I meant to wake up on time for work at 9:00 but didn't wake up until 10:45. No worries, when I finally went downstairs the manager woman handed me a rake, led me outside, and told me to come back in whenever I wanted lunch.
I raked for about an hour and then took a lunch break, which consisted of onion soup, salad, wiener schnitzel, and spaghetti. Not too shabby for a mid-day meal. The woman told me that I had done enough work and could go after I ate, but I wanted to finish the lawn. Partly because I hadn't had many chances to actually earn my keep, partly because it was a beautiful day, and partly because it wasn't exactly going to kill me.
So I went back out and raked for another hour to finish the lawn-- it was HUGE-- and then went inside to tell the manager woman that the task was completed. Lo and behold, the woman was gone, and so my efforts went temporarily unnoticed. But at least I finished what I had set out to do that morning. And it would be a nice surprise when she returned.
When I left Hotel Post I went to the youth information center since, having only given myself a week in the country, I wanted to make sure I did everything. Or, rather, I wanted to leave no stone unturned.
There were two people working at the info center when I arrived and I told them "I want to do EVERYTHING in this country." They got a kick out of that because, they said, "there is NOTHING to do in this country." I had my route for the country in mind, so to make things simpler I asked them to just write three things for each of the towns. They laughed again because, seriously, they said there was nothing.
Well, I was already in Schaan, so I figured I was starting off right. After all, Schaan is the most-populated town in all of Liechtenstein. Which means, to give you an idea, it has a population of 5,806. A real metropolis, eh?
Schaan is divided into two sides by the road, which runs down the middle and serves as the downtown. Downtown Schaan is about three blocks long and consists of a bank, a music store, a bar, a supermarket ambitiously called "party center," and-- for reasons completely beyond me-- a giant construction site.
The road, then, splits Schaan into two sides, with one side being the commercial district and the other being the historic district. On the commercial side is Hotel Post, the post office, the train station, and a restaurant.
The historic district, though, is the important and memorable part of Schaan, as it consists of a church and a cemetary. Yes, an entire church and an entire cemetary.
The church, listed as one of the twenty "historic sites" on my map of the country, is notable for a 14-panel "story-board" of the crucifixion, a pretty decent organ, and the least-impressive stained-glass windows I've ever seen in a church. Ever. Not exactly a rousing start.
The adjacent cemetary had toilet facilities amongst the graves. This is the only notable thing about the cemetary. But, really, no thanks. I think I'll hold it.
The other thing about Schaan is that the town has an art center for the mentally handicapped. And these were, ahem, the most artistic retards I've ever come across. A couple workers were there changing the theme of the center from "fall" to "Christmas," and I went in to look around because, honest to God, I thought it was an art store. It really was that good. The workers asked if I wanted to paint something, and I politely declined. Not because I don't like art, but because the paintings already on the wall would make me look retarded. Ahem.
As was to become a common theme, and has had already been demonstrated in the youth info center, the two women thought it was hilarious that an American was exploring Liechtenstein on foot. At this point, I'll be honest, I was beginning to have a better understanding about why everyone thought this was funny. After all, I had just explored the entirety of Schaan-- the largest town by population-- in under an hour an a half, and it only took that long because I decided to crawl instead of walk. Not such a good sign for the rest of the country.
The other thing I realized from this visit to the art center is that, in general, the only people in the world more self-deprecating than people from New Jersey are Liechtensteiners. This isn't really surprising to me, largely because of the following conversation I had with a real human being:
him: Where are you from in America?
me: New Jersey.
him: Oh, that's part of New York, right?
me: No, it's a state.
him: I mean it's part of New York CITY-- it's one of the burroughs.
me: I assure you, it's a state.
him: You're sure it's not one of the burroughs? I mean, there's Manhatten, Brooklyn, Newark, New Jersey, and one more, I forget what it is.
This is an actual conversation I had with someone. It's sort of that way with Liechtenstein.
(By the way, according to wikipedia-- and most of my accumulation of knowledge is "according to wikipedia"-- "Schaan is the location of the world headquarters of Ivoclar Vivadent AG, the world's biggest manufacturer of false teeth, and Hilti Aktiengesellschaft, one of the world's largest makers of anchors and power tools." I'm not sure how I missed this, but I guess that's something to be proud of, huh?)
(Oh, and if you're wondering, the three things listed for Schaan were "church," "bars," and "cinema." Nice.)
After a thorough exploration of Schaan, I headed back to the youth info center at around 5:30. Niko, a dude who had been working there earlier, had told me to come back to see about some sort of work, and when I arrived he said I was going to meet the owner of the supermarket. Rather, the owner of the "party center."
The owner ended up being a pretty good dude and said he would pay for my dinner and a bed at the hostel that night in exchange for me coming back the next morning to work. Sounded like a deal to me. So I went to the restaurant next door and, still being full from lunch, ordered a bowl of meat and barley soup. Not really a wise choice, considering the open tab for dinner, but this was one of those lessons learned through experience.
Anyway, it occured to me as I was finished my soup that the hotels in Nendeln had all been closed and that maybe the hostel wasn't open either. So I called the hostel from the restaurant and, as I expected, found out that it wasn't open for the season yet.
Now I was in a situation, so I went to the bar next door to weigh my options. After discussing the matter with two bartenders and two patrons, I decided that the main options were:
1) Going back to Hotel Post. At CHF65 it was still a good deal more than the hostel but was probably the cheapest option in the entire country. And if I worked three hours or so the next morning I would be able to earn it.
2) Going to a hotel in Vaduz. Except every hotel would be more than CHF100, which was absolutely out of the question unless I was going to work the entire day. I was in no mind to do that, to be sure, but also wasn't going to skip out on work entirely.
Of these two, Vaduz was an impossibility but I wasn't too keen on spending another night in Schaan. Let alone another night in Hotel Post. The people at the bar couldn't understand this, but I was adament about this last point. So they made some phone calls for me and had a few decent leads, but in the end nothing was working out.
Now, as the leads kept failing to work out, the guy bartender-- without prompt-- asked his buddy if I could crash on his couch for the night. The buddy said something along the lines of "not a chance"-- or maybe it was something along the lines of "no" but his body language sure as hell looked like "not a chance."
So I asked the bartender if I could simply crash at HIS place, since I assumed he was into the couch business, and he gave me an I-don't-know, why-are-you-asking-me shrug and head-shake. This is the best way I can describe it, but it was basically like he had no idea why I would even think to ask him, despite the fact that he had offered up his buddy's couch without my even prompting him.
Anyway, things were looking bleak, and I asked the bartender again if he would let me crash on his couch for just one night. And I got the same response. So eventually it got to the point where I literally asked him, "How many nights of us hanging out at the bar like this would it take for you to let me crash at your place for a night, if all I needed was a couch, a floor, or a bathtub, and if there was a wall safely between us, and if the alternative was me sleeping outside-- five, six, or seven?"
This was literally the question I asked him, and all he could say was "I don't know" and he refused to give me an answer. I asked the same question to the girl bartender, and she said "I'd have to ask my boyfriend." And I asked the same question to the two patrons, with the girl saying "not a chance" and the guy laughing.
The point is, students in Liechtenstein are the least hospitable in the entire world. In the entire freaking world. I'm not making this up.
Anyway, all else failing, I walked to Vaduz and tried Residence Hotel, advertised outside as a "comfort- undbusiness hotel." I walked upstairs and asked the lady at the front desk if I could crash there for the night, and much to my surprise she said yes, I could sleep on the couch in the lobby. I mean, seriously, I was pretty stunned. Believe it or not. But this place was class.
I was pretty hungry again at this point, since dinner hadn't been substantial at all, so I went to the Residence Hotel restaurant to try to get something to eat. The waitress was very friendly and almost as soon as I indicated I was hungry she went into the kitchen and brought out pasta with vegetables in cream sauce covered with parmesean. I have to call it that, because anything less would do a disservice to this wonderful food. And bread, since that was there too.
So I went back upstairs and ate my meal, and I started to feel at home but was nonetheless still a bit impressed with my own success. I mean, this place was C-L-A-S-S. Probably a CHF200/night place, at the cheapest. And here I was.
I wanted to go back to the bar in Schaan, since the bartender had said he would buy me a drink if I actually was able to sleep in a Vaduz hotel for free. But the hotel doors were going to be locked, and if I left I wouldn't be able to get back in. I figured the self-satisfaction of collecting on that drink wouldn't be worth the problematic nature of being homeless again, so I just said to hell with it and went to sleep. Early, but whatever.
But the lasting legacy of Hotel Residence was this-- it set the final standard for hotel quality.
nicest hotel: Burg Hotel; Deutchslandsberg, Austria
nicest bed: Octagon; Westport, Ireland
nicest couch: Residence Hotel; Vaduz, Liechtenstein
best meal: Burg Hotel; Deutchslandsberg, Austria
Way to go, Residence Hotel.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
9 November 2008: Schaan, Liechtenstein
(FIRST OF ALL, I'VE BEEN UNBELIEVABLY OUT OF INTERNET ACCESS SINCE VIENNA. ALTHOUGH THERE ARE MANY GOOD STORIES BETWEEN THEN AND NOW, THE STORIES IN LIECHTENSTEIN ARE MORE PRESSING, AS ARE THE ONES THAT COME AFTER. I WILL FINISH THE AUSTRIA STORIES AT SOME POINT, BUT FOR NOW YOU MUST REMAIN PATIENT. AND ENJOY THESE ONES.)
I had set my alarm for 9:00 in order to start hitch-hiking, but the combination of wanting to hike and wanting to see Emilie made me turn the alarm off and go back to sleep. (Although not before I witnessed the culmination of the previous night's birthday girl situation-- her phone rang, Giacomo told her "SHH" loudly, she left, and that was it. Clearly nothing had happened, and Giacomo confirmed as much later that day.)
I woke up again at 11:45 and, after Giacomo made pasta for lunch, I started hiking just before 1:30. Giacomo had told me a particular route to take to get to the mountain, but since you couldn't possibly miss the mountain even if you tried I just figured I would head towards the nearest mountain and, well, hit it soon enough. Which I did.
I spent the next hour or so hiking up and around the mountain and absolutely realized why people choose to go to school in Innsbruck. The town, as I've said, isn't much to speak of, but who needs a town when the mountains are just out your window. Hell, I'd go to school in Cleveland if I could escape to the mountains whenever I wanted to. Maybe even Columbus-- well, not Columbus, but you get the point.
The point IS that you're a 15 minute walk from the mountains, which means hiking and snowboarding and a perfect view of the city. Which means, unfortunately, that the University of Innsbruck isn't for you if you don't like snow, sunshine, or doing things.
So I hiked around for a bit, but at 3:00 I was suddenly overcome by the feeling that I had to go to Liechtenstein. Not so much a feeling as a premonition, almost, that I just had to go. Right then. I had done some hiking-- and had gotten the mountain-feel of Innsbruck-- and I could hopefully see Emilie in France eventually. But right then, right there I had to go. There was no avoiding it.
I hiked back down for the bottom and walked back to Giacomo's place, where I got my stuff and bid Giacomo adieu. He was very surprised-- and, I kid you not, had not opened the door at first because he had been scared it was going to be the birthday girl-- but he offered me a couch for the night in case I didn't actually make it out of Innsbruck that night.
It was a nice offer and a rather likely situation, not because the hitch-spot was bad but because, by the time I had gotten my stuff from Giacomo's and walked to the highway-- I wasn't going to tempt fate on the tram on my last day with all my stuff-- it was already 4:05. I wasn't feeling even slightly optimistic about my chances, but it only took 24 minutes for a car to pull up. It was going to Switzerland, all the way past Liechtenstein. It couldn't have been any more perfect.
I got in and talked to the driver, Stefan, for a little while, but I fell asleep pretty soon thereafter. As such, the ride was incredibly quick-- and uneventful-- and when Stefan woke me up we were in Feldkirch, the last town in Austria before Liechtenstein. I asked Stefan if he could take me a bit farther, and so he drove to where we were no more than 50 meters from the Liechtenstein border. At which point he gave me CHF10-- Swiss Francs, the currency in Liechtenstein-- and I got out.
I walked up to the customs agents and told them I was going to Vaduz. They didn't seem even the least bit surprised to see someone crossing the border on foot and with a bag on his back, which was a bit disappointing to be honest with you, but I handed one of them my passport and waited while he went inside. I was actually a bit nervous because I hadn't shown my passport when I crossed into Austria, and I wasn't sure how receptive Liechtenstein would be to outside influence when the last documented country I had been in was Hungary, but the customs agent came right back out and ushered me through.
And that is how, at 6:02, I crossed the border and walked into Liechtenstein.
I kept walking down the same road, and the first baby town I came to was Nendeln, but all the hotels were closed. So I kept walking to Schaan, which was the first major-ish town and where I figured I would find something. The walk took me about an hour, but all I had to was keep going straight. For most of the walk, on the left there are just a row of regular buildings. But on the right you can see lights going on forever with the outline of a mountain behind them. It's just lights on top of nothingness, like looking out at night upon an impossible number of boats on the sea. You couldn't possibly walk into the country and see this sight and not immediately realize that Liechtenstein was going to be an entirely different experience.
When I finally got to Schaan the first hotel I came to was called Hotel Post, and an old man greeted me at the door to the kitchen. I told him I needed a place to sleep for the night, and he said "it's not a problem" and motioned for me to sit at his table. Boy was that easy.
Except that five minutes later the actual manager came out, and I had to repeat to her that I needed a place to sleep for the night. She also said that would be fine, told me to meet her at 9:00 the next morning for a job, handed me a room key, and told me to take my stuff up. Boy, that WAS easy.
When I came back down the manager asked if I wanted dinner, and so I sat down at the old man's table again and by the time my plate of steak and rice had come out, the old man had bought me a beer. Although it wasn't just the one old man. There were three old men, none of whom worked there or had any authority in the place whatsoever but all of whom had been had been supportive that "it's no problem" when I asked if I could sleep there. And so I just spent a couple hours hanging out with these three old men, and it was really just like I had happened to walk in on their weekly "checkers night"-- they were just three old friends sitting around in a bar having a few drinks.
Of the three, one spoke bad English, one spoke too-good Spanish, and one spoke complete jibberish. And all spoke at the same time, so even discounting the jibberish I couldn't understand even one-fourth of everything that was being said.
The first old man, the one who had first invited me to sit with them, was the one who spoke too-good Spanish. He was from either Italy or Argentina, I'm not sure which, and claimed to have been to 44 states, including Montana but not Idaho-- I'm not sure how you can go to one but not the other-- but he said that his favorite state of all was Miami. This guy, Denato, was clearly the leader, and he kept flirting with the absolutely non-responsive waitress. I guess when you're not working for tips you're not as inclined to humor old men, but seriously, you gotta let the brother work his game. Denato kept laughing and shaking my hand and buying me beer, though I didn't understand even a fraction of what he thought I was understanding.
The other guy-- I'm not counting the jibberish-speaker, since I haven't a clue about him-- was, to be honest, kinda weird. He spoke a very little bit of English, but as he kept drinking he gradually stopped speaking English and it all became German. Which didn't get us far. He said he was in love with the waitress, which was easy to see as she was pretty cute and this guy probably spent five nights a week at this place, but I didn't have the heart to tell him that Denato already had dibs. Which, if it ever in a million years came down to it, is probably how it would have happened. Even with me included, sadly.
This guy, Norbert, said I could stay at his house "two weeks, it's no problem," and though I wasn't really so keen on that-- and kept telling him I couldn't stay at his house because of my allergies to cats, which was a convenient excuse-- he kept repeating "two weeks, it's no problem" over and over and over again. Weirdness aside, I guess you do have to hand it to the guy for being hospitable.
Anyway, I spent the evening talking with these guys, and though I couldn't understand most of what they were saying I did catch that they love Barack Obama and hate Fidel Castro. And, though I couldn't understand most of what they were saying, all I could come up with after I went to bed was-- these are Liechtensteiners? I loved them already.
I had set my alarm for 9:00 in order to start hitch-hiking, but the combination of wanting to hike and wanting to see Emilie made me turn the alarm off and go back to sleep. (Although not before I witnessed the culmination of the previous night's birthday girl situation-- her phone rang, Giacomo told her "SHH" loudly, she left, and that was it. Clearly nothing had happened, and Giacomo confirmed as much later that day.)
I woke up again at 11:45 and, after Giacomo made pasta for lunch, I started hiking just before 1:30. Giacomo had told me a particular route to take to get to the mountain, but since you couldn't possibly miss the mountain even if you tried I just figured I would head towards the nearest mountain and, well, hit it soon enough. Which I did.
I spent the next hour or so hiking up and around the mountain and absolutely realized why people choose to go to school in Innsbruck. The town, as I've said, isn't much to speak of, but who needs a town when the mountains are just out your window. Hell, I'd go to school in Cleveland if I could escape to the mountains whenever I wanted to. Maybe even Columbus-- well, not Columbus, but you get the point.
The point IS that you're a 15 minute walk from the mountains, which means hiking and snowboarding and a perfect view of the city. Which means, unfortunately, that the University of Innsbruck isn't for you if you don't like snow, sunshine, or doing things.
So I hiked around for a bit, but at 3:00 I was suddenly overcome by the feeling that I had to go to Liechtenstein. Not so much a feeling as a premonition, almost, that I just had to go. Right then. I had done some hiking-- and had gotten the mountain-feel of Innsbruck-- and I could hopefully see Emilie in France eventually. But right then, right there I had to go. There was no avoiding it.
I hiked back down for the bottom and walked back to Giacomo's place, where I got my stuff and bid Giacomo adieu. He was very surprised-- and, I kid you not, had not opened the door at first because he had been scared it was going to be the birthday girl-- but he offered me a couch for the night in case I didn't actually make it out of Innsbruck that night.
It was a nice offer and a rather likely situation, not because the hitch-spot was bad but because, by the time I had gotten my stuff from Giacomo's and walked to the highway-- I wasn't going to tempt fate on the tram on my last day with all my stuff-- it was already 4:05. I wasn't feeling even slightly optimistic about my chances, but it only took 24 minutes for a car to pull up. It was going to Switzerland, all the way past Liechtenstein. It couldn't have been any more perfect.
I got in and talked to the driver, Stefan, for a little while, but I fell asleep pretty soon thereafter. As such, the ride was incredibly quick-- and uneventful-- and when Stefan woke me up we were in Feldkirch, the last town in Austria before Liechtenstein. I asked Stefan if he could take me a bit farther, and so he drove to where we were no more than 50 meters from the Liechtenstein border. At which point he gave me CHF10-- Swiss Francs, the currency in Liechtenstein-- and I got out.
I walked up to the customs agents and told them I was going to Vaduz. They didn't seem even the least bit surprised to see someone crossing the border on foot and with a bag on his back, which was a bit disappointing to be honest with you, but I handed one of them my passport and waited while he went inside. I was actually a bit nervous because I hadn't shown my passport when I crossed into Austria, and I wasn't sure how receptive Liechtenstein would be to outside influence when the last documented country I had been in was Hungary, but the customs agent came right back out and ushered me through.
And that is how, at 6:02, I crossed the border and walked into Liechtenstein.
I kept walking down the same road, and the first baby town I came to was Nendeln, but all the hotels were closed. So I kept walking to Schaan, which was the first major-ish town and where I figured I would find something. The walk took me about an hour, but all I had to was keep going straight. For most of the walk, on the left there are just a row of regular buildings. But on the right you can see lights going on forever with the outline of a mountain behind them. It's just lights on top of nothingness, like looking out at night upon an impossible number of boats on the sea. You couldn't possibly walk into the country and see this sight and not immediately realize that Liechtenstein was going to be an entirely different experience.
When I finally got to Schaan the first hotel I came to was called Hotel Post, and an old man greeted me at the door to the kitchen. I told him I needed a place to sleep for the night, and he said "it's not a problem" and motioned for me to sit at his table. Boy was that easy.
Except that five minutes later the actual manager came out, and I had to repeat to her that I needed a place to sleep for the night. She also said that would be fine, told me to meet her at 9:00 the next morning for a job, handed me a room key, and told me to take my stuff up. Boy, that WAS easy.
When I came back down the manager asked if I wanted dinner, and so I sat down at the old man's table again and by the time my plate of steak and rice had come out, the old man had bought me a beer. Although it wasn't just the one old man. There were three old men, none of whom worked there or had any authority in the place whatsoever but all of whom had been had been supportive that "it's no problem" when I asked if I could sleep there. And so I just spent a couple hours hanging out with these three old men, and it was really just like I had happened to walk in on their weekly "checkers night"-- they were just three old friends sitting around in a bar having a few drinks.
Of the three, one spoke bad English, one spoke too-good Spanish, and one spoke complete jibberish. And all spoke at the same time, so even discounting the jibberish I couldn't understand even one-fourth of everything that was being said.
The first old man, the one who had first invited me to sit with them, was the one who spoke too-good Spanish. He was from either Italy or Argentina, I'm not sure which, and claimed to have been to 44 states, including Montana but not Idaho-- I'm not sure how you can go to one but not the other-- but he said that his favorite state of all was Miami. This guy, Denato, was clearly the leader, and he kept flirting with the absolutely non-responsive waitress. I guess when you're not working for tips you're not as inclined to humor old men, but seriously, you gotta let the brother work his game. Denato kept laughing and shaking my hand and buying me beer, though I didn't understand even a fraction of what he thought I was understanding.
The other guy-- I'm not counting the jibberish-speaker, since I haven't a clue about him-- was, to be honest, kinda weird. He spoke a very little bit of English, but as he kept drinking he gradually stopped speaking English and it all became German. Which didn't get us far. He said he was in love with the waitress, which was easy to see as she was pretty cute and this guy probably spent five nights a week at this place, but I didn't have the heart to tell him that Denato already had dibs. Which, if it ever in a million years came down to it, is probably how it would have happened. Even with me included, sadly.
This guy, Norbert, said I could stay at his house "two weeks, it's no problem," and though I wasn't really so keen on that-- and kept telling him I couldn't stay at his house because of my allergies to cats, which was a convenient excuse-- he kept repeating "two weeks, it's no problem" over and over and over again. Weirdness aside, I guess you do have to hand it to the guy for being hospitable.
Anyway, I spent the evening talking with these guys, and though I couldn't understand most of what they were saying I did catch that they love Barack Obama and hate Fidel Castro. And, though I couldn't understand most of what they were saying, all I could come up with after I went to bed was-- these are Liechtensteiners? I loved them already.
Friday, November 7, 2008
24 October 2008: Vienna, Austria
I woke up this morning ready to leave. I'm not sure why, since obviously nothing had happened since the previous night when I went to sleep, but I just felt like it was time to go. And, if possible, before anyone woke up.
Graz was my likely next destination, as it was the highest-recommended college town in Austria, but I also wanted to go to Innsbruck. However, since I would have to hitch-hike there, on account of the trains being so expensive, I was a bit concerned about the feasibility-- Graz is very far in the south-east of Austria while Innsbruck is in the very western part.
What I discovered, though, was Salzburg, internationally famous because of "The Sound of Music," which didn't matter a bit to me, but also a college town-- the fourth-biggest, after Vienna, Graz, and Innsbruck. It is on the way to Innsbruck, too, so I figured it would be an easy hitch to get to both.
So I decided I would stay in Vienna for the weekend, after all. As simple as that.
But when Mo woke up and I told him my plan, he said that Salzburg was a bad choice and that Graz would be a MUCH better time. Well, I trusted his opinion, but by this point it was too late in the day to go to Graz. So, after much deliberation, I was right back where I began-- staying in Vienna for the weekend and then going to Graz, and Innsbruck after that.
(Spicy ramen noodles were lunch during this deliberation. They were delicious.)
When I finally left the flat that afternoon I went to the tourism information booth. Considering the mixed reviews I had been given about National Day, I was still a bit hestitant about staying all the way until Sunday-- since that would make a week and a half in Vienna-- if it wasn't going to be worth it. I asked the girl at the info desk about that weekend's festivities and she said National Day was "going to be lame," but also that it would "make a good story." That sounded about right, and I figured that was really all I needed. A good story.
I was sold.
Committed to staying, I walked a bit around the empirical grounds, checking out the scene. There were still, of course, the tanks and planes and armed soldiers. But even more encouraging were the two gigantic blow-up dolls, the kind with that wiggly arms that you see on the side of the road advertising a car-wash or a yard sale. Except these two dolls, with their wiggly arms blowing in the wind, were dressed in Austrian army uniforms. If I was looking for a sign that National Day was going to be a show, I think this was it. Unquestionably.
I went back to Ike's place to try once again to recoup my €4, but he still wasn't there. I couldn't believe I was making such a fuss over two coins, but a guy's gotta eat and €4 is food for about three meals-- twelve meals if I kept eating Ramen noodles. But it was looking like I wouldn't get it, after all.
Disappointed, I went back to Niko's flat where I had, you guessed it, Ramen noodles. The last pack. It was chow mein flavor, a big drop-off from the Spicy flavor, but I added some chili pepper. It's pretty incredible, really, what you'll do to make simply "edible" food "decent." Or somewhat decent.
Corina and some guy who I had seen before were watching "South Park," which Corina has nearly episode of on her laptop. You would never believe how much these people love that show, and I'm telling you we watched "The Dreidle Song" on youtube no less than ten times in three days. That's not an exaggeration. In English AND in German.
Mo and Corina and the other guy started watching youtube videos so I moved to Mo's room to take a nap for a bit, and when I came back they were still watching youtube. And not just the three of them but about four other friends who had shown up. They honestly have the videos on cycle, known by nickname, that they watch continuously. It's the funniest thing.
(I also, at this point, was beginning to recognize most of Mo and Niko's friends, and there were Austrian fist pumps and greetings for everyone. It was sort of like Tomi's friends, in that I recognized everyone after a few days, but everyone seemed a bit closer in this circle. With each other and with me.)
We watched youtube for a while longer and I feasted on peanuts-- I am positive that I had seriously eaten more peanuts at Mo's flat than in the entire rest of my life combined-- and then we went to a house party at Mo's friend's flat. It was the first house party I had been to on my trip, although it wasn't really a house party at all. It was sort of just people sitting around in circles and talking-- sitting because everyone needed an ashtray and there was one in the middle of every circle of people-- with barely-audible music and no dancing. It wasn't so much a house party as a get-together with chips and beer and chili. Although delicious chili.
I was a big hit, of course, as the only resident American-- an easy card to play, I'll admit, but one worth playing-- and Corina pretended to be my "American girlfriend," telling people she was from Michigan also. I'm not sure how or why anyone believed her, but they did. She was a hit too.
I was talking to this one particular girl for a while, sort of a poor man's Sarah Palin, and she said that we should get coffee the next day. I said sure, and asked her where we should meet. She said "well, just come back to my place tonight."
Ladies and gentlemen, the Republican vice-presidential nominee.
It was sort of casually agreed on, but the thing about Corina is that she had described herself as my American "girlfriend" rather than "friend," when simply being my friend would have sufficed. She was being particularly flirty on this night, but had a habit of backing off right in the knick of time-- sort of like Tomi and the girl at the reggae club in Pecs.
Corina told me that I should go back with Sarah in a not-serious-but-I-should-probably-say-this way-- trust me on this one-- but I said that I prefered her. She said something about her ex-boyfriend, although I didn't really hear what she was saying, and just as these things happen I ended up leaving with Sarah-- although, when I did, Corina had a definite didn't-mean-for-you-to-go look on her face. Trust me on this one, too.
And so I ended up going home with a poor man's Sarah Palin.
More importantly, though, since both Sarah and I have black hair and black glasses and were wearing a black shirt and jeans, it was like going home with my twin. And how could I say no to that?
Graz was my likely next destination, as it was the highest-recommended college town in Austria, but I also wanted to go to Innsbruck. However, since I would have to hitch-hike there, on account of the trains being so expensive, I was a bit concerned about the feasibility-- Graz is very far in the south-east of Austria while Innsbruck is in the very western part.
What I discovered, though, was Salzburg, internationally famous because of "The Sound of Music," which didn't matter a bit to me, but also a college town-- the fourth-biggest, after Vienna, Graz, and Innsbruck. It is on the way to Innsbruck, too, so I figured it would be an easy hitch to get to both.
So I decided I would stay in Vienna for the weekend, after all. As simple as that.
But when Mo woke up and I told him my plan, he said that Salzburg was a bad choice and that Graz would be a MUCH better time. Well, I trusted his opinion, but by this point it was too late in the day to go to Graz. So, after much deliberation, I was right back where I began-- staying in Vienna for the weekend and then going to Graz, and Innsbruck after that.
(Spicy ramen noodles were lunch during this deliberation. They were delicious.)
When I finally left the flat that afternoon I went to the tourism information booth. Considering the mixed reviews I had been given about National Day, I was still a bit hestitant about staying all the way until Sunday-- since that would make a week and a half in Vienna-- if it wasn't going to be worth it. I asked the girl at the info desk about that weekend's festivities and she said National Day was "going to be lame," but also that it would "make a good story." That sounded about right, and I figured that was really all I needed. A good story.
I was sold.
Committed to staying, I walked a bit around the empirical grounds, checking out the scene. There were still, of course, the tanks and planes and armed soldiers. But even more encouraging were the two gigantic blow-up dolls, the kind with that wiggly arms that you see on the side of the road advertising a car-wash or a yard sale. Except these two dolls, with their wiggly arms blowing in the wind, were dressed in Austrian army uniforms. If I was looking for a sign that National Day was going to be a show, I think this was it. Unquestionably.
I went back to Ike's place to try once again to recoup my €4, but he still wasn't there. I couldn't believe I was making such a fuss over two coins, but a guy's gotta eat and €4 is food for about three meals-- twelve meals if I kept eating Ramen noodles. But it was looking like I wouldn't get it, after all.
Disappointed, I went back to Niko's flat where I had, you guessed it, Ramen noodles. The last pack. It was chow mein flavor, a big drop-off from the Spicy flavor, but I added some chili pepper. It's pretty incredible, really, what you'll do to make simply "edible" food "decent." Or somewhat decent.
Corina and some guy who I had seen before were watching "South Park," which Corina has nearly episode of on her laptop. You would never believe how much these people love that show, and I'm telling you we watched "The Dreidle Song" on youtube no less than ten times in three days. That's not an exaggeration. In English AND in German.
Mo and Corina and the other guy started watching youtube videos so I moved to Mo's room to take a nap for a bit, and when I came back they were still watching youtube. And not just the three of them but about four other friends who had shown up. They honestly have the videos on cycle, known by nickname, that they watch continuously. It's the funniest thing.
(I also, at this point, was beginning to recognize most of Mo and Niko's friends, and there were Austrian fist pumps and greetings for everyone. It was sort of like Tomi's friends, in that I recognized everyone after a few days, but everyone seemed a bit closer in this circle. With each other and with me.)
We watched youtube for a while longer and I feasted on peanuts-- I am positive that I had seriously eaten more peanuts at Mo's flat than in the entire rest of my life combined-- and then we went to a house party at Mo's friend's flat. It was the first house party I had been to on my trip, although it wasn't really a house party at all. It was sort of just people sitting around in circles and talking-- sitting because everyone needed an ashtray and there was one in the middle of every circle of people-- with barely-audible music and no dancing. It wasn't so much a house party as a get-together with chips and beer and chili. Although delicious chili.
I was a big hit, of course, as the only resident American-- an easy card to play, I'll admit, but one worth playing-- and Corina pretended to be my "American girlfriend," telling people she was from Michigan also. I'm not sure how or why anyone believed her, but they did. She was a hit too.
I was talking to this one particular girl for a while, sort of a poor man's Sarah Palin, and she said that we should get coffee the next day. I said sure, and asked her where we should meet. She said "well, just come back to my place tonight."
Ladies and gentlemen, the Republican vice-presidential nominee.
It was sort of casually agreed on, but the thing about Corina is that she had described herself as my American "girlfriend" rather than "friend," when simply being my friend would have sufficed. She was being particularly flirty on this night, but had a habit of backing off right in the knick of time-- sort of like Tomi and the girl at the reggae club in Pecs.
Corina told me that I should go back with Sarah in a not-serious-but-I-should-probably-say-this way-- trust me on this one-- but I said that I prefered her. She said something about her ex-boyfriend, although I didn't really hear what she was saying, and just as these things happen I ended up leaving with Sarah-- although, when I did, Corina had a definite didn't-mean-for-you-to-go look on her face. Trust me on this one, too.
And so I ended up going home with a poor man's Sarah Palin.
More importantly, though, since both Sarah and I have black hair and black glasses and were wearing a black shirt and jeans, it was like going home with my twin. And how could I say no to that?
Monday, November 3, 2008
23 October 2008: Vienna, Austria
The previous night Benny had invited Niko and me for lunch, so when Niko came back from classes he and I hopped on a tram and went to Benny's place, located nearly on the outskirts of Vienna.
Benny had made pasta with meat sauce, which was complemented by "the most delicious apple juice in Austria," and then we took a tram up a hill to a view which Niko had said was vital for me to see. I suppose. But I'll take the rooftop terrace any day of the week over this view.
Niko had to go to class after this, and he said that Mo was going to a second-hand store and I should go with him because "people are buying stuff so you'll find money." I didn't have any idea what he meant by this, but it was fine to walk around, so I went back to the flat to meet up with Mo and Corina.
The second-hand store was pretty weak, though, and Mo just wanted to buy a pair of sneakers. We literally went to five stores before he found an acceptable pair. He turned down an alright pair for €20, and then a cool pair for €25, and then went to two more stores that had nothing, before finally choosing a pair of black sneaks with huge and terrible blue Nike swooshes on the sides. I mean, it was a pretty abominable selection. Shouldn't Corina have advised him on this?
(Incidentally, the whole episode was pretty fun, even if WAS a bit annoying that it took over an hour to buy a pair of sneakers. But there's never anything wrong with walking around with a couple friends. Though I still didn't have any idea what Niko had meant about finding money.)
After Mo finally made his decision we parted ways and I headed to Ike's to try to recoup my €4. He wasn't there, and though I waited about half an hour he didn't show up. I went back to the flat, had a slice of artichoke pizza-- the first real pizza in almost two months-- and then, because €4 is sadly a lot, I went back to Ike's. But he still wasn't there. And then, because I sadly was still hungry, I went back to the flat and made some more Ramen noodles. Pretty gross.
Niko was out for the night, and I told Mo I was going to walk around Vienna for a bit. I asked if he and Corina wanted to come along, mostly as a kind gesture and not thinking they would say yes. I meant to walk around by myself, as a sort of reflection upon my time in Vienna, but Mo said he did want to come and convinced Corina to come too. So my quiet walk had become a tour. OK.
I had been planning on leaving the next day, in order to spend the weekend in Graz, but we walked across the Parliament lawn and saw a number of tanks and fighter planes being guarded by armed soldiers. Mo talked to one of the soldiers, who said that the tanks and planes and tents were there for National Day on Sunday. I had known that National Day was coming up, but Niko said it wouldn't be anything special and I hadn't thought much of sticking around for it. But I figured soldiers with machine guns guarding army tanks and planes at midnight was a sign that National Day might end up being a bit of a show. And maybe worth seeing.
After some more walking Corina wanted to get a drink, so we found an Irish pub and went in. It was, of course, like every other Irish pub in the world, with Irish beer, Irish signs on the walls, the Irish punk band that everyone has on their itunes, a wooden bar, a foosball table, and soccer on the television. I mean, you've been to one Irish pub not in Ireland you've been to them all.
Anyway, I was walking back to Mo and Corina from somewhere and a girl came up to me to say hello. Or, rather, to say "You're still here, Zach?"
"Yes I am-- and you are?"
It turned out to be a girl who had walked with me from the IDA party to Shannon's hostel, whom I had completely forgotten about and never would have recognized. I told her I was probably sticking around for at least another day and maybe the weekend, and she asked if I needed a tour guide. Well, now I was DEFINITELY sticking around for at least another day and maybe the weekend.
We said we would meet at 3:00 the next afternoon at Stephansplatz, and in my mind that was the commitment to stay, like I said, at least for one more day. As it turned out, though, I committed too soon, because when I went to say goodbye to her I said I would see her the next day and she said "Well, I don't know, I mean I have class and I might need to sleep afterwards." It was absolutely the most abrupt turn-around I had ever seen.
Anyway, I went back to the flat with Mo and Corina. And, at least mentally, I was already staying for the weekend.
*************************************
To be perfectly honest, I was a little bit concerned at first about over-staying my welcome. I was on a pretty bad streak of over-staying, what with Ike and Astrid and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and to a lesser extent Greg and Tomi. But I really believed that Mo and Niko enjoyed my being there, and Mo had certainly made it clear that I was "welcome." So it seemed safe. Which meant I would have a second shot at a Vienna weekend, which would hopefully make up for the first one.
Benny had made pasta with meat sauce, which was complemented by "the most delicious apple juice in Austria," and then we took a tram up a hill to a view which Niko had said was vital for me to see. I suppose. But I'll take the rooftop terrace any day of the week over this view.
Niko had to go to class after this, and he said that Mo was going to a second-hand store and I should go with him because "people are buying stuff so you'll find money." I didn't have any idea what he meant by this, but it was fine to walk around, so I went back to the flat to meet up with Mo and Corina.
The second-hand store was pretty weak, though, and Mo just wanted to buy a pair of sneakers. We literally went to five stores before he found an acceptable pair. He turned down an alright pair for €20, and then a cool pair for €25, and then went to two more stores that had nothing, before finally choosing a pair of black sneaks with huge and terrible blue Nike swooshes on the sides. I mean, it was a pretty abominable selection. Shouldn't Corina have advised him on this?
(Incidentally, the whole episode was pretty fun, even if WAS a bit annoying that it took over an hour to buy a pair of sneakers. But there's never anything wrong with walking around with a couple friends. Though I still didn't have any idea what Niko had meant about finding money.)
After Mo finally made his decision we parted ways and I headed to Ike's to try to recoup my €4. He wasn't there, and though I waited about half an hour he didn't show up. I went back to the flat, had a slice of artichoke pizza-- the first real pizza in almost two months-- and then, because €4 is sadly a lot, I went back to Ike's. But he still wasn't there. And then, because I sadly was still hungry, I went back to the flat and made some more Ramen noodles. Pretty gross.
Niko was out for the night, and I told Mo I was going to walk around Vienna for a bit. I asked if he and Corina wanted to come along, mostly as a kind gesture and not thinking they would say yes. I meant to walk around by myself, as a sort of reflection upon my time in Vienna, but Mo said he did want to come and convinced Corina to come too. So my quiet walk had become a tour. OK.
I had been planning on leaving the next day, in order to spend the weekend in Graz, but we walked across the Parliament lawn and saw a number of tanks and fighter planes being guarded by armed soldiers. Mo talked to one of the soldiers, who said that the tanks and planes and tents were there for National Day on Sunday. I had known that National Day was coming up, but Niko said it wouldn't be anything special and I hadn't thought much of sticking around for it. But I figured soldiers with machine guns guarding army tanks and planes at midnight was a sign that National Day might end up being a bit of a show. And maybe worth seeing.
After some more walking Corina wanted to get a drink, so we found an Irish pub and went in. It was, of course, like every other Irish pub in the world, with Irish beer, Irish signs on the walls, the Irish punk band that everyone has on their itunes, a wooden bar, a foosball table, and soccer on the television. I mean, you've been to one Irish pub not in Ireland you've been to them all.
Anyway, I was walking back to Mo and Corina from somewhere and a girl came up to me to say hello. Or, rather, to say "You're still here, Zach?"
"Yes I am-- and you are?"
It turned out to be a girl who had walked with me from the IDA party to Shannon's hostel, whom I had completely forgotten about and never would have recognized. I told her I was probably sticking around for at least another day and maybe the weekend, and she asked if I needed a tour guide. Well, now I was DEFINITELY sticking around for at least another day and maybe the weekend.
We said we would meet at 3:00 the next afternoon at Stephansplatz, and in my mind that was the commitment to stay, like I said, at least for one more day. As it turned out, though, I committed too soon, because when I went to say goodbye to her I said I would see her the next day and she said "Well, I don't know, I mean I have class and I might need to sleep afterwards." It was absolutely the most abrupt turn-around I had ever seen.
Anyway, I went back to the flat with Mo and Corina. And, at least mentally, I was already staying for the weekend.
*************************************
To be perfectly honest, I was a little bit concerned at first about over-staying my welcome. I was on a pretty bad streak of over-staying, what with Ike and Astrid and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and to a lesser extent Greg and Tomi. But I really believed that Mo and Niko enjoyed my being there, and Mo had certainly made it clear that I was "welcome." So it seemed safe. Which meant I would have a second shot at a Vienna weekend, which would hopefully make up for the first one.
Friday, October 31, 2008
22 October 2008: Vienna, Austria
I woke up early, as I do, and Sarah presented me with a chocolate croissante. It's hard to think of a better way to minimize the terribleness of waking up early after you've been drinking.
I spent the early part of this morning researching a new possible way for me to make money-- selling plasma. Axel, who shall never be spoken of again after this, told me that it's very easy to sell plasma in Vienna and that you get €25 for every session. That was my kind of gig. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to research it, and this morning I discovered that you have to take a test first to make sure your plasma is disease-free. Which makes sense. But the test results take a week to come back, which also means I wasn't getting any money for plasma.
At around noon a bunch of Mo's friends came over and Mo made a vat of pasta, to which I helped myself, and then I helped Corina with her English homework. She had to write a story about two robots-- it was a pretty bizarre assignment-- and I decided that one should be an abusive alcohol robot and the other should be a fat chick virgin robot. What happened was the fat chick virgin robot was dying for attention-- as fat chick virgins of any species are prone to do-- and so she fell for the abusive alcoholic robot. And then even when he hit her after sex she just thought "oh, I love it rough," but when she got on top for another round she killed him from her weight. But she was pregnant with the love child, although since she was still a fat chick robot no one noticed. And when she gave birth she put the baby in a dumpster. The end.
(Guess who wrote the entire story.)
I meant for this to be my last day in Vienna, and to go to Graz the following morning, so I went out with Niko and Sarah for one final day of seeing the city. My mom wanted me to check out the Hundertwasser Museum, which would incredibly enough have been the first museum of the trip. I'm not too crazy about spending money to go into a museum when I can appreciate a place for free outside, but this place is my mom's favorite museum and she really wanted me to check it out.
So the three of us walked to the museum, where I was dumb-struck by the €9 entrance fee-- no museum would have been worth food for three days, not a chance. But the thing about the Hundertwasser Museum is that it's a place where "I only have €4 but my mom loves this museum and she really wants me to see it" gets you in for €3. Well, so long as you smile. As per usual.
The other thing about the Hundertwasser Museum is that it is absolutely and completely worth €3-- and even worth €9 if that isn't, like I said, food for three days. The first floor is of Hundertwasser's art, which is actually pretty cool-- and paintings don't really do it for me, usually. But the second floor is what really makes the museum worthwhile.
The second floor is partly composed of more paintings and, like I said, they are pretty cool-- google Hundertwasser for a look at them. But the second floor is mostly dedicated to Hundertwasser's belief in the importance of creativity in children's lives. Essentially, he believes that a creative environment promotes and ecourages creativity in children, and the second floor contains his plans, and their results, for re-designing schools, hospitals, etc., into colorful and creative buildings.
I know I can't really describe what it all means, not least of all because at the time I'm writing this I saw the museum over a week ago, but here are some of the quotes that are interspersed amongst the art on the second floor:
- "Our real illiteracy is our inability to create."
- "I am proud of being a beautifyer."
- "A straight line is a dangerous, comfortable fiction."
(In explaining what his building designs are intended to aid against:)
- "Rectilinear, ice-cold repression of the children's soul and suppression of growing creativity."
(The benefits of putting children into new, creative environments:)
- "They will communicate to other people the beauty and harmony they witnessed and spread the message to the world."
Along with the importance of creativity, the second floor also stressed the importance of going back to nature-- one of his designs is for a sort of nature-haven, free from the trappings and negatives of industrialized society. To this end, he says "It helps to bring back to man what he is longing for and what technology cannot do." In addition to this, though, there are trees planted in the museum that grow out of the window. Hundertwasser called them "tree tenants," saying that they pay their rent from the environmental benefits they provide to society. Interesting.
Anyway, I can't do the museum even 1/5 the amount of justice it deserves, so I recommend it to anyone who goes to Vienna. Suffice it to say, I spent nearly two hours in the museum and could/would have spent twice as long were it not for Niko and Sarah waiting for me downstairs.
They were as gracious as could be, despite having waited for me, and we took a walk over to the Prater, a 150 year-old ferris wheel from which you can see the entire city-- a staple to many European cities, but a ridiculously old staple to Vienna. We didn't go on it, of course, but it was a lovely walk, if a bit overcast.
And then, as we kept walking, we came upon an amusement park. I mean, a completely random amusement park in the middle of this beautiful greenness, and Sarah said she wanted to go on a ride. I thought it sounded fun, but Niko absolutely and positively refused. I was going to ask him if he needed a new tampon or had a box of Thin Mints that I could buy, but he said "My stomach is not glad to be on that ride." And how can you make fun of someone who says that?
So Sarah and I went on a ride-- Niko bought my ticket, which was incredible-- and it was one of those things where there are seats on both sides of a long stick, for lack of a better word, and the stick swings around. That's a TERRIBLE description, but it was an amusement park ride and it was brilliant fun. So there.
And that was how we spent the day, just walking around and hanging out and having a great time. Niko, by this point, had pretty much clinched his spot as the nicest person I had met on my trip so far, and Sarah was just a total sweetheart. It was like hanging out with old friends.
Back to the flat, eventually, and Mo had made steak fajitas for dinner-- although I had to supplement them with Ramen noodles, on account of being absolutely famished. After dinner I did the rest of Corina's homework, partly because it was the least I could do to thank Mo for letting me crash at his place-- by doing his friend's homework-- and partly because it was actually pretty fun. Corina had to write a fake application for an Artificial Intelligence program, or something along those lines. The highlights were that she wanted to help develop artificial intelligence because her sisters are naturally retarded, and she wanted to study in the program in Brussels because she could just be a prostitute in Amsterdam if it didn't work out. It was basically like any assignment I ever wrote in five years at the University of Michigan, it really was.
That night I went with Niko and Mo to meet some of their friends in a "typical Viennese cafe," which was mostly just a bar. It was fun and I hung out with Benny, the kid from the first night, again. It was practically like hanging out with the Austrian three stooges: Niko, Benny, and Mo.
When we got back to the flat, I went up to the rooftop terrace with Mo and Corina-- Niko had gone back to Sarah's. Vienna isn't really such an incredible panorama from above, to be honest, but this view had a something that meant a bit more to me than Citadel in Budapest. I think what it was is that, here I was, technically an American tourist in Vienna, yet I was on a rooftop terrace overlooking the entire city. I was on this particular roof in this particular city, and even though I am nowhere close to being Viennese, on this particular night it was almost like Vienna was MY city. That's a feeling I would never have gotten in a hostel, no matter how long I stayed in the city, and I'm pretty sure that even Astrid has never had that experience before.
When I woke up I had meant for this day to be my last, but at this point, and after such a nice day, I knew that wasn't possible. I was staying another day.
**********************************
The most adorable thing about Austrians? They always pronounce the V in English words as a W. Even the ones who speak English nearly fluently, it's still a W. There's nothing better than asking an Austrian who sang "YMCA" and then having him or her respond "the Willage People of course." Gets me every time. Almost as much as when Spanish people laugh like "Ja Ja Ja." Almost.
I spent the early part of this morning researching a new possible way for me to make money-- selling plasma. Axel, who shall never be spoken of again after this, told me that it's very easy to sell plasma in Vienna and that you get €25 for every session. That was my kind of gig. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to research it, and this morning I discovered that you have to take a test first to make sure your plasma is disease-free. Which makes sense. But the test results take a week to come back, which also means I wasn't getting any money for plasma.
At around noon a bunch of Mo's friends came over and Mo made a vat of pasta, to which I helped myself, and then I helped Corina with her English homework. She had to write a story about two robots-- it was a pretty bizarre assignment-- and I decided that one should be an abusive alcohol robot and the other should be a fat chick virgin robot. What happened was the fat chick virgin robot was dying for attention-- as fat chick virgins of any species are prone to do-- and so she fell for the abusive alcoholic robot. And then even when he hit her after sex she just thought "oh, I love it rough," but when she got on top for another round she killed him from her weight. But she was pregnant with the love child, although since she was still a fat chick robot no one noticed. And when she gave birth she put the baby in a dumpster. The end.
(Guess who wrote the entire story.)
I meant for this to be my last day in Vienna, and to go to Graz the following morning, so I went out with Niko and Sarah for one final day of seeing the city. My mom wanted me to check out the Hundertwasser Museum, which would incredibly enough have been the first museum of the trip. I'm not too crazy about spending money to go into a museum when I can appreciate a place for free outside, but this place is my mom's favorite museum and she really wanted me to check it out.
So the three of us walked to the museum, where I was dumb-struck by the €9 entrance fee-- no museum would have been worth food for three days, not a chance. But the thing about the Hundertwasser Museum is that it's a place where "I only have €4 but my mom loves this museum and she really wants me to see it" gets you in for €3. Well, so long as you smile. As per usual.
The other thing about the Hundertwasser Museum is that it is absolutely and completely worth €3-- and even worth €9 if that isn't, like I said, food for three days. The first floor is of Hundertwasser's art, which is actually pretty cool-- and paintings don't really do it for me, usually. But the second floor is what really makes the museum worthwhile.
The second floor is partly composed of more paintings and, like I said, they are pretty cool-- google Hundertwasser for a look at them. But the second floor is mostly dedicated to Hundertwasser's belief in the importance of creativity in children's lives. Essentially, he believes that a creative environment promotes and ecourages creativity in children, and the second floor contains his plans, and their results, for re-designing schools, hospitals, etc., into colorful and creative buildings.
I know I can't really describe what it all means, not least of all because at the time I'm writing this I saw the museum over a week ago, but here are some of the quotes that are interspersed amongst the art on the second floor:
- "Our real illiteracy is our inability to create."
- "I am proud of being a beautifyer."
- "A straight line is a dangerous, comfortable fiction."
(In explaining what his building designs are intended to aid against:)
- "Rectilinear, ice-cold repression of the children's soul and suppression of growing creativity."
(The benefits of putting children into new, creative environments:)
- "They will communicate to other people the beauty and harmony they witnessed and spread the message to the world."
Along with the importance of creativity, the second floor also stressed the importance of going back to nature-- one of his designs is for a sort of nature-haven, free from the trappings and negatives of industrialized society. To this end, he says "It helps to bring back to man what he is longing for and what technology cannot do." In addition to this, though, there are trees planted in the museum that grow out of the window. Hundertwasser called them "tree tenants," saying that they pay their rent from the environmental benefits they provide to society. Interesting.
Anyway, I can't do the museum even 1/5 the amount of justice it deserves, so I recommend it to anyone who goes to Vienna. Suffice it to say, I spent nearly two hours in the museum and could/would have spent twice as long were it not for Niko and Sarah waiting for me downstairs.
They were as gracious as could be, despite having waited for me, and we took a walk over to the Prater, a 150 year-old ferris wheel from which you can see the entire city-- a staple to many European cities, but a ridiculously old staple to Vienna. We didn't go on it, of course, but it was a lovely walk, if a bit overcast.
And then, as we kept walking, we came upon an amusement park. I mean, a completely random amusement park in the middle of this beautiful greenness, and Sarah said she wanted to go on a ride. I thought it sounded fun, but Niko absolutely and positively refused. I was going to ask him if he needed a new tampon or had a box of Thin Mints that I could buy, but he said "My stomach is not glad to be on that ride." And how can you make fun of someone who says that?
So Sarah and I went on a ride-- Niko bought my ticket, which was incredible-- and it was one of those things where there are seats on both sides of a long stick, for lack of a better word, and the stick swings around. That's a TERRIBLE description, but it was an amusement park ride and it was brilliant fun. So there.
And that was how we spent the day, just walking around and hanging out and having a great time. Niko, by this point, had pretty much clinched his spot as the nicest person I had met on my trip so far, and Sarah was just a total sweetheart. It was like hanging out with old friends.
Back to the flat, eventually, and Mo had made steak fajitas for dinner-- although I had to supplement them with Ramen noodles, on account of being absolutely famished. After dinner I did the rest of Corina's homework, partly because it was the least I could do to thank Mo for letting me crash at his place-- by doing his friend's homework-- and partly because it was actually pretty fun. Corina had to write a fake application for an Artificial Intelligence program, or something along those lines. The highlights were that she wanted to help develop artificial intelligence because her sisters are naturally retarded, and she wanted to study in the program in Brussels because she could just be a prostitute in Amsterdam if it didn't work out. It was basically like any assignment I ever wrote in five years at the University of Michigan, it really was.
That night I went with Niko and Mo to meet some of their friends in a "typical Viennese cafe," which was mostly just a bar. It was fun and I hung out with Benny, the kid from the first night, again. It was practically like hanging out with the Austrian three stooges: Niko, Benny, and Mo.
When we got back to the flat, I went up to the rooftop terrace with Mo and Corina-- Niko had gone back to Sarah's. Vienna isn't really such an incredible panorama from above, to be honest, but this view had a something that meant a bit more to me than Citadel in Budapest. I think what it was is that, here I was, technically an American tourist in Vienna, yet I was on a rooftop terrace overlooking the entire city. I was on this particular roof in this particular city, and even though I am nowhere close to being Viennese, on this particular night it was almost like Vienna was MY city. That's a feeling I would never have gotten in a hostel, no matter how long I stayed in the city, and I'm pretty sure that even Astrid has never had that experience before.
When I woke up I had meant for this day to be my last, but at this point, and after such a nice day, I knew that wasn't possible. I was staying another day.
**********************************
The most adorable thing about Austrians? They always pronounce the V in English words as a W. Even the ones who speak English nearly fluently, it's still a W. There's nothing better than asking an Austrian who sang "YMCA" and then having him or her respond "the Willage People of course." Gets me every time. Almost as much as when Spanish people laugh like "Ja Ja Ja." Almost.
Monday, October 27, 2008
21 October 2008: Vienna, Austria
I woke up at around 11:00 and got my stuff together as Astrid looked on. I put my pack on and was about to leave when Riquel came back, opening the door with her key and walking in.
Now, I was ready to leave for a new couch and would have done so this day on my own accord, but Astrid was making me leave while she not only was letting Riquel stay but had given her her own key? Uh...
Anyway, whatever. I had my stuff with me and didn't really feel like walking around with everything all day, so I got some yogurt and bread for a lunch of 87 cents and then went to the library, where I spent most of the afternoon.
Not a whole lot going on.
At around 5:00 or so I headed around town on the metro for a bit, just for the hell of it, and when I got back to the University stop and emerged I asked the first people I saw for a couch-- three dudes, one on a bike.
The dude on the bike left, but one of the other guys said maybe, and let me buy you a drink in the meantime. So the three of us went to a bar, and Niko-- the guy who said maybe about the couch-- called his roommate, who told him I could crash there. So I had a beer and a couch. I was set.
After the drink Niko and I went back to his place-- the other guy was a friendly dude named Benny-- and he asked if I was hungry. I said I was and expected to get a slice of bread or a bowl of pasta or something. Instead, Niko came back with mozzerella cheese and tomatos. Nice move, guy.
Niko's roommate Mo came back a little later with his friend Corina, a pretty cute girl he went to high school with and who goes to University in Graz. What ensued was lots of beer and Jaeger and "cheers" and "prost" and "eggusheggadray," and to put it simply I wrote in my notebook "what fun, one of the all-time couches." Which, to be sure, is the quickest I've ever been inspired to write that.
(Speaking of the notebook, I took it out at one point and Niko, not missing a cue, told me I should write a book about my time in Europe. I told him that if I ever did, at this rate he and Mo and Corina would get their own chapter. Corina said she wanted her own chapter by herself. Don't you know you're going to have to earn it?)
(I should also make note that although I had met Niko, I was actually staying at Mo's place-- or, rather, Mo's father's place. It's the flat that Mo grew up in, and still lives in while he goes to school, and Niko lives there for free because he's been friends with Mo for such a long time. And because it's a palace of a flat, taking up the entire pent-house floor in an apartment building right off Stephansplatz.)
At this point, I should explain that I got a pretty late start for finding a couch because I had been planning on going to this place IDA as a fall-back. On the day I met Ike, some guys I had asked for a couch told me that if I didn't find anything I could crash at IDA, which they said is a culture club. I didn't know that a culture club was anything more than an '80s band, but if it really is a thing I thought it would be a fine place to hang out. They said the place was pay-what-you-want for food and beer, and that was where I figured I'd end up this night if I hadn't met Niko.
Anyway, I mention this only because, when we left the flat, Mo said we were headed to "a place called IDA." The one and only.
This place, which Mo also described as "anti-fascist," was pretty cool, if a bit anarchistic, but boy was it coincidental that I ended up there. And probably moreso because, judging from the crowd, it was almost 95% likely that I would have ended up talking to Niko or Mo or Corina or Niko's girlfriend Sarah anyway.
I had told Shannon that I would meet her at the hostel at 11:00 and when I went to see if she was around Astrid was-- of course!-- sitting at the desk. And she gave me a pretty nasty look like "you're back." Actually, darling, just here to meet a friend. And glad I had left that morning.
Shannon was sitting at the hostel bar, and as I waited for her to finish her beer I was suddenly overcome with this feeling of how much cooler my trip is than hers. This moment in particular, because it was a Tuesday and Shannon was sitting at a hostel bar with a tourist, whereas I was at an anti-fascist party with a bunch of local kids. I waited at the hostel for about half an hour, got bored, and decided to leave.
I went back to the party and hung out with Niko and Sarah, and when they left a bit after midnight Mo and Corina left too so they could catch the last metro. I had given thought to crashing at IDA for the night, since I figured that wouldn't be a problem in any case, but one of the main people there said everyone would be kicked out at 4:00. I was sure they'd make an exception for a traveler, but I was ready to go. Everyone was sitting in circles on bean bags, presumably talking about how to bring down fascism, and though it was a pretty interesting scene it wasn't really an outsider-friendly scene if you aren't an anarchist. Which I'm not.
So I left with the other four, and when I protested to Mo buying me a kebab, he told me that he had won €1,200 playing poker the day before. That, and his dad was loaded. So I consented.
And then we went back to the flat and drank a little more, and I crashed on the pulled-out futon.
**********************************
For this day my notes are broken into two parts: drunken scribbling and the next day. "One of the all-time couches" was written the next day, which makes it much more meaningful, as was this next part: "Niko and Mo just the nicest guys--> genuinely happy to help me out." This was that kind of night and they were that kind of dudes.
Now, I was ready to leave for a new couch and would have done so this day on my own accord, but Astrid was making me leave while she not only was letting Riquel stay but had given her her own key? Uh...
Anyway, whatever. I had my stuff with me and didn't really feel like walking around with everything all day, so I got some yogurt and bread for a lunch of 87 cents and then went to the library, where I spent most of the afternoon.
Not a whole lot going on.
At around 5:00 or so I headed around town on the metro for a bit, just for the hell of it, and when I got back to the University stop and emerged I asked the first people I saw for a couch-- three dudes, one on a bike.
The dude on the bike left, but one of the other guys said maybe, and let me buy you a drink in the meantime. So the three of us went to a bar, and Niko-- the guy who said maybe about the couch-- called his roommate, who told him I could crash there. So I had a beer and a couch. I was set.
After the drink Niko and I went back to his place-- the other guy was a friendly dude named Benny-- and he asked if I was hungry. I said I was and expected to get a slice of bread or a bowl of pasta or something. Instead, Niko came back with mozzerella cheese and tomatos. Nice move, guy.
Niko's roommate Mo came back a little later with his friend Corina, a pretty cute girl he went to high school with and who goes to University in Graz. What ensued was lots of beer and Jaeger and "cheers" and "prost" and "eggusheggadray," and to put it simply I wrote in my notebook "what fun, one of the all-time couches." Which, to be sure, is the quickest I've ever been inspired to write that.
(Speaking of the notebook, I took it out at one point and Niko, not missing a cue, told me I should write a book about my time in Europe. I told him that if I ever did, at this rate he and Mo and Corina would get their own chapter. Corina said she wanted her own chapter by herself. Don't you know you're going to have to earn it?)
(I should also make note that although I had met Niko, I was actually staying at Mo's place-- or, rather, Mo's father's place. It's the flat that Mo grew up in, and still lives in while he goes to school, and Niko lives there for free because he's been friends with Mo for such a long time. And because it's a palace of a flat, taking up the entire pent-house floor in an apartment building right off Stephansplatz.)
At this point, I should explain that I got a pretty late start for finding a couch because I had been planning on going to this place IDA as a fall-back. On the day I met Ike, some guys I had asked for a couch told me that if I didn't find anything I could crash at IDA, which they said is a culture club. I didn't know that a culture club was anything more than an '80s band, but if it really is a thing I thought it would be a fine place to hang out. They said the place was pay-what-you-want for food and beer, and that was where I figured I'd end up this night if I hadn't met Niko.
Anyway, I mention this only because, when we left the flat, Mo said we were headed to "a place called IDA." The one and only.
This place, which Mo also described as "anti-fascist," was pretty cool, if a bit anarchistic, but boy was it coincidental that I ended up there. And probably moreso because, judging from the crowd, it was almost 95% likely that I would have ended up talking to Niko or Mo or Corina or Niko's girlfriend Sarah anyway.
I had told Shannon that I would meet her at the hostel at 11:00 and when I went to see if she was around Astrid was-- of course!-- sitting at the desk. And she gave me a pretty nasty look like "you're back." Actually, darling, just here to meet a friend. And glad I had left that morning.
Shannon was sitting at the hostel bar, and as I waited for her to finish her beer I was suddenly overcome with this feeling of how much cooler my trip is than hers. This moment in particular, because it was a Tuesday and Shannon was sitting at a hostel bar with a tourist, whereas I was at an anti-fascist party with a bunch of local kids. I waited at the hostel for about half an hour, got bored, and decided to leave.
I went back to the party and hung out with Niko and Sarah, and when they left a bit after midnight Mo and Corina left too so they could catch the last metro. I had given thought to crashing at IDA for the night, since I figured that wouldn't be a problem in any case, but one of the main people there said everyone would be kicked out at 4:00. I was sure they'd make an exception for a traveler, but I was ready to go. Everyone was sitting in circles on bean bags, presumably talking about how to bring down fascism, and though it was a pretty interesting scene it wasn't really an outsider-friendly scene if you aren't an anarchist. Which I'm not.
So I left with the other four, and when I protested to Mo buying me a kebab, he told me that he had won €1,200 playing poker the day before. That, and his dad was loaded. So I consented.
And then we went back to the flat and drank a little more, and I crashed on the pulled-out futon.
**********************************
For this day my notes are broken into two parts: drunken scribbling and the next day. "One of the all-time couches" was written the next day, which makes it much more meaningful, as was this next part: "Niko and Mo just the nicest guys--> genuinely happy to help me out." This was that kind of night and they were that kind of dudes.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
20 October 2008: Vienna, Austria
Astrid had said she'd be at the flat at 11:00 and that she would make pancakes, but by 11:30 she still hadn't shown up. I figured she would at the hostel, since where else would she be, but she wasn't. The dude working said she was still at classes-- the third place she spent time, although she hadn't mentioned it in the conversation the previous night-- and so I left a note at the desk saying thanks and that I would see her that night. And that, if she did make pancakes, to leave me a couple.
I headed into town and got myself a chickenburger from McDonald's for lunch. The thing about the chickenburger is that it only costs €1 and is, in all honesty, pretty damn good. Not really enough for a meal by itself, but enough to tide you over. And the thing about McDonald's in general-- we're talking the Vienna McDonald's of course-- is that everyone that eats there is attractive and not fat. I'm talking everyone. It's the most bizarre thing in the world. It's almost like Austrian McDonald's is good for you. At the very least, you don't feel like a fat-ass by eating there. Which, if you've ever been to a McDonald's in the deep south, is EXACTLY how you feel.
I basically spent this day riding around on the metro and getting off whenever I felt like going up for fresh air. By this point I just about had the entire metro system memorized-- which lines went where, which direction was north or south or east or west, how to get to the main places I needed. I may have been getting less exercise because of it, but the Austrian metro is famously free-- I had never seen a single person get checked for a ticket, and no one I had spoken to could remember the last time they saw one, either-- so why not? Plus, walking around is a lovely way to see a city, but when you can navigate the metro system in a city like the back of your hand it makes you feel like you live there. Which, since I probably wouldn't be in Vienna for much more than a week, was about the best I could do.
I had met someone in the hostel the previous night who had gone to the opera and loved it. She said I should check it out, so I bought a thing of yogurt and a piece of bread-- a healthy dinner, just in case Viennese McDonald's actually is as bad for you as American McDonald's-- and I walked to the opera house.
The opera house in Vienna is the foremost opera house in all of Vienna, and tickets go as high as €240. But tickets also go as low as €3 if you stand in the back for the entire show. So it's a good thing I've got legs of steel.
Now, I'm not really the opera type, to be honest, but every once in a while I like to remind myself that I spent five years in the best men's collegiate choir in the world. And so, when I'm trying to get my cultural side going, I just think WWDD. And I'm pretty sure that he would have gone to the opera. So I did too.
(And that really is just how cultured I am. So cultured it's silly.)
I got to the opera house at 5:30 for a 7:00 show, and the line was already around the corner. I bought my ticket and was ushered upstairs to the highest balcony, where I found the standing area. Obviously there are no seats and you just stand where you can, so in a sense it's a free-for-all. But to mark the spot where you are standing, the opera-goer will tie a scarf around his portion of the banister in front of him, and then the ushers will politely tell you the spot is taken if you try to stand there. So while it might be considered a free-for-all, it is without a doubt the daintiest free-for-all you could ever be a part of.
Because I was so far back in line I had to stand in the back row, but the back row is actually the best row to be in because the translation screens are right at eye level. Everyone in the two rows ahead of me had to either tilt their head up a bit to see or look way down to see the screen of the person sitting in front of them. Not me. From MY spot I could see the words-- which were in English on the screen I was looking at-- and see the stage without moving my head at all. Thank you very much.
The funniest thing about the opera is that, in the translation, all the sentences end with exclamation points. It doesn't matter what is being said, the only punctuation to end a sentence-- at least that I noticed-- is an exclamation point. Operas are lovely and wonderful, but I think that perfectly captures the grandiose self-perception of opera singers. "Listen to me!"
The other funny thing is the spattering of cheers throughout the performance. After every song you'll hear a muffled "woo!" throughout the audience, but no one ever really cheers. They just clap. It's like they're too dignified to cheer, and when they start to "woo!" they have to catch themselves before they let out their wild side.
At intermission I went to the refreshment stand and looked longingly at the drinks and snacks for about five uninterrupted minutes. Then I decided to walk around, listening for someone speaking English since I figured only an American would buy a glass of wine or a tart for a scrub like me.
Because I was wearing my hoodie, my dino t-shirt, a pair of jeans and sneakers, and nearly everyone else was in a coat and tie or a dress, or at least something nice. I was a classy dude. But what killed me was that, despite everything that I was wearing, it was my sneakers that were the biggest offense. Every so often I would catch someone studying my sneakers in disgust and then slowly raising his or her head, eyeing my jeans and then my hoodie and then finally looking with contempt upon the proletariat so common that he would actually wear SNEAKERS to the OPERA. Disgusting.
As far as the opera, since that is important I suppose, it was "Faust," about a week or so after it premiered in the opera house. I was somewhat familiar with the story before going in, and was able to follow it actually all the way up until the final five minutes or so. But, for a three-hour show, that's pretty good.
And I thought the opera itself was pretty incredible, not that I really have any frame of reference to know if an opera is not incredible. But the opera was lovely, the singing fantastic, the acting superb-- and that's really all I can say about it. Other than that it was, like I've mentioned, the most cultural thing I'll probably do during this entire adventure of mine.
My favorite part of the opera, though, was when they sang "Gloire Immortelle," which I sang during my first year in the best men's collegiate choir in the world. It was very cool to hear it in such an opera house by such a group of performers, knowing that I sang it in a gymnasium in Wales four years earlier. I'm not going to say who sounded better because I like to practice modesty once in a while, but I will say that these guys definitely were missing that "Glee Club charm."
By the way, I guess the sign that you don't look at your music enough is when you fail to notice the "from 'Faust' " at the top of the first page and are stunned and delighted when you hear it during the opera which it is from.
(My second favorite part of the opera was when the devil took Faust to the witches orgy and all the witches were running around in thongs. That looked like fun.)
When I got back to the hostel I found Astrid at the front desk, of course, talking to who I assumed was the manager. I asked Astrid for the key to her flat and the manager gave a weird look and Astrid looked a bit nervous. I went up, took a shower, and figured this was the end.
And I was right. When I came back down Astrid told me that the manager-- I had been correct-- was less than pleased that I was crashing at her place. I asked her why that mattered if Astrid lived there, and she said that she didn't own the flat. No kidding, but you ARE paying rent, right? She didn't get it, though, and said that this was probably going to be my last night.
When I turned away from Astrid, I had my first real Michigan sighting in Europe-- the first fake one had been a dude wearing a Michigan shirt who didn't respond when I said "Go blue" and who said a friend of his had gotten it for him when the friend was in Michigan a year ago. The Michigan sighting, however, was not just any Michigan sighting. It was none other than my friend Shannon, with whom I had about four classes during my last two years.
Of all the people, for some reason this just felt like it would have happened. I'm not sure why, but I think it's because I had unsuccessfully tried to convince Shannon and another mutual friend to come to Mardi Gras with me in the spring. Whatever the reason, it almost seemed natural that she was there in the same hostel that I was not really staying in.
Shannon and her friend-- who I didn't know-- were in the middle of a two-month European adventure, traveling around and spending a few days in each place and staying at hostels. The way I would have done it five years ago. We went to a bar down the street and exchanged stories from our respective adventures, and they too were particularly fond of the Hobo Brawl.
We had gone to this bar to get a drink and something to eat, but getting a drink didn't exactly seem imperative at this point. And, although I was starving, I realized at this point that I had hit a new low in regards to money-consciousness. When looking at the menu, I actually considered the merit of eating something versus just waiting it out until the morning. I mean, I actually thought to myself "is spending €2.50 right now really going to help me out in the grand scheme of hunger?" And I decided it wouldn't, so I didn't get anything.
(Although luckily Shannon couldn't finish what she ordered so I had a little bit of left-over.)
Astrid had told me to be back at 12:00 again, and although it seemed to me like she could be able to make an exception once in a while she was rather grumpy when I left and figured it was best to just go back. I looked around for Marion, who had said she would meet me but wasn't in the bar earlier, and she was still nowhere to be found. Which sadly meant no more free drinks. But she had bought a ticket to the same production of "Faust" that evening for about €25 because she didn't know about the €3 deal and so maybe she just didn't want to hear about how great the standing room was. Who knows.
Either way, this was clearly to be my last night staying with Astrid. And I was fine with that, because I had had enough "hostel" to tide me over for a while.
I headed into town and got myself a chickenburger from McDonald's for lunch. The thing about the chickenburger is that it only costs €1 and is, in all honesty, pretty damn good. Not really enough for a meal by itself, but enough to tide you over. And the thing about McDonald's in general-- we're talking the Vienna McDonald's of course-- is that everyone that eats there is attractive and not fat. I'm talking everyone. It's the most bizarre thing in the world. It's almost like Austrian McDonald's is good for you. At the very least, you don't feel like a fat-ass by eating there. Which, if you've ever been to a McDonald's in the deep south, is EXACTLY how you feel.
I basically spent this day riding around on the metro and getting off whenever I felt like going up for fresh air. By this point I just about had the entire metro system memorized-- which lines went where, which direction was north or south or east or west, how to get to the main places I needed. I may have been getting less exercise because of it, but the Austrian metro is famously free-- I had never seen a single person get checked for a ticket, and no one I had spoken to could remember the last time they saw one, either-- so why not? Plus, walking around is a lovely way to see a city, but when you can navigate the metro system in a city like the back of your hand it makes you feel like you live there. Which, since I probably wouldn't be in Vienna for much more than a week, was about the best I could do.
I had met someone in the hostel the previous night who had gone to the opera and loved it. She said I should check it out, so I bought a thing of yogurt and a piece of bread-- a healthy dinner, just in case Viennese McDonald's actually is as bad for you as American McDonald's-- and I walked to the opera house.
The opera house in Vienna is the foremost opera house in all of Vienna, and tickets go as high as €240. But tickets also go as low as €3 if you stand in the back for the entire show. So it's a good thing I've got legs of steel.
Now, I'm not really the opera type, to be honest, but every once in a while I like to remind myself that I spent five years in the best men's collegiate choir in the world. And so, when I'm trying to get my cultural side going, I just think WWDD. And I'm pretty sure that he would have gone to the opera. So I did too.
(And that really is just how cultured I am. So cultured it's silly.)
I got to the opera house at 5:30 for a 7:00 show, and the line was already around the corner. I bought my ticket and was ushered upstairs to the highest balcony, where I found the standing area. Obviously there are no seats and you just stand where you can, so in a sense it's a free-for-all. But to mark the spot where you are standing, the opera-goer will tie a scarf around his portion of the banister in front of him, and then the ushers will politely tell you the spot is taken if you try to stand there. So while it might be considered a free-for-all, it is without a doubt the daintiest free-for-all you could ever be a part of.
Because I was so far back in line I had to stand in the back row, but the back row is actually the best row to be in because the translation screens are right at eye level. Everyone in the two rows ahead of me had to either tilt their head up a bit to see or look way down to see the screen of the person sitting in front of them. Not me. From MY spot I could see the words-- which were in English on the screen I was looking at-- and see the stage without moving my head at all. Thank you very much.
The funniest thing about the opera is that, in the translation, all the sentences end with exclamation points. It doesn't matter what is being said, the only punctuation to end a sentence-- at least that I noticed-- is an exclamation point. Operas are lovely and wonderful, but I think that perfectly captures the grandiose self-perception of opera singers. "Listen to me!"
The other funny thing is the spattering of cheers throughout the performance. After every song you'll hear a muffled "woo!" throughout the audience, but no one ever really cheers. They just clap. It's like they're too dignified to cheer, and when they start to "woo!" they have to catch themselves before they let out their wild side.
At intermission I went to the refreshment stand and looked longingly at the drinks and snacks for about five uninterrupted minutes. Then I decided to walk around, listening for someone speaking English since I figured only an American would buy a glass of wine or a tart for a scrub like me.
Because I was wearing my hoodie, my dino t-shirt, a pair of jeans and sneakers, and nearly everyone else was in a coat and tie or a dress, or at least something nice. I was a classy dude. But what killed me was that, despite everything that I was wearing, it was my sneakers that were the biggest offense. Every so often I would catch someone studying my sneakers in disgust and then slowly raising his or her head, eyeing my jeans and then my hoodie and then finally looking with contempt upon the proletariat so common that he would actually wear SNEAKERS to the OPERA. Disgusting.
As far as the opera, since that is important I suppose, it was "Faust," about a week or so after it premiered in the opera house. I was somewhat familiar with the story before going in, and was able to follow it actually all the way up until the final five minutes or so. But, for a three-hour show, that's pretty good.
And I thought the opera itself was pretty incredible, not that I really have any frame of reference to know if an opera is not incredible. But the opera was lovely, the singing fantastic, the acting superb-- and that's really all I can say about it. Other than that it was, like I've mentioned, the most cultural thing I'll probably do during this entire adventure of mine.
My favorite part of the opera, though, was when they sang "Gloire Immortelle," which I sang during my first year in the best men's collegiate choir in the world. It was very cool to hear it in such an opera house by such a group of performers, knowing that I sang it in a gymnasium in Wales four years earlier. I'm not going to say who sounded better because I like to practice modesty once in a while, but I will say that these guys definitely were missing that "Glee Club charm."
By the way, I guess the sign that you don't look at your music enough is when you fail to notice the "from 'Faust' " at the top of the first page and are stunned and delighted when you hear it during the opera which it is from.
(My second favorite part of the opera was when the devil took Faust to the witches orgy and all the witches were running around in thongs. That looked like fun.)
When I got back to the hostel I found Astrid at the front desk, of course, talking to who I assumed was the manager. I asked Astrid for the key to her flat and the manager gave a weird look and Astrid looked a bit nervous. I went up, took a shower, and figured this was the end.
And I was right. When I came back down Astrid told me that the manager-- I had been correct-- was less than pleased that I was crashing at her place. I asked her why that mattered if Astrid lived there, and she said that she didn't own the flat. No kidding, but you ARE paying rent, right? She didn't get it, though, and said that this was probably going to be my last night.
When I turned away from Astrid, I had my first real Michigan sighting in Europe-- the first fake one had been a dude wearing a Michigan shirt who didn't respond when I said "Go blue" and who said a friend of his had gotten it for him when the friend was in Michigan a year ago. The Michigan sighting, however, was not just any Michigan sighting. It was none other than my friend Shannon, with whom I had about four classes during my last two years.
Of all the people, for some reason this just felt like it would have happened. I'm not sure why, but I think it's because I had unsuccessfully tried to convince Shannon and another mutual friend to come to Mardi Gras with me in the spring. Whatever the reason, it almost seemed natural that she was there in the same hostel that I was not really staying in.
Shannon and her friend-- who I didn't know-- were in the middle of a two-month European adventure, traveling around and spending a few days in each place and staying at hostels. The way I would have done it five years ago. We went to a bar down the street and exchanged stories from our respective adventures, and they too were particularly fond of the Hobo Brawl.
We had gone to this bar to get a drink and something to eat, but getting a drink didn't exactly seem imperative at this point. And, although I was starving, I realized at this point that I had hit a new low in regards to money-consciousness. When looking at the menu, I actually considered the merit of eating something versus just waiting it out until the morning. I mean, I actually thought to myself "is spending €2.50 right now really going to help me out in the grand scheme of hunger?" And I decided it wouldn't, so I didn't get anything.
(Although luckily Shannon couldn't finish what she ordered so I had a little bit of left-over.)
Astrid had told me to be back at 12:00 again, and although it seemed to me like she could be able to make an exception once in a while she was rather grumpy when I left and figured it was best to just go back. I looked around for Marion, who had said she would meet me but wasn't in the bar earlier, and she was still nowhere to be found. Which sadly meant no more free drinks. But she had bought a ticket to the same production of "Faust" that evening for about €25 because she didn't know about the €3 deal and so maybe she just didn't want to hear about how great the standing room was. Who knows.
Either way, this was clearly to be my last night staying with Astrid. And I was fine with that, because I had had enough "hostel" to tide me over for a while.
19 October 2008: Vienna, Austria
Ike woke me up at 9:00 for the moment I had been dreading for over twelve hours. Except, to my surprise, it was even worse.
He spoke for about 15 minutes, but the only way you can decipher what he says from the stuttering and mumbling mumbo-jumbo is by paying strict attention, and I was much too tired to pay any attention at all. When he finished talking I said something like "I don't want to go to church," and he replied "Not church. The Catholic Charity."
Well, that woke me up. I'm sorry, but going to the Catholic Charity crosses the line, it really does. I told Ike there was no way I was going to the Catholic Charity, and he said "You must go so you can go back to America." I told him for about the tenth time that I am in no rush to go back to America, and he said "But they will buy your plane ticket."
Uh, now I'm listening.
Ike just about picked me up off the bed and made me a bowl of rice, and as I ate he got my things together. I really didn't want to go to the Catholic Charity, for many reasons, but Ike was practically making me. I swear, he literally must have thought I was 13 years old. Just let me make my own choices.
But, of course, he didn't, and so we were on the tram heading for the Catholic Charity. And when we got there, Ike showed me how to ring the bell-- really, Ike?-- then apologized for not repaying me for the cigarettes and left. The end.
Since I was there, and since I figured what the hell, I went to ring the bell. And the second after I did, I noticed the sign above the door-- "Asylum for Refugees."
Ha!
And, wouldn't you know, no one came to the door because the place is closed on Sunday. Unbelievable. The place is freaking closed on Sunday.
Well, I was back on the street. And, additionally, still unemployed. So I went to the main hostel area that I hadn't gone to the previous day. The first place I tried didn't have any job opportunities, but the guy at the desk said I could store my stuff in the luggage room for the day. I accepted the offer.
At the second hostel, the girl at the desk called her manager to ask for me. I spoke to the manager-- a woman from Seattle-- and told her I was looking for hostel work in Vienna. She was as nice as could be, she really was, but she explained that since the summer was over she was actually already beginning to cut her staff, and so hiring a new worker was impossible. She did say that she could use a night porter, but that I would have to speak German so I could deal with the neighbors. Not going to happen.
I asked her, then, if there was even any work that I could do just for a bed to sleep in for the night, and she said she couldn't think of any. I asked if I could clean the coffee cup that was on the table where I was sitting in exchange for a bed, and she laughed and said that she would try to think of something and, if she did, she would call back to the girl at the desk and tell her.
That was that. I didn't have a job or a bed or anything that would help me, but at least the manager had been nice and tried to think of something-- since she said she usually likes to give people work for a bed, if they need it, but just at this point there was nothing.
(Although it was a bit discouraging to hear that she's in fact reducing her staff for the winter. I hope that's not the case everywhere.)
When I hung up, I handed the phone back to the girl, and a guy who had overheard me starting asking about my adventure. I told him that I've been traveling around and looking for work. And I mentioned off-handedly, as I had told the manager, that I would even be willing to work for a bed and nothing else if it was possible, since I needed a place to crash.
The girl at the desk overheard me, I guess, and said that if I needed a place to crash I could just stay at her place. She said she lived next door and was already letting one person from the hostel, whose money had run out, sleep on her floor. So one more wouldn't hurt.
That was good enough for me, and I told her I'd be back at 7:00.
The day was mine. And, as I learned, the thing about Sunday is that it is the best day to be in a city because things are free.
But I didn't learn this immediately. I first went to the Museum Quarter and popped into a couple museums, but they all cost between €6 and €8. I even went to the Spanish Riding School, just to see what on earth was going on there, and considered getting a ticket for Morning Exercise until I realized that it cost €12. Yes, twelve euro to watch horses go through their morning exercises.
(Although, when you consider that the horses lay golden eggs, maybe €12 isn't so much after all.)
I went to one more museum in the Museum Quarter and it, too, was €6, but it was here that the woman at the ticket counter told me about the free museums.
The first one I went to was the Wien Museum, which is the main national museum of Vienna. I don't know what the price would have been normally, but there was a lot of art and some interesting history. A cool place, for sure, although only about one-third of the pieces in the museum had English descriptions to go along with the German ones. So it probably wouldn't have been worth paying to go in if you can't speak German and can't "understand art" without knowing what's going on. And I can't do either.
Then I went to the Beethoven's apartment museum, which is where he lived while in Vienna, and which is really just an apartment with some pictures of Beethoven on the walls and a fake keyboard that has headphones playing his music. That's it. No furniture, no personal items, nothing. I mean, it's listed under "museums," but it really could have been any apartment in the entire world, just if the person who owned it actually lived somewhere else and liked to keep pictures of Beethoven in his empty apartment. It was nothing at all like Beethoven's apartment in "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure"-- I don't know why the museum curator decided to change it, but it wasn't anywhere near as authentic as I had expected.
When I left Beethoven's digs most of the museums were about to close and I had to go back and get my stuff, anyway. I found the first hostel pretty easily, but had a bit of a time locating the second. When I did, the girl was forunately still working. And still offered me a couch.
Except it wasn't a couch. And it wasn't, as I had actually expected, just the floor. The girl literally went into one of the closets in the hostel office and came back out with a mattress. I didn't really have any spare hands, and anyway the mattress probably weighed four pounds, so the girl carried it up for me.
When we got up to her flat the other couch-surfer was making dinner. She is a Portuguese girl named Riquel who is studying at the University of Vienna but hasn't found her own flat yet. Although she's been in Vienna for a couple months, so I'm not really sure what the hold-up is. Maybe she's just going to move in.
Anyway, Riquel had made an omelette, sort of, and she gave me half of it and made me a cup of tea, which was lovely of her. She also told me that the hostel girl's name is Astrid, which was good to know. Astrid said I could stay a couple days and that, if I ever needed to find her, she would either be in the flat or at the hostel. One of those two places, and nowhere else. I asked her what she was doing that night, and she said she would be hanging out at the hostel. Because "that's what I always do."
Now, my ideal job on this adventure would be to work in a hostel, I admit that. But I don't think I would like it if hanging out at my workplace was "what I always do," no matter how fun that workplace might be. I asked Astrid if that was really all she ever did, and she said yes; she's literally always around and knows everything that goes on and knows everyone who's staying there and that's one reason why she often lets people crash at her place-- because they always see her around and so they ask her.
And that, my friends, could have been my life if I had gotten a hostel job. But lord I hope not.
After talking for a while Astrid went down to the front desk-- not because she was working, just because she was hanging out-- and I took a shower and then went down myself. I went to the hostel bar and made a joke to the girl next to me, asking her just how bubbly she thought the soda water was-- because it said "VERY bubbly"-- and then asking her if she thought it was so bubbly it would get me drunk, because it was two euro cheaper than the beer. She laughed and bought me a beer. Good going, Zach.
I kept talking to this girl for a while, an English girl named Marion, and we were hitting it off swimmingly although she wasn't really in the least bit cute. But she bought me two beers and then a bottle of wine which we split. So it was all good.
I met another girl, an Australian who was staying there, who asked me if I was using CouchSurfing.com when I told her how I'd been travelling. I told her no, that I've been meeting people, and was about to say "using the website is too easy" when she literally beat me to it. I mean, she literally said those exact words and added "the challenge is the fun part." I couldn't believe it, I told her that was EXACTLY what I thought.
So I started telling her some of the stories from my adventures, and she was loving them-- the one about the Hobo Brawl was her favorite, understandably. She said that she had wanted to do her trip on couches but that her friend, whom she was traveling with, had absolutely refused. I told her to meet me in Italy at some point, and she instantly told me it was a plan. But her friend overheard and said it was out of the question. Damn, girl, shush your mouth.
Anyway, the whole thing was really pretty fun, and when the Australian girls left Marion and I went with an Austrian dude to a bar down the street and had another drink-- although I paid for this one. Astrid had told me to be back at the hostel at 12:00 so she could let me into the flat, which was fine by me, and so we went back and I was asleep by 12:30. Again. But at least I was back on track.
********************************
The best part about this night was that I was able to have all the fun of a hostel without any of the commitment. Or the "hosteler" tag. Or the hostelness. Or knowing that I was paying to sleep in a hostel and paying to be a hosteler. I was just hanging out in the hostel and hanging out with kids who were staying in a hostel, but I was still kicking it on the couches and doing it my own way. Which was sweet. And, most importantly, I can't even begin to explain how nice it was to be able to be funny again. Or, at least, to be able to make jokes again, whether or not they were funny. That's the main problem of crashing on couches-- the fact that, other than Tomi or Charles who speak nearly flawless English, the people I've been staying with typically miss subtle jokes and irony. So it was nice to be able to make people laugh again.
He spoke for about 15 minutes, but the only way you can decipher what he says from the stuttering and mumbling mumbo-jumbo is by paying strict attention, and I was much too tired to pay any attention at all. When he finished talking I said something like "I don't want to go to church," and he replied "Not church. The Catholic Charity."
Well, that woke me up. I'm sorry, but going to the Catholic Charity crosses the line, it really does. I told Ike there was no way I was going to the Catholic Charity, and he said "You must go so you can go back to America." I told him for about the tenth time that I am in no rush to go back to America, and he said "But they will buy your plane ticket."
Uh, now I'm listening.
Ike just about picked me up off the bed and made me a bowl of rice, and as I ate he got my things together. I really didn't want to go to the Catholic Charity, for many reasons, but Ike was practically making me. I swear, he literally must have thought I was 13 years old. Just let me make my own choices.
But, of course, he didn't, and so we were on the tram heading for the Catholic Charity. And when we got there, Ike showed me how to ring the bell-- really, Ike?-- then apologized for not repaying me for the cigarettes and left. The end.
Since I was there, and since I figured what the hell, I went to ring the bell. And the second after I did, I noticed the sign above the door-- "Asylum for Refugees."
Ha!
And, wouldn't you know, no one came to the door because the place is closed on Sunday. Unbelievable. The place is freaking closed on Sunday.
Well, I was back on the street. And, additionally, still unemployed. So I went to the main hostel area that I hadn't gone to the previous day. The first place I tried didn't have any job opportunities, but the guy at the desk said I could store my stuff in the luggage room for the day. I accepted the offer.
At the second hostel, the girl at the desk called her manager to ask for me. I spoke to the manager-- a woman from Seattle-- and told her I was looking for hostel work in Vienna. She was as nice as could be, she really was, but she explained that since the summer was over she was actually already beginning to cut her staff, and so hiring a new worker was impossible. She did say that she could use a night porter, but that I would have to speak German so I could deal with the neighbors. Not going to happen.
I asked her, then, if there was even any work that I could do just for a bed to sleep in for the night, and she said she couldn't think of any. I asked if I could clean the coffee cup that was on the table where I was sitting in exchange for a bed, and she laughed and said that she would try to think of something and, if she did, she would call back to the girl at the desk and tell her.
That was that. I didn't have a job or a bed or anything that would help me, but at least the manager had been nice and tried to think of something-- since she said she usually likes to give people work for a bed, if they need it, but just at this point there was nothing.
(Although it was a bit discouraging to hear that she's in fact reducing her staff for the winter. I hope that's not the case everywhere.)
When I hung up, I handed the phone back to the girl, and a guy who had overheard me starting asking about my adventure. I told him that I've been traveling around and looking for work. And I mentioned off-handedly, as I had told the manager, that I would even be willing to work for a bed and nothing else if it was possible, since I needed a place to crash.
The girl at the desk overheard me, I guess, and said that if I needed a place to crash I could just stay at her place. She said she lived next door and was already letting one person from the hostel, whose money had run out, sleep on her floor. So one more wouldn't hurt.
That was good enough for me, and I told her I'd be back at 7:00.
The day was mine. And, as I learned, the thing about Sunday is that it is the best day to be in a city because things are free.
But I didn't learn this immediately. I first went to the Museum Quarter and popped into a couple museums, but they all cost between €6 and €8. I even went to the Spanish Riding School, just to see what on earth was going on there, and considered getting a ticket for Morning Exercise until I realized that it cost €12. Yes, twelve euro to watch horses go through their morning exercises.
(Although, when you consider that the horses lay golden eggs, maybe €12 isn't so much after all.)
I went to one more museum in the Museum Quarter and it, too, was €6, but it was here that the woman at the ticket counter told me about the free museums.
The first one I went to was the Wien Museum, which is the main national museum of Vienna. I don't know what the price would have been normally, but there was a lot of art and some interesting history. A cool place, for sure, although only about one-third of the pieces in the museum had English descriptions to go along with the German ones. So it probably wouldn't have been worth paying to go in if you can't speak German and can't "understand art" without knowing what's going on. And I can't do either.
Then I went to the Beethoven's apartment museum, which is where he lived while in Vienna, and which is really just an apartment with some pictures of Beethoven on the walls and a fake keyboard that has headphones playing his music. That's it. No furniture, no personal items, nothing. I mean, it's listed under "museums," but it really could have been any apartment in the entire world, just if the person who owned it actually lived somewhere else and liked to keep pictures of Beethoven in his empty apartment. It was nothing at all like Beethoven's apartment in "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure"-- I don't know why the museum curator decided to change it, but it wasn't anywhere near as authentic as I had expected.
When I left Beethoven's digs most of the museums were about to close and I had to go back and get my stuff, anyway. I found the first hostel pretty easily, but had a bit of a time locating the second. When I did, the girl was forunately still working. And still offered me a couch.
Except it wasn't a couch. And it wasn't, as I had actually expected, just the floor. The girl literally went into one of the closets in the hostel office and came back out with a mattress. I didn't really have any spare hands, and anyway the mattress probably weighed four pounds, so the girl carried it up for me.
When we got up to her flat the other couch-surfer was making dinner. She is a Portuguese girl named Riquel who is studying at the University of Vienna but hasn't found her own flat yet. Although she's been in Vienna for a couple months, so I'm not really sure what the hold-up is. Maybe she's just going to move in.
Anyway, Riquel had made an omelette, sort of, and she gave me half of it and made me a cup of tea, which was lovely of her. She also told me that the hostel girl's name is Astrid, which was good to know. Astrid said I could stay a couple days and that, if I ever needed to find her, she would either be in the flat or at the hostel. One of those two places, and nowhere else. I asked her what she was doing that night, and she said she would be hanging out at the hostel. Because "that's what I always do."
Now, my ideal job on this adventure would be to work in a hostel, I admit that. But I don't think I would like it if hanging out at my workplace was "what I always do," no matter how fun that workplace might be. I asked Astrid if that was really all she ever did, and she said yes; she's literally always around and knows everything that goes on and knows everyone who's staying there and that's one reason why she often lets people crash at her place-- because they always see her around and so they ask her.
And that, my friends, could have been my life if I had gotten a hostel job. But lord I hope not.
After talking for a while Astrid went down to the front desk-- not because she was working, just because she was hanging out-- and I took a shower and then went down myself. I went to the hostel bar and made a joke to the girl next to me, asking her just how bubbly she thought the soda water was-- because it said "VERY bubbly"-- and then asking her if she thought it was so bubbly it would get me drunk, because it was two euro cheaper than the beer. She laughed and bought me a beer. Good going, Zach.
I kept talking to this girl for a while, an English girl named Marion, and we were hitting it off swimmingly although she wasn't really in the least bit cute. But she bought me two beers and then a bottle of wine which we split. So it was all good.
I met another girl, an Australian who was staying there, who asked me if I was using CouchSurfing.com when I told her how I'd been travelling. I told her no, that I've been meeting people, and was about to say "using the website is too easy" when she literally beat me to it. I mean, she literally said those exact words and added "the challenge is the fun part." I couldn't believe it, I told her that was EXACTLY what I thought.
So I started telling her some of the stories from my adventures, and she was loving them-- the one about the Hobo Brawl was her favorite, understandably. She said that she had wanted to do her trip on couches but that her friend, whom she was traveling with, had absolutely refused. I told her to meet me in Italy at some point, and she instantly told me it was a plan. But her friend overheard and said it was out of the question. Damn, girl, shush your mouth.
Anyway, the whole thing was really pretty fun, and when the Australian girls left Marion and I went with an Austrian dude to a bar down the street and had another drink-- although I paid for this one. Astrid had told me to be back at the hostel at 12:00 so she could let me into the flat, which was fine by me, and so we went back and I was asleep by 12:30. Again. But at least I was back on track.
********************************
The best part about this night was that I was able to have all the fun of a hostel without any of the commitment. Or the "hosteler" tag. Or the hostelness. Or knowing that I was paying to sleep in a hostel and paying to be a hosteler. I was just hanging out in the hostel and hanging out with kids who were staying in a hostel, but I was still kicking it on the couches and doing it my own way. Which was sweet. And, most importantly, I can't even begin to explain how nice it was to be able to be funny again. Or, at least, to be able to make jokes again, whether or not they were funny. That's the main problem of crashing on couches-- the fact that, other than Tomi or Charles who speak nearly flawless English, the people I've been staying with typically miss subtle jokes and irony. So it was nice to be able to make people laugh again.
Friday, October 24, 2008
18 October 2008: Vienna, Austria
I had gone to bed at 1:00 and woke up at 10:30, so I was feeling pretty good. Osi and the Nigerian were already awake and I went into the kitchen to find something to eat. The Nigerian came in to assist me and I made some tuna and bread and beans. An interesting combination.
After I ate I started to clean up and the Nigerian came into the kitchen to show me "which sink to use for washing" so I could "get used to the house." This was after he had gone out to buy shampoo since he didn't have any. Considering his initial response to my crashing at his place, he had done a pretty quick turn-around. Maybe I was wrong.
I left the flat after eating to try to do a little job searching but got initially caught up with "GEBT UNS ZURÜCK WAS UNS GEHÖRT MONTEZUMA'S FEDERKRONE." At least, that's what the sign said. I have no idea what it was meant to be, but there were two men, a woman, and a little girl all in full Indian costumes-- three-foot headresses (except for the girl), elaborate boots, grass skirts, fancy shields, and clubs. At first there was a call-and-response with a guy banging a drum and calling and the other men responding by blowing through shells. Then there was either a war dance or a rain dance, which was mostly just twirls and fancy footwork, but which went on for 20 minutes and which the audience loved.
And, of course, there was a chalice in between them all with smoke coming out of it.
These people were obviously not even remotely Native American, but the audience freakin' loved it-- 80% of the people gave money, I would guess, when yet another person in Indian costume came by with a bowl. It was completely bizarre, mostly because I wouldn't pay a cent to people immitating Native Austrian culture. Those silly Austrians.
I went to a few hostels to look for work but hadn't brought any identification with me, which meant it was mostly pointless. So I went back to the University and fiddled around on the computer, waiting for a response from a English or History professor. Which didn't arrive.
After a while I gave up and headed back to the flat. The Nigerian had made rice for dinner, which was something like an African rice with tomatos, onions, chili pepper, fish, and tomato stew. Making it fifteen times more delicious than the rice mess I tend to put together if I'm ever lucky enough to have rice to put together.
While we were eating the Nigerian asked when I wanted to go to church in the morning. I told him I hadn't really been planning on going at all, and he was appalled. He started telling me all the ways that going to church has helped him and all the ways it would help me if I went with him, and I cut him off right there. "OK, fine, I'll go."
After eating we went to buy beer for us and cigarettes for him, and before we left he showed me how to open the door of his flat. For the third time. I get it. I told him I had come home the previous night and gotten in, hadn't I, and he said that his brother had let him in. No, his brother had just happened to arrive right after me, I told him. For the third time. It was unbelievable. Showing me how to wash dishes, how to make tuna and beans and bread, how to open the door, how I should just go back to America, I get it. I don't have a work visa and it's going to be hard, I get it. Just let it go.
When we got to the cigarette machine the Nigerian realized that he didn't have any money with him. I lent him €4, which is fine of course in general, but not for cigarettes. Not really.
We parted ways then and I went to get the beer, and when I came back he was lying in bed with the lights off and talking to his girlfriend. I put the beer in the fridge and went to find a warm place-- a metro station, it turned out to be-- to write.
I returned in about an hour and found him in the same position, still talking on the phone. It was only a one-room flat and it would have been rude to stick around, even though I wouldn't have been able to hear him if I were standing two meters from the guy. So I took a beer from the fridge and went up to the main square.
I walked by a dude who was playing the guitar and singing. Actually, he was playing three chords over and over again and saying things like "Why do I have to pay €5 for a pint" and "Why can't I smoke what I want to when I want to." I thought he was either hilarious or an idiot, or maybe both, and he was speaking English. So I went over and talked to him.
I asked him if he was playing a track off his Greatest Hits compilation and he said "This? No, this is just improv-- just protest music." You don't say, huh? He said he wants to make a record but doesn't "want to be like Mick Jagger, you know, and have all that money." I said I didn't think it was just his forsaking of material possessions that was stopping him from being quite like Mick Jagger. Boy was I on a roll.
This dude was from Michigan and had been in Spain for two years, and he said he was done with America but that if he ever went back he would be a teacher. Gee, where have I heard that before?
I asked him what he's been doing for all that time, and he said he was traveling for a while but after about six months he decided he didn't really want to go back, and he's been playing the guitar on the street to support himself ever since. I found that impossible to imagine but didn't think it would be nice to tell him.
Anyway, he was a pretty decent guy, and I was intrigued by his time-line of giving up on America after six months and still being here a year and a half later. Which gives me about four more months to go in Europe before it becomes eternity.
Before I left I asked him if he had any ideas about how to make some money. He asked if I had a guitar and I said no, and he said that was the best way he could think of. But then he thought a bit more and, when he asked if I could make an investment, said that I should just sell drugs. It would cost a bit at the start but I'd make a killing. So there's my fallback, I guess.
I went back to the flat then and the Nigerian was STILL on the phone. His girlfriend said she wanted to talk to me, and the first thing she said was "So is Ike nice?" And, I'll tell you, I was THIS close to asking who Ike was but thought better of it. So I said "Yes, and he's a good cook." I looked up and Ike, as it turned out, was smiling.
Because, as I'm sure you've noticed, I didn't know his name. I mean, I had no clue what his name was, I really didn't. He had told me a couple times before but each time I didn't understand him, on account of the stutter and the overall near muteness, and after asking him to repeat himself a couple times, both times, I gave up. And it really was too late to ask him again.
(To be honest, I said "Huh, what?" more times to Ike than I had to any Austrian or Hungarian who didn't even speak English as a first language. Which, for those who don't know, Nigerians do. It was unbelievable.)
So now I knew Ike's name. He had said he wanted to go out that night, but when he finally got off the phone past midnight he just sat on the bed in his boxers, watching the television. I asked him if he still wanted to go out and, not surprisingly, he said he didn't.
So now I needed to get a bit more energy before going out, since it would just be me, and I figured I would finally take that hour-long nap from the night before. And, of course, when the alarm went off in an hour I could barely make it to the bed let alone out the door. So I called it a night. Again. A wasted weekend. Again.
And I blame Axel for this particular wasted weekend. Still exhausted from my night in the garage and still mentally exhausted from dealing with it all. And now he took my weekend.
Oh, and my iPod.
********************************
The crazy thing is, after berating Axel for using CouchSurfing.com, I finally had a similar experience. Staying with Ike was literally like staying with a couple grandparents. Maybe because he was-- get this-- actually 36 years old. Oops.
After I ate I started to clean up and the Nigerian came into the kitchen to show me "which sink to use for washing" so I could "get used to the house." This was after he had gone out to buy shampoo since he didn't have any. Considering his initial response to my crashing at his place, he had done a pretty quick turn-around. Maybe I was wrong.
I left the flat after eating to try to do a little job searching but got initially caught up with "GEBT UNS ZURÜCK WAS UNS GEHÖRT MONTEZUMA'S FEDERKRONE." At least, that's what the sign said. I have no idea what it was meant to be, but there were two men, a woman, and a little girl all in full Indian costumes-- three-foot headresses (except for the girl), elaborate boots, grass skirts, fancy shields, and clubs. At first there was a call-and-response with a guy banging a drum and calling and the other men responding by blowing through shells. Then there was either a war dance or a rain dance, which was mostly just twirls and fancy footwork, but which went on for 20 minutes and which the audience loved.
And, of course, there was a chalice in between them all with smoke coming out of it.
These people were obviously not even remotely Native American, but the audience freakin' loved it-- 80% of the people gave money, I would guess, when yet another person in Indian costume came by with a bowl. It was completely bizarre, mostly because I wouldn't pay a cent to people immitating Native Austrian culture. Those silly Austrians.
I went to a few hostels to look for work but hadn't brought any identification with me, which meant it was mostly pointless. So I went back to the University and fiddled around on the computer, waiting for a response from a English or History professor. Which didn't arrive.
After a while I gave up and headed back to the flat. The Nigerian had made rice for dinner, which was something like an African rice with tomatos, onions, chili pepper, fish, and tomato stew. Making it fifteen times more delicious than the rice mess I tend to put together if I'm ever lucky enough to have rice to put together.
While we were eating the Nigerian asked when I wanted to go to church in the morning. I told him I hadn't really been planning on going at all, and he was appalled. He started telling me all the ways that going to church has helped him and all the ways it would help me if I went with him, and I cut him off right there. "OK, fine, I'll go."
After eating we went to buy beer for us and cigarettes for him, and before we left he showed me how to open the door of his flat. For the third time. I get it. I told him I had come home the previous night and gotten in, hadn't I, and he said that his brother had let him in. No, his brother had just happened to arrive right after me, I told him. For the third time. It was unbelievable. Showing me how to wash dishes, how to make tuna and beans and bread, how to open the door, how I should just go back to America, I get it. I don't have a work visa and it's going to be hard, I get it. Just let it go.
When we got to the cigarette machine the Nigerian realized that he didn't have any money with him. I lent him €4, which is fine of course in general, but not for cigarettes. Not really.
We parted ways then and I went to get the beer, and when I came back he was lying in bed with the lights off and talking to his girlfriend. I put the beer in the fridge and went to find a warm place-- a metro station, it turned out to be-- to write.
I returned in about an hour and found him in the same position, still talking on the phone. It was only a one-room flat and it would have been rude to stick around, even though I wouldn't have been able to hear him if I were standing two meters from the guy. So I took a beer from the fridge and went up to the main square.
I walked by a dude who was playing the guitar and singing. Actually, he was playing three chords over and over again and saying things like "Why do I have to pay €5 for a pint" and "Why can't I smoke what I want to when I want to." I thought he was either hilarious or an idiot, or maybe both, and he was speaking English. So I went over and talked to him.
I asked him if he was playing a track off his Greatest Hits compilation and he said "This? No, this is just improv-- just protest music." You don't say, huh? He said he wants to make a record but doesn't "want to be like Mick Jagger, you know, and have all that money." I said I didn't think it was just his forsaking of material possessions that was stopping him from being quite like Mick Jagger. Boy was I on a roll.
This dude was from Michigan and had been in Spain for two years, and he said he was done with America but that if he ever went back he would be a teacher. Gee, where have I heard that before?
I asked him what he's been doing for all that time, and he said he was traveling for a while but after about six months he decided he didn't really want to go back, and he's been playing the guitar on the street to support himself ever since. I found that impossible to imagine but didn't think it would be nice to tell him.
Anyway, he was a pretty decent guy, and I was intrigued by his time-line of giving up on America after six months and still being here a year and a half later. Which gives me about four more months to go in Europe before it becomes eternity.
Before I left I asked him if he had any ideas about how to make some money. He asked if I had a guitar and I said no, and he said that was the best way he could think of. But then he thought a bit more and, when he asked if I could make an investment, said that I should just sell drugs. It would cost a bit at the start but I'd make a killing. So there's my fallback, I guess.
I went back to the flat then and the Nigerian was STILL on the phone. His girlfriend said she wanted to talk to me, and the first thing she said was "So is Ike nice?" And, I'll tell you, I was THIS close to asking who Ike was but thought better of it. So I said "Yes, and he's a good cook." I looked up and Ike, as it turned out, was smiling.
Because, as I'm sure you've noticed, I didn't know his name. I mean, I had no clue what his name was, I really didn't. He had told me a couple times before but each time I didn't understand him, on account of the stutter and the overall near muteness, and after asking him to repeat himself a couple times, both times, I gave up. And it really was too late to ask him again.
(To be honest, I said "Huh, what?" more times to Ike than I had to any Austrian or Hungarian who didn't even speak English as a first language. Which, for those who don't know, Nigerians do. It was unbelievable.)
So now I knew Ike's name. He had said he wanted to go out that night, but when he finally got off the phone past midnight he just sat on the bed in his boxers, watching the television. I asked him if he still wanted to go out and, not surprisingly, he said he didn't.
So now I needed to get a bit more energy before going out, since it would just be me, and I figured I would finally take that hour-long nap from the night before. And, of course, when the alarm went off in an hour I could barely make it to the bed let alone out the door. So I called it a night. Again. A wasted weekend. Again.
And I blame Axel for this particular wasted weekend. Still exhausted from my night in the garage and still mentally exhausted from dealing with it all. And now he took my weekend.
Oh, and my iPod.
********************************
The crazy thing is, after berating Axel for using CouchSurfing.com, I finally had a similar experience. Staying with Ike was literally like staying with a couple grandparents. Maybe because he was-- get this-- actually 36 years old. Oops.
17 October 2008: Vienna, Austria
I slept in the garage for about an hour, maybe, but didn't really get a whole lot of "relaxation" out of it. After a while I just got up and walked to the center of town since I was awake before the metro started running.
I got yogurt and bread for breakfast, at a paltry 52 cents, and then spent a long time in the library warming up and looking for jobs at the University website. As you might have imagined, the yogurt and bread didn't last too long and I had to supplement with chicken tenders and a cheeseburger from McDonald's. €3 for lunch. Easy there, guy.
At this point I decided to start looking for a couch because I needed a nap like something fierce, and so I began my first true search since Charles-- well, since Tomi, but that happened so quickly it didn't really count.
It took a little while, but eventually I asked a dude who said that he couldn't but had a friend who would probably be OK with it. He went into the computer lab and, a few minutes later, came back out with a big Nigerian dude. He asked to see my passport, I guess because I hadn't had to clear customs when I crossed into Austria. Luckily I didn't come up as a fugitive and he said he would hook me up with a couch.
We left pretty soon after that and, on the tram ride back to his place, the dude just kept grilling me about everything. He couldn't believe I left America and couldn't believe I didn't want to "go back tomorrow." I told him I was trying to find work in Europe and he said no one would hire me. And then when I told him I didn't have a work visa, anyway, he said I was a fool to not just go back to America. I mean, maybe, but I'm not really one for pessimism.
And so the whole ride he just kept going on about how he couldn't believe I didn't want to just go back to the States, and when we got off the tram he said something along the lines of "I don't know what I'm going to do now because of you."
(Here is where I should point out that the big Nigerian dude had a terrible stutter and spoke at about the volume of a mouse. I had to ask him to repeat himself nearly every time he spoke, and so a lot of what he had said I missed completely.)
I didn't know what he was talking about, but I didn't really feel like bothering. And it was still early enough that I'd probably be able to find a new couch. I offered to leave and get him off the hook so he could whatever it was he needed to do that night. He said I had nowhere to go, but when I told him I'd find something and he countered that I didn't know anyone, I explained I didn't exactly know him, either.
I said I'd have no problem finding a place to sleep, but I asked why he hadn't said any of this when we met. And when we were still near the University. He said "Africans can't say no." That wasn't good enough, because it really wasn't impossible for me to leave and be fine, but he insisted. Fine.
When we got to his apartment the dude's brother, Osi, was there. The dude left with his girlfriend after a while and I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again no more than fifteen minutes later Osi had put a sandwich and a beer next to me. Nice work, dude.
After a while Osi got ready to leave for the night and I got up to go to Axel's place to see about the iPod. I told Osi the story, and at the end he just laughed and called Axel a "crazy bitch." Then he got serious and said "I'll come with you."
Oh damn.
At least, he offered to come with me. But Axel's place really was quite a trek away and Osi didn't seem too enthusiastic about the journey. I told him he really didn't have to, which he seemed relieved about, but he said he would tell his friend about the situation. And before he left he said "We'll get you're iPod." Oh damn again.
Now, Axel had said he was leaving for the weekend on Saturday and I figured he would be taking all his stuff-- including the iPod-- with him. So I thought I would go to the apartment after he had gone out for the night and then tell his lady that he had my iPod and I needed to pick it up before I left Vienna in the morning. A flawless plan.
Except I hadn't considered who I was dealing with.
Because, you see, my plan was contingent on Axel being out for the night. The problem is that Axel admittedly has "three friends" from his two weeks in Vienna and Marvin had gone home that morning. So when I got to his place at 11:00 and knocked on the door, he answered it dressed like he had just gotten back from a fancy dinner. And, right behind him, his lady was dressed like she too had just gotten back from a fancy dinner. But of course.
So I asked him about the iPod, not really sure what I was hoping for, and he said he had given the iPod to Marvin who had taken it back to Budapest. Which was the end of that.
But I remembered what Osi had said about his friend, and so very casually I said "You gave Marvin my iPod? That was the choice you made? Watch out." And I left, as calm as could be, not really sure what that meant.
(And as I walked away, Axel screamed at me "That's the choice I made, you fucking no-thinker." That's really what he called me-- a fucking no-thinker.)
I was a mess of upset and tired at this point, but I didn't want to waste my first Friday night and risk getting back onto the Budapest track from my first weekend there. The Nigerian had said he was going to be at his girlfriend's place that night, so I figured I would go back and take a nap for an hour and then go out, since it was only midnight.
But the Nigerian was already home and in bed when I got back, and literally only five minutes later Osi came back too. I told Osi what happened and all he could do was laugh about the whole thing. That made me feel a bit better, to be honest, and I didn't really feel like setting my alarm and waking them both up, and I was already half-asleep in bed, so I figured that was the end of the night.
Another waste of a Friday. Sorry nothing else happened.
I got yogurt and bread for breakfast, at a paltry 52 cents, and then spent a long time in the library warming up and looking for jobs at the University website. As you might have imagined, the yogurt and bread didn't last too long and I had to supplement with chicken tenders and a cheeseburger from McDonald's. €3 for lunch. Easy there, guy.
At this point I decided to start looking for a couch because I needed a nap like something fierce, and so I began my first true search since Charles-- well, since Tomi, but that happened so quickly it didn't really count.
It took a little while, but eventually I asked a dude who said that he couldn't but had a friend who would probably be OK with it. He went into the computer lab and, a few minutes later, came back out with a big Nigerian dude. He asked to see my passport, I guess because I hadn't had to clear customs when I crossed into Austria. Luckily I didn't come up as a fugitive and he said he would hook me up with a couch.
We left pretty soon after that and, on the tram ride back to his place, the dude just kept grilling me about everything. He couldn't believe I left America and couldn't believe I didn't want to "go back tomorrow." I told him I was trying to find work in Europe and he said no one would hire me. And then when I told him I didn't have a work visa, anyway, he said I was a fool to not just go back to America. I mean, maybe, but I'm not really one for pessimism.
And so the whole ride he just kept going on about how he couldn't believe I didn't want to just go back to the States, and when we got off the tram he said something along the lines of "I don't know what I'm going to do now because of you."
(Here is where I should point out that the big Nigerian dude had a terrible stutter and spoke at about the volume of a mouse. I had to ask him to repeat himself nearly every time he spoke, and so a lot of what he had said I missed completely.)
I didn't know what he was talking about, but I didn't really feel like bothering. And it was still early enough that I'd probably be able to find a new couch. I offered to leave and get him off the hook so he could whatever it was he needed to do that night. He said I had nowhere to go, but when I told him I'd find something and he countered that I didn't know anyone, I explained I didn't exactly know him, either.
I said I'd have no problem finding a place to sleep, but I asked why he hadn't said any of this when we met. And when we were still near the University. He said "Africans can't say no." That wasn't good enough, because it really wasn't impossible for me to leave and be fine, but he insisted. Fine.
When we got to his apartment the dude's brother, Osi, was there. The dude left with his girlfriend after a while and I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again no more than fifteen minutes later Osi had put a sandwich and a beer next to me. Nice work, dude.
After a while Osi got ready to leave for the night and I got up to go to Axel's place to see about the iPod. I told Osi the story, and at the end he just laughed and called Axel a "crazy bitch." Then he got serious and said "I'll come with you."
Oh damn.
At least, he offered to come with me. But Axel's place really was quite a trek away and Osi didn't seem too enthusiastic about the journey. I told him he really didn't have to, which he seemed relieved about, but he said he would tell his friend about the situation. And before he left he said "We'll get you're iPod." Oh damn again.
Now, Axel had said he was leaving for the weekend on Saturday and I figured he would be taking all his stuff-- including the iPod-- with him. So I thought I would go to the apartment after he had gone out for the night and then tell his lady that he had my iPod and I needed to pick it up before I left Vienna in the morning. A flawless plan.
Except I hadn't considered who I was dealing with.
Because, you see, my plan was contingent on Axel being out for the night. The problem is that Axel admittedly has "three friends" from his two weeks in Vienna and Marvin had gone home that morning. So when I got to his place at 11:00 and knocked on the door, he answered it dressed like he had just gotten back from a fancy dinner. And, right behind him, his lady was dressed like she too had just gotten back from a fancy dinner. But of course.
So I asked him about the iPod, not really sure what I was hoping for, and he said he had given the iPod to Marvin who had taken it back to Budapest. Which was the end of that.
But I remembered what Osi had said about his friend, and so very casually I said "You gave Marvin my iPod? That was the choice you made? Watch out." And I left, as calm as could be, not really sure what that meant.
(And as I walked away, Axel screamed at me "That's the choice I made, you fucking no-thinker." That's really what he called me-- a fucking no-thinker.)
I was a mess of upset and tired at this point, but I didn't want to waste my first Friday night and risk getting back onto the Budapest track from my first weekend there. The Nigerian had said he was going to be at his girlfriend's place that night, so I figured I would go back and take a nap for an hour and then go out, since it was only midnight.
But the Nigerian was already home and in bed when I got back, and literally only five minutes later Osi came back too. I told Osi what happened and all he could do was laugh about the whole thing. That made me feel a bit better, to be honest, and I didn't really feel like setting my alarm and waking them both up, and I was already half-asleep in bed, so I figured that was the end of the night.
Another waste of a Friday. Sorry nothing else happened.
Friday, October 17, 2008
16 October 2008: Vienna, Austria
I woke up at 10:15, which is pretty late by hostel standards, but everyone else in the room was still sleeping. It only means that I was the first of four, but that's a bit more heartening than waking up last on your first day in a new city.
I went next door to talk to the woman who runs the hostel, and who had said we could store our stuff for the day. She said that the free storage was only for people who were coming back for another night. I asked how much a second night would be, and though it only would have been another €11 I was pretty confident I'd be able to find something better. So I talked her down to €3 for the day combined for my stuff and Marvin's and called it a win.
I met Axel at 12:15 to try to find employment at the University of Vienna. A girl he knows, Marie, said to find the "big board" that had listings of students looking for English help, and which she had used for a whole semester to get some extra cash.
Axel said he knew where the big board was, but after walking around for a while I asked him if he was sure. He said he was, the big board was by this one copy shop, but after walking around even longer we had still found nothing. So finally I asked him if he actually knew where the copy shop was, and he looked at a map of the campus and, I'm not kidding, traced his finger around the outline and said "somewhere here." I asked him if he was joking, and he said he had only been there once. Which I guess explained why he had thought he knew where it was.
I could not believe it.
We had literally spent three hours walking around trying to find the big board by the copy shop when Axel had no idea where the board OR the copy shop was located. Finally Axel said he had to go back to his place, and I was too frustrated to continue looking. I asked if I could move the stuff from the hostel to his place, and he agreed. So we walked back to the hostel and transported it all, with Axel carrying Marvin's bag.
Now, here is where I have to clarify about "Axel's place." He moved to Vienna from Germany a couple weeks earlier and has been staying with a woman he found on CouchSurfing.com, otherwise known as ICantDoItMyself.com. The woman, whom Axel calls "my lady," is 45 years old and gets dressed in front of Axel. Axel claims that she is wildly into him but that he isn't interested at all, but he says he "likes to take her out once in a while."
(And also, before I asked about storing our stuff for the night, I asked if Marvin and I could actually just crash at his place. He said there wasn't enough room, which was reasonable since he was, of course, already staying there himself.)
When we got to the apartment building I offered to bring my stuff up to the flat, since otherwise Axel would have had to carry all three things-- Marvin's bag, my pack, and my backpack-- by himself. He refused my offer because "she might be back," even though it was still an hour before he said she usually got home. Seemed a bit fishy, but whatever.
Before I left I asked him if I would be able to run upstairs when Marvin and I returned in order to change clothes before going out, and he handed me a plastic bag and told me "put your clothes in here and I'll bring the bag down when you come." I'm not kidding, this actually happened.
Finally, just trying to see how far he would take this, I asked if Marvin and I could bring some beer to the flat and then drink it in the apartment. Not a chance, he said that we would just drink it in the garage.
I asked him why he was being such a douche about this-- my words, in fact-- and he said that his lady would get mad if he brought people over. And, if she got mad, he wouldn't be able to crash there anymore.
I'll give him that-- she, of course, could kick him out whenever she felt like it-- but the woman is a host on CouchSurfing.com, for God's sake. She is a member of a website whose only purpose is to enable people (her) to help other people (Axel, Marvin, me) find a place to sleep. That's the only purpose for the entire freaking website. SHE LIKES TO MEET TRAVELERS AND HELP THEM OUT! How would this woman not be willing to let me and Marvin relax for a bit and have a beer and take a shower?
Something was VERY fishy.
Anyway, I went back to the University after this but, now that my stuff was stored for the night, I was feeling less of a need to find a couch since I could just find one at the bar. Marvin might be out of luck, since I was pretty confident he lacked the requisite social skills to find a couch himself, but I wasn't too concerned. At least, I was less concerned with that than with my e-mail.
(One of which was to the head-person of the English and History faculties, telling her I was a college graduate looking to spend some time in Vienna and hoping to be able to work as an assistant for a professor. I asked her to forward the e-mail to the English and History professors, so we'll see.)
I met Marvin at 6:00 and we picked up some beer for 64 cents per can and then headed to Axel's place. We were able to find our way pretty close to the flat but didn't know the final directions, so Marvin called to ask. Axel picked up and, according to Marvin, spoke practically in a whisper the entire time. He wouldn't tell Marvin the address but said he would meet us at a street corner near the place. Dodgy?
So we waited in the bus stop at the street corner for no less than half an hour before Axel came down. Carrying, I kid you not, my "changing bag." He actually brought it down, along with Marvin's bag. Just in case he wanted to change too, I guess.
Marvin asked if he could go up to shower and Axel said he couldn't because his lady was getting dressed. Marvin asked if he could shower after she left, and Axel begrudgingly agreed. Which was a bold move, because it meant he was locked in. If she was still there when we went up we would know something bogus was definitely up, although it didn't necessarily mean that she was actually there at the moment.
So Marvin and I waited in the bus stop for another half an hour, during which time we both agreed that Axel was acting incredibly bizarre and that the whole thing was suspicious as hell. Like you didn't realize that.
Finally Axel came down and said we could come up. I told him how absurd he was being, and was actually going off pretty bad because he was being such an idiot, and he said "I don't have to explain myself." Of course you don't, but you ARE being an idiot about it.
When we went upstairs Axel's lady really was gone, which means he at least passed half the test-- although, like I said, maybe she was never even there to begin with. Axel said she would be gone for an hour and Marvin said I could take the first shower, which I guess Axel hadn't been anticipating because he mumbled something under his breath and then said "Don't make me lose my couch." First of all, I don't take hour-long showers, so I didn't forsee it being a problem. But second of all, "if you lose the couch it's your own fault because you should have just told her we were coming up." I couldn't believe this guy.
Not only that, but Axel had said there wasn't any room for me and Marvin to crash. Really? There was not one but TWO couches. In the living room. With enough floor space for the entire hostel from the previous night to sleep there. I hated this guy.
Someway, somehow we managed to leave the apartment before Axel's lady came back and kicked him out-- thank goodness for that-- and we started walking to the bar. Along the way, as per the only thing he does in social situations, Marvin told me to talk to a girl we passed by. I did and got her to come to the bar with us.
Hell, the girl even bought us all a round, no thanks to the other two. Am I good or what?
And so it was me and the girl talking and Marvin and Axel huddled to their side of the table. I swear, these are the two most anti-social people I had ever met. I can't begin to explain it.
After a while I had to go to the bathroom but I couldn't leave the table for fear that Axel and Marvin would cock-block me. Worse than that, I couldn't leave the table for fear that Axel and Marvin would internationally cock-block me.
But I couldn't hold it forever, and when I came back from the bathroom the girl was talking to Marvin and Axel in German. As I feared. I couldn't understand a word of what they were saying, of course, but what I most definitely COULD understand was when she gave me a weird look, wrote down her e-mail address, said goodbye and left. Just like that. I'll never know what they said to her, but I'm guessing it was something like "I hope we can stay out all night but I might need to change my diaper soon. Do you think this place has clean ones somewhere?"
We left pretty soon after that because I couldn't believe I was sitting here with this two idiots and we tried to find a new bar. Axel had one particular bar in mind that he liked but forgot where it was so he asked someone, and when she started to tell him he literally took out a map and had her point out the directions. The night just kept getting better and better.
And so we would keep walking and I would keep talking to people and the Two Social Retards would keep waiting to the side for me to finish, and by this point it was almost like a game. And when we finally got the place, called Club Flex, we found a druggie bar with a €7 dance floor. Which, considering neither Axel nor Marvin are druggies or like to dance, indicated we were at not-so-good a place.
I suggested we try somewhere else and Axel got pissed. He said "nothing is good enough for you" and then, I swear to you, asked if I wanted to fuck him up. He actually said this. I said I just wanted to go to another bar. He said he would throw my stuff out when he got back to his place that night and, hopefully, it would still be there in the morning.
Oh?
To be honest, considering how much I disliked the guy this probably wasn't unexpected, but making that threat is inexcusable. He called me out for not finding a couch by that point, but I said that we had been out for all of an hour, had been in a bar for half an hour, and that in that time I had already gotten an e-mail address and talked to about half a dozen people. And he had taken out his map for directions.
I said he was the most anti-social person ever, he said he'd have more fun without me, I said he wouldn't even talk to people, he said he would burn my stuff.
Stop right there.
OK, now it was serious. Now I had to beat him back to his place, absolutely had to. So I got up and thanked Marvin for letting me crash at his place those few nights in Budapest. And here, to my complete surprise, he said that I had been a terrible guest. I asked him why he thought that and he said because I hadn't cleaned up after dinner the first night-- not true-- and I had used his soap in the shower-- guilty as charged. That didn't really seem like such a sin, to be honest, and I asked him what else. He said "That's not enough? You ate my cheese the night after the club, too."
I swear to you, this was what he said.
Now, of course, the whole thing was terribly absurd-- I mean, it had been pretty awkward with him at times but I thought for the most part it was alright for both of us-- but I didn't really have time to argue with him now. I left the bar and asked a girl for directions back to Axel's place, but she said it was a very long walk away and would take well over an hour. I definitely didn't have the time for that, since Axel and Marvin would call a cab. But I also didn't have any money because I had left it all at home in order to not get myself into a financial hole on only the second night.
I told the girl my predicament and, like Helen of Troy herself, gave me €10 for the cab. Wow.
So I beat them home by a decent amount of time and waited around outside for them to show up. After a little while it occured to me to try the door for the garage, and it opened. Then I tried the door for the building, and it too opened.
Now I was in, but I didn't know the apartment number. I was about to knock on what I thought was the right door, then, but at that exact moment I heard the downstairs door open and the sound of Axel and Marvin talking.
They were surprised to see me, that's for sure, but unforunately I hadn't successfully retrieved my stuff. They wouldn't be burning it, of course, but it was in their flat and Axel got it while Marvin blocked the door.
(And seriously, I couldn't believe just how much Marvin had turned on me. It was incomprehensible, it really was.)
Now, it's important to note that I owed Marvin €10 from the security deposit at the hostel. I had had every intention of paying him the money, of course, but when Axel came out with my stuff he said that Marvin owed him €10 and he wanted the money from me instead.
He then said that he had taken "something expensive" from my bag and would only give it back if I gave him the €10.
The thing is, first of all, I was not going to negotiate with this dude. He had literally and actually threatened to destroy everything that I owned, and I figured that since he wasn't able to light my stuff on fire he was just trying to get what he could from me instead. Like €10. I did a quick check of my stuff and found my wallet, my passport and my camera. I don't really have many gadgets, so I called his bluff. And left.
And only when I got outside did I realize I had forgotten about my iPod. I checked for that and realized he had taken it. But by this point it was too late. I went to sleep in the garage.
***********************
There is A LOT about these events.
1) First of all, and this is the thing, even if Axel had ended up being cheated out of €10, he would have deserved everything. Seriously, you don't threaten to SET FIRE to a backpacker's backpack because, guess what, that's my entire livelihood. That's it and that's everything. You don't fucking do that.
2) Axel should know better. I'm not going to call him a backpacker, because he's not anywhere even remotely close to that level, but he is traveling with his things and only has what he has. He should know better.
3) Axel doesn't deserve to be on CouchSurfing.com. I don't care if it is couch surfing for pussies, he needs to have his account deleted. You DON'T do that to a fellow couch-surfer-- especially one who's doing it the hard way.
4) I should have seen this coming. I mean, I really should have. Not because Axel was such a terrible guy during the day, but just because it was obvious every moment that I was with him that he didn't have a clue how to interact with people and would be prone to pull a stunt like this. I should have backed out when I had the chance.
5) I was pretty hurt by the accusations-- by "ungrateful" from Axel and "bad guest" from Marvin. The two often go hand-in-hand, but if I'm a bad guest because I use your soap or eat cheese when we get back from the bar, then you shouldn't have offered me a couch to sleep on. Because, guess what, I need a couch for a reason, and I need to shower as a fact of life. But calling me ungrateful hurt even worse, since that's the thing I try most to avoid. I always make a conscious effort to thank the people that put me up, or that get me food, or that hand me some money, and I do it the point that some of them find it off-putting. But I do everything that I can to make sure people know how grateful I am for their help, and it hurt to be called ungrateful, it really did. Even if I know that he was off-base with the accusation.
6) I have a tendency to be a condescending traveler, as evidenced by ICantDoItMyself.com and the way I always try to do things unconventionally. I'll admit that that isn't such a good thing, since everyone travels their own way, there's no "right" way to travel, and once in a while even I will have to veer from my traveling principals. And, mostly, everyone travels their own way. I need to remember that. The other thing is that I'm an arrogant traveler, but that's a necessity. You have to be arrogant if you're going to travel like I do, otherwise you're going to give up too easily and pay for a hostel at the first sign of difficulties. You have to KNOW you're going to find a couch, otherwise you never will.
7) 95% of couches are brilliant. 5% of couches steal your iPod.
8) Threatening to destroy someone's stuff is unacceptable when they've trusted you enough to leave their stuff at your place. I don't care how bad the person is, you tell them to leave first thing in the morning. Hell, you tell them they have to find somewhere else to sleep that night. But you DON'T threaten to destroy their pack. After all, that's a traveler's entire livelihood.
I went next door to talk to the woman who runs the hostel, and who had said we could store our stuff for the day. She said that the free storage was only for people who were coming back for another night. I asked how much a second night would be, and though it only would have been another €11 I was pretty confident I'd be able to find something better. So I talked her down to €3 for the day combined for my stuff and Marvin's and called it a win.
I met Axel at 12:15 to try to find employment at the University of Vienna. A girl he knows, Marie, said to find the "big board" that had listings of students looking for English help, and which she had used for a whole semester to get some extra cash.
Axel said he knew where the big board was, but after walking around for a while I asked him if he was sure. He said he was, the big board was by this one copy shop, but after walking around even longer we had still found nothing. So finally I asked him if he actually knew where the copy shop was, and he looked at a map of the campus and, I'm not kidding, traced his finger around the outline and said "somewhere here." I asked him if he was joking, and he said he had only been there once. Which I guess explained why he had thought he knew where it was.
I could not believe it.
We had literally spent three hours walking around trying to find the big board by the copy shop when Axel had no idea where the board OR the copy shop was located. Finally Axel said he had to go back to his place, and I was too frustrated to continue looking. I asked if I could move the stuff from the hostel to his place, and he agreed. So we walked back to the hostel and transported it all, with Axel carrying Marvin's bag.
Now, here is where I have to clarify about "Axel's place." He moved to Vienna from Germany a couple weeks earlier and has been staying with a woman he found on CouchSurfing.com, otherwise known as ICantDoItMyself.com. The woman, whom Axel calls "my lady," is 45 years old and gets dressed in front of Axel. Axel claims that she is wildly into him but that he isn't interested at all, but he says he "likes to take her out once in a while."
(And also, before I asked about storing our stuff for the night, I asked if Marvin and I could actually just crash at his place. He said there wasn't enough room, which was reasonable since he was, of course, already staying there himself.)
When we got to the apartment building I offered to bring my stuff up to the flat, since otherwise Axel would have had to carry all three things-- Marvin's bag, my pack, and my backpack-- by himself. He refused my offer because "she might be back," even though it was still an hour before he said she usually got home. Seemed a bit fishy, but whatever.
Before I left I asked him if I would be able to run upstairs when Marvin and I returned in order to change clothes before going out, and he handed me a plastic bag and told me "put your clothes in here and I'll bring the bag down when you come." I'm not kidding, this actually happened.
Finally, just trying to see how far he would take this, I asked if Marvin and I could bring some beer to the flat and then drink it in the apartment. Not a chance, he said that we would just drink it in the garage.
I asked him why he was being such a douche about this-- my words, in fact-- and he said that his lady would get mad if he brought people over. And, if she got mad, he wouldn't be able to crash there anymore.
I'll give him that-- she, of course, could kick him out whenever she felt like it-- but the woman is a host on CouchSurfing.com, for God's sake. She is a member of a website whose only purpose is to enable people (her) to help other people (Axel, Marvin, me) find a place to sleep. That's the only purpose for the entire freaking website. SHE LIKES TO MEET TRAVELERS AND HELP THEM OUT! How would this woman not be willing to let me and Marvin relax for a bit and have a beer and take a shower?
Something was VERY fishy.
Anyway, I went back to the University after this but, now that my stuff was stored for the night, I was feeling less of a need to find a couch since I could just find one at the bar. Marvin might be out of luck, since I was pretty confident he lacked the requisite social skills to find a couch himself, but I wasn't too concerned. At least, I was less concerned with that than with my e-mail.
(One of which was to the head-person of the English and History faculties, telling her I was a college graduate looking to spend some time in Vienna and hoping to be able to work as an assistant for a professor. I asked her to forward the e-mail to the English and History professors, so we'll see.)
I met Marvin at 6:00 and we picked up some beer for 64 cents per can and then headed to Axel's place. We were able to find our way pretty close to the flat but didn't know the final directions, so Marvin called to ask. Axel picked up and, according to Marvin, spoke practically in a whisper the entire time. He wouldn't tell Marvin the address but said he would meet us at a street corner near the place. Dodgy?
So we waited in the bus stop at the street corner for no less than half an hour before Axel came down. Carrying, I kid you not, my "changing bag." He actually brought it down, along with Marvin's bag. Just in case he wanted to change too, I guess.
Marvin asked if he could go up to shower and Axel said he couldn't because his lady was getting dressed. Marvin asked if he could shower after she left, and Axel begrudgingly agreed. Which was a bold move, because it meant he was locked in. If she was still there when we went up we would know something bogus was definitely up, although it didn't necessarily mean that she was actually there at the moment.
So Marvin and I waited in the bus stop for another half an hour, during which time we both agreed that Axel was acting incredibly bizarre and that the whole thing was suspicious as hell. Like you didn't realize that.
Finally Axel came down and said we could come up. I told him how absurd he was being, and was actually going off pretty bad because he was being such an idiot, and he said "I don't have to explain myself." Of course you don't, but you ARE being an idiot about it.
When we went upstairs Axel's lady really was gone, which means he at least passed half the test-- although, like I said, maybe she was never even there to begin with. Axel said she would be gone for an hour and Marvin said I could take the first shower, which I guess Axel hadn't been anticipating because he mumbled something under his breath and then said "Don't make me lose my couch." First of all, I don't take hour-long showers, so I didn't forsee it being a problem. But second of all, "if you lose the couch it's your own fault because you should have just told her we were coming up." I couldn't believe this guy.
Not only that, but Axel had said there wasn't any room for me and Marvin to crash. Really? There was not one but TWO couches. In the living room. With enough floor space for the entire hostel from the previous night to sleep there. I hated this guy.
Someway, somehow we managed to leave the apartment before Axel's lady came back and kicked him out-- thank goodness for that-- and we started walking to the bar. Along the way, as per the only thing he does in social situations, Marvin told me to talk to a girl we passed by. I did and got her to come to the bar with us.
Hell, the girl even bought us all a round, no thanks to the other two. Am I good or what?
And so it was me and the girl talking and Marvin and Axel huddled to their side of the table. I swear, these are the two most anti-social people I had ever met. I can't begin to explain it.
After a while I had to go to the bathroom but I couldn't leave the table for fear that Axel and Marvin would cock-block me. Worse than that, I couldn't leave the table for fear that Axel and Marvin would internationally cock-block me.
But I couldn't hold it forever, and when I came back from the bathroom the girl was talking to Marvin and Axel in German. As I feared. I couldn't understand a word of what they were saying, of course, but what I most definitely COULD understand was when she gave me a weird look, wrote down her e-mail address, said goodbye and left. Just like that. I'll never know what they said to her, but I'm guessing it was something like "I hope we can stay out all night but I might need to change my diaper soon. Do you think this place has clean ones somewhere?"
We left pretty soon after that because I couldn't believe I was sitting here with this two idiots and we tried to find a new bar. Axel had one particular bar in mind that he liked but forgot where it was so he asked someone, and when she started to tell him he literally took out a map and had her point out the directions. The night just kept getting better and better.
And so we would keep walking and I would keep talking to people and the Two Social Retards would keep waiting to the side for me to finish, and by this point it was almost like a game. And when we finally got the place, called Club Flex, we found a druggie bar with a €7 dance floor. Which, considering neither Axel nor Marvin are druggies or like to dance, indicated we were at not-so-good a place.
I suggested we try somewhere else and Axel got pissed. He said "nothing is good enough for you" and then, I swear to you, asked if I wanted to fuck him up. He actually said this. I said I just wanted to go to another bar. He said he would throw my stuff out when he got back to his place that night and, hopefully, it would still be there in the morning.
Oh?
To be honest, considering how much I disliked the guy this probably wasn't unexpected, but making that threat is inexcusable. He called me out for not finding a couch by that point, but I said that we had been out for all of an hour, had been in a bar for half an hour, and that in that time I had already gotten an e-mail address and talked to about half a dozen people. And he had taken out his map for directions.
I said he was the most anti-social person ever, he said he'd have more fun without me, I said he wouldn't even talk to people, he said he would burn my stuff.
Stop right there.
OK, now it was serious. Now I had to beat him back to his place, absolutely had to. So I got up and thanked Marvin for letting me crash at his place those few nights in Budapest. And here, to my complete surprise, he said that I had been a terrible guest. I asked him why he thought that and he said because I hadn't cleaned up after dinner the first night-- not true-- and I had used his soap in the shower-- guilty as charged. That didn't really seem like such a sin, to be honest, and I asked him what else. He said "That's not enough? You ate my cheese the night after the club, too."
I swear to you, this was what he said.
Now, of course, the whole thing was terribly absurd-- I mean, it had been pretty awkward with him at times but I thought for the most part it was alright for both of us-- but I didn't really have time to argue with him now. I left the bar and asked a girl for directions back to Axel's place, but she said it was a very long walk away and would take well over an hour. I definitely didn't have the time for that, since Axel and Marvin would call a cab. But I also didn't have any money because I had left it all at home in order to not get myself into a financial hole on only the second night.
I told the girl my predicament and, like Helen of Troy herself, gave me €10 for the cab. Wow.
So I beat them home by a decent amount of time and waited around outside for them to show up. After a little while it occured to me to try the door for the garage, and it opened. Then I tried the door for the building, and it too opened.
Now I was in, but I didn't know the apartment number. I was about to knock on what I thought was the right door, then, but at that exact moment I heard the downstairs door open and the sound of Axel and Marvin talking.
They were surprised to see me, that's for sure, but unforunately I hadn't successfully retrieved my stuff. They wouldn't be burning it, of course, but it was in their flat and Axel got it while Marvin blocked the door.
(And seriously, I couldn't believe just how much Marvin had turned on me. It was incomprehensible, it really was.)
Now, it's important to note that I owed Marvin €10 from the security deposit at the hostel. I had had every intention of paying him the money, of course, but when Axel came out with my stuff he said that Marvin owed him €10 and he wanted the money from me instead.
He then said that he had taken "something expensive" from my bag and would only give it back if I gave him the €10.
The thing is, first of all, I was not going to negotiate with this dude. He had literally and actually threatened to destroy everything that I owned, and I figured that since he wasn't able to light my stuff on fire he was just trying to get what he could from me instead. Like €10. I did a quick check of my stuff and found my wallet, my passport and my camera. I don't really have many gadgets, so I called his bluff. And left.
And only when I got outside did I realize I had forgotten about my iPod. I checked for that and realized he had taken it. But by this point it was too late. I went to sleep in the garage.
***********************
There is A LOT about these events.
1) First of all, and this is the thing, even if Axel had ended up being cheated out of €10, he would have deserved everything. Seriously, you don't threaten to SET FIRE to a backpacker's backpack because, guess what, that's my entire livelihood. That's it and that's everything. You don't fucking do that.
2) Axel should know better. I'm not going to call him a backpacker, because he's not anywhere even remotely close to that level, but he is traveling with his things and only has what he has. He should know better.
3) Axel doesn't deserve to be on CouchSurfing.com. I don't care if it is couch surfing for pussies, he needs to have his account deleted. You DON'T do that to a fellow couch-surfer-- especially one who's doing it the hard way.
4) I should have seen this coming. I mean, I really should have. Not because Axel was such a terrible guy during the day, but just because it was obvious every moment that I was with him that he didn't have a clue how to interact with people and would be prone to pull a stunt like this. I should have backed out when I had the chance.
5) I was pretty hurt by the accusations-- by "ungrateful" from Axel and "bad guest" from Marvin. The two often go hand-in-hand, but if I'm a bad guest because I use your soap or eat cheese when we get back from the bar, then you shouldn't have offered me a couch to sleep on. Because, guess what, I need a couch for a reason, and I need to shower as a fact of life. But calling me ungrateful hurt even worse, since that's the thing I try most to avoid. I always make a conscious effort to thank the people that put me up, or that get me food, or that hand me some money, and I do it the point that some of them find it off-putting. But I do everything that I can to make sure people know how grateful I am for their help, and it hurt to be called ungrateful, it really did. Even if I know that he was off-base with the accusation.
6) I have a tendency to be a condescending traveler, as evidenced by ICantDoItMyself.com and the way I always try to do things unconventionally. I'll admit that that isn't such a good thing, since everyone travels their own way, there's no "right" way to travel, and once in a while even I will have to veer from my traveling principals. And, mostly, everyone travels their own way. I need to remember that. The other thing is that I'm an arrogant traveler, but that's a necessity. You have to be arrogant if you're going to travel like I do, otherwise you're going to give up too easily and pay for a hostel at the first sign of difficulties. You have to KNOW you're going to find a couch, otherwise you never will.
7) 95% of couches are brilliant. 5% of couches steal your iPod.
8) Threatening to destroy someone's stuff is unacceptable when they've trusted you enough to leave their stuff at your place. I don't care how bad the person is, you tell them to leave first thing in the morning. Hell, you tell them they have to find somewhere else to sleep that night. But you DON'T threaten to destroy their pack. After all, that's a traveler's entire livelihood.
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