oh you wouldn’t want an angel watching over /surprise, surprise they wouldn’t wannna watch / another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults. - The National, "Mistaken for Strangers"
it's been a long time since i've felt Just Happy but i do now. i think that simple happiness is something that has tended to elude the both of us, but right now i don't feel bored or itchy or important or anything. it's a relief. - my best friend from high school, message to me, April 8th.
I'll tell you the tangible parts of this first, in hopes of making some semblance of sense. I had a good weekend; an indulgent, over-priced dinner at the lone T.G.I. Friday's in Vienna, solely for the nostalgia of good old American Restaurantism, hallucinating that we were actually on 41st and Yale, that I could walk out to my Oldsmobile and drive the three miles home with my iPod roaring and Marlboro smoke drifting out the window. Annie and I partook of the unspeakably awesome Natural History Museum, a steal at 3.50 Euros, with dinosaur bones and epic architecture and 100 year old taxidermied animals, including a walrus, and let me tell you, walruses are really fucking big. Drinks on Thursday and Saturday, little smoky cafes where we talked about death and our siblings and god knows what else. Saw The Third Man today, after taking the tour on Friday, seeing all the locations where they filmed. And then I came home, digging around online and uncovering a wealth of "publisher's blogs," detailing the perils of the business of books, the boring work-world of words, and felt shattering doubt come storming through the window like a crazy, malicious wind.
Because, really, what am I doing. What the hell do I think I'm doing.
Do you know about my State project? Well, let me tell you. It's the dumbest idea I've ever had, up there with novel-length Harry Potter fanfiction, with running three campus organizations at one time, with that time I tried to do Atkin's and nearly crashed my car driving home from Booker T due to lack of blood sugar. The gist is this: 50 pieces of sudden fiction, truncated stories no longer than 4-5 pages, one per state, ala Sufjan Stevens (I know, I'm a hack). Yesterday I finished California, and, after recycling a pair of exercises from workshops past, I've nudged this little monster of mine to 17 pieces, clocking in at 55 pages, 1.5 spaced, 12 pt. font. Fascinating stuff, I know, but this bastard of mine is the first real "project" I've ever undertaken - something with a set beginning and end, something that lets me read Wikipedia all day and push myself to experiment, something that makes me feel like I'm doing something real and actual and worthwhile. I received a 2.5 grand school-funded grant to go on a road-trip across the American West this summer with another Hamilton student, to hypothetically help me finish this thing. It's going to be my thesis, when that time comes. And it's ridiculous.
And I feel the nightmares coming on, feel everything my best friend is telling me not to feel - itchy, bored, and important - so I dive into the bathroom for a hopefully chemically-soothing cigarette, looking out the window at the building across the street. Most of the time, the building's windows are dark, but every now and again I get a peek in someone's nursery or living room. Tonight, the library was lit up - a room of shelves, all those volumes, and all I want, all I think I want, is one of them to have my name on it, to sit collecting dust somewhere. If I'm lucky, someone will underline some phrases I wrote, dog-ear a few pages, scribble a note in the margins. And this is the same kind of panic, happy at times with the sheer hugeness of my hopes, impossible with the enormity of possibilities, that makes my palms sweaty when I go to Gardner's Used Bookstore in Tulsa, when I went to Strand in New York - all those books. All these people. It just starts a string of questions I can't finish: What? Why? How?
But tonight, I'm wearing my Feel Better Sweater, and I'm smoking, when I hear the most tremendous sneeze that echoes all down the street - this is sneezing at the level of my Dad, an explosion of allergies, epic and cranium-shaking. And I poke my head out of the window and look down at the sidewalk 4 floors below, but there's just a leashless dog and his hip chick of an owner. And then I look up, and there's a man standing on the balcony of the top floor of the building across the street, and he waves, and I wave, and then he sneezes again and goes inside.
So I just started laughing.
I sometimes think that my sense of humor might be the only thing rallying me through the days when I sleep too long, the afternoons when I'm glued to the computer, the nights spent alone. So I have that to be grateful for - and being away from Campus Bureaucracy, away from Tulsa Claustrophobia. It just swings so much. But the saying goes: This too shall pass, which I've always liked, because it means Hold Your Breath and Savor It, or Don't Worry, Tomorrow Is On Its Way Already.
But this is what I do when I ought to be reading things in German. So much for bilingualism, no?
EDIT:
Much better now, courtesy of a Nutella-and-banana sandwich and a day spent with the little 'uns at the Vienna school, in the lovely 18th district where there are sidewalks and trees and it feels like a neighborhood (my district just feels like a district). I made up 3 new verses to Head Shoulder Knees and Toes, and while some of the kids make me want to yelp and run away, it just makes the nicer ones all the much nicer. After Crazy Class - 30 something 2nd graders, a screaming teacher, one of those mandatory I'm-going-to-whine-like-a-dog-until-you-call-on-me-students - I have Nice Quiet class, where there was a birthday today, so all the children sat around the cake and said their wishes for tiny Paul, who looked about 7 though he was turning 10. Then they cut up the cake, and I was just wandering around the classroom, trying to stay out of the way, learning new words in German, when there's a tiny tug on my shirt hem and tiny Paul is asking me if I'd like a piece of cake. It was about the most adorable thing in the world.
So I'm not nuts, not yet, at least. Registered for my Senior Year classes and it's going to be baller - Lit Theory, PRISON WRITING (with Doran Larson OH SWOON), Murder Madness and Mayhem Russian Literature, and an independent study. Also got my housing in order and I'm in a suite, thank god. And, finally, I'm doing my laundry at someone else's dorm because this is getting a little gross (BUT KARLI AND ARIEL ARE SENDING ME OLD NAVY JEANS AND THAT IS WHAT I CALL TRUE BLUE.) The end.
11 April 2008
nobody's reading this but then again it is spring.
Or: What A Little Booze and Sunshine Can Do.
Also or: A New List of Addictions.
As of today, Friday, April 11, exactly three months and 11 days since I landed in Frankfurt and exactly 2 months and 20-odd days before I return to Patriotic Soil, I am addicted to the following (in addition to cigarettes but I'm not going to list those unless I already did whoops):
Crackers: I'm on what I like to call The Cracker Diet. Crackers are cheap. Crackers do not go bad, at least not as dramatically as bread does. Crackers are also delicious with just about anything, such as cheese, honey, and more cheese. Also, cheese. I have apertifs for dinner. I'd like to amend my earlier statement about the Horrors of Dining Alone by adding that this experience is only dreadful when in the greater social context of A Restaurant. When it's in a Kitchen with Food You Prepared Yourself Even If It's Only Crackers and Cheese Again Because You Are Pretending to Be An Adult Now, it's glorious.
Doodling: Yes I could be paying attention and learning some German but I would much rather draw tiny caricatures of myself dressed like Robin and horribly drunk. I'm getting fairly good at it, too.
SUNSHINE AND NICE WEATHER: Makes a load of difference. This is Minor-Field, beer in the afternoon, laze away outside weather, when lying on some grass is an activity that can occupy most of the day. It's great. In fact, that's where I'm going now, before we reconvene for THE THIRD MAN TOUR which is going to actually explode my mind.
Also or: A New List of Addictions.
As of today, Friday, April 11, exactly three months and 11 days since I landed in Frankfurt and exactly 2 months and 20-odd days before I return to Patriotic Soil, I am addicted to the following (in addition to cigarettes but I'm not going to list those unless I already did whoops):
Crackers: I'm on what I like to call The Cracker Diet. Crackers are cheap. Crackers do not go bad, at least not as dramatically as bread does. Crackers are also delicious with just about anything, such as cheese, honey, and more cheese. Also, cheese. I have apertifs for dinner. I'd like to amend my earlier statement about the Horrors of Dining Alone by adding that this experience is only dreadful when in the greater social context of A Restaurant. When it's in a Kitchen with Food You Prepared Yourself Even If It's Only Crackers and Cheese Again Because You Are Pretending to Be An Adult Now, it's glorious.
Doodling: Yes I could be paying attention and learning some German but I would much rather draw tiny caricatures of myself dressed like Robin and horribly drunk. I'm getting fairly good at it, too.
SUNSHINE AND NICE WEATHER: Makes a load of difference. This is Minor-Field, beer in the afternoon, laze away outside weather, when lying on some grass is an activity that can occupy most of the day. It's great. In fact, that's where I'm going now, before we reconvene for THE THIRD MAN TOUR which is going to actually explode my mind.
06 April 2008
bad nights and good days.
Subtitled: A Weekend Worth Writing About.
My lone class was canceled on Friday, which gave me ample time to have what Annie probably rightly diagnosed as a complete and total blood sugar crash, wherein I, after sitting at my computer for far too long looking at such worthwhile sites as Where The Hell is Matt (and not the Kanye Grammy performance which if you have not seen MUST BE CHECKED OUT), have a smoke and then realize I'm about to fall over and am sweating and what feels a lot like dying. So then I ate something and realized my Just Don't Eat for Long Stretches Because It Is Expensive and I Am Broke and Overweight Anyway strategy was pretty fucking stupid.
But then! I met up with Pat Hodgens, a fellow Hamiltonian en route from his program in somewhere near London to a week-long farm stay in little town Austria, and we had coffee at this divey little coffeeshop that you would never suspect is completely awesome. I went there the first time on Wednesday night, when the tables were cramped and the waiters overworked - we asked if we could see a menu, and the tuxedo'd man just shouted "THERE IS NONE." But we also got secret Buechteln donut-cakes and pretended we were not lost Americans. Connie, one of Annie's visiting compadres, led us there before she departed for India - which just reinforced my loserly idea that everyone is having grander adventures than I am, which was, in turn, why it was so nice to see Pat, who is suffering the same Study Abroad Malaise and Confusion that I am. What are we supposed to be doing here, exactly? Aren't our lives supposed to be changing on a daily basis, and shouldn't we be having perspective-warping epiphanies when walking down the street? Why do we spend so much time missing our dogs, cheap beer, and readily-edible snacks? Other than being fantastic company for an afternoon, it was awesome to see Pat solely as consolation, because try as we might, not every single moment is going to be world-imploding. And maybe that's the realization we'll all end up having.
After a dinner of Doeners, Annie and I saw Juno, a nice little film and infinitely nicer when I wasn't seeing it by myself in Oslo and with a plastic cup of beer more fitting for a baseball game than a movie. Snagged some fancy ice cream and called it a night, due to sleepiness more than anything, and I was snuggled up in bed dreaming away when my roommate barged in at who knows what hour - not unusual, really, but this time she wasn't exactly alone. And though I might sleep through tornadoes at home, I was unhappily unable to drown out the noises of the hanky-panky going on in the bed on the other side of my room. Freshmen, take heed: do not have sex in the room when you're roommate is "asleep." Unless your roommate is actually, certifiably dead, as in not amongst the living, has perished, is a corpse, she will certainly, definitely hear you, no matter how quiet you're trying to be. It sucked. It really, really sucked. And I have not seen my roommate - or rather, heard my roommate - since, as she has disappeared for a day now.
But, on the plus side, so as not to deal with awkward morning encounters, I ran from the dorm on Saturday morning (after, of course, slyly scoping out and consequently judging this random dude - for some reason it would've been one thing had he been some dashing Austrian prince, but he was pudgy and had a neck tattoo and I was more than happy to never see him again) and stayed out as long as possible. Went to a nearby cafe and wrote for a while (my friends have taken to calling it "Pulling A Rachel" - I remember the same phrase had a completely different definition once, namely leaving a party without saying bye to anyone), told the awful tale of the night before to Annie, collected the boys and set off for The Third Man Private Collection.
I read an article about how certain areas of the world had a tourist boom following filming there - kids are gung-ho to ride the "real Hogwarts Express," nearly every native in Salzburg hates the Sound of Music - and I initially thought "HOW RIDICULOUS" until I remembered I came to Vienna because of a movie. I think I've seen The Third Man at least a dozen times since that fateful first viewing in Intro Film class Freshman year, and I'm going to go see it again as soon as I can (there's a theater here that plays it twice a week, year-round). I'm obsessed with Orson Welles and have his picture in my wallet (where a real photo of a real boyfriend ought to be). So, yes, I did kind of explode while we were at the Collection - we got to watch a scene from one of the original film strips, played through a 1936 projector, in addition to the approximately one million posters of the film, bios on all the actors, a room devoted to Post WWII Vienna to give a better context for the film, and souvenirs including a mug that reveals Harry Lime's face when you pour something hot into it (I didn't buy one, but I might). So awesome. If you haven't seen it yet, you really, really should, or better yet, you should wait until I'm available and we can watch my trusty copy together. That goes for everyone.
Satiated, we nabbed a bite to eat at the Naschmarkt and headed for the Reisenrad, the gigantic ferris wheel of Third Man fame, where Harry and Holly meet in the scene that made me fall in love with Young Orson Welles forever. I've been on the Reisenrad once before, in 2006 when Matthew and I ran around Vienna for one exhausting weekend, but it's still awesome - you can see all of Vienna from the windows, though we spent most of the ride shopping for rides in the surrounding Prater amusement park. Again, I have to go back with the script in hand, so I can threaten to kill my former best friend and say "old man" a lot and then deliver that kicker of a line about the Renaissance and cuckoo clocks (SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS HAVE TO WATCH THIS MOVIE). Instead, we rode some rides - my first 'dizzy mouse' roller coaster, next door to the Super 8 Bahn which was probably not as frightening as all my screaming made it seem, and then a gigantic spinning swing thing that lets you see pretty much all of Europe with naught but a bar between you and the rest of the world. Unfortunately, we were weeping by the end of it, not with emotion but merely with wind, because it's really damned windy on the top of the world. Annie, because she is batshit crazy, rode some horrible spin-you-in-all-directions-including-upside-down-while-strobe-lights-and-German-techno-are-playing
ride called EXTAZY - reminded me of The Himalaya at Bell's, solely for the awful air-brushed murals all around it. R.I.P., Bell's Amusement Park. I don't know what the hell Tulsa was thinking.
So amusement parks are great, and so is beer, because we had some sushi for dinner and actually found a bar, for once, under the U6 Line, where we talked about outer space for the better part of an hour and then managed to return ourselves home via Night Transportation. I was tipsy enough to run into the flower-beds of City Hall and snag a daffodill, because even though my jacket has multiple phony pockets, it does have ample space for a faux boutonnière. I had to spell-check that one, just for the record.
I think I'm watching The Godfather tonight with fellow dormitory-mates, and tomorrow I've got to teach English to small children. Indeed!
My lone class was canceled on Friday, which gave me ample time to have what Annie probably rightly diagnosed as a complete and total blood sugar crash, wherein I, after sitting at my computer for far too long looking at such worthwhile sites as Where The Hell is Matt (and not the Kanye Grammy performance which if you have not seen MUST BE CHECKED OUT), have a smoke and then realize I'm about to fall over and am sweating and what feels a lot like dying. So then I ate something and realized my Just Don't Eat for Long Stretches Because It Is Expensive and I Am Broke and Overweight Anyway strategy was pretty fucking stupid.
But then! I met up with Pat Hodgens, a fellow Hamiltonian en route from his program in somewhere near London to a week-long farm stay in little town Austria, and we had coffee at this divey little coffeeshop that you would never suspect is completely awesome. I went there the first time on Wednesday night, when the tables were cramped and the waiters overworked - we asked if we could see a menu, and the tuxedo'd man just shouted "THERE IS NONE." But we also got secret Buechteln donut-cakes and pretended we were not lost Americans. Connie, one of Annie's visiting compadres, led us there before she departed for India - which just reinforced my loserly idea that everyone is having grander adventures than I am, which was, in turn, why it was so nice to see Pat, who is suffering the same Study Abroad Malaise and Confusion that I am. What are we supposed to be doing here, exactly? Aren't our lives supposed to be changing on a daily basis, and shouldn't we be having perspective-warping epiphanies when walking down the street? Why do we spend so much time missing our dogs, cheap beer, and readily-edible snacks? Other than being fantastic company for an afternoon, it was awesome to see Pat solely as consolation, because try as we might, not every single moment is going to be world-imploding. And maybe that's the realization we'll all end up having.
After a dinner of Doeners, Annie and I saw Juno, a nice little film and infinitely nicer when I wasn't seeing it by myself in Oslo and with a plastic cup of beer more fitting for a baseball game than a movie. Snagged some fancy ice cream and called it a night, due to sleepiness more than anything, and I was snuggled up in bed dreaming away when my roommate barged in at who knows what hour - not unusual, really, but this time she wasn't exactly alone. And though I might sleep through tornadoes at home, I was unhappily unable to drown out the noises of the hanky-panky going on in the bed on the other side of my room. Freshmen, take heed: do not have sex in the room when you're roommate is "asleep." Unless your roommate is actually, certifiably dead, as in not amongst the living, has perished, is a corpse, she will certainly, definitely hear you, no matter how quiet you're trying to be. It sucked. It really, really sucked. And I have not seen my roommate - or rather, heard my roommate - since, as she has disappeared for a day now.
But, on the plus side, so as not to deal with awkward morning encounters, I ran from the dorm on Saturday morning (after, of course, slyly scoping out and consequently judging this random dude - for some reason it would've been one thing had he been some dashing Austrian prince, but he was pudgy and had a neck tattoo and I was more than happy to never see him again) and stayed out as long as possible. Went to a nearby cafe and wrote for a while (my friends have taken to calling it "Pulling A Rachel" - I remember the same phrase had a completely different definition once, namely leaving a party without saying bye to anyone), told the awful tale of the night before to Annie, collected the boys and set off for The Third Man Private Collection.
I read an article about how certain areas of the world had a tourist boom following filming there - kids are gung-ho to ride the "real Hogwarts Express," nearly every native in Salzburg hates the Sound of Music - and I initially thought "HOW RIDICULOUS" until I remembered I came to Vienna because of a movie. I think I've seen The Third Man at least a dozen times since that fateful first viewing in Intro Film class Freshman year, and I'm going to go see it again as soon as I can (there's a theater here that plays it twice a week, year-round). I'm obsessed with Orson Welles and have his picture in my wallet (where a real photo of a real boyfriend ought to be). So, yes, I did kind of explode while we were at the Collection - we got to watch a scene from one of the original film strips, played through a 1936 projector, in addition to the approximately one million posters of the film, bios on all the actors, a room devoted to Post WWII Vienna to give a better context for the film, and souvenirs including a mug that reveals Harry Lime's face when you pour something hot into it (I didn't buy one, but I might). So awesome. If you haven't seen it yet, you really, really should, or better yet, you should wait until I'm available and we can watch my trusty copy together. That goes for everyone.
Satiated, we nabbed a bite to eat at the Naschmarkt and headed for the Reisenrad, the gigantic ferris wheel of Third Man fame, where Harry and Holly meet in the scene that made me fall in love with Young Orson Welles forever. I've been on the Reisenrad once before, in 2006 when Matthew and I ran around Vienna for one exhausting weekend, but it's still awesome - you can see all of Vienna from the windows, though we spent most of the ride shopping for rides in the surrounding Prater amusement park. Again, I have to go back with the script in hand, so I can threaten to kill my former best friend and say "old man" a lot and then deliver that kicker of a line about the Renaissance and cuckoo clocks (SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS HAVE TO WATCH THIS MOVIE). Instead, we rode some rides - my first 'dizzy mouse' roller coaster, next door to the Super 8 Bahn which was probably not as frightening as all my screaming made it seem, and then a gigantic spinning swing thing that lets you see pretty much all of Europe with naught but a bar between you and the rest of the world. Unfortunately, we were weeping by the end of it, not with emotion but merely with wind, because it's really damned windy on the top of the world. Annie, because she is batshit crazy, rode some horrible spin-you-in-all-directions-including-upside-down-while-strobe-lights-and-German-techno-are-playing
ride called EXTAZY - reminded me of The Himalaya at Bell's, solely for the awful air-brushed murals all around it. R.I.P., Bell's Amusement Park. I don't know what the hell Tulsa was thinking.
So amusement parks are great, and so is beer, because we had some sushi for dinner and actually found a bar, for once, under the U6 Line, where we talked about outer space for the better part of an hour and then managed to return ourselves home via Night Transportation. I was tipsy enough to run into the flower-beds of City Hall and snag a daffodill, because even though my jacket has multiple phony pockets, it does have ample space for a faux boutonnière. I had to spell-check that one, just for the record.
I think I'm watching The Godfather tonight with fellow dormitory-mates, and tomorrow I've got to teach English to small children. Indeed!
02 April 2008
letters to illiterates.
Dear Sweet New Kicks and Jacket That I Bought When I Didn't Have Enough Money To Do So But Did So Anyway:
You make me look awesome! Or at least feel like I look awesome! Or feel a little like I should be on a field somewhere reporting live while bombs explode in the distance, or maybe starting a revolution with a lot of scraggly university students who haven't shaved on purpose, and I don't even care that 3/4s of your pockets are fake! And these kicks - check it, they have ANCHORS on them! Why!? I don't know! Keep up with the good work.
Dear Penny:
I know you are not reading this, because you are a dog, and last time we saw one another your vocabulary included the words "suppertime" and "monkey" but little else (though we tried our damnedest to teach you "perambulation" as a synonym for "walk"). I would just like to express how much I appreciate your sub-human, don't-know-any-better devotion to me, because you are always up for hanging out, even if your definition of quality time means crawling all over the book I am trying to read and then waiting patiently at the door while I slip outside for a front-porch smoke before my parents get home. I saw a dog in Copenhagen and was reminded of you, as I am always reminded of you whenever I see a dog that I can't borrow, but this dog especially was Penny-esque, as it couldn't take more than 4 steps without flopping on its back and rolling in the grass of the Danish Palace Lawns, solely out of sheer, doggy glee. Clearly the happiest creature in all of Denmark, probably all of Scandinavia. I had a very obvious epiphany today, Penny, while the spring we'd been enjoying vamoosed, replaced with a dreary cold wind and hail, and I was sitting in my room again, looking out the window, realizing I spend far too much time alone. This is not a new problem, and it's something of a writerly burden to be cooped up in one's head continually, having the maddening capacity to re-write reality and imagine things that are always better but always unattainable, living anywhere and anywhen but in the here and now, but it's something that shouldn't be going on, not while I'm 21 and in Europe at least. And that is why I miss you so much, stupid little pig-shaped dog of mine - because you always think I'm awesome, regardless of how I did my hair if I did it at all and how I think of myself, and you are always ready for an adventure and think an adventure is a fearsome game of chase through the house. If you kick the bucket anytime soon, I really will never forgive you, and I promise we will perambulate like we have never perambulated before as soon as I'm in Tulsa again.
Dear iPod:
Holy shit, you rock! What a brilliant being you are, all pocket-sized and hand-holdable, and jam-packed with goodness! Like Spoon! I forgot I even liked Spoon! But man, I've spent the past day and a half skipping down sidewalks humming the horn part to "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb" and I'm pretty sure it's one of the most idiotic songs I've ever heard, but then I have visions of Strassenbahns full of dancing Austrians! Magical! You provide a soundtrack, which then tells me the mood of the scene I am in - poignant when it's raining and I'm listening to "Take Five," hysterical when the track switches to "Bossa Nova U.S.A." You kept me going in Oslo when the solitude was about to overwhelm me, because I've come to understand Of Montreal, at last, after seeing them live twice. You kept me company in all those train rides, made it possible for me to imagine for a moment we were leaping off the furniture in Keehn again, probably with the strobe light going, rapping to "99 Problems" or dancing like madfiends to "We Share Our Mother's Health." And Modest Mouse - I have the mix CDs of my entire life in my hand! Relive high school with some Arcade Fire, the Unicorns - Freshman year and Andrew Bird. Incredible! You are astounding, like all other iPods in the world, and may you not break (by falling on the tracks of the U-Bahn, for instance, a scene I have imagined uncountable times) until I have enough money to replace you. Which will probably be never. Amen.
Dear Vienna:
Do you like me check yes or no.
Love,
Rachel
You make me look awesome! Or at least feel like I look awesome! Or feel a little like I should be on a field somewhere reporting live while bombs explode in the distance, or maybe starting a revolution with a lot of scraggly university students who haven't shaved on purpose, and I don't even care that 3/4s of your pockets are fake! And these kicks - check it, they have ANCHORS on them! Why!? I don't know! Keep up with the good work.
Dear Penny:
I know you are not reading this, because you are a dog, and last time we saw one another your vocabulary included the words "suppertime" and "monkey" but little else (though we tried our damnedest to teach you "perambulation" as a synonym for "walk"). I would just like to express how much I appreciate your sub-human, don't-know-any-better devotion to me, because you are always up for hanging out, even if your definition of quality time means crawling all over the book I am trying to read and then waiting patiently at the door while I slip outside for a front-porch smoke before my parents get home. I saw a dog in Copenhagen and was reminded of you, as I am always reminded of you whenever I see a dog that I can't borrow, but this dog especially was Penny-esque, as it couldn't take more than 4 steps without flopping on its back and rolling in the grass of the Danish Palace Lawns, solely out of sheer, doggy glee. Clearly the happiest creature in all of Denmark, probably all of Scandinavia. I had a very obvious epiphany today, Penny, while the spring we'd been enjoying vamoosed, replaced with a dreary cold wind and hail, and I was sitting in my room again, looking out the window, realizing I spend far too much time alone. This is not a new problem, and it's something of a writerly burden to be cooped up in one's head continually, having the maddening capacity to re-write reality and imagine things that are always better but always unattainable, living anywhere and anywhen but in the here and now, but it's something that shouldn't be going on, not while I'm 21 and in Europe at least. And that is why I miss you so much, stupid little pig-shaped dog of mine - because you always think I'm awesome, regardless of how I did my hair if I did it at all and how I think of myself, and you are always ready for an adventure and think an adventure is a fearsome game of chase through the house. If you kick the bucket anytime soon, I really will never forgive you, and I promise we will perambulate like we have never perambulated before as soon as I'm in Tulsa again.
Dear iPod:
Holy shit, you rock! What a brilliant being you are, all pocket-sized and hand-holdable, and jam-packed with goodness! Like Spoon! I forgot I even liked Spoon! But man, I've spent the past day and a half skipping down sidewalks humming the horn part to "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb" and I'm pretty sure it's one of the most idiotic songs I've ever heard, but then I have visions of Strassenbahns full of dancing Austrians! Magical! You provide a soundtrack, which then tells me the mood of the scene I am in - poignant when it's raining and I'm listening to "Take Five," hysterical when the track switches to "Bossa Nova U.S.A." You kept me going in Oslo when the solitude was about to overwhelm me, because I've come to understand Of Montreal, at last, after seeing them live twice. You kept me company in all those train rides, made it possible for me to imagine for a moment we were leaping off the furniture in Keehn again, probably with the strobe light going, rapping to "99 Problems" or dancing like madfiends to "We Share Our Mother's Health." And Modest Mouse - I have the mix CDs of my entire life in my hand! Relive high school with some Arcade Fire, the Unicorns - Freshman year and Andrew Bird. Incredible! You are astounding, like all other iPods in the world, and may you not break (by falling on the tracks of the U-Bahn, for instance, a scene I have imagined uncountable times) until I have enough money to replace you. Which will probably be never. Amen.
Dear Vienna:
Do you like me check yes or no.
Love,
Rachel
30 March 2008
back from outer space. also known as scandinavia.
On my last night in Oslo, when I was completely beat from the whirlwind tour of 5 countries in 2 weeks, I was sitting in the hostel reading and chatting with my two British roommates, a blond bloke named Jack and his Italian compatriot Vince who had just eaten whale steaks and were prepping for a night on the town, and Jack, after demonstrating his girly scarf with a catwalk across the room and approving of my massive Oasis catalogue (the first time that has ever happened) on my iPod, asked me what my favorite part of my Grand European tour had been. And I had no idea what the answer was, nor do I have any idea how to go about writing about it, so bear with me if this post rambles the way I rambled from Austria to the Czech Republic, across Germany to the Netherlands, up to Copenhagen, Stockholm, and finally Oslo. Also, there's a veritable bonanza of photos on Facebook, so have a look at those if you have time to sift through three entire albums.
I set off from Vienna in the afternoon, and by dawn we were back in the sick NYU dormitory, watching the sun rise over Prague from the roof-top terrace they have, more than adequate for soul-searching cigarette breaks. Johanna met me at the station, thank God, because Prague is dirty and full of bizarre Czechs, only out-bizarred by their language, which has absolutely no vowels, as far as I can tell. Prague itself is lovely and the club scene is far more jumping than Vienna - there's a scene in Lost in Translation where the two go out to a club and end up at a karaoke joint, and that was pretty much me, wearing Johanna's jewelry and Jamie's shirt, chain-smoking and beer-chugging. 4 a.m. stop-over for fried cheese sandwiches and then I collapsed on someone else's bunk bed - a rollicking way to start the whole mad adventure. We took the next night in, watching a movie and drinking fine wine, after spending the day marauding around the city and seeing the necessary sights: the Charles Bridge, the Lennon Wall, that big two-towered church and the busy Easter festival set up in the square. Much of the stay was based on being around people as much as possible, having conversations with Johanna that resembled the streets themselves - twisty and with no clear direction - because I'm going back to Prague with the Central Abroad group in something like two weeks, and I can't wait.
After a Kafka-esque scramble through the city to get me on my train to Amsterdam via taxi, the maddening train system (I mean, there's something to be said for Austrian Efficiency when it comes to public transportaion), and lots of wandering, which inevitably failed, I ended up on a train bound for Frankfurt. I swear, if I never see Frankfurt until my flight out of there in July, I'll be thrilled. Before that, though, it was 5 in the morning, I was on a train station in Fulda, Germany, fairly happy because I can at least understand Deutsch, and the sleepy German passengers were being booted off the train for reasons my groggy mind couldn't grasp, so there I was, the lone American, sitting on my backpack with 100 other Germans waiting for the final train to godforsaken Frankfurt. That's something like 5 trains in less then 12 hours, but finally, finally, it was Amsterdam.
Of course I smoked weed in Amsterdam, and I'm sorry to report, I absolutely cannot enjoy the sticky-icky, the dro, the ganja, the mary jane - but the whole escapade was completely worth it, just to walk into a coffeeshop (appropriately called Amnesia), go up to counter and say, "I'd like to buy some weed please." Of course, the answer to this should be "WELL CERTAINLY HERE YOU ARE" and not what the woman actually said: "Would you like to get high or stoned?" "HIGH!" I blurted, and then I was the owner of half a gram of premium weed. So then a kind local rolled us a joint and there we were - 2 puffs in, though, I felt my heartrate triple and my thoughts go into hyperdrive and I was frantically nodding my head to the ridiculous music and we went and got pancakes afterwards, after giving the remaining stuff to some old American biker dude sitting behind us, who laughed and said that he'd been in the same situation himself. Zoso, though, has never sounded so good.
Had a much better night when we went out bar-hunting after a day ambling beside the canals and dodging bicycles. Heard some incredibly legit blues coming from an unmarked door and dove inside - these incredible Dutch dudes, wailing away on guitars and fiddles, singing about their women and their dogs and all the ache they were in, and then they'd start bantering in Dutch. Alabama in Amsterdam, and plenty of beer to wash it down with. We ran around Madame Tussaud's wax museum, posing with all the mannequins, went to the Van Gogh museum (featuring many things from Vincent's own trash can, including a probably priceless doodle of a shovel), and got hailed on a lot. Which was annoying, but Amsterdam is beyond gorgeous, the Netherlands is still the coolest country name in the universe, and I'm going to retire to a windmill surrounded by tulips.
Copenhagen was full of swans and rain and coldness - kind of a comedown after Amsterdam, really - plus, we were only there for a night due to these alleged terrorists who clearly wanted to kill us. We saw no such violence - a lot of parks and swans and more swans and Hans Christian Andersen basically leaping around every corner. Went in an old castle and saw the Danish crown jewels, most legit indeed. It was Easter weekend, though, so the city was fairly quiet in general. We ended up splurging on an Italian meal because we didn't understand the currency at all, and still don't - not nearly as good as all the pancakes we had in Amsterdam, or the fine Indian feast we treated ourselves to, complete with a bottle of shitty white wine, or the incredible brunch we had where they gave me an entire pot of coffee. But I was just glad for blue skies and blue seas and to finally be there, in Scandinavia. Just say "Scandinavia" a few times and you'll get the feeling.
A quick jaunt over the water and we were in Stockholm, where things got completely unpronounceable. Dutch just looks like German with more vowels, but Swedish is a class of its own - this was before Norway, which has all those lovely circles over its letters and lines through its O's. Accosted some old man for directions, checked into our hostel, and prepared to battle the cold - and man, it was cold. I bought some tights in Copenhagen which turned out to be mandatory for setting foot outside in Stockholm, and added a Swedish hat and some gloves THAT I STOLE from a tourist attraction (I was trying to do one ridiculous thing per country) to be as bundled as possible. We took a boat out to the archipelago, ate some delicious shrimp chowder (Karli, I understand your love of soup now), and coped with the Ice Bar being closed until May by getting giant beers at a better bar, anyway. Old Town Stockholm, aside from being rife with tourists (making it very easy to shoplift a pair of over-priced gloves), looked so much like Schwaebisch Hall - windy streets and narrow buildings. Again, due to the holiday, pretty much everything was closed, so we sought warmth in some churches, said "Sweeeeden" a lot, and were not at all surprised when the Swedish Royal Drum Corps performing outside of the palace burst into "Dancing Queen." It's Sweden, after all. Fruitless voyage to Ikea, which was fucking closed, and a feast at TGI Friday's because they apparently realized the city would be full of homesick tourists who would appreciate the free refills. I had 4 Pepsis, for the record.
Annie and I split ways and then I was off to Oslo - like Berlin, like Scandinavia, half of my infatuation with the place was based soley on the name itself. Oslo! I was supposed to press on towards Bergen, on the other side of Norway, where all those fjords are, but when I got off the train at Oslo, I realized, horribly and scarily, that I was alone in Norway, starving and light-headed, and sans cigarettes and a bed to sleep in that night. So I made some decisions, with the help of some cigarettes, and decided Bergen could wait (it was also snowing ala Hamilton last February), I was staying put in Olso. Which turned out just fine, in the end. Traveling alone, though, has its pros and cons. It was incredibly nice to feel only responsible for myself, to know if I was bored it was just me being bored, to take my time walking around and basically not plan anything in advance - but these are small consolations for the god-awful act of Dining Alone. I'd rather starve than sit in another restaurant by myself, eating a meal for one, talking to no one besides the waitress. There's nothing lonelier in the world than that. Fortunately, the Indian waiters were fairly chatty, the soup I had on my first night was mind-blowing (and hot, which was something I hadn't experienced in an entire week), and the last time I was on my way to the Philharmonic so I could've cared less. I did see the Oslo Philharmonic, which was fantastic, if only for the incredible parade of the elderly. Also saw The Scream, after chasing it down, and some Viking Ships, and a Stave Church.
But this might have been the best thing I experienced in my entire time there, if you're still reading (and I know this is longer than Proust right now). I took a boat out to these islands where all the famous museums were, and I was about to rush to get the boat back to the mainland when I saw a little stretch of coast - probably no more than 30 feet of rocks. But I sat there and missed the boat entirely, digging for shells and sitting in the sun and jumping back when the tide started rushing in. That may have been my favorite part of the whole nutty voyage - just sitting quietly in Norway with the water, not thinking anything in particular, looking for the best shells.
So there it is. The epic tale of Rachel's Spring Break, the Scandinavian Tour. Now I'm off to call the fam-o-rama from a phone booth.
I set off from Vienna in the afternoon, and by dawn we were back in the sick NYU dormitory, watching the sun rise over Prague from the roof-top terrace they have, more than adequate for soul-searching cigarette breaks. Johanna met me at the station, thank God, because Prague is dirty and full of bizarre Czechs, only out-bizarred by their language, which has absolutely no vowels, as far as I can tell. Prague itself is lovely and the club scene is far more jumping than Vienna - there's a scene in Lost in Translation where the two go out to a club and end up at a karaoke joint, and that was pretty much me, wearing Johanna's jewelry and Jamie's shirt, chain-smoking and beer-chugging. 4 a.m. stop-over for fried cheese sandwiches and then I collapsed on someone else's bunk bed - a rollicking way to start the whole mad adventure. We took the next night in, watching a movie and drinking fine wine, after spending the day marauding around the city and seeing the necessary sights: the Charles Bridge, the Lennon Wall, that big two-towered church and the busy Easter festival set up in the square. Much of the stay was based on being around people as much as possible, having conversations with Johanna that resembled the streets themselves - twisty and with no clear direction - because I'm going back to Prague with the Central Abroad group in something like two weeks, and I can't wait.
After a Kafka-esque scramble through the city to get me on my train to Amsterdam via taxi, the maddening train system (I mean, there's something to be said for Austrian Efficiency when it comes to public transportaion), and lots of wandering, which inevitably failed, I ended up on a train bound for Frankfurt. I swear, if I never see Frankfurt until my flight out of there in July, I'll be thrilled. Before that, though, it was 5 in the morning, I was on a train station in Fulda, Germany, fairly happy because I can at least understand Deutsch, and the sleepy German passengers were being booted off the train for reasons my groggy mind couldn't grasp, so there I was, the lone American, sitting on my backpack with 100 other Germans waiting for the final train to godforsaken Frankfurt. That's something like 5 trains in less then 12 hours, but finally, finally, it was Amsterdam.
Of course I smoked weed in Amsterdam, and I'm sorry to report, I absolutely cannot enjoy the sticky-icky, the dro, the ganja, the mary jane - but the whole escapade was completely worth it, just to walk into a coffeeshop (appropriately called Amnesia), go up to counter and say, "I'd like to buy some weed please." Of course, the answer to this should be "WELL CERTAINLY HERE YOU ARE" and not what the woman actually said: "Would you like to get high or stoned?" "HIGH!" I blurted, and then I was the owner of half a gram of premium weed. So then a kind local rolled us a joint and there we were - 2 puffs in, though, I felt my heartrate triple and my thoughts go into hyperdrive and I was frantically nodding my head to the ridiculous music and we went and got pancakes afterwards, after giving the remaining stuff to some old American biker dude sitting behind us, who laughed and said that he'd been in the same situation himself. Zoso, though, has never sounded so good.
Had a much better night when we went out bar-hunting after a day ambling beside the canals and dodging bicycles. Heard some incredibly legit blues coming from an unmarked door and dove inside - these incredible Dutch dudes, wailing away on guitars and fiddles, singing about their women and their dogs and all the ache they were in, and then they'd start bantering in Dutch. Alabama in Amsterdam, and plenty of beer to wash it down with. We ran around Madame Tussaud's wax museum, posing with all the mannequins, went to the Van Gogh museum (featuring many things from Vincent's own trash can, including a probably priceless doodle of a shovel), and got hailed on a lot. Which was annoying, but Amsterdam is beyond gorgeous, the Netherlands is still the coolest country name in the universe, and I'm going to retire to a windmill surrounded by tulips.
Copenhagen was full of swans and rain and coldness - kind of a comedown after Amsterdam, really - plus, we were only there for a night due to these alleged terrorists who clearly wanted to kill us. We saw no such violence - a lot of parks and swans and more swans and Hans Christian Andersen basically leaping around every corner. Went in an old castle and saw the Danish crown jewels, most legit indeed. It was Easter weekend, though, so the city was fairly quiet in general. We ended up splurging on an Italian meal because we didn't understand the currency at all, and still don't - not nearly as good as all the pancakes we had in Amsterdam, or the fine Indian feast we treated ourselves to, complete with a bottle of shitty white wine, or the incredible brunch we had where they gave me an entire pot of coffee. But I was just glad for blue skies and blue seas and to finally be there, in Scandinavia. Just say "Scandinavia" a few times and you'll get the feeling.
A quick jaunt over the water and we were in Stockholm, where things got completely unpronounceable. Dutch just looks like German with more vowels, but Swedish is a class of its own - this was before Norway, which has all those lovely circles over its letters and lines through its O's. Accosted some old man for directions, checked into our hostel, and prepared to battle the cold - and man, it was cold. I bought some tights in Copenhagen which turned out to be mandatory for setting foot outside in Stockholm, and added a Swedish hat and some gloves THAT I STOLE from a tourist attraction (I was trying to do one ridiculous thing per country) to be as bundled as possible. We took a boat out to the archipelago, ate some delicious shrimp chowder (Karli, I understand your love of soup now), and coped with the Ice Bar being closed until May by getting giant beers at a better bar, anyway. Old Town Stockholm, aside from being rife with tourists (making it very easy to shoplift a pair of over-priced gloves), looked so much like Schwaebisch Hall - windy streets and narrow buildings. Again, due to the holiday, pretty much everything was closed, so we sought warmth in some churches, said "Sweeeeden" a lot, and were not at all surprised when the Swedish Royal Drum Corps performing outside of the palace burst into "Dancing Queen." It's Sweden, after all. Fruitless voyage to Ikea, which was fucking closed, and a feast at TGI Friday's because they apparently realized the city would be full of homesick tourists who would appreciate the free refills. I had 4 Pepsis, for the record.
Annie and I split ways and then I was off to Oslo - like Berlin, like Scandinavia, half of my infatuation with the place was based soley on the name itself. Oslo! I was supposed to press on towards Bergen, on the other side of Norway, where all those fjords are, but when I got off the train at Oslo, I realized, horribly and scarily, that I was alone in Norway, starving and light-headed, and sans cigarettes and a bed to sleep in that night. So I made some decisions, with the help of some cigarettes, and decided Bergen could wait (it was also snowing ala Hamilton last February), I was staying put in Olso. Which turned out just fine, in the end. Traveling alone, though, has its pros and cons. It was incredibly nice to feel only responsible for myself, to know if I was bored it was just me being bored, to take my time walking around and basically not plan anything in advance - but these are small consolations for the god-awful act of Dining Alone. I'd rather starve than sit in another restaurant by myself, eating a meal for one, talking to no one besides the waitress. There's nothing lonelier in the world than that. Fortunately, the Indian waiters were fairly chatty, the soup I had on my first night was mind-blowing (and hot, which was something I hadn't experienced in an entire week), and the last time I was on my way to the Philharmonic so I could've cared less. I did see the Oslo Philharmonic, which was fantastic, if only for the incredible parade of the elderly. Also saw The Scream, after chasing it down, and some Viking Ships, and a Stave Church.
But this might have been the best thing I experienced in my entire time there, if you're still reading (and I know this is longer than Proust right now). I took a boat out to these islands where all the famous museums were, and I was about to rush to get the boat back to the mainland when I saw a little stretch of coast - probably no more than 30 feet of rocks. But I sat there and missed the boat entirely, digging for shells and sitting in the sun and jumping back when the tide started rushing in. That may have been my favorite part of the whole nutty voyage - just sitting quietly in Norway with the water, not thinking anything in particular, looking for the best shells.
So there it is. The epic tale of Rachel's Spring Break, the Scandinavian Tour. Now I'm off to call the fam-o-rama from a phone booth.
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