednesday which I won't yet publish (winkity wink, har har) or make public or publicize because it's not finalized, but we went out to celebrate, knowing we had no class the next day, and the evening could have easily been titled, "Writers Talking About Writing When They've Been Drinking." Because it is amazing, to have two giant beers with your Schnitzel dinner, to go wandering into Vienna, end up in the smoky Cafe Hawelka where's there's no menu but plenty more beer to have, where we three CreWri majors had one of those winding, exhaustive conversations that make the whole "I will never have a real job" part of majoring in what you love seem like a minor side effect. It was grand, just like Vienna, and maybe we overdid it a little and I stole a bottle of bubbly water, but it was pretty great nonetheless.
Thursday and Friday, I crammed on my new-found hat (which makes me look like a newsie but keeps weird men from saying things at me which is beginning to get pretty goddamned annoying and chokingly ironic) and Annie and I took an amble that went all over this pretty little city. Again, I always forget what a simple panacea just Having A Walk is, especially when they day's nice and you have nothing better to do. Beers at the stand-by Zwoelf Apsotlkeller, a restaurant in some medieval brick-arched cellar, visits to the Kriminal Museum, the Butterfly House, and, of course, new Aida Cafes. We wandered into a district we'd simply overlooked in our previous walkings - and Vienna, though it has too many people for me, though it's code of living is a little still and formal, though it's weather is unpredictable - it's a pretty great place, if you go out with your feet and look around. On the same street, a stone's throw from the MuseumsQuartier where hip twenty-somethings flock on all nights of the week to drink grocery-store beers in front of museums holding priceless works of Klimt and Schiele, there's a clock museum, a Polaroid store, and a furniture dealer with an old dog inside the door who will let you pet him without attracting the attention of the owner. We capped off the evening with a trip to the Volkstheater to see ,,Der Besuch Der Alten Damen" - a horrible, disturbing play Annie and I had to read in Deutsch 140 - but for 4 Euros, it was a steal - plus, the theater itself is all Austrian Grandeur, just like the cafe across the street where the Ham&Cheese Sandwich I had (a standard on any Austrian menu) was served under chandeliers.
So the weekend proper was dedicated to being out in the wilderness, with the necessary exception of Eurovision. Saturday, we took an U-Bahn, a bus, and a lot of steps up to the Kirche Am Steinhof, a church built by Jugendstil genius Otto Wagner (Jugendstil being the German name for the super-decorative, turn-of-the-century stuff that Mucha, Klimt, et al did - Art Nouveau in French - basically it's really, really pretty and I love it) on the grounds of a sanatorium. And the church was certainly worth the trek, though it was 6 Euros to go in, so we settled for walking around the exterior and then took off a random path that, in the end, led to a vista of the surrounding hills. And that's what's important, that's what I always forget - take a path, just a little dirt lane where no one's looking, and you'll end up in a field of wheat-weeds that reach to your waist, with the foothills of the Alps in front of you. Incredible, really, and so much better than a photograph or a description, because, like the meadow I found in Schwaebs oh-so-long-ago, so much of the moment was in the actual moment, the actual turning around and seeing, emerging from the trees into the great wide open. Ride the 41 to the end of the line on a whim and you'll find Narnia. Take the long walk around the Ring Strasse and you can wash your feet in the fountain in front of the Russian Soldier's Memorial. And even when nothing really happens - you don't find any actual wild boars at the Lanzier Zoo, even though you walk a few miles and lounge on a hillside overlooking the city, again in the thick of the trees - things still happen, because we didn't see any boars, didn't find anything more exotic than bilingual children being yelled at in both German and English for leaving their shoes in the grass ("Martin, we're leaving. You can stay here, but at night the animals come out and they are very hungry. Now where are your shoes?"), but the sheer happy exhaustion of being Out and About made our meager dinner of whatever we had left in our cupboards taste so much better.
If you asked me how it was going, I can finally answer beyond the usual, "Oh, it's going." Because it's going, and it's going quickly, but it's going pretty good. More importantly, I'm going - eventually home, but that's an eventually I'm not counting towards anymore. And that's what's good with me. What's good with you?
25 May 2008
18 May 2008
into the blue again.
Preface: Sorry about the length. I suggest getting some coffee or something, because you can do that in America! Drink cheap, crappy coffee all day long! It's glorious!
Time does funny things in Europe. Yesterday, I tried to update this thing, and ended up with a paragraph trying to rationalize my very third-graderly, first-time-at-sleepaway-camp feeling of plain ole Homesickness, because that's what it is, and it's raging right now, as constant as a cold, and I can't really explain it or excuse it. I'm trying my best to keep it at bay, but there's no real remedy, and it does creep up on me and keep me quiet - that, or I've run out of things to say after nearly five months abroad. Yet another reason to look forward to being back, where I can start stories with, "Well in Vienna" rather than "Back in Tulsa/Hamilton/America in General." I'm flying home a week earlier than anticipated, though, thanks to some finagling with STA Travel and my father - originally, I'd booked my flight for the 8th of July, naively thinking I'd be smitten with being broke and bored and exhausted all the time and want a week extra to travel, and I'd landed on a decision for where to spend that week, which, as time went on, was becoming more and more daunting and dreadful to me. Hamburg, Germany, though - where I could speak the language, see My Morning Jacket, go to the North Sea in the daylight, and get back to Frankfurt easily for my flight out - and then my father, after I told him the idea, innocently asked, "What about coming home?"
What followed was one of the most awful experiences I've had here: literally ransacking my desk to find my flight information (I should take a picture, the collection I have here on my desk is pretty incredible - dried flowers, either picked or purchased, books and letters and doodles, Polaroids I never pinned to the wall, the stray Euro cent), drafting nervous emails and waiting for the response, running back and forth to the kitchen for a dozen cigarettes and not seeing anything but the interior of Delores, my 92 Oldsmobile, the green walls of my room, the view down Erie Avenue - literally blinded with the hope of home, equally ashamed that I was so gung-ho to get the hell out of here, as if this were Nam and not, well, Vienna. And, initially, the answer was it's impossible, but I did some digging and felt pretty low for a few days, until my dad writes me, "Hey, Spud, success. See you on the first."
So, in short, I'll probably be able to re-emerge from the womb of my home by Independence Day. Someone arrange a crazy party and we'll get drunk and set off fireworks on somebody else's property.
In the meantime, we've had tests. Stupid, impossible tests, about Austrian History, and rather than pay attention in class, I drew comics or remembered the last time I heard the name "Metternich" and "The Congress of Vienna," which was back in Mr. Wheelah's room at BTDub, and then I'd think about how good a roll from the Booker T cafeteria sounded right about now - basically, I was completely unprepared, and felt pretty shitty afterwards. But, again, my father, the Voice of All Reason and Wisdom and Dadliness, emailed me to say, "Chin up, sport. Go out and take a walk. Eat some struesel."
Which was adorable because there's no such thing as 'streusel.'
And, as a disclaimer, my mom is also awesome but she does not understand The Internet and when she emails me IT IS IN ALL CAPS AND HAS SUBJECT LINES LIKE "JUST WANTED TO SAY HI!" AND THEN I FEEL LIKE SHE IS SHOUTING AT ME EVEN THOUGH SHE IS NOT ALSO HER SYNTAX IS A LOT LIKE THIS.
So I did as Pops prescribed: Took a walk. I enjoy walk-taking. So does Penny. This is why we are best friends. Actually, I started off with some coffee and scribbling and just got so damn down that the walk was accidental, a desperate idea of going anywhere solely for the sake of going. But it turned out to be the best thing I could've done. The Guertel follows the outer ring of the city, where the U6 line runs aboveground, easily demarcated by this giant brick wall with all these nice arches and shady lanes on either side - it's hard to describe. But I got turned around, which is rare for me because I've got a compass in my head (probably from growing up in a city where streets either run N-S or E-W) and just kept walking, breaking in the 5 Euro sandals Rob and I found in some cozy, Turkish-run courtyard flea market right off of Mariahilferstrasse, the shopping, neon-lit, consumer-crazy street of Vienna (where, incidentally, we saw Iron Man on Friday and it was a lot more awesome than it should have been - robots! I love robots!). Along the Guertel actually feels like a neighborhood; it's easy to forget there's such busy-ness as Mariahilferstrasse just a Strassenbahn ride away - and it reminded me of walking around Hyde Park in Chicago, exactly a year ago.
So I saw some trees down a street and literally ran into a gigantic park. Vienna, for all of my complaints, knows parks, and I like parks. So does Penny. This is probably why we are best friends. But Penny is in America, and Austrian dogs are insanely obedient, so the dog-runs in Vienna are about three times the size of American ones and the dogs usually clamber all over each other while the owners just stand there, unless the dog is a very old golden retriever, in which case the dog will wander over to where I am sitting and let me pet it for a quarter of an hour. And then some other dogs will decide that underneath my bench is the best place for their love-making. So then I was sitting there, petting one nice dog, while two others dry-humped beneath me. STUDY ABROAD WHOOOOO.
But then! The quest continued! Past the Vienna ICE BAR (it exists! capes! ice! bar!), and then I boarded the 41 Line to ride it to the end, and basically found Narnia. If you're looking for Narnia, and aren't we all, it's at the end of the 41 Strassenbahn line, in Poetzleindorf, where there are random, eerie statues in the trees, where there are deer running through the woods or in the fields of wheat-grass, and if you go at dusk, it's silent save for crickets and the occasional owl. Beyond beautiful, and so quiet and nice and that's all I could think as I walked around: I found Narnia, and why are there so many mosquitoes in Narnia.
And, to add adventure to more adventure, last night was Vienna's annual Life Ball, this huge, gay-tastic celebration to raise AIDS awareness, and basically the ragingest, craziest, themeiest party in all of Central Europe. The theme this year was "Landing on Planet Life Ball," so here are all these nutty Austrians spray-painted silver wearing antennae, in addition to an elaborate fashion show where aliens danced with ballerinas, some silver cowboy rapped in German, midgets on motorcycles, lots of models wearing very little, psychedelic unitards and dancers pretending to be on acid, pirates and pole-dancers. I'm not making this up - it was insane, though the crowd was too thick to be anywhere near the action, so we watched the show from the jumbo TV set up in front of the actual happenings - but, if you count that as "seeing live," which I do, I also saw the following list of celebrities: Alan Cumming, Kim Catrall (she spoke German!), Naomi Campbell, a very bizarre Sharon Stone (possibly a robot?), AND DEBBIE HARRY. And a lot of drag queens.
Plus tonight we're cooking Breakfast for Dinner!!!! Okay the end.
Time does funny things in Europe. Yesterday, I tried to update this thing, and ended up with a paragraph trying to rationalize my very third-graderly, first-time-at-sleepaway-camp feeling of plain ole Homesickness, because that's what it is, and it's raging right now, as constant as a cold, and I can't really explain it or excuse it. I'm trying my best to keep it at bay, but there's no real remedy, and it does creep up on me and keep me quiet - that, or I've run out of things to say after nearly five months abroad. Yet another reason to look forward to being back, where I can start stories with, "Well in Vienna" rather than "Back in Tulsa/Hamilton/America in General." I'm flying home a week earlier than anticipated, though, thanks to some finagling with STA Travel and my father - originally, I'd booked my flight for the 8th of July, naively thinking I'd be smitten with being broke and bored and exhausted all the time and want a week extra to travel, and I'd landed on a decision for where to spend that week, which, as time went on, was becoming more and more daunting and dreadful to me. Hamburg, Germany, though - where I could speak the language, see My Morning Jacket, go to the North Sea in the daylight, and get back to Frankfurt easily for my flight out - and then my father, after I told him the idea, innocently asked, "What about coming home?"
What followed was one of the most awful experiences I've had here: literally ransacking my desk to find my flight information (I should take a picture, the collection I have here on my desk is pretty incredible - dried flowers, either picked or purchased, books and letters and doodles, Polaroids I never pinned to the wall, the stray Euro cent), drafting nervous emails and waiting for the response, running back and forth to the kitchen for a dozen cigarettes and not seeing anything but the interior of Delores, my 92 Oldsmobile, the green walls of my room, the view down Erie Avenue - literally blinded with the hope of home, equally ashamed that I was so gung-ho to get the hell out of here, as if this were Nam and not, well, Vienna. And, initially, the answer was it's impossible, but I did some digging and felt pretty low for a few days, until my dad writes me, "Hey, Spud, success. See you on the first."
So, in short, I'll probably be able to re-emerge from the womb of my home by Independence Day. Someone arrange a crazy party and we'll get drunk and set off fireworks on somebody else's property.
In the meantime, we've had tests. Stupid, impossible tests, about Austrian History, and rather than pay attention in class, I drew comics or remembered the last time I heard the name "Metternich" and "The Congress of Vienna," which was back in Mr. Wheelah's room at BTDub, and then I'd think about how good a roll from the Booker T cafeteria sounded right about now - basically, I was completely unprepared, and felt pretty shitty afterwards. But, again, my father, the Voice of All Reason and Wisdom and Dadliness, emailed me to say, "Chin up, sport. Go out and take a walk. Eat some struesel."
Which was adorable because there's no such thing as 'streusel.'
And, as a disclaimer, my mom is also awesome but she does not understand The Internet and when she emails me IT IS IN ALL CAPS AND HAS SUBJECT LINES LIKE "JUST WANTED TO SAY HI!" AND THEN I FEEL LIKE SHE IS SHOUTING AT ME EVEN THOUGH SHE IS NOT ALSO HER SYNTAX IS A LOT LIKE THIS.
So I did as Pops prescribed: Took a walk. I enjoy walk-taking. So does Penny. This is why we are best friends. Actually, I started off with some coffee and scribbling and just got so damn down that the walk was accidental, a desperate idea of going anywhere solely for the sake of going. But it turned out to be the best thing I could've done. The Guertel follows the outer ring of the city, where the U6 line runs aboveground, easily demarcated by this giant brick wall with all these nice arches and shady lanes on either side - it's hard to describe. But I got turned around, which is rare for me because I've got a compass in my head (probably from growing up in a city where streets either run N-S or E-W) and just kept walking, breaking in the 5 Euro sandals Rob and I found in some cozy, Turkish-run courtyard flea market right off of Mariahilferstrasse, the shopping, neon-lit, consumer-crazy street of Vienna (where, incidentally, we saw Iron Man on Friday and it was a lot more awesome than it should have been - robots! I love robots!). Along the Guertel actually feels like a neighborhood; it's easy to forget there's such busy-ness as Mariahilferstrasse just a Strassenbahn ride away - and it reminded me of walking around Hyde Park in Chicago, exactly a year ago.
So I saw some trees down a street and literally ran into a gigantic park. Vienna, for all of my complaints, knows parks, and I like parks. So does Penny. This is probably why we are best friends. But Penny is in America, and Austrian dogs are insanely obedient, so the dog-runs in Vienna are about three times the size of American ones and the dogs usually clamber all over each other while the owners just stand there, unless the dog is a very old golden retriever, in which case the dog will wander over to where I am sitting and let me pet it for a quarter of an hour. And then some other dogs will decide that underneath my bench is the best place for their love-making. So then I was sitting there, petting one nice dog, while two others dry-humped beneath me. STUDY ABROAD WHOOOOO.
But then! The quest continued! Past the Vienna ICE BAR (it exists! capes! ice! bar!), and then I boarded the 41 Line to ride it to the end, and basically found Narnia. If you're looking for Narnia, and aren't we all, it's at the end of the 41 Strassenbahn line, in Poetzleindorf, where there are random, eerie statues in the trees, where there are deer running through the woods or in the fields of wheat-grass, and if you go at dusk, it's silent save for crickets and the occasional owl. Beyond beautiful, and so quiet and nice and that's all I could think as I walked around: I found Narnia, and why are there so many mosquitoes in Narnia.
And, to add adventure to more adventure, last night was Vienna's annual Life Ball, this huge, gay-tastic celebration to raise AIDS awareness, and basically the ragingest, craziest, themeiest party in all of Central Europe. The theme this year was "Landing on Planet Life Ball," so here are all these nutty Austrians spray-painted silver wearing antennae, in addition to an elaborate fashion show where aliens danced with ballerinas, some silver cowboy rapped in German, midgets on motorcycles, lots of models wearing very little, psychedelic unitards and dancers pretending to be on acid, pirates and pole-dancers. I'm not making this up - it was insane, though the crowd was too thick to be anywhere near the action, so we watched the show from the jumbo TV set up in front of the actual happenings - but, if you count that as "seeing live," which I do, I also saw the following list of celebrities: Alan Cumming, Kim Catrall (she spoke German!), Naomi Campbell, a very bizarre Sharon Stone (possibly a robot?), AND DEBBIE HARRY. And a lot of drag queens.
Plus tonight we're cooking Breakfast for Dinner!!!! Okay the end.
12 May 2008
in the making.
Two posts in two days may seem excessive, but it's been a Weekend of Note and due to the arbitrary holiday, it's not over yet, though, to be honest, I'm straining a little to maintain the Everything Will Be All Right attitude considering El Roomie just walked in and I forgot to buy toilet paper for the bathroom. Ick. I stole a roll of TP from a cafe, but I had to leave it at another dorm, because, for once in our lives, we were Going Out and who Goes Out with a roll of stolen toilet paper in her purse? That's what you don't learn from Preparing For Your Study Abroad Experience pre-meetings and waivers and informational brochures - you will more than likely steal toilet paper from a cafe up the street because you are a broke American (in more ways than one) and it'll probably be awkward to live in your room, especially if your laundry is literally exploding out of your wardrobe and your desk is a collage of empty Coke bottles, train tickets from months ago, mate-less earrings and contact cases. Dear Reader, consider yourself informed, I guess.
So Going Out is good, and I've missed it, though I never much was one for it, unless it involved an elaborate theme, free beer, and facepaint to dance and/or stand awkwardly around in a dark, graffitti-covered, and probably structurally unsound basement. Some of my home-slices took advantage of the long weekend and headed for those Alps we have in Austria, and I stayed back, due to a perpetually empty bank account and some lingering childhood bias against Mountains (when we went for the umpteenth time for the Rockies, some part of me was always wishing we were off to see the sea - and I would still take water over rocks any day). So the weekend was wide open, and prime time for experiencing the jumpier side of Viennese nightlife - not that my friends and I are complete recluses, though I've spent practically days at my computer chicken-pecking away at hopeful, too-long story drafts, but when we go out, we end up in a smoky cafe near Stephansdom, or down in a cellar brewery where men in suspenders play The Third Man theme on the accordion, and that's great, but where do the twenty-somethings go to dance about and get sweaty? I had no idea, but some kid on our program did, and fortunately extended an invite last night to me and Suzanne, so, following my fourth viewing of The Third Man since I've been here and an immaculate dinner cooked by Suzanne, we got ourselves done-up and pre-gamed with someone else's vodka. Sure, we were overdressed, and sure, we were in mixed and pretty bizarre company, but the Young And Stupid Girl in me Who Only Wants To Get Drunk and Dance was pretty amped to just be Out, with new people, at some cramped club on the banks of the Danube Canal, where if you sat at a picnic table long enough someone would come by asking, "Grass? Cocaine? Only 5 Euros."
And music - another simple thing no one warns you that you'll miss. How many games of Kings did we play listening to Girl Talk or Velvet Underground? How many gallons of gas did I waste, driving around Tulsa aimlessly with the windows down and some indie mix CD in the player, unlabeled but named? How many hours have I spent in the basement studio of WHCL, blasting choice tunes to a grand total of 3 listeners, if I was lucky? We're sitting outside, smoking cigarettes or cigarettes emptied of their tobacco and stuffed with some headier wares (I passed, though, yet again, everybody just wants to get me high), and all of a sudden, from inside where some Austrians are awkwardly dancing around like they're in someone's apartment and not a public club, in plain view of hundreds of people - Beirut. Spoon's "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb," the DANCING ANTHEM of this semester. Interpol. Oh, did my little indie heart soar, even if it was the lone indie heart at the table.
But really, the highlight of the night, and the highlight of the entire weekend, maybe of the entire time in Vienna, was the silent, lengthy hike back from the bar. I was tipsy enough to walk across nearly the entirety of the city - and you haven't seen Vienna until you've seen it at 3:30 a.m. on a Sunday, the buildings dark, the streets empty, a ghost town, everything huge and vast and so silent. I gave the handful of change in my pocket to a haggard-looking guy I passed by the Hofburg palace, but, aside from him, I was completely alone. Stephansplatz, where hundreds of Italian tourists are usually chattering and eating gelato, completely deserted, the cathedral shooting up into the sky - and the silence inside, unfathomable. The Spanish Riding School, where guys dressed like Mozart are usually conning you into buying concert tickets, utterly empty. Heldenplatz in front of the Hofburg palace, where there are concerts and rallies and demonstrations, where Hitler once spoke, as dark as if no one had ever been there. The epic, imperial architecture of Vienna is pretty awesome in the middle of the afternoon, but in the middle of the night, as the sky's just getting light and the birds are starting to chirp - incredible.
And I have to admit, it felt pretty awesome to come back to an empty room at 4:30 in the morning, the room just starting to get light - reminded me of a lot of other all-night adventures, drug-induced or paper-caused or otherwise.
So I woke up at 2 p.m. today, which was fine, and have spent the entire day reading Bradbury, feeling as lost as an astronaut and relating far too much to stories about rockets and aliens (Mars and Vienna might as well be the same to me), and being interrupted twice by two entirely different conversations started by two remarkably similar men. First, I'm just sitting against a tree, enjoying the slight hangover I have, when some guy just walks over, crouches down, and asks me how I am, what's my name, stuff I wasn't going to volunteer until I finally had to get up and walk away - I don't know what he wanted, but I just wanted to be left alone, and the whole thing disturbed me. It's not uncommon for passing men, usually African (I don't know why, that's just how it is), to just shout stuff at you - nothing derogatory, just a "Hello beautiful" or "Wie geht's", but it's pretty annoying - but this was the first time someone approached me and where I had to leave my cozy tree spot for another. Within fifteen minutes, though, another guy comes over to me, and, as if he knew what had happened, demonstrated how to actually converse with a strange girl. He asked if I had a lighter, which I did, and then simply said, "Wienerin?" meaning, are you Viennese? And I said no. "Neither am I," he said, in German - which was pretty apparent, given that he was black and Vienna is as about as white as cottage cheese. "I've lived in Germany for many years, but I'm only in Vienna for a semester. I'm a student. And you?" "The same," I said, again in German. "Just here for the semester." "It's practically a summer's day," he said, and then, cigarette lit, bicycle beside him, bid me have a nice day and left.
So then I went and goofed around on the baby grand piano in the Central Abroad office. Not bad, for a Monday.
So Going Out is good, and I've missed it, though I never much was one for it, unless it involved an elaborate theme, free beer, and facepaint to dance and/or stand awkwardly around in a dark, graffitti-covered, and probably structurally unsound basement. Some of my home-slices took advantage of the long weekend and headed for those Alps we have in Austria, and I stayed back, due to a perpetually empty bank account and some lingering childhood bias against Mountains (when we went for the umpteenth time for the Rockies, some part of me was always wishing we were off to see the sea - and I would still take water over rocks any day). So the weekend was wide open, and prime time for experiencing the jumpier side of Viennese nightlife - not that my friends and I are complete recluses, though I've spent practically days at my computer chicken-pecking away at hopeful, too-long story drafts, but when we go out, we end up in a smoky cafe near Stephansdom, or down in a cellar brewery where men in suspenders play The Third Man theme on the accordion, and that's great, but where do the twenty-somethings go to dance about and get sweaty? I had no idea, but some kid on our program did, and fortunately extended an invite last night to me and Suzanne, so, following my fourth viewing of The Third Man since I've been here and an immaculate dinner cooked by Suzanne, we got ourselves done-up and pre-gamed with someone else's vodka. Sure, we were overdressed, and sure, we were in mixed and pretty bizarre company, but the Young And Stupid Girl in me Who Only Wants To Get Drunk and Dance was pretty amped to just be Out, with new people, at some cramped club on the banks of the Danube Canal, where if you sat at a picnic table long enough someone would come by asking, "Grass? Cocaine? Only 5 Euros."
And music - another simple thing no one warns you that you'll miss. How many games of Kings did we play listening to Girl Talk or Velvet Underground? How many gallons of gas did I waste, driving around Tulsa aimlessly with the windows down and some indie mix CD in the player, unlabeled but named? How many hours have I spent in the basement studio of WHCL, blasting choice tunes to a grand total of 3 listeners, if I was lucky? We're sitting outside, smoking cigarettes or cigarettes emptied of their tobacco and stuffed with some headier wares (I passed, though, yet again, everybody just wants to get me high), and all of a sudden, from inside where some Austrians are awkwardly dancing around like they're in someone's apartment and not a public club, in plain view of hundreds of people - Beirut. Spoon's "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb," the DANCING ANTHEM of this semester. Interpol. Oh, did my little indie heart soar, even if it was the lone indie heart at the table.
But really, the highlight of the night, and the highlight of the entire weekend, maybe of the entire time in Vienna, was the silent, lengthy hike back from the bar. I was tipsy enough to walk across nearly the entirety of the city - and you haven't seen Vienna until you've seen it at 3:30 a.m. on a Sunday, the buildings dark, the streets empty, a ghost town, everything huge and vast and so silent. I gave the handful of change in my pocket to a haggard-looking guy I passed by the Hofburg palace, but, aside from him, I was completely alone. Stephansplatz, where hundreds of Italian tourists are usually chattering and eating gelato, completely deserted, the cathedral shooting up into the sky - and the silence inside, unfathomable. The Spanish Riding School, where guys dressed like Mozart are usually conning you into buying concert tickets, utterly empty. Heldenplatz in front of the Hofburg palace, where there are concerts and rallies and demonstrations, where Hitler once spoke, as dark as if no one had ever been there. The epic, imperial architecture of Vienna is pretty awesome in the middle of the afternoon, but in the middle of the night, as the sky's just getting light and the birds are starting to chirp - incredible.
And I have to admit, it felt pretty awesome to come back to an empty room at 4:30 in the morning, the room just starting to get light - reminded me of a lot of other all-night adventures, drug-induced or paper-caused or otherwise.
So I woke up at 2 p.m. today, which was fine, and have spent the entire day reading Bradbury, feeling as lost as an astronaut and relating far too much to stories about rockets and aliens (Mars and Vienna might as well be the same to me), and being interrupted twice by two entirely different conversations started by two remarkably similar men. First, I'm just sitting against a tree, enjoying the slight hangover I have, when some guy just walks over, crouches down, and asks me how I am, what's my name, stuff I wasn't going to volunteer until I finally had to get up and walk away - I don't know what he wanted, but I just wanted to be left alone, and the whole thing disturbed me. It's not uncommon for passing men, usually African (I don't know why, that's just how it is), to just shout stuff at you - nothing derogatory, just a "Hello beautiful" or "Wie geht's", but it's pretty annoying - but this was the first time someone approached me and where I had to leave my cozy tree spot for another. Within fifteen minutes, though, another guy comes over to me, and, as if he knew what had happened, demonstrated how to actually converse with a strange girl. He asked if I had a lighter, which I did, and then simply said, "Wienerin?" meaning, are you Viennese? And I said no. "Neither am I," he said, in German - which was pretty apparent, given that he was black and Vienna is as about as white as cottage cheese. "I've lived in Germany for many years, but I'm only in Vienna for a semester. I'm a student. And you?" "The same," I said, again in German. "Just here for the semester." "It's practically a summer's day," he said, and then, cigarette lit, bicycle beside him, bid me have a nice day and left.
So then I went and goofed around on the baby grand piano in the Central Abroad office. Not bad, for a Monday.
10 May 2008
happenings as of late.
Just to answer the obvious question, inherent in all Study Abroad blogs: what the hell have you been up to?
Well, babies, it's been a stretch of days with ups and downs, mainly on escalators, and ins and outs, mainly going into coffee shops and supermarkets and classrooms. Much has not been notable, and that's due to life becoming Life-like again, by which I mean, this is all very ordinary now, and I'm looking forward to The Return (as of now, one month and twenty-odd days) solely for the feeling of New again, the wonders of the Taken For Granted: Quiktrip. Riverside. Bueno. Penny. All those things that make Oklahoma so very strangely great. And I've been looking forward to the Going Back since I got here, and if there's anyone out there wanting to shake some of the proverbial sense into me, thinking "GOOD LORD RACHEL YOU ARE IN EUROPE EVERYTHING SHOULD BE MIND-BOGGLING AND AMAZING QUIT WHINING," you have to understand the circumstances. I was in Tulsa for two weeks before I left, knowing I'd be back for a week before leaving again, making my total time at Home in 2008 something like a month, at a time when Home is a very liminal, fleeting thing (by this time next year, I'll - fingers crossed - be preparing for my graduation, apartment-hunting in whatever town I end up in, sending forms to Yon Graduate School, whichever one it may be). When last semester ended, Hamilton had become a Hamilton I didn't want to stay at but not one I wanted to leave either, knowing my crew would be back and only lacking me - there's a handful of friends I haven't seen since May 2007, with their own Study Abroad experiences already over. I have no money, and too much time, and the way things are now has leveled into some form of okay-ness.
They're not reading this because I haven't shared the link (for reasons of I like to write about smoking), but I want everyone to know that my folks are awesome. My whole ridiculous family is awesome, otherwise I wouldn't get drunk with my friends here and babble on for half an hour about the strange phrases we Richardsons use, the dichotomy between me sitting in Europe right now using words like 'dichotomy' and my infinite number of knocked-up, Army-enrolled, meth-addicted cousins (it's a very mixed batch), what October in Arkansas feels like and seeing the shack my father grew up in - literally a shack, in the middle of the woods, that housed a dozen family members at any given time. Tomorrow's Mother's Day, and I'm actually looking forward to calling home. I called my dad the other day, feeling lonely and out-of-sorts, and he imparted some very Dadly wisdom when I apologized that they were spending all this money for me to be here and it wasn't life-altering, moment-to-moment excitement, not the kind of thing I'd come back and say "Wee Underclassmen, you absolutely must go abroad, it'll change your life." My dad simply said, "That's all right. 6 months is a long time. You can have bad days, and if you tell yourself you're supposed to be having the Best Time of Your Life then of course you won't. Besides, you've been to Norway. You can say that now."
And then I thought, "Well, hell. I have been to Norway. That's pretty fucking awesome." And that is just a fact.
There were other instances that added some weight to the perpetual scale of How Is Rachel Today (because, looking back through the past few posts of this blog - and as an aside, what does one do with a Study Abroad blog when the Studying Abroad is over? - this really has been as much about me as it has been Vienna, which I can't really help, but it'd be untruthful somehow to start every sentence with "Today I saw this" - if you're after Viennese History, I recommend Wikipedia). I found out, after a more-grueling-than-it-should-have-been wait, that the stories I submitted for the annual Hamilton prizes did win, which means I get a nice coupon for my tuition, which makes my parents like me. I'm editor-in-chief of the lit mag next year, and still part of WHCL. I told my Viennese peers in one of my literature classes all about kudzu. I left a bakery without getting my change, making my Ciabatta Proscuitto five times as expensive as it should've been (to be fair those sandwiches are BEYOND delicious). My "boss" at my internship told the director of my program we were having "communication issues" when I thought everything was going fine. It rained a whole lot. I got drunk and remembered how stupid I am when I drink that much. I likened my experiences in Vienna with another kid on the program's and felt like I was doing everything wrong. I missed Class and Charter Day, but I received some touching emails from various points of the world that made me feel worthwhile. I started a story, pitched it, and started again. Pretty standard stuff; if you charted it, it would look a lot like a heart monitor (apparently called an electrocardiogram?) but that's better than a flat-line, or at least makes for more interesting blog posts.
But to answer the question, here is what I did: explored the expansion of the U2 line which opened today because of the blasted Eurowelt Soccer Championship that's going to make Vienna a madhouse in a few weeks. Wandered through a new park at twilight after having some pricey Sachertorte at the Mozart Cafe, and gawked at the giant, hideous, Nazi-built bunker towers that were built to withstand the Apocalypse and look appropriately apocalyptic. Went to the Rathaus for a free classical concert, mixing Culture and Beer, and saw the Vienna Boy's Choir. Saw 2/3rds of Sigfried, the massive Wagner opera, at THE Operahouse in Vienna, which was grand and great except we were standing up and couldn't endure the whole 5 hour show. Drank White Russians in a dorm kitchen and felt like I was at college again. Sat on the banks of the Donau Kanal and didn't go to class. Took a test entirely in German. Sat on a statue with some beer. Finished my 22nd journal.
And I have goals, small and silly though they may be: to have one infinite, ridiculous night, wade through some fountains without getting yelled at, drink in the open, see some more good shows and explore the outer reaches of the city, hang out with more people on the program, take a boat to Bratislava.
I've had the LCD Soundsystem song in my head for some time now, not only because it's been exactly a year since I listened to it exclusively for the better part of a week, but also because the message is pretty clear - and it's so middle school journal to quote lyrics but they're lyrics for a reason, so don't you judge me! - but it's simply this: it keeps coming, and it keeps coming, and it keeps coming til the day it stops. That's about the sum of it, right there. That, and shaking it like a Polaroid picture.
Well, babies, it's been a stretch of days with ups and downs, mainly on escalators, and ins and outs, mainly going into coffee shops and supermarkets and classrooms. Much has not been notable, and that's due to life becoming Life-like again, by which I mean, this is all very ordinary now, and I'm looking forward to The Return (as of now, one month and twenty-odd days) solely for the feeling of New again, the wonders of the Taken For Granted: Quiktrip. Riverside. Bueno. Penny. All those things that make Oklahoma so very strangely great. And I've been looking forward to the Going Back since I got here, and if there's anyone out there wanting to shake some of the proverbial sense into me, thinking "GOOD LORD RACHEL YOU ARE IN EUROPE EVERYTHING SHOULD BE MIND-BOGGLING AND AMAZING QUIT WHINING," you have to understand the circumstances. I was in Tulsa for two weeks before I left, knowing I'd be back for a week before leaving again, making my total time at Home in 2008 something like a month, at a time when Home is a very liminal, fleeting thing (by this time next year, I'll - fingers crossed - be preparing for my graduation, apartment-hunting in whatever town I end up in, sending forms to Yon Graduate School, whichever one it may be). When last semester ended, Hamilton had become a Hamilton I didn't want to stay at but not one I wanted to leave either, knowing my crew would be back and only lacking me - there's a handful of friends I haven't seen since May 2007, with their own Study Abroad experiences already over. I have no money, and too much time, and the way things are now has leveled into some form of okay-ness.
They're not reading this because I haven't shared the link (for reasons of I like to write about smoking), but I want everyone to know that my folks are awesome. My whole ridiculous family is awesome, otherwise I wouldn't get drunk with my friends here and babble on for half an hour about the strange phrases we Richardsons use, the dichotomy between me sitting in Europe right now using words like 'dichotomy' and my infinite number of knocked-up, Army-enrolled, meth-addicted cousins (it's a very mixed batch), what October in Arkansas feels like and seeing the shack my father grew up in - literally a shack, in the middle of the woods, that housed a dozen family members at any given time. Tomorrow's Mother's Day, and I'm actually looking forward to calling home. I called my dad the other day, feeling lonely and out-of-sorts, and he imparted some very Dadly wisdom when I apologized that they were spending all this money for me to be here and it wasn't life-altering, moment-to-moment excitement, not the kind of thing I'd come back and say "Wee Underclassmen, you absolutely must go abroad, it'll change your life." My dad simply said, "That's all right. 6 months is a long time. You can have bad days, and if you tell yourself you're supposed to be having the Best Time of Your Life then of course you won't. Besides, you've been to Norway. You can say that now."
And then I thought, "Well, hell. I have been to Norway. That's pretty fucking awesome." And that is just a fact.
There were other instances that added some weight to the perpetual scale of How Is Rachel Today (because, looking back through the past few posts of this blog - and as an aside, what does one do with a Study Abroad blog when the Studying Abroad is over? - this really has been as much about me as it has been Vienna, which I can't really help, but it'd be untruthful somehow to start every sentence with "Today I saw this" - if you're after Viennese History, I recommend Wikipedia). I found out, after a more-grueling-than-it-should-have-been wait, that the stories I submitted for the annual Hamilton prizes did win, which means I get a nice coupon for my tuition, which makes my parents like me. I'm editor-in-chief of the lit mag next year, and still part of WHCL. I told my Viennese peers in one of my literature classes all about kudzu. I left a bakery without getting my change, making my Ciabatta Proscuitto five times as expensive as it should've been (to be fair those sandwiches are BEYOND delicious). My "boss" at my internship told the director of my program we were having "communication issues" when I thought everything was going fine. It rained a whole lot. I got drunk and remembered how stupid I am when I drink that much. I likened my experiences in Vienna with another kid on the program's and felt like I was doing everything wrong. I missed Class and Charter Day, but I received some touching emails from various points of the world that made me feel worthwhile. I started a story, pitched it, and started again. Pretty standard stuff; if you charted it, it would look a lot like a heart monitor (apparently called an electrocardiogram?) but that's better than a flat-line, or at least makes for more interesting blog posts.
But to answer the question, here is what I did: explored the expansion of the U2 line which opened today because of the blasted Eurowelt Soccer Championship that's going to make Vienna a madhouse in a few weeks. Wandered through a new park at twilight after having some pricey Sachertorte at the Mozart Cafe, and gawked at the giant, hideous, Nazi-built bunker towers that were built to withstand the Apocalypse and look appropriately apocalyptic. Went to the Rathaus for a free classical concert, mixing Culture and Beer, and saw the Vienna Boy's Choir. Saw 2/3rds of Sigfried, the massive Wagner opera, at THE Operahouse in Vienna, which was grand and great except we were standing up and couldn't endure the whole 5 hour show. Drank White Russians in a dorm kitchen and felt like I was at college again. Sat on the banks of the Donau Kanal and didn't go to class. Took a test entirely in German. Sat on a statue with some beer. Finished my 22nd journal.
And I have goals, small and silly though they may be: to have one infinite, ridiculous night, wade through some fountains without getting yelled at, drink in the open, see some more good shows and explore the outer reaches of the city, hang out with more people on the program, take a boat to Bratislava.
I've had the LCD Soundsystem song in my head for some time now, not only because it's been exactly a year since I listened to it exclusively for the better part of a week, but also because the message is pretty clear - and it's so middle school journal to quote lyrics but they're lyrics for a reason, so don't you judge me! - but it's simply this: it keeps coming, and it keeps coming, and it keeps coming til the day it stops. That's about the sum of it, right there. That, and shaking it like a Polaroid picture.
03 May 2008
where is that large automobile?
On the way to the movie tonight, a nice, breezy walk up the street, past the Strassenbahns clattering along and the French Institut with its giant lawn that we want to camp out on, across the street from the two-spired church that's never open, a jaunt away from the U-Bahn hub where you can get cheap, tasty pizza, and a flew blocks up from the Danube, I said to Annie, "This is what's required of our study abroad program--Riding roller coasters. Walking in woods. Lying in parks. Drinking coffee. Drinking beer. Petting mules." And she said, "And never doing any work." And I said, "It's pretty great."
Because that's true. It's May, and if you'd told me two months ago that it would ever even be May, I might not have believed you. Being abroad for six months has its obvious draws and obvious downfalls--it's six months, but then again, that's six solid months--but one of the things I'm grateful for, and I think we're all grateful for, is the springtime. A lot of other programs are finishing up now, kids shuttling back to the U.S., maybe road-tripping to Hamilton for Senior Week, already "seniors," but I'm here until July, and while that means I have yet to do a stitch of actual work and herd of finals wait for me when most every one else I know will be sleeping in and working shitty summer jobs, it also means I have two glorious months of sunshine and warm weather, when simply Being Outside is activity enough.
And yes, it took me four months to find some sort of contentedness, some semblance of balance, stability, adjustment, whatever you want to call it, but it's finally here and I hope it sticks around.
I don't know where I left off, because it feels like a decade since I updated this, but Annie and I have undertaken a quest to visit every Aida in Vienna. This means trekking to the far districts, ones we don't even know about, and drinking a lot of quality coffee served by some middle-aged waitress in pink and brown. Out of the 26, we've accomplished 7 already, and, at this rate, I'll be done by mid-June, just when BRMC comes to town and I rock my face off. We also went on a mission to find the Prater--not the fantastically terrible amusement park side of it, but the giganto park on the other side, which we discovered and which was amazing and where we lay on the grass for a long time sending ESP messages to all the leashless dogs running around to come be our friends (AND IT WORKED). Think Woodward Park times maybe a million, and if Bell's were tacked onto the side, and then you have the idea. We went back to the Prater last night for the big May Day festival (as for the Hamilton event of the same name - don't get me started. Eve 6? Really? Everyone's just going to wait until that stupid "Blender" song and then leave to go get drunk - plus it's inside, again. Wtf?), which involved a lot of people, a lot of people drinking beer, and a lot of people who had just drank a lot of beer getting on rides. We rode the smaller Ferris Wheel and were midway in the air when the fireworks started going off - and that was something. I was almost glad that my camera was dead, because it's a sight I don't think I could reproduce, and I had to watch it with my own eyes - fireworks erupting over an amusement park in Vienna. Pretty phenomenal.
PLUS we rode a roller coaster called Boomerang, and while I may or may not have received a bruise from being thrown upside down, backwards, and straight down, it was completely worth it. There's something really cathartic about screaming for dear life for about a minute and a half - all your problems and issues pale in comparison to looking directly at the ground from several stories up right before you plunge. Beer was necessary afterwards.
Today, we actually made it out to the Wienerwald, that huge stretch of woods surrounding Vienna, where the vineyards are plenty, the tourists are easily avoided, the views are stunning, and you'll probably get to pet a mule. I mean, I did. It was a bit like the cherry on the sundae, though, after all those gigantic trees, the sheer niceness of the weather - Rob kept describing it like he was Bob Ross painting some landscape on PBS - "Those crickets. And then a crow. Perfect." And that's one thing I really want to do when I get back - walk around more. After going on a long, city-wide amble with Annie on Thursday, I can safely say there are few more satisfying endeavors than just walking around - except maybe driving around. That's pretty awesome, too.
Because that's true. It's May, and if you'd told me two months ago that it would ever even be May, I might not have believed you. Being abroad for six months has its obvious draws and obvious downfalls--it's six months, but then again, that's six solid months--but one of the things I'm grateful for, and I think we're all grateful for, is the springtime. A lot of other programs are finishing up now, kids shuttling back to the U.S., maybe road-tripping to Hamilton for Senior Week, already "seniors," but I'm here until July, and while that means I have yet to do a stitch of actual work and herd of finals wait for me when most every one else I know will be sleeping in and working shitty summer jobs, it also means I have two glorious months of sunshine and warm weather, when simply Being Outside is activity enough.
And yes, it took me four months to find some sort of contentedness, some semblance of balance, stability, adjustment, whatever you want to call it, but it's finally here and I hope it sticks around.
I don't know where I left off, because it feels like a decade since I updated this, but Annie and I have undertaken a quest to visit every Aida in Vienna. This means trekking to the far districts, ones we don't even know about, and drinking a lot of quality coffee served by some middle-aged waitress in pink and brown. Out of the 26, we've accomplished 7 already, and, at this rate, I'll be done by mid-June, just when BRMC comes to town and I rock my face off. We also went on a mission to find the Prater--not the fantastically terrible amusement park side of it, but the giganto park on the other side, which we discovered and which was amazing and where we lay on the grass for a long time sending ESP messages to all the leashless dogs running around to come be our friends (AND IT WORKED). Think Woodward Park times maybe a million, and if Bell's were tacked onto the side, and then you have the idea. We went back to the Prater last night for the big May Day festival (as for the Hamilton event of the same name - don't get me started. Eve 6? Really? Everyone's just going to wait until that stupid "Blender" song and then leave to go get drunk - plus it's inside, again. Wtf?), which involved a lot of people, a lot of people drinking beer, and a lot of people who had just drank a lot of beer getting on rides. We rode the smaller Ferris Wheel and were midway in the air when the fireworks started going off - and that was something. I was almost glad that my camera was dead, because it's a sight I don't think I could reproduce, and I had to watch it with my own eyes - fireworks erupting over an amusement park in Vienna. Pretty phenomenal.
PLUS we rode a roller coaster called Boomerang, and while I may or may not have received a bruise from being thrown upside down, backwards, and straight down, it was completely worth it. There's something really cathartic about screaming for dear life for about a minute and a half - all your problems and issues pale in comparison to looking directly at the ground from several stories up right before you plunge. Beer was necessary afterwards.
Today, we actually made it out to the Wienerwald, that huge stretch of woods surrounding Vienna, where the vineyards are plenty, the tourists are easily avoided, the views are stunning, and you'll probably get to pet a mule. I mean, I did. It was a bit like the cherry on the sundae, though, after all those gigantic trees, the sheer niceness of the weather - Rob kept describing it like he was Bob Ross painting some landscape on PBS - "Those crickets. And then a crow. Perfect." And that's one thing I really want to do when I get back - walk around more. After going on a long, city-wide amble with Annie on Thursday, I can safely say there are few more satisfying endeavors than just walking around - except maybe driving around. That's pretty awesome, too.
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