Last Day In Vienna

I leave tomorrow morning after five weeks here.

It's been a dark winter, not much sun, but nevertheless I've had a great time. The sun shines in my heart, thanks to B, her family, and her friends.

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It's odd, living in two dreams. Two lives: one here, one in America. Now that I'm retired, I can spend more time in Europe when I come here. It feels strange---strangely good---not to have to turn around after two weeks and go back home. Talk about a dream; the feeling always was, "Was I really there? Did it really happen?"

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B found an article in the New York Review of Books called "What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?" It's adapted from a speech and is a little bit of a read, but an interesting read. And though it's not the main point of the article, one can't help but noting how present-day US thinking was shaped in some part by the theories and ideas of a small group of Austrians...

You have to step outside your ordinary thoughts and experiences once in a while, even if it's uncomfortable to do so. Maybe especially because it's uncomfortable. What tends to happen, otherwise, is that certain crucial questions never even get asked, and certain ideas are never even discussed. I've noticed a closing of the American mind in recent decades. A greater polarization.

If 1968 was tumultuous, what is 2018 going to look like?

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Read a book called "Three Cups Of Tea" by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. Subtitle: "One man's mission to promote peace...one school at a time."

Maybe 2018 will look a lot better than we might imagine it, thanks to people like Mortenson.

B and I have been reading this book aloud to each other. Buy a copy and read it to someone you love, then give the book away as a gift.

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So, I'm flying home. As in previous times, this blog is now dormant. Until my next visit abroad.

Cheers,
The Bicontinental Bastard

A Walk In The Vienna Woods

Someone said it's been a darker-than-usual winter; fewer sunny days than usual since I've been here. Maybe.

We decided to meet B's dad for a hike. Drove over to his place about noon and from there drove to a section of the Vienna Woods. There's still snow on the ground and the temperature was right around freezing, but it wasn't uncomfortable...I never had to put my gloves on, just kept my hands in my coat pocket most of the time and that was enough.

It was the usual Saturday outdoor experience in Austria---lots of people out walking and jogging. Had there been no snow, certainly we would have seen bicyclists, too.Even in winter, even with snow on the ground, the Austrians get their asses outside and DO SOMETHING. Having been here five weeks this time, and visited twelve other times since December 2003, I can only point out that I almost NEVER see an obese Austrian.

So maybe OUTSIDE + ACTIVITY = BETTER HEALTH? Dunno. Just saying. B's dad is 83 and he was trucking right along. Pick an average 43-year-old Oklahoman and put him in the woods and tell him to start walking, and don't stop until he hits the 5-mile mark...see if you don't have a stroke victim on your hands within minutes.

Dog fetches giant stick in the Vienna Woods

Some benches and a small Catholic shrine, Vienna Woods

Austrian horses for rent. Can you spot the MIDGET horse?

The branches of these tall trees were ice encrusted.

As the wind blew, the branches swayed; interesting cracking sounds were heard!

After our walk, it was back to B's parents' house. Her mom made good sandwiches for us, and her dad poured me a Metaxa; I bet my buddy George The Greek knows all about Metaxa. If not, I will teach him.

We watched ski-jumping on TV. The Austrians are apeshit for skiing. I kind of like watching it, at least on Austrian TV, because 1) the events go very quickly, and 2) very few motherfucking commercials, which are the absolute bane of American TV. Don't get me started...

Yesterday, saw an Italian skier with an interesting name: Wolfgang Hell. Sounds like a punk-rocker. B says the word "hell" means nothing in German (and I guess, not in Italian, either) but I thought it sounded cool.

Also yesterday, happened upon a championship bout featuring two German women boxers. I've never really seen women boxing before, but I have to give them both credit---they looked pretty sharp. One gal had a great reach advantage and was jabbing the shit out of the other girl, puffing her face up pretty good. But neither of them would throw many combinations. Finally in the 5th round, the shorter girl opened a cut above the eye of the tall girl and the ring doctor stopped the fight (wisely.)

I saw no low blows because, uh, what would be the point?

Adios, Tree

Stayed home almost all day.

Took the Christmas tree down this afternoon, which was kind of sad for us. I guess having the tree in the room, greeting us every time we entered, made us happy. And though the tree died the day the tree merchant cut it down, it seemed alive. It gave off a wonderful fragrance, and looked beautiful.

It was our first Christmas together, and the tree kind of sealed the deal. It seemed like a Real Thing in a world increasingly filled with Fake Shit.

Last night when I went to bed, I actually had a short, silent conversation with the tree (which didn't answer me, I have to add.) I don't know what I was thinking. But I know what I felt.

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Walked down to Fidelio's for supper. The people at the adjacent table were enjoying a card game. At another table was Margit, a lady I met a few weeks ago when I popped in for a beer, who sat there with a friend.

B and I enjoyed good conversation and good food. On our way out we stopped and talked with Margit and her friend for a while, everyone mostly talking in German. Except me, a guy who should be a lot further along with my Deutsch by this point in the program...

On our way out, they wished me a good flight home.

I wish me a good flight, too, but I really don't want to leave.

Thursday & Friday

Thursday, we went to visit B's sister, R.

R has some vision problems and wanted us to help her configure her computer in such a way that she could more easily see the screen...

We found out there's a thing in Windows called the Magnifier, which is a separate window that can be moved around or sized differently. It kind of imitates an actual magnifying glass, enlarging everything the cursor points at.

You can also enlarge the cursor, making it easier to see.

R's apartment, from the living room

View from the second floor to the living room

I'm sharing these pics of R's apartment because I like the uncluttered look of the place, and the modern design. The place is small---maybe 800 SF---but comfortable, with lots of light coming in through a huge living room window downstairs, and more normal-sized windows upstairs.

I don't know that these kinds of places are more expensive to build than the houses / apartments you usually see in the US, but for whatever reason, you don't see too many of them. Beats me why not.

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Today it was snowing. Snowed last night, not much, maybe an inch, but today the fat flakes were really floating down. We took the tram to the 9th District to meet our friends P and G for lunch at a Greek place called Rembetiko. I thought the food was pretty good, and the conversation with our friends was wonderful. After an hour or so the guys had to get back to work, so we walked them most of the way back, parting company here:

The Strudlhofstiege

Took a walk through the 9th, then to the Danube Canal where, despite the snow, there were joggers, an occasional cyclist, and people walking their dogs (I guess a dog's need to shit is eternal, winter be damned.)

Up there, the street. Down here, the walkway parallel to the Danube Canal

The white buildings are apartments along the Danube Canal.

This snow, and the snow the US and England / Europe have been recently hit with, made B wonder why certain places (England and OKC) are so ill-equipped to handle snow. Vienna has an army of snow plows, sand trucks, and private individuals who shovel sidewalks, clear roads and parking lots, etc. (They are especially visible and efficient in election years, like this.)

"It doesn't snow that much or that hard, usually, in Oklahoma...." I said.

"But when it does, it brings everything to a standstill. If you have an Army dedicated to keeping the US safe from attack, why don't you have snowplows? You've been attacked far less often than you've had crippling snowstorms, after all."

"Right, but Ratheon and General Dynamics don't make snowplows," I said, "and whoever DOES make snowplows doesn't seem to cram enough cash into the pockets of our elected representatives."

I hope that flip answer is wrong, but I'm afraid it might not be.

What OKC Should Steal From Vienna

ALL IMAGES LIFTED FROM FLICKR.COM
I think it would improve the Lebensqualitat (quality of life) in OKC if we had:

Coffeehouses that stay open late / coffeehouses that serve alcohol

 

Good public transportation

A lot more places to dine outdoors

Cobblestone streets (a favorite of women bicyclists)

SIDEWALKS!

A decent Wiener Schnitzel 

A lot more public spaces

Dinner With Friends

It snowed last night. About six inches, I'd guess, but you know how men exaggerate.

About 4:30 we took off to Peter and Vivian's place for dinner. It's a holiday here (Ascension? I can never keep Austria's 5689 holidays straight) so the streets were relatively uncrowded; no rush hour traffic because no one had been at work.

B: It's E-P-I-P-H-A-N-Y!!! As I said about a dozen times! And you could have added that tens of thousands of children are visiting people's homes around Austria right now, disguised as the magi, ringing bells everywhere, or else reciting poems, collecting money for a cause. This year they are collecting money for projects helping the indigenous population of India - whose fate resembles that of American Indians.

John X: I appreciate these comments very much. This information enriches in me in a way that makes it easy for it to go in one ear, and out the other. Thank you! >g<

Peter and Vivian live on the 4th floor in one of the old-fashioned apartments you see here sometimes----hardwood floors, always in a herringbone pattern.

Their daughter, L, is going to law school. It's different in Austria----you don't need an undergraduate degree. You just go right into law school from high school. Part of the reason for this is, the average 18-year-old, college-track European high school kid is every bit as well-educated as the average 22-year-old American college graduate. They simply demand more from their students. In Austria, if you don't show college chops by age 10 or so, they direct you toward the trade school route.

So. We had good conversations around the table. Dinner was roast lamb, potatoes, beans, and a kind of cucumber salad made with sour cream. Beer to drink, and champagne. For desert later, chocolate liquor, schnapps, and Vivian made a Sacher torte---excellent chocolate cake. I'm not much of a desert man, but I ate some. Delicious.

They have two cats, both about 12 years old, both sweet...but I really fell in love with the orange male tabby. He was a muscular fucker, and very friendly----bumping his head against my hand when he wanted to be petted, rolling around on the floor, swatting playfully at my hand from time to time, and his purr sounded like a Harley-Davidson at idle. I took a lot of video of him. I miss my cat back home...

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Back at B's, before settling in, we lit the candles on the Christmas tree one more time. We sat on the bed and stared at the tree. The light of 30 or so candles filled the room, and after a few minutes you could actually feel the heat. We just sat there, staring at it, and talking quietly as we watched. Sometimes a candle would hiss and pop.

We fetched this tree from a hillside in the country, brought it home, set it up, and decorated it. We've enjoyed its light several times since then. Tomorrow we take the tree down. I've said before I'm not much on Christmas or holidays or rituals of any kind, but I did enjoy this Christmas very much.

Maybe kind of sappy, but I said a silent "Thank you" to the tree. I will miss it, as I missed all the people who have vanished from my life and who I was thinking of as B extinguished the candles, one by one.

You remember, then you continue. You try hard to Be Here Now.

Impressionists

Visited the Impressionism: Painting Light exhibit at the Albertina Museum here in Vienna.

The display went on for room after room, arranged more or less chronologically, with a history of the development of Impressionism posted in English and German throughout the exhibit, so you could get a feel for the evolution of it.

I found out what I already knew about my own taste in art: The brighter the colors, the more I like it. The paintings done on a sunny day, for instance, were far more interesting to me (the pigments were brighter) than identical paintings done from the same vantage point on a misty day.

That's probably kind of primitive of me, but that's how it goes: I like bright colors.

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Really interesting to me were the displays which explained advances in the technology of painting----simple things like paints in tubes which could be easily carried around, or changes in the shapes of brushes, or easels that could be broken down for transport...all this helped lead to Impressionism because these artists liked to paint outdoors, on locations where the light could vary, instead of in the studio.

Microscopic analysis of some of the paintings showed there were grains of sand, or seeds from trees, embedded in some of the canvases...proof that the artist was really outside painting "on location" instead of back in the studio.

After the exhibit, coffee and conversation with our friend M, who had accompanied us to the exhibit.

Then home, a good supper, some reading, some television, more conversation.

And young Jethro's head was full of ideas about how to do Impressionism-like video portraits, when he returns to the land of Way Too Much Snow.

A Walk In The Park/Then Annie Disappointed Us/But Amy Didn't

Went for a nice walk in the Prater, the former imperial hunting grounds.

It's a huge park and though it was cold and gray outside, there were plenty of people jogging, bicycling, walking, and playing with their dogs. There was a hill with some snow & ice on it (probably man-made, because we haven't had enough snow to accumulate like that) and the kids were having a great time sledding down...

Even the crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw. 

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Then we went to the Annie Liebowitz exhibit at Kunsthaus Wien.

Annie was the subject of a recent American Masters documentary. She's been around forever and even people who have never heard of her have seen her images. Among the most famous is the pic of a naked John Lennon curled up in bed with Yoko Ono, and a pic of the naked, pregnant Dimi Moore. Both of which were at the exhibit.

And there were some great portraits on display, but the exhibit mostly disappointed us. Most of the work looked pretty ordinary to me. There were lots of shots of Annie's family---her kids, her siblings, her parents---doing ordinary stuff in the back yard or at the beach. I don't care if photographers shoot non-famous people, but the photos have to be interesting, and these weren't. Annie's large format, B & W shots were beautiful but most of the other 150 or so images made us shrug and say, "Eh."

The exhibit was crowded, though. Mostly with younger people, staring at the photos of famous people.

I dunno. I always liked Annie's work, but maybe that's because I only saw the very best of it. Why she chose to stack her exhibit with shots my grandma might have taken, is beyond me.

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We discovered a local public-access station here called Okto. They carry Amy Goodman's DEMOCRACY NOW! and we watch it several times a week.

Yesterday, Amy featured a guy who spoke of an interesting plan: people disappointed in the attitudes of, and risky investments of the major banks, should consider withdrawing their money from those banks and depositing it instead in small local banks and credit unions.

I like the idea of thousands or millions of customers telling the "too big to fail" banks: Go fuck yourselves. Voting with your money---it's the American Way.

Check out the Move Your Money website for more.

Free Postcards

Some free postcards I picked up at a restaurant...

Avatar

Went to see AVATAR last night with our friends Peter and Vivian.

Short take: I suggest you see it.

I am not big on special-effects films. When I hear someone say: "The special effects were fantastic!" I take that to mean: "They tried desperately to cover the stink of a shitty story with less-smelly special effects."

But with Avatar, I give a hearty thumbs-up...not only because the effects were so spectacular, and the world they created so beautiful, but also because the 3-D was a nice touch. Unlike 3-D films of the past that I've seen, where you get cheap-ass cardboard glasses with different colored lenses, with Avatar we got what looked like regular sunglasses. I looked them over, trying to figure out what was different about them, but couldn't. But they worked, and worked well.

The story was decent, though a few of the characters (particularly the military leader) were absolute caricatures. Also, though the film is set in the year 2154, there were way too many early-21st Century verbalizations, like "Bring it!" and "Is that all you got, bitch?" An obvious concession to the youngsters in the audience.

Also, the sappy Hollywood-esque romantic part of the story line might make more mature viewers say, sarcastically: "Yeah, right---that's EXACTLY how love works," though I suspect the teenage girls in the audience might swoon a bit. Give 'em a few weeks of a "dream man" who sits on the sofa all night farting while playing his video games, and who never cleans up around the house, and they'll get over that shit soon enough.

Also, the final battle scene was way over the top and I found myself thinking: "I'm not buying this crap for a second," followed immediately by: "On the other hand, here's a movie where blue cat-people are flying around on dinosaur birds, so who can expect a realistic battle sequence?" It's like opera: you go for the music and the singing, but forget anything approaching a believable story.

Lots of interesting modern-day parallels in the story line that provide food for thought. And, the producers used a lot of imagination in designing the world the blue cat-like people inhabit.

I also thought it might be a great film to see while higher than a kite, for those of you who enjoy a good smoke now and then.

Sitting Bull.Then--Sitting On Our Asses at Lux

Visited the Museum of Ethnology this afternoon to check out the Sitting Bull exhibit.

We were impressed with the scope of the exhibit. There were numerous photos, copies of drawings Sitting Bull made showing his many adventures (and which looked like a child's crayon drawings), artifacts from his time such as clothing, weapons, and everyday items, and many explanations in German and English about Sitting Bull's history and life.

The exhibit had a lot of visitors besides us. Generations of Europeans have grown up reading the books of Karl May, who is one of the bestselling German-language authors of all time---his books have sold more than 200 million copies worldwide. May counted among his fans such guys as Einstein and Hermann Hesse.

May wrote a series of books about Native Americans. He got a lot of the details wrong but the books were very popular and showed Indians in a positive light---unlike, say, the TV shows I watched as a kid on American TV.

The entrance to the Sitting Bull exhibit at Vienna's Museum of Ethnology

There's the myth of the noble savage, and there's the myth of the "no-good Indian." My take on it is that the Indians reacted pretty much as any of us would---as most of us do---when we're suddenly swamped with hordes of outsiders...especially when those outsiders are stealing our land and fucking up our way of life. They fought. In the end they lost, and lost big. Ironically enough, I've heard that some of the Indian casinos are using their earnings to buy back a lot of land that originally belonged to them in the first place, using the white man's gambling losses. What goes around...
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After the exhibit we met some friends for dinner. Tried all the trendazoidal places attached to the museums in the MuseumsQuartier but they were jam-packed; couldn't get a table. Plus, they were noisy as hell.

So we ended up at Lux, a restaurant I really like.

Had a couple of beers and a bowl of soup, and good conversation with our friends.

Interior of Lux

But the most interesting talk came at the end, when I was paying the waiter. Somehow it came out that this young man was from Iran, and had come to Austria in 2003. His English seemed pretty good so I asked him: "Tell me---what's your impression of what's going on in Iran right now? How do you think it will turn out?"

This got the guy started. He asked me if he could switch to German to explain things. Having a world-class simultaneous interpreter with me (my girlfriend) I said: "Sure, German is fine."

So while the guy talked, B interpreted simultaneously. What he told us was:

1) As long as Iran has oil and gas, nothing much will change for the better for the Iranian people
2) There are two kinds of cops in Iran. The normal cops, and the elite cops. The elite cops have no problems gunning ordinary people down.
3) His brother was thrown into prison in Iran, so the kid had to leave when he was 16 or so...I guess because, once someone in your family gets persecuted, YOU get persecuted.
4) He has no intention of, or interest in, ever returning to Iran.
5) Compared to life in Iran, life in Austria as an immigrant is easy.

The young man went on for about ten minutes. I like talking to ordinary people about their lives and insights about things I know nothing about. B seemed to enjoy talking to him, as well. When it was over I said to him, in my rudimentary German: "I hope everything works out OK for the Iranian people." And I thanked him for sharing his ideas with us. He seemed happy that someone cared enough to ask. He shook my hand when we left.

What I Saw January 01, 2010

About 2 this afternoon, I left the house for a little walkabout.

Temperature wasn't bad for this time of year, but it was really overcast and misty...

First time I've ever seen anything like this in Vienna.

Not sure if they're renovating this or demolishing it.

Urania

 

 

 

 

 

St. Stephens cathedral, its tower in the mist

New Year's Day jibber-jabber at the coffeehouse

Happy New Year

Most years, it's just another day of the year to me, New Year's Eve. I just stay home.

Had I been in OKC, I would have attended Marcy's party; thanks for the invitation, Marcy!

As it turns out, things here in Vienna were a lot of fun and quite memorable. As I knew they'd be.
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There are traditions here. Me, being a guy not too interested in traditions and even less interested in following them, still found it kind of charming.

Speaking of charms---one of the traditions is, you buy good-luck charms for your friends and family. These fall into the category of EDIBLE or INEDIBLE. We chose to buy (and mostly received) the EDIBLE charms because that way, you don't have little trinkets filling up the house after several decades of charm-gettin' and givin'.

New Year's charms: pigs, chimney sweeps, clovers. Chocolate coins are also a favorite.

Another tradition usually occurs around Christmas, but for several reasons we didn't do it until yesterday. That is, you visit the graves of loved ones and place a lit candle there. Because it gets dark early in winter, and so many people light candles at the grave, it's quite beautiful in the graveyards.

There were lit candles at the graveyard yesterday, too, though not nearly as many as on Christmas. B and I drove out to the huge Central Cemetery and she placed candles at the graves of her maternal and paternal grandparents, who are buried side by side.

Vienna's huge Central Cemetery. Note the mist.

Lueger Kirche in the Zentralfriedhof 

Driving out of the huge cemetery, we noticed the full moon, low and huge just above the horizon. I shot some video, keeping the moon in my viewfinder as we drove along...

Then to B's parents's house nearby, where we enjoyed coffee and conversation. I'd brought 140 big-band and Swing CDs with me on this trip as a gift for B's dad, who's a big fan of the music of that era. He showed me how he built a new shelf for the CDs, numbered each of them with a little sticker, then wrote down the title of the CD, its sticker number, and other data into a hard-bound book he keeps. He does the same thing with his DVDs, his VHS tapes, his records...anal retentive, or just really organized? You be the judge.

 

We also doted on their cat, Gri-Gri. She actually "belongs" to someone else in the neighborhood but several years ago the cat decided she'd rather spend her time with B's folks, who were never pet owners and didn't want a pet of any kind. But Gri-Gri kind of charmed her way into their lives and now she has her own special place on the couch, covered with a little towel. She's been told not to lay anywhere else on the couch and amazingly, she obeys.

 Gri-Gri, the queen of Simmering.

Back home, we started on our celebration. B prepared a fantastic meal which started with appetizers made from crab meat and caviar.

While eating this, we played a dice game very similar to YAHTZEE. 

Meantime, the main course was in the oven----trout stuffed with shrimp and dill, and diced potatoes. It was B's first time to prepare stuffed trout but everything came out perfect, and it was delicious. Watch out for the bones, though...

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For several days leading up to New Year's (or Silvester, as they call it here) you hear fireworks going off. It's all a build-up to the lengthiest fireworks extravaganza I've ever seen, which happens on New Year's Eve. It usually begins several hours before midnight, as the New Year happens in various parts of the world. For instance, there are a lot of Turks here, so when it's midnight in Turkey, you'll hear a lot of fireworks. An hour later, more fireworks as the people of that time-zone who happen to find themselves in Vienna detonate their explosives. 

 

These displays are not the most spectacular, mind you, in terms of OOHing and AHHing, but in terms of enthusiasm and intensity, it's fucking NON-STOP for hours. I am not exaggerating. HOURS.

And none of it administered by the city or state. It's just many thousands of maniacs who spend hundreds or even thousands of Euros on fireworks of various potency.

About 11:30 we set out for the vineyards about a half-mile behind B's house. The streets were wet with moisture and there were literally hundreds of explosions going off. The streets were mostly empty and it was rather like running through a besieged city where nearby firefights were happening. BOOM! BAM! BOOMBOOMBOOM!

Close to the vineyards we encountered groups of people carrying their rockets, heading the same way. It was really foggy---the air was unseasonably warm----but we could see rockets flashing eerily in the foggy skies only a few hundred meters ahead of us. It made me a little nervous, moving TOWARD a bunch of (possibly) drunk psychos firing big rockets...

The vineyards were very muddy. We walked between the vines, which, because they are supported by strands of wire, and because of the constant explosions around us and above us, gave a WW I trench-warfare glow to everything. The mud, the wire, the rockets, the bombardment. Except, no real danger. Unless you count the possibility of catching a rocket that tilts downward just prior to launch.

Vienna itself was far below but the fog was so thick, visibility was very limited---you COULD see some of the larger explosions high in the sky far away, but it was like watching the sun through thick clouds. Nevertheless, all around us, above us on the steep hill, and in the streets just below us: CONSTANT flashes of light and the BOOM! of fireworks.

A few minutes after midnight we walked home and opened our champagne. Fireworks were still going off constantly, even past 2 AM. I put my audio recorder out on the balcony for about five minutes just to record the noise of everything, and I bet there wasn't ten seconds of silence during that entire time; indeed, since about 5 PM.

Another tradition: in a special spoon, we melted little metal figures...a house, a hat, etc. When the metal is melted you dump it into a bowl of cold water where it forms into bizarre, jagged shapes. This is kind of like a 3-D Rorshach test, I guess...you're supposed to look at the distorted metal and figure out what it means.

We stayed up until about 3:30 this morning. Coincidentally, the fireworks finally petered out about that time.

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One last tradition. Every New Year's Day the Vienna Philharmonic broadcasts a concert heard around the world. I'm listening to it now, and occasionally pop into the living room to watch on TV. PBS shows this a couple of times on New Year's Day and I highly recommend it. Interspersed with the music are always interesting little video vignettes that show Vienna at its finest. 

 

Check it out.