IT'S JUNE. In exactly one month, I'm going to be semi-comatose on my plaid couch in Tulsa with Pennycakes in my lap and a suitcase too heavy to take up the stairs and probably drinking a 32 ounce QuikTrip cup of Diet Coke and Strawberry Fanta (try it it's delicious) full of incredible, incredible ice. But I'll also be away from here, here where the transportation is simple, the weather is balmy, and well, it's Europe. I won't be in Europe anymore. Europe, where we have ourselves some epic weekends (see also: what follows).
Here's a true story: I do not like beaches. I do not understand beaches. Granted, my lone experience with beaches has been either the rainy, stormy shore of Washington or the overcrowded, overheated sand-in-your-swimsuit beaches of Italy. In Italy, in 2005, I was fresh out of high school, still acne-faced and braces on my teeth and wearing dorky glasses with orange frames - the rest of the girls on the trip, meanwhile, and there were only two boys to speak of, were babes. Simply babes. I was not a babe. I don't really think I qualify as a babe now, but I definitely was a lot farther from babeitute in 2005 than I am now. So, our first day in Italy, we take a train from Florence all the way to Cinque Terra, this clump of five little towns on the Mediterranean coast, and the train took so long that I think we were only there for about 3 hours, during which our chaperones went hiking and I found myself with all the babes of the trip on a beach. (If this sounds familiar, it's the first scene of 'Primavera' which you can read in your latest copy of Red Weather plug plug hint hint shameless self-promotion). And there I am, pale and pudgy and uncomfortable in my tankini, the first two-piece bathing suit I'd ever owned, and there are these babes in their bikinis, drinking malt beverages and smoking cigarettes, and next thing I know everybody's taken their tops off. They jokingly invite me to do the same, but there was absolutely no chance, and that whole silly vignette of an experience kind of haunted me for the rest of the trip, like I should be shaking my fists at some unjust God with a sadistic sense of humor and shouting "Why can't I do that, too? Aren't I 18 and full of life and in Italy?!"
Well. Yesterday I was 21 and full of life and in Austria. And you can see where this is going, I'm sure - but we decide, it's hot out, let's go jump in a river. So we ride out to the Alte Donau Beach, bearing enough sunscreen to slather our shamefully pale bodies, and I'm wearing the same swimsuit from 2005, but the whole thing was so wildly different this time around. First of all, Austrian beaches aren't really beaches - we were lying on a lawn, in the shade of some giant deciduous trees, and there was a stretch of rocks before the Donau proper, and we splashed right in along with the naked babies and overweight old men and swam around and ate some oranges and reapplied the sunscreen. And, because this is Europe, there are breasts everywhere - breasts you don't want to look at and ones you do, old women and college students and everything in between. The whole time I was thinking about those girls back in Italy, girls I haven't seen since that summer, and that was really the main motivation that made me decide to just go ahead and bare it all (that, and one of my friends who was essentially raised in a sauna and therefore knows the delicate decorum of public nudity already had). So I did. And it was fine. And then we put our clothes back on, ate some home-cooked hamburgers, feasted on gelato, and played Scrabble in a bar. It may have been my favorite day here, not just for the cycle-completion of Rachel's Personal Struggle With Going Topless On Beaches (get me drunk enough and I'll tell you the half-dozen other Naked stories I have, courtesy of Hamilton College), but just the simple, fantastic niceness of lying around all day, smoking cigarettes and swimming, with good friends and good weather. Yet another ridiculous thing I can say I've done, though you see why my parents don't read this.
On Friday, though, things were not so pleasant. Went on a RESCUE MISSION to retrieve a fainted friend from the clutches of H&M, only to find out she'd been shuttled off in an ambulance already - she was fine in the end, suffering from Europe's Lack of Air Conditioning more than anything, but I spent a good few hours pretending I was a hero or at least a hobbit on a quest, and then showing up, sweaty and stressed, to the Central Abroad Vienna brochure photo shoot, which, I will not lie, I attended for the free food. Because I deliberately ditched the Central Abroad official Blog job, having had my share of bullshit blog entries, and because I was, and am, less than thrilled about this whole experience from a paperwork standpoint - and sure, I'm being young and rebellious, but having the "photo shoot" only reinforced why I refused to work for them. To disclaim - our program directors over here, Ruth and Marie, are fantastic, and I have nothing at all against them, but we've all had several venting sessions where we compared our arduous and disorienting experiences with the heads at Central, and our own incompetent Study Abroad directors. So, at this photo shoot, we were at a cafe that I've never set foot in, and I camp in cafes pretty often, forbidden to smoke and drink, and as we enjoyed our cakes and pastries, the official employee from Central College shoved a tape recorder in our face and made us repeat and reword everything we said until it matched what she 'needed.' Completely unsurprising, and I wasn't really annoyed, but check your local Study Abroad office sometime this fall for the new brochure, because, chances are, I'm all over it, looking unflattering with a mouthful of cake and with some bullshit quote about the "greatness" of the program. Admittedly, I very much enjoyed being photographed and feeling like I was famous - and like I said, free cake.
That night, though, we went out to a bar on the Danube Canal, a place I'd been only once before when I walked home at 4 a.m., and though it was a Saturday night, the place was eerily quiet. Beers in hand, we were just lounging at the picnic table when a grungy, greasy potential bum who looked like the ghost of Kurt Cobain asked if he could sit with us. So we said sure, for lack of knowledge of how to say no politely, and it was odd at first, but he turned out to be completely harmless and friendly, and willing to work with us and our beer-battered German skills (haha, get it?! beer-battered! THINK ABOUT IT). In fact, he was pretty sad, as he said his friend, someone in his sixties, had cancer, and it wasn't looking good for him, and then he just stared out at the water until saying goodbye. Poor Franz. Almost as sad as Martin, the little boy who lost his shoes.
But then, while we girls were in the bathroom, we came back to find a new guest at the table, who, upon finding out we were Americans, proceeded to lecture us on how we were killing people, how we kill children, how we bomb schools, all in broken English and as he could barely stand up. And that's one of the things Central Abroad does not tell you when you leave for Europe - you have to shoulder the entire fucking stupidity of your government, your legislative system, your country's mistakes. And I tried to tell the guy - the only incident I've encountered of out-right U.S. Hatred - we were Americans, but we weren't America, but he followed us to the bar and kept needling us, until Suzanne finally dropped some smack-down in hasty German and told him to essentially fuck off. We tried our best though - as this jackass kept accusing us in English, and we just said "We personally did not do that" in German, "We did not elect Bush," etc. And I'm not waving a flag for U.S. Pride or anything, I know we've done some stupid things, but there was nothing to be done about it right there at the bar. Even if a fight had broken out, what would've happened? An American and an Austrian would have gone home with black eyes. That means nothing in terms of the Real Problems of politics. That does no good to the bombed schools and dead children and all the other gruesome things this guy wanted to tell us about.
So then we had some indignant drunken Doeners. I doubt we'll be going back to that place anytime soon - an eventful weekend by the waterside, though, and I'll see you all soon.
01 June 2008
29 May 2008
correspondence.
I shouldn't be blogging as I have to be at an U-Bahn station in approximately seven hours to meet for a tour of Communist Architecture in Vienna, and I am also a little bit drunk because tonight it was Heimfest and while the rest of the people in my dormitory were downstairs drinking or outside smoking, Annie and I played a fierce, inebriated round of cards in her room while listening to such hits as "Geh Mal Tanzen" by MO-DO and "Moskau" by the highly underrated Soviet disco group, Dschengis Khan. All of which are available on Youtube.
But here's the news:
"Dear Rachel Richardson,
I am pleased to inform you that our editors have accepted your story
“Trapeze” for publication in the minnesota review."
This is a direct copy and paste from the email I just received, because it's true, it's happening, it's Highly Significant and Unbelievable but, like I said, I'm kind of tipsy so I can't elaborate more than that. I'm 21 years old and I'm getting published in a national literary magazine - the issue doesn't come out until September, but if you're bored sometime this fall, go hunt down a copy at Border's and have yourself a read. I've been celebrating since I heard the news, which was potential news until just now, and I'd already been celebrating tonight but hey - anyone who wants a drink with me when I'm stateside again, let's go and toast to success and stardom. Or at least publication.
This is another gem from my inbox today:
But here's the news:
"Dear Rachel Richardson,
I am pleased to inform you that our editors have accepted your story
“Trapeze” for publication in the minnesota review."
This is a direct copy and paste from the email I just received, because it's true, it's happening, it's Highly Significant and Unbelievable but, like I said, I'm kind of tipsy so I can't elaborate more than that. I'm 21 years old and I'm getting published in a national literary magazine - the issue doesn't come out until September, but if you're bored sometime this fall, go hunt down a copy at Border's and have yourself a read. I've been celebrating since I heard the news, which was potential news until just now, and I'd already been celebrating tonight but hey - anyone who wants a drink with me when I'm stateside again, let's go and toast to success and stardom. Or at least publication.
This is another gem from my inbox today:
"Dear Rachel,
From my father. I love my dad. I love my dog. I love all you lovely people out there. And I hope, honestly and truly and sincerely, that life is going just as swimmingly well for you, wherever you may be.
25 May 2008
lost and found.
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?
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?
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.
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