Little Excerpt

This is just a little something I jotted down hurriedly in my notebook on the way to Berlin.  Early mornings inspire me - when I'm awake enough to greet them properly.  This is an example of how my brain functions early in the morning.  I'm on my way from my home to the train station - about a 20 minute walk.

Walking to the station before the break of dawn.  A bird calls.  Somewhere music plays but where?  I can't find the source.  Is there always music and I hear it now only because the world is asleep and silent?  Barely anyone is awake.  Have to be careful on the ice.  Walk tenderly.  McDonald's is open.  Comforting, like home.  I know that at least one other poor soul is awake.  Bakery is just opening too.  Woman on bicycle.  Creak of a sign somewhere sounds apocolypitic, repetitive, erie.  I hurry on in mock fear.  Music is stilly playing loudly in a bar.  It's night music but it's early morning now. People still crowded in for a drink.  I can nearly smell the cigarettes.  A car passes and I wish he'd give me a lift.  Another car passes - same wish.  The font on that sign is interesting.  Looks hand painted.  Getting closer the station now.  Restaurant is called something - something Gastronomie.  Another punnish names comes to mind: Institute der Gastronomie.  Cute but somehow unappealing.  There's vomit nearby.  It isn't frozen yet.  Also unappealing.  I can see the train station.  Looks dark.  Man walks out to his car but his door is frozen shut.  Should I help or say hello?  Acknowledge his struggle?  He has it open.  Hurry along.  Ticket room is unlit but there's a young man inside pacing back and forth.  No response to 'Good Morning.'  Not so good afterall.  Buy ticket and it's more expensive than I thought.  I double check.  Five minutes to go.  Waiting in the waiting room.  Boy starts to play Green Day loudly on his cell phone.  Train arrives.  

Hemingway and Berlin

Before I left on the semester break, I visited a cocktail bar in town called "The Hemingway" with Vicki, the daughter of my archery instructor. Inside, it was a comfortable cabana paradise with robust wood paneling, high oaken tables, and vintage photos of Hemingway. The constant companion of any public gathering scene in Austria, smoke, curled about the ceiling but fit the atmosphere. Hemingway probably enjoyed chewing on a fat, Cuban cigar. Vicki and I ogled the mile long list of cocktails . Variety is not always a virtue - we were hard pressed to decide.

Afterwords we did a run to McDonald's and had an interesting encounter with a mob of pre-pubescent Turkish boys. Let's not do details - it involved spit, straws, and paper. It was the 'freaky' part of Friday the 13th.

And so I was able to welcome in Valentine's Day with a friend. The day of was spent listening to death metal, ceremoniously burning pictures of happy couples, and packing for my trip to Berlin on the following day. Well, two of the three are truth. ^.~

The next day, snowy and chill, was my epic train ride to Berlin. I clocked about 14 hours traveling time and around 8 trains. I couldn't imagine doing this sort of travel in a country lacking the stability and conformity of Germany. EVERY single train was on time. Only a few, the closer I got to Berlin, were especially crowded but I knew from before to scramble to the next train while in Leipzig and Falkenberg. The whole trip, one way, costs 41euros (55 usd). That's a lot of train for so little cash, imo.

Berlin was snowy and gorgeous. The city is usually gray and cold in winter but when I got there, it was turning swiftly into a winter wonderland. It snowed on and off the whole time and I really got to enjoy the weather. Gabi, Mariko, Felix, and I (host mother, guest student, and son respectively) went sledding down the one hill in Berlin. Located in Kreuzberg, if you ever find yourself in need of a park or adventures. Now I can say that I've experienced winter. I went sledding, had a monstrous snowball fight (ate snow in said fight), made a snow angel, and walked across a frozen lake.

Gabi's house was under siege the whole week - the kitchen required work and painting. A constant stream of painters and plasterers filed in and out the door for a few days - along with a random (yet cute) chimney sweep. He rode up on a bike laden with tools, binders, and the stereotypical black bristle brush. It was love. <3

ANYWAY, back on track, being back in town was like rediscovering humanity. I could actually communicate in German (Austrian dialect sounds like a Texan with a mouth full of molassus) . Imagine breathing through a straw for 3 months and finally standing up to realize that the water is only waist deep. Deep breath, fresh air. Wonderful.

I spent Thursday evening with the family I tutored during my time of Berlin study. I ended up staying for dinner - a German dinner of coldcuts, fresh bread, cheese, salad, and a hunk of pig. Helmut, the father, dashed out the door to the garage and came back inside with a pig's leg mounted on a wooden block. It looked like something you would hang on the wall, except it didn't have any skin, fur, or antlers. Helmut took out a knife and sawed away at an already established groove in the meaty part of the leg. Siegrid, the mother, laughed at my face and said that this chunk of meat would last them all winter and stay fresh in the dry, cold garage. Trust me when I say that it was the best smoked ham I have ever had. On fresh farmer's bread with German whipped butter? I had to be pried away from the table.

The kids went to bed and Helmut and I stayed up chatting. Siegrid fell asleep tucking in one of the younger boys; she's an artist with three sons - I'd be exhausted too. Helmut and I talked about careers (a subject haunting my life in transition) and I probed him about how he came into the career that he has now (property value estimator for a bank). Considering Helmut studied Geography and traveled all about South and Central America and even Pakistan, the answer to 'how did you get to where you are now' is not simple. For anyone, I imagine. I'm excited and terrified - where is my life going?

Friday was the last day but as brilliantly wonderful as all the rest. I met up with a friend from my high school back in America. Who would have thought that someone else from Boyertown, Penssylvania, would be in Berlin? We ate wonderful Indian food at my favorite Indian restaurant in town, Bombay, reminisced about high school, and caught up on each other's lives. We also went to Schloss Charlottenburg, a prussian summer palace on the outskirts of Berlin. I've been meaning to see it since eternity began. I could literally cross it off of my 'do before you die' list. Not that the castle was very impressive, or that we even went inside for a tour (10euro ouch!), but I SAW it. I stood before the gated door and admired the statues and tall windows. We walked through the gardens in the back and it occured to me - this is something I've built up in my mind, a mountain of sorts, that I've spent a year fabricating. And it's gone - poof! No more Schloss Charlottenburg. Fine. Oh, I felt empty later, a little lonesome. It's hard to describe... I'm scrambling for words. It's just a palace, right?

Now I'm back and refueled for a thrilling month and a half without break! Then it's Easter and we have another week off. My job is terrible, right? How is everyone doing? Friends, family, passersby?

After school...

I have one student for English tutoring who distinctly reminds me of a Golden Retriever puppy: cute, blond, and perky - which is how all the young men are here in my town. I live on a puppy farm and all I want to do is adopt.

Said student, in a conversation regarding school lockers, responded so in the following dialogue:
me: "Everything is bigger in America."
student: *snigger, laugh*
me: "Cars, houses, hamburgers..."
student: "Pamela Anderson!"
me: *...*

Good news! Boys are boys everywhere! Damn.

In other news, a sophomore class of mine might elect Twilight to read as a class. The other book hanging in with tooth and nail is Lord of the Flies but it might lose out because the teacher doesn't like it. It's too sad.

Last note to this horribly tangential post: I found the following picture online at the local disco's website:
**No barley fields were harmed in the making of this picture. -> Mostly a lie.

The Sequel

So many people are enjoying Ski Gymnastik to the extent that the instructor has agreed to keep going until Easter. YEAH!!! Otherwise it would have ended tonight and I would have been on the prowl for future Monday night entertainment.

Tonight I was able to guide an Austrian by car back to where I live. I feel quite competent. HOWEVER, last night on the way home, I learned for the first time about the connecting train between the larger and the smaller train stations in my town. I cannot say that I will miss that 1.5 mile walk home.

As for books, I finished A Thousand Splendid Suns and have moved on to the classic Catch-22. I shall no longer complain about a dusty vocabulary. Joseph Heller is taking my lexicon on the limbo dance of its life. "How low can you go - OH - how low can you go!"

Bathroom time

I just walked in on a boy peeing in the bathroom. Who was more surprised, him or me? That was the quickest u-turn I've ever performed in reality.

VIRGINS

Just back from a theater visit and I am torn inside. The play is called VIRGINS and it is about a teenage boy who gets trashed at a party and cannot remember if he has had sex with one or two girls. He finds out shortly thereafter that he has an STI (brit equivalent of STD). Meanwhile, the husband/father of the family is sexually frustrated by his work horse of a wife. The daughter/sister is the sane, pure responsible child running around, trying to mediate. They all run around, mixed up in their own and eachother's problems. The family tears apart but reunites at the end. The son finds out his 'best friend' lied to him about the second sexual encounter of the fateful evening. The husband and wife, for reasons unknown, reconcile and the daughter is happily in love with a man who 'understands and respects her.'

I am completely vexed by the whole thing. After this play and several other 'reality books', I am quite convinced that love, happiness, loyalty, and virtuous values don't exist. Life is quite impossible and happiness is a fleeting thing that we chase after blindly and impotently.

Something needs to happen, read something, experience something for me to believe that the values I grew up with actually exist in real life.

BLOODY DISNEY FILMS

Word from class

Never take your language or culture for granted:

Today the students defined 'congenital' as 'genitals', which brings a colorful new meaning to 'congenital heart failure'.

During a session on first aid, many traditional Austrian remedies were discussed. If you have a fever, be advised to soak your socks in vinegar and salt and wear them overnight OR wear a necklace of sliced horse radish root. If you have a cold, slice an onion in half, put the halves into socks, and sleep with them pressed against your ears. If you have a nosebleed, put a handkerchief under your tongue or a wet towel against the back of your neck.

Lyme disease and deer ticks were also discussed. The teacher asked the students how many of them had been vaccinated: they all raised their hands. Apparently, Austria is THE European breeding ground for deer ticks. o.0 They even designed a special tweezers for easy tick removal. As the tick and mosquito delicacy of my home county in PA, I'm quaking in my boots at the thought of spring...

A new fun method of reading in the class is having a student read until they make a mistake - then the next person picks up until he/she makes a mistake, then the next, etc. It creates a fun, competitive atmosphere while picking up faults in their pronunciation.

Warning Label

Besides the fact that my English skills are swirling downward into an abyss of grammatical and syntactical chaos, life is good.

I just finished reading Stravaganza, by Mary Hoffman. It's the story of a young, English boy who is transported into a parallel world, a parallel Italy to be exact. Every night he visits a town similar to Venice in the 17th century by way of a Talisman. The kicker/twist is that the boy is dying of cancer in the real world. Although the plot was a bit transparent, it made for a fun read. Great description!

Now I've moved on to a different genre; it could be called "historical fiction." I'm reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini. I'm only about 25 pages deep but it seems to focus around a bastard child, a girl. Since it takes place in Afghanistan, I'm not holding my breath for the Happy Ending. This book falls into that "life is really hard for women" genre that seems to have swallowed my life lately. I recently finished Desert Flower, by Waris Dirie. It's her autobiographical tale of life as a nomad in Somalia. At the age of 14, she runs away from her family and an arranged marriage and, after much struggle, ends up in London as a clothing model. A very easy read but also very informative. The students have to be able to understand (mostly) what's going on so most of the books they read are simple but deep. Sort of like that Volvo commercial: boxy but safe. I enjoy it although my vocabulary doesn't.

Other than reading, my life focuses on my future life. I imagine that sounds a bit like the Ouroboros, the snake that's eating its' own tail: devour and recreate, the circular quality of life. That works for me because, in the beginning, I wanted to become a librarian. But that dream is fading with each new ipod, computer, larger jump driver, smaller laptop. Pretty soon, a librarian will watch over empty shelves. The job is changing - here today and gone tomorrow.

The trick is imagining myself in some other form of work. Work that will hopefully land me in a river of cash that I can use to build my own Beauty and the Beast worthy library. In the meantime, because my brain is mostly fried explaining the present perfect continuous tense, send me a note: where do you see me at work?

Down in the deep blue sea

Little bit on Austrian culture oddities today, which might become a regular feature of blogs to come (ah, so what! I should have been doing this all along).


The Austrian Ball
The Austrians love a good ball, which is definable as: a dance for any special occasion, event, or organization during which - but not limited to - the consumption of excessive amounts of beer, wine, and liqeour as well as dancing, and various performances that exceed rational proportions.

My graduating students at the BORG (the Bundesoberstufereal Gymnasium and not the Star Trek space oddity) had their ball on Saturday evening. They brought in a big brass band and a lot of community members who I never expected to see (including quite a few older ones) showed up and cut up the parquet floor. When Austrians dance, they don't do the bump-and-grind that Americans find so pleasing. They prefer ballroom dancing from waltzs to foxtrots to tangos. Even though the liquer flows, they still swirl about the dance floor in one form or another.

It's difficult to compare an American high school prom and an Austrian ball. Balls aren't limited to students - adults, and teachers come too. The young and old mix freely and happily through the fact that the drinking age is 16 for beer and 18 for hard liquer; most of the students are slightly fluid.

Alcohol and age. Two As that summarize the big differences between American and Austrian balls. Oh, and Dancing. AAD. Alcohol, Age, and Dancing.

Second Austrian cultural oddity.
Ketchup packets at McDonald's. If you're any average American, you love ketchup on your fries (no gainsayers allowed). There is nothing odd with reaching into the bin and grabbing 10 or 15 packets of ketchup at any fastfood chain in America. If you come to Austria, check your ketchup urges at the door or BYOK (bring your own ketchup) because it costs 25euro cents extra for about two packets worth. A terrible injustice to anyone who enjoys that red sauce crafted from the wiles of Zeus on the top of Mt. Zion... Mixing religions. Anyway, DAMMIT. I want my ketchup'd fries!!