Österreichologie

What happened to the blog?

2010-02-03T16:48:00.003-05:00

I know, I know. I haven't written anything for ages....or at least for as long as I've been back in the States.

Some of you who have made transitions abroad and then had to un-transition may have run into the same thing: once you're no longer a foreigner and you're back in your "normal" environment - and in my case, once I'm unemployed and not traveling someplace exciting ever few weeks - what's left to write about? Where are the cultural observations, the daily struggles and mishaps, the minor triumphs and the travel adventures?

I've tossed around a few ideas with reverse culture shock, but the truth is, it's not that bad and it's not all that exciting. Other than complaining about Austrian supermarkets for a couple years and now realizing just how much more I prefer the Austrian grocery shopping experience to the American one, there's not much else that really reverse shocks me. No, it wasn't weird to stop speaking German. (Sorry, Austria, it's the truth.) Yes, I feel right at home. No, I don't really miss Austria. (Which is to say, I don't have that active longing for a place.) It's been a pretty painless process.

Since I'm still in transition, there's really not all that much that inspires me to write - though I really want to get back into the habit of writing. (This blog, my novel, more emails...I'm not picky.) I've got a couple of ideas floating around in my head, but we'll see if they make it to the printed page.

I just wanted to give you the heads up that I'm still here, but on hold. Of course if you have any brilliant ideas that you think I should write about, I welcome them. Until then...it's probably best if you don't hold your breath.

Giving Thanks

2009-12-11T23:32:00.007-05:00

Now that I'm back in the States, life in Austria already seems so far away. The life I led there for the past couple years was certainly a unique phase full of excitement and opportunity. When I learned that I wouldn't be able to stay in the country, I started to appreciate the little things all around me as though I only had a week left to live. Consequently, I spent most of the last couple weeks walking around in a state of perpetual thankfulness and warm fuzzies. On the train from Graz up to Vienna on my way to the airport, I finally compiled a list -- a list of all the things I could think of that I was thankful for. (This also makes it a list of things I like about Austria. I could call this list "Things I Like About Austria," or I can call it...)

I'm thankful...

for a city that's safe at night

for a city that's safe during the day

for a fantastic church home

for a rich national history

for accessible and affordable operas

for affordable housing

for an abundance of castles

for an orderly and cheap laundry system in my apartment building

for Austrian school and office supplies -- so much cooler!

for balls (i.e. dancing balls, like Cinderella went to a ball)

for bike paths

for cheap but good wine and beer

for cheap sparkling mineral water

for cheap, convenient and reliable train travel within Austria

for cheap/easy/convenient opportunities to travel within Europe

for church bells that ring at 7 am, 12 pm, 3 pm, and 7 pm

for consistently good coffee

for cute, quaint villages

for dialect and its accompanying amusements, puzzles and challenges

for everyone who helped me and/or made phone calls to figure out all the bureaucratic visa stuff

for everything pumpkin out of Styria: pumpkin seed oil, pumpkin cream soup, pumpkin bread, etc.

for exclusively Austrian Sturm, Glühwein, Christmas markets, and Buschenschanks

for ex-pats

for friends

for good bread and cheese

for good health insurance and no referrals

for good places to run and bike

for having 38 public holidays

for having the Mur river running though town

for hospitality

for how Austrians will really pull through for you

for incredible scenery

for kebabs

for Labello

for lackadaisical passport control officials

for living in a bike-friendly city

for meeting so many cool people from all over the world

for my connections

for my fellow foreigners

for old European streets, houses, and architecture in general; especially how this everyday cityscape stayed fresh and new for me

for reliable public transportation

for skiing and Austrian-style sledding

for so much free/leisure time

for sturdy toilet paper and tissues

for the abundance and coexistence of kitsch, history, and design

for the Austrians who adopted me and introduced me to Austrian life and culture

for the comfortable pace and quality of life

for the coziness of Graz

for the insanely cheap price of a chunk of fresh mozzarella

for the lack of cockroaches, poison ivy, and poisonous spiders and snakes

for the ubiquitous ice cream stands in the summer

for traditional clothing and accordion music

for tram and bus drivers who will stop the vehicle and wait for you if they see you running to catch a ride

for wearing slippers at home or as a guest in someone's home

for wonderful roommates and a flexible landlady

that Austria takes care of its people

that dogs are so well-behaved here and are allowed to go everywhere

that even in Austria I can be BFF with my bank teller(s)

that Graz was the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2003 and therefore has lots of spiffy new buildings and such

that having a car is so unnecessary

that having a real Christmas tree with real candles is the only tree most of them have ever known

that I can leave my bike simply standing and loosely locked anywhere in the city and it will still be there when I come back

that I can understand German on the phone

that I can walk in to the doctor's office without an appointment and actually be seen

that I could live in the same apartment for over 2 years -- longer than any other apartment I've ever had

that I had so many visitors in the past couple years!

that I lived for 2 years without a deadbolt and it never bothered me

that I'm no longer pre-judged on the basis of my president

that it is so easy to split the bill in a restaurant

that my room doesn't face a street

that nearly everything you ever use is recycled

that people have stopped introducing me as, "This is Rebecca. She's American."

that receiving phone calls is free on your mobile phone

that Styria has it all -- mountains, hills, vineyards, thermal baths…

that tax is included in all your purchases and tipping is practically nonexistent

that the country is very stable and doesn't have any severe political or international problems

that there are so many old people who are out and about

that there are very few Americans in comparison with other Austrian cities

that there are very few tourists in comparison with the other Austrian cities

The Sound of Music

2009-11-07T03:56:00.008-05:00

One of the reasons I love living in Graz is because I have so many opportunities available to me that I wouldn't have [time or money for] back home. And one of last year's biggest highlights was my subscription for season's tickets to the Graz Opera House (Grazer Oper). So when I saw the program for this year's opera season with The Sound of Music prominently listed, I knew I would have to make it a priority to go to the opera at least one last time before leaving Graz.

Last night I had the perfect offer: a visiting friend had connections with a sound technician and could get us into a box seat for free! We'd be sitting right up next to the stage under a hot spotlight, but who can complain when this arrangement so perfectly fits our budget! As we entered through the backstage area and snaked in and out of an underground maze of corridors before climbing a series of staircases to get to our loge, I was literally bouncing with anticipation. We were shown into our own private box, a little awkwardly situated directly to the right of the stage, but great seats if we snuggled up together in the corner and leaned in. As a connoisseur of the film, The Sound of Music, I wasn't too worried that this production was being staged in German -- I knew practically the whole thing by heart, so none of the story would be lost on me.

Or so I thought.

*****DISCLAIMER: The rest of this entry contains spoilers. If you have any intention of seeing this production, please do not read any further until after you've seen the musical.*****

Let me just start by saying that I was willing to make concessions for this musical. Clearly, it is difficult to adapt a three-hour movie into a three-hour stage production. There are certain limitations of the stage that may affect how the plot is played out or how the story moves forward. But I was unprepared for the arbitrary meddling that essentially stripped the story and the characters of any depth, intrigue, or suspense.

You see, The Sound of Music is not just about the music -- and I'm afraid this is where the Grazer Oper goes wrong. From the beginning of the performance it is clear that this production's strength is in the music, but it's a shame that this comes at the expense of the rest of the story. While last year's musical productions of My Fair Lady and West Side Story proved Graz is capable of staging a good musical but lacks non-operatic singers, this year's musical production of The Sound of Music is a perfect fit for these opera house voices. Sieglinde Feldhofer as Maria does an admirable job of capturing the essence of Julie Andrews' voice, admittedly a hard act to follow. Likewise, the nuns in the abbey consistently perform well as a supporting chorus and in a select few songs of their own. The children are perfectly cast for cuteness and talent, and Boris Pfeifer as Captain von Trapp is more pleasant on the ears than his orginal counterpart, Christopher Plummer. But when the cast of the show isn't singing, there is, sadly, nothing to propel the production along.

For reasons I cannot rationalize, the German staging of The Sound of Music has chosen to remove or change critical details of the story, crippling many of the scenes that, in the movie, are so powerful. It seems that any of the characters in the film who are coniving or treacherous are made over in the musical to be normal, redeemable characters...and where is the intrigue in that?

We know, for instance, that the butler, Franz, is a Nazi sympathizer in the Graz production -- it's mentioned, once. But in the musical production, it is not Franz who betrays the family as they attempt to flee during the night; rather, the authorities just happen to show up two days before the musical festival and knock on the door, informing Captain von Trapp that he is to report to duty immediately. And here it is Maria who convinces the Nazi officials to wait a couple days until they can have their farewell performance at the theater. For reasons unknown, Franz's betrayal of the family -- an inside job, thus very dramatic -- is taken out.

Similarly, the influence of the Baroness is played down and she is given absolutely no personality at all. She returns to the estate with Captain von Trapp because, as we're led to believe, she loves him. Not only does she love the Captain von Trapp, but she loves the children, too -- there's no talk of marrying Georg for his money or sending the kids off to boarding school once she's the Captain's wife -- and indeed it is she who arranges for the children to sing "So Long, Farewell" to the guests at the ball. And perhaps the most insulting affront to the story is when the Baroness' character is stripped of her jealosy and manipulation of Maria. Instead of the Baroness cattily confronting Maria about the way the Captain looked at her at the ball, it is instead Brigitta, the daughter, who innocently tells Maria that of course her father is in love with her and has been for a long time. Not only is this confession unconvincing from what we've seen of the Captain and Maria so far, but the Baroness' character simply becomes redundant at this point.

Sadly, the von Trapp children suffer from the same one-dimensionality as the Baroness. When Maria arrives at the von Trapp household, she is immediately welcomed into the family by the children, who are on their best behavior from day one. We're told by Frau Schmidt, the housekeeper, that the last governess left abruptly because she'd had enough; however, this admission is largely incongruous with the way the children treat Fräulein Maria. Nary a prank is played upon the poor woman, and we lose the sense that Maria has really bonded with the children.

Despite all of this, the von Trapp family of the musical somehow makes it to the Salzburg Music Festival and manages to come off as a convincing, fearful family, singing together as if for the last time. Since so much of the plot is a letdown until this point, I was thrilled when the von Trapp family takes the stage, and Nazi soldiers stream through the doors of the opera, posting themselves on alert throughout the audience. The Commandant himself takes a box seat near the front of the stage to watch the performance, and all of this audience interaction started to win me over again. Indeed, when the von Trapp family is called back on stage to receive their award and is then discovered missing, the soldiers run out from the seating area, and a spotlight sweeps the audience in pursuit of the escapees. The tension builds, and by the time the family takes refuge in the abbey, the audience knows that the big escape is near. Then Rolf enters the abbey. In the biggest disappointment of the whole production, Rolf spots Liesl, stops in his tracks, and then -- robbing the production of the biggest moment in the movie's climax -- calls out, "They're not here, either!" Thus, the family escapes. Without the big chase. Without the suspense. Without much difficulty at all, it seems. The Reverend Mother simply appears and tells the von Trapps that their best bet is to escape over the mountains, to which the Captain replies in the schmalziest line of the entire production, "I always had the feeling that the mountains were our friends." Then we watch as the family von Trapp ascends into the Alps, presumably with the same faulty geography as the film, over the border of Salzburg and into Switzerland.

As I said, it's the music that carries this production, not the plot. Yet even the musical score isn't off-limits in the German adaption. For reasons I still cannot understand, Maria breaks into a round of "My Favorite Things" when she's being chastised by the Reverend Mother at the beginning of the show for singing in the hills and arriving late back at the abbey. As if that wasn't enough to digest, Maria chooses to sing "The Lonely Goatherd" when the von Trapp children run into her room on the first night, frightened of the thunderstorm. "I Have Confidence" is conspicuously missing from the score, although two new and extraneous songs materialize between Max and the Baroness -- one of which cautions Captain von Trapp to be more politically moderate. For the most part though, there was a filter between the music and my brain, taking in the German lyrics and processing them into English before they reached my mind. Taking this into account, I was admittedly listening to an alternative version of the musical...but with all of these modifications, who can blame me? However, what the characters lacked in expression and depth, the conductor made up for in his own enthusiastic performance. Watching him was nearly as entertaining as watching the performers on stage, and he did an excellent job bringing this classic score alive.

The Sound of Music in the Grazer Oper is best taken with a grain of salt. Since most Austrians have never actually seen the film version of The Sound of Music, they'll probably leave happy, having enjoyed the good music and the kitschy portrayal of pre-war Austria for a fun night out on the town. And, let's be fair here, it's The Sound of Music, so it's a Must-See, regardless. But for purists such as myself, it's probably best to just stick to the film.

Re-entry

2009-09-21T23:13:00.002-04:00

A few days before I came back to the States, I said goodbye to a friend of mine (whom I tend to see every couple months or so) at a party. We did the European cheek kissy kissy thing, and I told him, “Goodbye—see you in October!”
He stepped back and looked at me with a slightly perplexed expression. “October?” he said. “Why October?”
“Because I’m going home on Friday,” I told him, “and I won’t be back till mid-October.”
“But this is your home,” he said.
I hesitated. “You’re right,” I admitted. “This is my home. See you in October.” I saw him out the door and then walked back into the room with the party. But something was different. It was as if this friend had just articulated a concept I’ve been wavering about for the past couple years. But coming from him—someone I’m not all that close to and don’t see on an über-regular basis—it finally sunk in. Austria is my home.

For the past two years, I’ve been living in a state of limbo. Since I knew my position as a Fulbright TA was only temporary, I’ve always had the feeling in the back of my mind that this arrangement wasn’t going to last. Consequently, I allowed Graz to become my new home, but with certain boundaries in place. I wouldn’t spend money on a bike because I knew I’d have to leave it one day. (Actually, I waited until I inherited a bike for free. Now I wish I’d had one way sooner.) I didn’t put that much effort into going out and making new friends, because I wanted to cultivate the friendships I already had—why pursue mediocre friendships when you know the good ones you already have will turn long-distance again anyway? (Rather, I made some great new friendships but let most of them come to me.) Occasionally I would look around my room and groan, thinking of what a pain it would be to one day get all this stuff home. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve loved my life in Austria and have been able to connect here in a really deep way—but it changes things when you know that your days are numbered.

So in spite of myself, I let Graz become more of a home than I’d anticipated. It wasn’t until this friend from the party, whom I see on only a sporadic basis, pointed this out that I really realized this. He’s right. No wonder I want to stay in Austria a bit longer.

And the thing about making your home in another country is, well, that that’s where you feel at home. There are many things that I really love about Austria, but there are just as many things that I dislike and complain about. Yet despite all of this, it’s the place I now feel connected to, for better or worse.

So there’s nothing like going through U.S. border control after a long absence to make you feel like you don’t belong anymore. I found myself waiting in the shorter line—the one full of American citizens and permanent residents who don’t need to get their fingerprints taken or take eye scans or offer up their firstborn child just to come be a tourist in this great and wonderful land—and feeling completely out of place. The miniature American flags hanging from every officer’s counter as well as from the walls and the ceiling feel so out of place coming from a country whose expressions of patriotism are siphoned into the form of regional pride because open national pride, as history has indicated, can sometimes be a dangerous thing. And it started here, in the line for border control, that I once again found myself surrounded by American English. It should have felt natural, like coming home. (Since, after all, I was.) But instead, there was some tug inside me, urging, “Distance yourself. Don’t open your mouth. Don’t reveal yourself as one of them!” It was this same inner urge that prompted me to unintentionally act foreign in other ways—to assume that confused, lost look of one who doesn’t understand their surroundings, to ask for directions in shockingly misconstructed sentences, or to say “Excuse me!” in the wrong language when accidentally bumping into someone. And to come back for the first time in a year after a two-year stint abroad, even the things I love most about my country—like its diversity—can at first seem out of place when you see people of every size, shape, and color speaking in a perfect American accent.

But not all of the re-entry process is weird. It was clear before I even left the airport that I was in a country full of friendly people again, where strangers talk to other strangers, where questions are answered with a smile, and where someone can make a joke in a crowded elevator and not come across as a crazy person. It’s refreshing that someone might start a conversation with me because we’re both waiting in the same line at the store, or that the doorman to some fancy Central Park West apartment building can wish me a good morning and tell me my hair looks great as I hurry by with a friend. I love that I can call a customer service hotline and hang up feeling like I just made a new best friend, and I get warm fuzzies to be in a culture where people greet each other and say goodbye with hugs.

Yet there’s still the nagging feeling when I look around that somehow I just don’t belong. And in all fairness, part of this is probably due to some residual cultural snobbery in me—though whether it favors the U.S. or Austria depends on the day. But despite the differences and the impressions of reverse culture shock I’ve experienced in the past few days, there’s a disconnect between me and my country that runs just a little deeper. This is the disconnect of realizing you’ve already made a new home for yourself and it's far beyond this bustling city block or suburban strip mall. And even if this current home changes, as it’s very likely to do in the near future, I realize that I’ll just set up a new home again. Despite myself.

Quintessential Rome

2009-09-08T17:43:00.004-04:00

I just got back from a weekend trip to Rome with a friend. ...Sounds so indulgently European, doesn't it?!

It was my first time back to Rome since 2004, when I went for a week with friends during my exchange year. Since we only had three full days in Rome this time, and since we'd seen the major attractions last time, we wanted our short time in the Eternal City to be leisurely and enjoyable.

We recently read Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert for our book club in Graz. In the first section of the book, the author spends several months in Rome pursuing pleasure, which -- for her -- means immersing herself in the indulgent Italian cuisine and the rich Italian language. This seemed reasonable enough to us, so we decided to put this Roman philosophy into effect for our short stay. As other tourists were rushing about in their cargo shorts and sneakers to see the Colosseum and the Vatican before closing, we snaked our way through cobblestone streets and picturesque back alleys in our cute summer dresses, ordering the occassional cappuccino freddo, neutralizing the intense Mediterranean sun with gelato at regular intervals, and pausing for pasta and wine as necessary.

With only a couple hours left in Rome before taking the night train back to Austria, we found a corner table at a trattoria on the edge of a sleepy piazza between the Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon and sat there watching the world go by over a bottle of wine. The two elderly Roman gentlemen with espresso and a newspaper at the neighboring table ackowledged us with a smile as we sat down, and later, when we attempted to ask them in broken Italian if they could take our picture, they answered, "Sì, bella!" More pseudo-Italian and warm smiles were exchanged as we tried to thank them. A while later when the gentlemen got up to leave, they offered us their hands with a "Ciao!" as they passed by our table. My companion offered up her own hand first to shake, and as the man took her hand in his own, he shook it twice, then gave it a squeeze, dropping it to give her a gentle rub on the shoulder. Far from being sleazy, when he took my own hand in his and gently squeezed it and rubbed it with a "Ciao!" it was as if the communication barrier had melted and he was communicating so clearly by touch: "We acknowledge that you are here with your wine and your piazza, and we approve. You are enjoying the essence of a Roman afternoon, and as old Italian men who value pleasure and beauty and a Mediterranean enjoyment of life, we salute you."

I wanted to share this quintessential Roman afternoon with you...it's much too wonderful an experience to keep to ourselves.

The first video focuses on the pleasure and lets the world go by. The second video watches the world go by without forgetting the pleasure. In their own way, each are distinctly their own experience, yet the same experience...so I decided to give you both. Indulge. Enjoy.

Quintessential Rome, Take 1

Quintessential Rome, Take 2

Reflections of an Expat

2009-08-31T02:16:00.003-04:00

It is really strange to wrap my mind around the fact that I've been living in Austria now for as long as I was in New York. But just as I never lost part of the tourist in me while I was living in the Big Apple (...after 2 years in the city, I still found myself looking up...), there are things about Austria that I find perpetually fresh and new. While I've grown accustomed to these differences and no longer take much notice of them, I still have moments where the juxtaposition of my home culture against my adopted culture sets my mind reeling. Sometimes it just blows my mind that all of this is normal

now...

I live in a country where steeples are more common than smokestacks. Where villages look like villages. Where you actually use the word "villages."

I live in a country where I see vineyards and farms on my way to work. Where the Alps are a fact of life rather than a novelty. Where castles are so common that when I see one, I say, "Oh, there's another castle."

I live in a country where the speed limits are higher, if only for the metric system, and where 40 degrees is a really hot day. And while my clothing size has quadrupled, my weight is down by half.

I live in a country where I have to walk up a flight of stairs to get to the first floor, and my clock strikes 00:00. Where a chunk of fresh mozerella the size of my fist costs less than a dollar, but a gallon of low-grade gasoline costs $5.60.

I live in a country where I no longer think of a 400-year-old building as very old, and where I don't think twice about seeing a man in leather shorts and a feathered cap out on the streets.

I live in a country where seeing a sedan with a trunk that sticks out past the rearview window is cause for a double take, and where seeing an SUV is cause to stare.

I live in a country where spotting a celebrity feels like an intelligentia sighting, since there are so few of them.

I live in a country where I think nothing of throwing faux-English words into my everyday vocabulary--where I use my Handy to make a phone call or use a Beamer for a Power Point presentation. I live in a country where the present progressive occassionally trips me up too, and where I occassionally find even myself "making" a photo.

And I live in a country where carrots really should be eaten with oil.

Grandmom

2009-08-05T10:25:00.002-04:00

My paternal grandmother, Margaret Brooke Earle, passed away on August 3, 2009.

Although being so far away from home is particularly difficult at a time like this, I know that my grandmother supported my adventurous spirit and would have wanted me to keep traveling the world, collecting the stories that will one day be passed on, like her stories, to the next generations. And so to a woman who has inspired me, molded me, and loved me with the indulgence that only a grandparent can bestow, I’d like to dedicate these pages in loving memory.

Grandmom grew up in the small town of Front Royal (or, as she used to call it, “Front Roll”), nestled into the Shenandoah Valley of the Appalachian Mountains in northwestern Virginia. Despite her small town upbringing, she did the unthinkable for a single young woman of her generation and first left home to study art in college, then later left Virginia to see the big wide world. She moved to New York—something that would come much harder to me nearly 60 years later—and lied about her age to become a stewardess for American Airlines when air travel was still young. Back then, being a stewardess was nearly as glamorous as being a movie star—and only the young, beautiful, single girls were chosen for this prestigious job. She moved to Hollywood, California, where she lived in a house with the other young stewardesses among the stars…and she had any number of great stories about these young, crazy, independent years. After the war, she returned home to Front Royal, where she married her childhood friend and sweetheart, an Air Force pilot named A.B. Honts. The next few years saw the young couple moving around with the Air Force and the arrival of my dad, uncle and aunt. But in the early 1950s while test piloting a B-52 bomber, my grandfather died when the plane malfunctioned and crashed. Not long after, my grandmother remarried to a longtime friend, also from Front Royal—my Granddad, Samuel Earle. Until the children were grown and gone, Grandmom and Granddad continued to move around the U.S. and the world, even living for a time in such places as Peru, Morocco, and the Philippines. Though my grandparents moved back to their hometown later in life, my grandmother never lost that adventurous spirit that drove her to leave home as a young woman and see the world.

I was fortunate to grow up near Richmond, Virginia, close enough to visit my grandparents regularly. My grandmother was therefore a constant presence in my life, and I believe much of my artistic tendencies and wanderlust were fostered by her own skill as an artist and by stories of her journeys. Wandering through her old Victorian home was like a visit to a museum where you could see and touch the relics of times gone by—the walls were draped with decades of her oil paintings, and all around the house were the decorations and trinkets she’d picked up from her travels across the globe. When nobody was looking I’d sneak over to her paintings and touch the canvas—an indulgence I was forbidden in the art museums she took me to—and I’d fantasize about which of these landscapes, still lives and portraits I might one day hang in my own home. Likewise, it was hard to resist running my fingers over the Moroccan doll or tooting out piercing notes on the Peruvian rock whistle carved in the shape of an animal. I’d stare at the Chinese silk screen at formal dinners in the dining room and trace the patterns of the oriental rugs with my toes. In hindsight, as an adult, it’s pretty easy to see that I soaked all that in and followed in her footsteps.

The older I got, the closer I became to Grandmom. As I matured, so did the nature of her stories; as I accomplished more, the more she encouraged me to go on; the more time we shared, the more we developed our shtick and inside stories. We shared something special—she was my confidant, my mentor, my sidekick, and my role model.

One of my earliest memories is playing tennis with my grandparents on the courts at Randolph Macon Academy in Front Royal. Both of my grandparents were avid tennis players, and I even went up to Front Royal the summer after 4th grade for tennis camp. Every day, my grandmother took me to the sports club for a morning of tennis (a sport which I never really mastered the necessary hand-eye coordination to play), every afternoon she’d take me for a chocolate malt at the local classic 1950s diner, The Royal Dairy, and every evening I’d catch fireflies out on the lawn. That was also the summer that I got a really bad case of poison ivy by walking on the brick wall next to the fence separating her yard from the neighbor’s yard. I knew better—my parents and grandparents always told me to watch out for the poison ivy there—but I did it anyway. …And I learned that I have a severe reaction to poison ivy the hard way. I can remember spreading the ointment all over my body (since the skin all over my body pretty much looked like a giraffe’s pattern at that point), and Grandmom doing her best to distract me with oil pastels and a sketchbook.

Thanksgiving dinners with my grandparents were classic. This was the only time of year that the whole extended family was together, and it was always a loud, loving full house. My grandmother would often stay up until 2 in the morning the night before Thanksgiving, preparing as much food as possible in advance; then she’d already be in the kitchen when I came down for breakfast, still preparing the most amazing meals of my childhood, aside from the tomato aspic, which was dreaded by all of the grandchildren. Good, Southern table manners were enforced, and we were constantly reminded how good we had it—that in my grandparents’ day, children were seen and not heard. No one was allowed to take the first bite until my grandmother—the hostess—took the first bite…and after a long Thanksgiving prayer, waiting for this moment wasn’t easy. After I’d graduated from the children’s table to the adults’ table, I still had to be on full alert—an elbow on the table could lead to a painful flick from Grandmom, the sting of which was always surprising coming from such a petite woman. However, Grandmom still allowed a few things at the table that wouldn’t have been allowed at home—only at her house was I allowed to sprinkle sugar on my breakfast cereal!

My grandmother was also an avid skier, and she surprised us all by going skiing with my family in Breckenridge at the age of 75. I was in high school at the time, and I remember imploring my parents to talk to her and convince her not to go. But at the end of the day, my grandmother had skied a day of perfect runs, and I was the one who took all the spills. She could be quite stubborn and tenacious, and I believe that kept her going for a long time.

In recent years, Grandmom lost her independence and her health. But through it all, she was still the same, sparking woman—part Lucy Ricardo, part Grace Kelly—the clown, the charmer, and the belle of the ball. Our visits were filled with incontrollable laughter, plenty of Jitterbug, and her beloved treat, a margarita.

When my sister had first started dating her husband, I was hanging out with my aunt, uncle and grandmother in Connecticut. My aunt and uncle posed one serious question after another about my brother-in-law’s character and his intentions, while my grandmother listened in silence. After a few minutes, Grandmom spoke up. “But what I really want to know is”—all eyes were turned to the matriarch of the family, expecting a grain of wisdom from her many years—“…Does he like margaritas?” We laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe.

The last thing my Grandmother wanted was a margarita. I couldn’t help but laugh when I heard this—in full Grandmom style, she still had her charm and wit about her to the end. Grandmom is going to be dearly missed by those she left behind. But someday I’ll see her again—and when I look for her in Heaven, I’ll find her, in a new and perfect heavenly body, perhaps with a margarita in her hand.

Grandmom and Uncle Craig cutting the rug at my sister's wedding reception.

After a family outing to the park: Uncle Craig and Aunt Gale, Grandmom, Lilia, Mohammed, and the kids

Grandmom, Aunt Susie, and Uncle Clint

Grandmom and me in Connecticut

Status Update

2009-08-01T06:50:00.002-04:00

Final lesson

I figure it’s about time I update you on what’s going on around here, since my blog isn’t quite up-to-date. …As my last entry on Wales took place at the end of May/beginning of June, we’ve got a little catching up to do.

Most of you probably know that I’m writing this little update from Malta. But for those of you who are saying, “Mal-where?” I can fill you in.

My contract renewal as a second-year Fulbright English teaching assistant ran up at the end of May. Since TAs are only allowed to stay 2 years max, that’s it for me.

It’s a shame, really. It was pretty much the best job ever—great hours, creative freedom, and little responsibility, all rolled into one nice little package. This past school year, TAs taught at a comfortable pace of 13 lesson hours per week, which again meant only a 3- or 4-day workweek, depending on the school. Whereas last year I was quite the ace at lesson planning—I chose relevant cultural or linguistic topics and spent hours and hours creating a nice, neat, 50-minute lesson based around said topic—this year I realized that I can pull of the same result with only a fraction of the effort. In other words: I got lazy. I still came up with some great lessons this year—lessons that I’ve done countless times and leave the kids asking for more such lessons—but I didn’t put in nearly as many hours with the lesson planning. Maybe this isn’t laziness, but rather the effortlessness that comes with experience…at any rate, I discovered that I could even enter the classroom and come up with a spontaneous lesson if needed. It’s a handy dandy skill to have, but it still leaves you with the feeling that you just crammed for your final exams and pulled it off. (…Like I did for pretty much every exam I ever had in high school or college…)

One of the things I came to appreciate most about my job was the fresh start, every day. In an office job, you can have a crappy day and it just stays crappy until your 8(+) hours are up and you can finally drag yourself home tired, stressed, and frustrated. But teaching is wonderful—every 50 minutes you have the chance to start over. It’s like every 50 minutes is a new day—the slate is wiped clean and you can start over without any of the baggage from the previous lesson. If you have one crappy lesson, your minutes are numbered. Soon you can start fresh, a new beginning with a new class. I became so thankful for this…it means that your day can always get better. You’re not necessarily stuck with what you start with.

I also realized that I really liked being in the classroom. I’ve said this before, but I mean it. After two years, I can really see myself continuing to teach. And since I’m at a crossroads in my career/life, it’s the path I want to pursue the most.

Right now, all of my options are open. People keep telling me how great this is, and I sure hope they’re right. So as of now, here’s the skinny on where I am, what I’m doing, and where I may or may not be going.

After finishing up the school year, I traveled to England and Wales, came back to Graz for a bit, and then went to Serbia to visit a friend. A few days after getting back from Serbia, I completed a lifeguard training course (and got certified as a lifeguard “helper,” which I suppose means that I could “help” you not to drown) in preparation for my summer job as…drum roll please… an English teacher at a summer camp. In Malta! (…and Austria, but let’s just say Malta for now—it’s more exciting that way.)

So right now I find myself on Malta in a town called Mellieha up in the north part of the main island (conveniently called Malta as well) for three weeks with the kiddies. We’ve got a group of teenagers here between the ages of 13-18, and when we’re not in English class, or doing any number of activities designed to distract them from going out and drinking while we’re not looking, I am usually trying to sleep. So it’s a busy schedule, but pretty good so far. I’ll fill you in later, after I get back. After my 3 weeks in Malta, I’ve got a week off and then one final week with the camp in Murau, in Austria.

As it stands, I don’t know where I’ll be in September. I have a job promoting coffee machines (i.e., being the girl who gives out the free samples in a place like Best Buy and trying to get you to buy the machine) if I want it, but I still have to see if the paperwork for a working visa is approved. If so, I’ll stay in Austria for the time being. If not, I’ll come home. I’ve also applied to an agency that places teachers in private schools, but since it’s so late, it’s highly unlikely that I’d get a position for the upcoming school year (since I’d be coming back to the States after it begins, for one…), so chances are I have an in-between year anyhow. The way I see it now, if I have to have a crap job, at this point I’d rather have one in Austria than in the States…but we’ll see.

I booked a flight home for September 18 until October 13. If I’ve got something worked out in Austria by then, I’ll go back. If not, I’ll just stay. Or at least, that’s the plan.

…Stay tuned for more travel and cultural observations, coming soon!

School's out!

Having a Whale of a Time in Wales

2009-07-24T15:47:00.004-04:00

St. David's Cathedral, St. David's, Pembrokeshire, Wales

I know, I know, it's a totally cheesy heading. I just couldn't resist.

One of the fabulous things about living in Austria is that it was SO easy to pop over to London for my cousin's wedding in May. I took off the last week of school to fly to London (which is ironic, since last year I had to take off a week at the end of my school year in May for my sister's wedding--such bad timing for taking a week off!), hang out with relatives, and then head down to Wales with some family for a few days after the wedding. This was my third trip to London, which was perfect for a wedding; since I'd seen the city twice before, I didn't feel pressured to go out and be a tourist. Instead, I visited with friends in the city and the relatives I rarely get to see. This really made for the perfect London trip. But since I've already been there and done that in London, I thought I'd tell you a bit about Wales instead.

Before I went to Wales, I envisioned a verdant countryside full of rolling hills and sheep. The day after the wedding, we drove in a rented minivan from London to St. David's in Pembrokeshire, on the far southwest coast of Wales, through a verdant countryside full of rolling hills and sheep. Yep, it was pretty much as I'd envisioned it. I'd also somehow gotten the idea that, since Welsh is one of those languages that looks like a grab bag of letters strung together to form words and sentences, the people of Wales would have a funny and barely intelligible accent. Not that I'd ever spoken with anyone from Wales, of course. To the contrary, I found that the Welsh accent just sounded British. However, the Welsh language is everywhere -- on every street sign, in tourist literature, and even on the radio and television; apparently children learn Welsh in school until the age of 16, and everyone I met could speak a bit of the language even if they didn't consider themselves fluent.

Verdant countryside full of rolling hills and sheep

St. David's is the smallest city in the UK and the second smallest city in the world, located within Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. With a population of less than 2000 and and a quaint city center, it seems like more of a village than an actual city. But Queen Elizabeth II granted St. David's city status because it had St. David's Cathedral (also aptly named for the city's patron saint), a pilgrimage site built in 1181.

The ruins of the Bishops's Palace, with St. David's Cathedral and the old city wall in the background

Our cottage was literally right across from St. David's Cathedral...and conveniently right behind the pub. We really couldn't have been in a better spot! Since the town was so small and walkable, we were able to see the biggest attractions in St. David's on foot (the cathedral and the ruins of the Bishop's Palace), eat (and drink) in the pub when we got hungry, and venture out further towards the coast for more fun and adventure. When I think about what made Wales so great, my mind comes to three things: going coasteering, walking along the coastal path, and meet even more super-interesting people.

I wasn't kidding -- this was the view from the cottage

Coasteering

I'd never heard of coasteering until I got to Wales. A relatively new adventure sport, the term "coasteering" was coined by a St. David's-based adventure sport company to describe the combined activities of swimming, scrambling, climbing, and cliff jumping at the base of the cliffs along the coastline. (Just as "mountaineering" is the stuff you do on a mountain, "coasteering" is the stuff you do along the coast.) This company also touts itself as the world's first carbon neutral company...which is understandable, since we outfited ourselves at the base and then walked down to the coast and back--it's all manpower, baby!

We were given a wetsuit, a helmet, old sneakers, a ratty pair of shorts to wear over the wetsuit (to protect it from being ripped to shreds on the rocks), and topped it all off with a life vest. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of this getup, but as you can imagine, it makes for a funny sight. But so necessary. When we had walked down to the coastal cliffs of St. Non's (which is St. David's birthplace), our guide explained to us exactly what was going down. We'd take a fisherman's path down to the water (read: climb down the not-sheer face of the cliff) and then climb across some sharp rocks--being careful not to cut our hands on the barnacles--before jumping into the water breaking at the base of the cliff. From there we'd swim from rock to rock, playing in whirlpools and toilet bowls, jumping from rocks as high as 5 m, and scrabling along the coastal rocks. As the basics were being explained to me, I thought, "Wow, this is pretty much everything your mother told you not to do!"

Basically, you have the potential of being battered or shattered against the rocks at every turn. Or at least, that's what your mother would say. But since you're with a guide, all of these really fun activities somehow seem less stupid.

The water was a brisk 12 degrees Celsius, which was enough to keep my hands sufficiently numbed for the first hour or so (although the wet suit provided sufficient body warmth after I got over the initial shock), which is perhaps why I didn't notice that I actually was ripping my fingers to shreds on the rocks. At the end of our adventure, my fingertips had been sliced to smithereens by what looked like thousands of tiny paper cuts, so I would have been in the perfect position to rob a bank and leave no fingerprints behind...though I didn't plan my time wisely enough to fit that all in. My wetsuit didn't fare any better, and I noticed a few extra tears in the knees that hadn't been there when we set out.

But I was proud of my barnacle-sliced fingertips. It was worth every grunt and every momentary feeling of dread before jumping into lord knows what. Coasteering is such an exciting and unique experience, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Don't let this serene photo fool you -- there were fiestier waters at hand when we went coasteering!

The Coastal Path

Having been coasteering, I'd already gotten a taste for the shocking beauty of the coast. This was like no coast back home -- it was rich and rugged, high and dramatic, and the waters were a deep and wild azure. I had to go back.

Since none of my relatives wanted to go hiking with me, I bought a few maps and decided to head out our last morning in Wales by myself. I was just a tad bit nervous about this decision, since I would be alone...on a cliff. Not that I had any plans of falling in, but all of those stories of freak winds coming along and pushing people to their dooms or of rural rapists and murderers using such cliffs to get rid of their victims...yeah, I'll admit, a few of these thoughts ran through my head. What made me even more nervous, however, is that I didn't have any appropriate shoes. I'd only brought shoes with me appropriate for city walking...but I decided I wasn't going to let this stop me. The coast was just too spectacular to pass up.

Danger: Do not fall off cliff

I set out on the last morning in Wales from our cottage, returning to the path leading down to St. Non's that we'd taken the previous day when coasteering. From St. Non's I walked back towards the cliff with the fisherman's path, snaking along the coast until I reached St. Justinian's -- probably a distance of about 6-7 miles.

The coastal path as it should be: just for me!

It was incredible. I soon realized that there was no reason to fret the solitude, but to embrace it. It was perfect. (In fact, I was brought back to my farming experience in Tyrol last summer, when I climbed to the summit of an un-trailed mountain, "alm" by myself (sorry for the German-English pun...even if it's only funny to me, I couldn't resist).) In fact, I didn't run into any other hikers on the path until I was within a half mile of my destination, and by then I actually resented them for intruding on my coast. The coastline awed me at every turn. I suppose that if you're looking at my pictures, after a while it all looks the same. But when I was there and standing on those cliffs carpeted in wildflowers sliding into that deep blue ocean under a clear blue sky, my spirit was joyful and my heart was happy and I was full of praise for such astounding creation. It really gets me.

The magnificence of the scenery testifies to the real power of the landscape: all of this incredible nature was enough to distract me from my burning, blister-ridden feet, which could feel the contour of every rock through the thin, thin soles of my shoes. Fortunately, when I arrived at St. Justinian's, I was just in time to catch the local shuttle bus (which does not tend to run often during the day) back to St. David's. The £1 fare was gladly spent in exchange for the last 2 miles spared my aching feet on the road back to St. David's. And although it took my feet days to recover, it was well worth the pain.

More People Worth Meeting

We arrived in St. David's rather late on our first night in Wales and decided to head over to the pub around 10 pm.
"If we sit in the beer garden, I bet we'll make some new friends!" I said as we were deciding where to sit.
"No we won't," my aunt said quickly and confidently.
But an hour later, after we'd chosen to occupy a few free seats at the end of a table in the beer garden where a couple of musicians were playing, we were all engaged in conversations with the really interesting people around us.

My most interesting conversation, however, was with a guy known to the locals -- as he put it -- as "Crazy Joe." I can't verify that any of his story is true, and it very well could have been one of the best tall tales ever spun, but he was an inspiring character, regardless.
Apparently, this guy was one of the top 5 mountain climbers in the UK, but years ago he scaled a peak with his wife...and she didn't make it down alive. He felt terrible and blamed himself for the accident. In the midst of his depression, he decided to go to Antarctica in an act of self-punishment. This decision, however, started out as exactly that -- a decision. He had no skills and wasn't qualified at all, but he badgered the UK's Antarctic program until they let him in. He went as an engineer, though he wasn't one before, and stayed for 7.5 consecutive years with no visits back to the rest of the world. (Although, allegedly, his father came to visit him once during that time in Antarctica.) Crazy Joe truly loved the freedom of the Antarctic: "It's the only f*ing place on earth where there are no bloody rules!" He found respite there from authority and The Man, and he reveled in it. Re-entry into an organized, regulated society after 7.5 years of total (Antarctic) freedom was difficult for him, but he did have 7.5 years worth of unspent wages upon his return...after all, you can't really spent money while living in Antarctica, can you? So what did Crazy Joe do? He surfed. He came back home and surfed along the Welsh coast for months. When I met him, he was no longer surfing but was trying to sort his life out and figure out what to do. When I asked him what he was considering, he said that he "might have to make art for a living" but couldn't elaborate more. Those of you who know my secret wish to go to Antarctica can understand why wasn't totally put off by his annoying drunken demeanor and kept on chatting with him until the intriguing story came out. His advice for getting to Antarctica when you're not qualified? "Be a f*ing pain in the ass!"

The other person I met who spoke to a secret wish of mine was the travel writer. If you've known me for more than 5 minutes then you've probably ascertained that I like to travel. If you're reading this blog, well then, you know I like to write. So it's no big jump to conclusions to assume that I've toyed with the idea of travel writing for a long time, but just haven't known where to start. So when I met the travel writer who as "tagging along" on the coasteering trip for the travel guide he was working on, you can imagine my enthusiasm. Though I tried to show a dose of composed restraint, I pretty much kept the questions coming, concluding with an apologetic, "So do people always pick your brain like this when they find out you're a travel writer?" Surprisingly, they do not. His biggest advice for someone trying to break into travel writing is just to write -- there's bound to be someone out there who will take your work! Somehow it wasn't until I was talking to him that it became clear to me that travel writing tends to be lonely business -- you do most of your travelling alone unless you're writing for a publication big enough to have a photographer with you. Although traveling alone is not really my thing, I think I could hack it for the sake of being a travel writer. Now just to figure out where to start...

Cappadocia, Land of Beautiful Horses

2009-07-14T03:19:00.022-04:00

We concluded our trip with a short but spectacular 3-day jaunt through the region of Cappadocia -- an area with an highly unusual natural landscape!

The wheels on the bus go round and round...
One of the best ways to travel through Turkey (if you choose not to fly) is by bus. In contrast to countries like Austria, it is actually more direct, faster and cheaper to travel by bus than by train in Turkey. Consequently, there is a thriving business for bus companies who provide transportation throughout the country. It's about 11 hours from Istanbul to Cappadocia on the night bus, which makes for a long and uncomfortable night if you have any difficulty sleeping on buses, but every few hours the bus stops for a bathroom and leg-stretching (or smoking, if that's your thing) break. To make your journey more pleasant, there is a steward who comes around (only once) to offer you drinks and Turkish soap operas (which are strangely compelling, even if you don't understand what they're saying!) playing on the TVs mounted to the ceiling. It's actually quite a nice way to travel, as the buses are new and modern and because you can reason with yourself that the mild discomfort of an 11-hour bus ride is worth the money you're saving on accommodation for the night. Oh, and I should also mention that when you book your ticket on the bus, they make sure that you are booked next to someone of the same gender -- there is no mixing of men and women as seatmates on the nightbus. (N.b.: Naturally, the booking agents do this to the best of their ability. On the night bus back from Cappadocia to Istanbul I was sitting next to an American woman who, on her night bus into Cappadocia, had been seated next to a guy. However, it's a small world for tourists, and this guy she was seated next to was a tourist I'd met in Cappadocia as well...unfortunately for the booking agent, his name was of Indian origin and ended in an "a," thus the assumption on paper that he was female.)

"What's the deal with [Cappadocia]?"

The biggest draw for visiting Cappadocia is the landscape. That, mixed with a dash of ancient and modern history, makes for quite an interesting destination.

The Lay of the Land

Cappadocia generally refers to the Nevşehir Province in central Turkey, though officially it is simply an area with no official boundaries. Generally understood to be a triangle formed by the towns of Avanos in the north, Nevşehir in the west and Ürgüp in the east, Cappadocia means "Land of Beautiful Horses" in either the ancient Hittite or the ancient Persian language, depending on your source. Settled first by Neolithic cultures and later by the Hittites, Persians, Greeks and Romans, and finally the Ottomans, Cappadocia has a rich blend of cultural history.

The defining feature of Cappadocia is its landscape. The entire area (roughly 250 miles wide and 120 miles top to bottom) is littered with unique rock formations, caves and gorges and is ringed by the ancient volcanoes that shaped the area. The most famous of these natural rock formations is the signature Cappadocian fairy chimney, a somewhat phallic column with a large round bit of rock balancing on top.

Formed over eons of time and erosion, the basic geological breakdown of these UNESCO World Heritage Site formations looks something like this:
First, way back in the day, the volcanoes ruled the land. They sent out a bottom layer of hard lava, which forms the geological base for these formations.
But as the saying goes, what goes up, must come down. So then, after the volcanoes erupted and the lava flowed, the volcanic ash, called tuff, rained down on the base layer of lava, forming a thick second layer of rock.
Finally, a tougher upper layer of basalt settled on the mix, providing the perfect geological conditions for some freaky erosion.
Over time, cracks and fissures developed in the upper layer of basalt. This allowed the rain, wind, and other elements to get to the softer layer of tuff underneath and do their dirty work. The basalt on top formed a protective shield for the softer tuff directly beneath it, but the rest of the tuff -- not directly protected by an upper layer of basalt -- was eroded away over time and exposure to the elements, leaving a rock formation topped by the tough basalt cap supported by a conical tuff column standing firm on a bed of lava. And this is the fairy chimney as we know it today.

Fairy chimneys

Because many of the rocks and cliffs in the area are also made of this not-so-tough tuff, the early Christians were able to carve out hundreds of cave churches and shelters where they escaped persecution. Even several multi-level underground cities were carved out, providing protection and shelter until Christianity became a recognized and accepted religion. Although the underground cities are now just empty shells, you can see what remains of the original frescoes in many of the cave churches.

Living Like the Locals

Traditionally, many residents of Cappadocian regions also lived in hollowed-out cave houses -- some on cliff faces, some at the base of fairy chimneys, and some into the sides of the mountains. Although a few people still live in such houses today, most residents live in what we consider "normal" houses. However, the thrill of living in a cave is still alive and well for the tourists who come and visit, and the hotels and hostels in the area -- especially in the village of Göreme where we stayed -- seem to be almost exclusively cave rooms. As one might expect, our cave room in the hostel was a bit chilly and damp, but well worth the experience.

A typical Cappadocian cave home

How to See Cappadocia in a Mere 3 Days

Because we were pressed for time, we only had three days to see this rather large region. Wanting to optimize what little time we had, we decided to explore the town of Göreme where we were staying on the first day, and then take two all-day tours (a North Tour and a South Tour) advertised at the hostel on the following two days. It was clear by the end of the first day that we easily could have stayed much, much longer in Cappadocia, so we really milked the time we had for all it was worth. I'm convinced we got the most out of our mere 3 days as was possible for two car-less, hapless tourists.

The Göreme Open Air Museum

The Göreme Open Air Museum is a classic but fitting first stop in Cappadocia. Located only a short walk or shuttle ride from the center of town, the museum is an outdoor complex of rock-cut churches and monastic spaces dating from the 10th to 12th centuries. You'll have to pay an entrance fee of about 15 lira to get in, but once you're inside you have access to a bunch of classic Cappadocian rock churches that are conveniently all in one place. The frescoes here are in remarkable shape, and the art history dork inside me really dug the fact that you can see both iconic and iconoclastic frescoes side-by-side. (I later found out that this is typical of many Cappadocian cave churches and monastic complexes, not just the ones in Göreme.)

Frescoes in the Göreme Open Air Museum

Even for an art historian (yeah, yeah, I use this term loosely), all of the churches and frescoes began to look the same after a while. However, the vantage point from the Open Air Museum provided an excellent view of the countryside, and after we left, we decided to walk through the rock formations and explore some trails before heading back into town.

Göreme Open Air Museum

Hiking and Biking Through Cappadocia

There are any number of hiking trails and biking routes through Cappadocia. If we'd had more time in the region, I would have wanted to go out exploring. As it was, we spent the morning of our second day exploring the nearby paths, romping through the hills, and exploring the rock formations and rock caves we encountered. It was like a giant playground for adults, and I could have easily spent all day out there without getting bored.

One of the many paths to explore around Göreme

Üçhisar Castle

Üçhisar Castle is a fortress carved into the highest peak in Cappadocia. People actually lived in the castle until the 1950s, when erosion became so bad that it was dangerous for people to remain. Today it reminds the modern visitor of a human ant farm carved into the face of the cliff.

The atypical castle at Üçhisar

Onyx Production

Cappadocia is also a rich source of onyx, which I learned is not just the rich black stone seen in jewelry today. Onyx is actually a type of quartz that ranges in color from white to black, and in Cappadocia it has been quaried, carved and polished for centuries. We went to an artisan center and watched a demonstration -- shamelessly aimed at getting tourists to the gift shop, but packed with interesting information nonetheless -- where they showed us the entire process of cutting, shaping and polishing the stone. Starting with a rough chunk of onyx, the demonstrator shaped it into the form of an egg on a pedestal before finally polishing the egg shape of a translucent shine. At the end of the demonstration, they asked if anyone knew the meaning of the word "Cappadocia"...and that person who answered just happened to get the onyx egg as a prize.

Lookey here! I guess she won the onyx egg!

Fairy Chimneys in Ürgüp, Paşabag / Monks Valley, Imagination Valley, and Pigeon Valley

Really, the names say it all. In Cappadocia there are any number of spectacular valleys with rock formations and hiking trails, each one slightly more psychadelic than the rest. Since fairy chimneys can range in size and shape, no two valleys really look the same. Many have described the landscape as something like a moonscape or an alien planet. In this case, I'll just let some of the pictures speak for themselves.

Fairy chimneys in Monks Valley. Some of these are remarkable because they have multiple basalt heads.

Pottery in Avanos

At the north end of Cappadocia lies the sleepy town of Avanos. There's really not much going for it, except for the fact that, well, they've been producing pottery for thousands and thousands of years. In fact, it was the Hittites who first started collecting silt from the nearby Red River to produce their signature red clay, and the same type of pottery is still being produced in Avanos today.

The Red River, aptly named for its red silt, is the longest river in Turkey. For millenia now, the local Avanos potters have gone down to the river to collect the red silt and then let it ferment for two weeks into a workable clay. This soft red clay is then thrown on a kick wheel the same way it was when the Hittites were around.

At the pottery center, we watched a young man of no more than 20 years old give a demonstration on pottery throwing, starting with a raw chunk of clay and ending with a beautifully thrown vessel. Our tour guide narrated the whole process in detail, and when the young potter was finished and removed the pot from the wheel, the guide said, "Now that you've seen how easy that was, who'd like to give this a try?" As soon as he posed the question, I knew that I really, really wanted to try throwing a pot. I've never used a pottery wheel in my life, but the idea of making my own vessel in the same way as the Hittites was irresistable. However, I'd already won the onyx egg, so I didn't want to appear overeager and steal somebody else's chance to participate.
To my surprise, the room stayed silent. No one said a thing. And after I looked around the room to see how other people were reacting, my eyes fell on the guide and we made eye contact. "You want to try?" he asked.
"Who? Me?" I asked, looking around at the people seated next to me.
But he clearly meant me, so I went up to the front (quite happy on the inside) and donned some giant puffy pants and footies caked with dried clay.
Taking a seat behind the wheel, I started to kick it rather awkwardly, but I just couldn't work up enough speed. So the potter came up beside me and kicked the wheel as I placed my hands on the clay, not having a clue what what supposed to happen. It quickly became clear that I didn't even know where to start, so he showed me how to dig my thumbs into the clay and bring up the sides to form a bowl. It was so much harder than he made it look, and I noticed that every little movement threw off the shape of my bowl, making it hopelessly asymmetrical. In the end, my wonky bowl looked nothing like the potter's, but I was proud of my very minor accomplishment. But what a unique experience it was to throw traditional pottery in Avanos!

A comparison of my attempt, on the left, and the potter's vessel, on the right.

Cavuşin Old Village

A quick stop, but interesting nonetheless, is the Cavuşin Old Village, a town carved entirely out of a cliff face. It's the kind of thing you expect to see in an Indiana Jones movie.

Once this was a thriving village.

Derinkuyu Underground City

An underground city is also something you'd expect to see out of an Indiana Jones movie, right? Derinkuyu is the largest of Cappadocia's underground cities, weighing in at an impressive 10 levels and diving as deep as 85 meters below the surface. The preliminary passages and levels were built by ancient peoples, but the city didn't become the underground metropolis that it is known as today until the early Christians expanded it to escape Roman persecution. (Are we noticing a trend here? The early Christians did not have it good in this area!) Equipped with chapels, kitchens, tombs, ventilation shafts, and even stables, the city could accomodate thousands of people at its peak. However, all of this was not accessible from the outside -- the original entrances were not from tunnels to the surface but rather from private houses on the land above. Such underground cities were not permanently inhabited, but rather only in emergency situations; the entrances could be sealed by large stones, and the extensive storerooms below could hold enough food for both people and livestock. Today, only 10% of Derinkuyu is open to the public, and not even all of it has been excavated. There are several other similar cities in the region, but Derinkuyu remains the largest and most popular for tourists.

A short, narrow passageway in the Derinkuyu underground city.

Ilhara Valley

For a nominal fee, visitors can also enter the Ilhara Valley and take a walk through the 10-mile long gorge carved into the volcanic rock by the river. Along the valley are more stone churches, walking trails, and now small restaurants for visitors who need a little pick-me-up after a long day of sightseeing. The nearby Mount Erciyes is probably responsible for much of that volcanic rock, but it hasn't erupted for over 2000 years.

The Ilhara Valley gorge

A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Finally, who can leave Cappadocia without a salute to George Lucas' very own planet of Tatooine? Yep, that's right -- filmed right here against the curious backdrop of the Cappadocian rock formations, this is the home to our dear friends, the Sand People.

Look familiar? This is the home of the Sand People.

More Turkish Potpourri and Food Basics

2009-07-13T04:37:00.011-04:00

Turkish Potpourri -- Double Jeopardy Round

There are just a few more miscellaneous things worth mentioning about Turkey. Let's start with a classic:

Haggling

As previously mentioned in the Do's and Don'ts of traveling in Turkey, you should never pay full price for anything in the bazaars...and even in many shops, the price is often negotiable. For someone such as myself coming from a fixed-price culture, this can be a very uncomfortable experience.

Negotiating a price -- or haggling -- requires one to be direct, assertive and persistent...or, in other words, something that we're taught from a young age in Anglo-American culture is impolite. This direct confrontation can often feel like a test of wills, a verbal showdown between you and the seller. For someone unaccustomed to such practices, it really takes some willpower to suppress these feelings and get down and dirty in the negotiations. Unfortnately, as a tourist, you have a few natural disadvantages: you don't speak the language, you probably have more money to burn than the locals, and you're probably uncomfortable with the situation from the get-go. And the seller is going to capitalize on this and on that nagging feeling in the back of your head saying, "Just accept the price and be done with it. It's still cheaper than you'd get it back home, anyway."

But the skilled haggler knows that to successfully parry the asking price, you need a subtle blend of stubborness and meekness. You have to let the seller think that he has the upper hand while working him over to get him down to the price you predetermined for yourself before even starting with the negociations. I say all of this not as an experienced haggler, but as one who has watched a master at work. My travel buddy drew on her experience with price negotiation in Chinese culture to really pull off some gutsy yet successful transactions. Eventually I stopped trying to haggle myself and just sent her to do my dirty work for me!

My first attempt at negociating price was in the Grand Bazaar. I found a pair of silver earrings for 43 YTL (about $28), and as soon as I expressed interest the shop owner told me that -- since he could tell I was a serious customer -- he'd let me have them for 30 YTL (about $19). Unfortunately, having worked in a jewelry store for 5 years, I know the real price of silver. I realize that I can no longer buy jewelry for slightly above cost, but I still have a hard time coming to terms with retail prices. This first shop owner was unwilling to go lower in price, so I moved on. Eventually I found the same pair of earrings at another stand for the asking price of 30 YTL. I decided I wouldn't pay more than 17 YTL (about $11) and set to work. I used all my best haggling skills, starting low and letting the shop assistant give me the runaround about him being only a poor student himself who needs to eat, an argument I easily returned (being young and looking younger has its advantages in these situations). When we finally got to my ultimatum of 17 YTL or nothing, he agreed to ask his boss if he could lower the price. Of course his boss said no, so I said I'd walk. They then offered me the earrings for 18 YTL, which I politely turned down, saying it was simply too much and I couldn't go above 17 YTL. In the end I got my earrings for the 17 YTL, still more than they were worth, but a respectable enough price for an English-speaking tourist.

But the best negociation by far happened in Cappadocia in the town of Göreme. The friend I was traveling with set out to buy herself enough jewelry to last her for the next several years, and as we went from shop to shop, she managed to buy 14 different pieces of jewelry between 3 different shops for an impressive total of 112 YTL (about $71). Finally, we stopped in an antique store to look around.

The shop assistant was a very friendly young woman who immediately greeted us when we came in the door and made some pleasant chit chat. Then I noticed a copy of The Old Man and the Sea out on the counter, and I asked her if she was reading that book. It turns out she was teaching herself English through this book and a dictionary, and for the next 45 minutes we chatted about books and jewelry and everything else as we browsed and sipped the apple tea she offered us. After my friend decided on 4 more pieces of jewelry and negotiated another great price, I found a pendant that I really liked. The more I considered the pendant, the longer my friend had to continue looking around the shop; so by the time I'd decided to get it, she'd already found 2 more pieces she wanted and had begun haggling again. This time around, however, we were both having difficulty getting the price down. As the girl translated our offers to her father, the owner of the shop, he started to raise his original price instead of lower it! Seeing that we were going nowhere, I counter-offered as a last resort, "Ok, how about this: my friend gets those rings for 32 YTL and I get this pendant and the chain for 15 YTL, and how about I also send you a book in English?" My friend and I watched the shop assistant's short and rapid discussion with her father in suspenseful anticipation. After a few moments, he nodded. The transaction was approved -- and this time, a negotiation and a barter!

After we'd paid up and gotten a mailing address, the father invited us to another cup of tea. We stayed in the shop a little longer, just hanging out with the two of them and chatting. After this negotiation, the father gradually warmed up to us, and after serving us tea, he disappeared into the back of the shop. As his daughter translated, she explained to us that he had a very valuable gold and ruby ring that had belonged to his father, which was too valuable to keep out for everyone to see. He brought out the ring just to show us his family treasure, so that we could admire it; this was no sales pitch -- rather, it was an honor to be welcomed and invited in. We left the shop over an hour after we arrived, exchanging email addresses with the girl and having made yet another Turkish friend. Although all of this blossomed out of a business transaction, this was another one of those genuine experiences of small town Turkish hospitality.

Haggling for scarves

The Evil Eye

I was surprised to learn that the belief in the Evil Eye is not a mere superstition in Turkey, but a belief that is alive and thriving. Since I always saw the charm against the Evil Eye in the context of souvenir vendors and shops aimed at tourists, I'd simply assumed that it was one of the cultural cliches meant to boost sales of something "typically Turkish," much like a beer stein from Munich or a boomerang from Australia.

However, I had more than one Turkish person tell me how important these charms against the Evil Eye actually are. (And perhaps I should also clarify that none of these people were selling Evil Eye charms!) A man in Cappadocia explained to me that this belief of the power of the Evil Eye has been deeply engrained in Turkish culture for the past 1000 years. Many people, he told me, wear 2-3 small Evil Eye charms hidden away in their pockets or sewn into their clothes in order to protect themselves from the malintentioned thoughts and words of others. He'd had at least one on him at all times since childhood and pulled one out of his blazer pocket to show me. His charm was only about an inch in diameter, and as I fingered it and examined the blue glass, he told me that when you discover a broken charm, that's when you know that someone has wished you harm. You should then get a new one to continue protecting yourself against the ill will of others. His testimonial was sincere, as he had already discovered several broken charms in his lifetime.

A charm set into the sidewalk to protect against the Evil Eye

On the Road:

It's interesting to compare how people drive in different countries. Still, the most harrowing experiences in a vehicle I've had were in Romania, where I'm convinced any driver could be a stunt driver.

I didn't do any driving myself in Turkey, but I was the passenger a few times. My ride from the airport to the hostel was a bit frightening, with the driver exceeding double the speed limit within the city limits. All I could do was clasp my hands in my lap and pray I made it to the hostel in one piece.

Country driving proved far different. In Cappadocia, the drivers didn't seem to be drunk with speed, but this is where the concept of lanes got a bit fuzzy. Lanes, or staying in one's lane, were a mere formality in the countryside unless oncoming traffic was an immediate likelihood. Some of the country roads were in such bad condition, however, that it would have been impossible to stay in the lane even if you wanted to. When I could tear my eyes away from the road -- because somehow as a passenger I still think I have more control if I keep my own eyes on the road -- I saw clips of life as though seen through a documentary lens: goat herders in the fields, women sitting around the roadside in traditional clothes, farmers working in the fields, and families piled onto the tractor chugging along the road.

On the road approaching an ancient volcano in Cappadocia

A Monumental First:

One of the reasons I have The Gift of Travel, i.e., an immunity to jetlag, is because I cannot sleep in any sort of moving object. Planes, trains, cars, you name it -- the best I can hope for is a heavy rest. This is actually quite practical when crossing oceans because I'm so tired by the time I go to bed at the local time of my destination that I get a whole night's sleep and wake up perfectly adjusted to local time in the morning. However, my return flight from Turkey marked a major first for me: I slept on the plane.

I left Cappadocia Sunday night on the overnight bus to Istanbul. I arrived 11 hours later on Monday morning stiff, sore, and dead tired from a sleepless night. Despite the 2-hour nap I took at the hostel, I remained tired throughout the day and went to bed Monday night at about 9:30 pm. However, I had to catch the 3 am shuttle bus to the airport for my 6:30 am flight, so I got only a few short hours of rest before having to leave. By the time I boarded the plane, I was so tired that I couldn't even keep my eyes open -- it was a kind of fatigue I've never felt in my life. After settling into my seat, I crossed my legs and closed my eyes and waited for liftoff. It seemed that it was taking the plane an awfully long time to get going, and I figured we must be delayed on the runway. When I finally took the effort to open my eyes, I realized that we were already at cruising altitude! Somehow I'd actually fallen asleep and slept through the takeoff, which hasn't happened before or since.

And finally, I bring you... Turkish Food

One of best things about travel is experiencing the local foods. We had some really excellent dishes of roast meats, kebabs, and all of the typically Turkish foods, often from places filled with locals. But rather than go into detail about all the different meals we had, I'm just going to share with you the staples of our trip -- the regular, every day foods that we came to depend on.

Turkish Bread

Oh yes, the Turkish bread. It's big, it's fluffy, and you can eat disturbing amounts of it without becoming as full as you'd think.

Every morning, the hostel would provide us with a breakfast of bread and various spreads and vegetables to put on the bread. Any sandwich ordered for later would be put on a giant half-loaf, which at first glance looked impossibly large to consume, but which went down in one sitting every time. This bread was a staple of our diet every day in Turkey.

Turkish Tea

Turkey is very much a tea culture -- everyone drinks the tea for every occassion. For breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, for dessert, for entertaining, for hospitality, for boredom....for everything. It's very common for someone to offer you a tea, which will usually either be a strong black tea with sugar or a sweet apple tea (with sugar). The Pigeon Guy even admitted to drinking 22-25 cups a day! Tea is always served in a special Turkish tea cup and saucer.

Turkish tea: çay (pronounced "chai")

Turkish Coffee

Very strong. Very black. Rivals any Italian espresso I've ever had.

I only had two cups of Turkish coffee while I was there, but that was enough. Even a coffee at 3 pm kept me up way past midnight.

Turkish coffee with "toast"

Turkish Delight and Baklava

I've never been much of a fan of Turkish Delight. I think the first time I tried it was only because I'd read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and I wanted to know what could have enticed Edmund so strongly. Unfortunately that first experience left me wondering what Edmund saw in the treat, so I wanted to give the real Turkish Turkish delight a shot. It was all over the markets and the bazaars, so I gave it another taste...and now I know that I'm just not a Turkish delight person.

Baklava was also everywhere, and I have to say that I've now had the best baklava in Turkey. Yummmm.

Mounds of baklava and Turkish delight in a storefront window

Manti, or Turkish Ravioli

One day at the hostel, the proprietor decided to cook us a meal of Manti, or what is basically a Turkish ravioli. Like ravioli, manti is a pasta with a meat filling, and it is served with a yogurt/chili/garlic/butter sauce. I never would have thought of putting yogurt on pasta, but it was amazing. I've since adopted this meal as my own -- with store-bought ravioli as a reasonable manti substitute, I can easily make my own yogurt sauce. It's quick, easy, and now my flatmate has picked it up and even makes it for herself! A quick Google search can provide you with any number of Manti recipes.

Manti

...Next time, the final post on Turkey: Cappadocia!

"I'll take Turkish Potpourri for $500, Alex."

2009-06-29T10:20:00.013-04:00

There are a bunch of noteworthy things about my trip to Turkey that don't fit into any particular category such as Sightseeing, People, or Food. ("Wait--Food?" you ask. ...That's right, there's more! You still have yet to hear about the food or the wonders of Cappadocia. But I digress.) Thus, I've decided to put my miscellaneous experiences into the category of:

Turkish Potpourri

Rebecca Horts:

I arrived in Istanbul shortly after 11 pm. By the time I got through the line to purchase my entry visa, and then through the line for passport control, it was well after midnight. I'd pre-arranged an airport pickup with the hostel, so when I stepped through customs and into the arrivals hall, I spotted my cab driver waiting for me with a sign labeled "Rebecca Horts." Not only did it amuse me that I was one of the people on the signs, but the creative spelling of my name was pretty amusing as well. (Though not as amusing as this classic booking from my OZ 08 trip through Australia last year.)

The Call to Prayer:

I first heard a call to prayer on a fieldtrip to the Richmond Mosque in my 9th grade world history class. We'd spent a whole semester learning about Islam, and this was our practical application. I remember that the trip made such an impression on me at the time--as a 14-year-old WASP from the 'burbs I'd never had any interactions with Muslims--and for years afterwards I appreciated that trip and our Q&A session with the imam after the Friday prayer service for broadening my horizons beyond everyday Chesterfield County. That being said, I was 14 years old and had never heard a call to prayer. And I won't pretend that my first reaction wasn't to suppress a giggle at the weird foreign sounds of the chant. But fortunately I managed to stay composed, and by the end of the call to prayer I wondered how I could have even wanted to laugh.

The second time I heard a call to prayer was in Istanbul.

Just as the church bells in Austria chime at regular intervals 3-5 times a day (depending on the day), the call to prayer rings out through the city 5 times a day. Even my earplugs weren't enough to mute the 5 am call to prayer, a much earlier alarm than its 7 am churchbell counterpart in Austria. When it's time for a call to prayer in Istanbul, all the different mosques send out a live transmission on loudspeakers secured on the minarets, and pretty soon you're surrounded by a round of calls to prayer. At first it was a little strange, just because it is such a different noise than what I'm used to--it was a regular reminder that I was a guest in a country whose culture is far different from any other country I've experienced; however, gone was the 9th grade propensity to giggle. I came to enjoy the calls to prayer and found them melodic and interesting, especially when we found ourselves in a particularly interesting part of the city when it happened, like the video below.

The Turkish Flag Challenge:

It didn't take us long to realize that there is a Turkish flag from nearly every vantage point in Istanbul. It is omnipresent. (...And you thought Americans were patriotic...)

When we realized just how ubiquitous the flag really is, we decided to initiate a challenge: the Turkish Flag Challenge.

Participants: 2 or more players
Equipment: A Turkish flag and a buzzword
Preparation: As a group, determine a mutual buzzword (for example: "Strudel"). Any player may initiate the Turkish Flag Challenge at any time.
Rules: When out and about in Istanbul, any player can call out the buzzword (ex: "Strudel!") at any time. The other players must stop in their spot and search for a Turkish flag within eyesight. The first player to point out the Turkish flag wins that round.
Winners: There are only winners, never losers.

Türkçe konuşur musunuz? *

Before I left for Turkey, a few friends had given me some helpful phrases in Turkish, such as: "Hello;" "Thank you;" "How much?"; and "I want to get off the minibus!" But I always try to pick up as much of a foreign language as I can while I'm in the country, so I made it a point to constantly ask friends, the hostel proprietor, and pretty much anyone else I was dealing with how to say things in Turkish.

But it was hard, man. Turkish is tough. It was really difficult for me to distinguish the different sounds, let alone the different words. Once I had a better understanding of how to pronounce written Turkish, it made it a little easier to order things. And it was the little victories--the baby steps--that made it so rewarding. Sometimes it helped to use pneumonic devices; for example, the Turkish word for "thank you" is Teşekkür ederim, which sounds very similar to "tea sugar dream." (N.b.: Similarly, some visitors in Graz have found the German word for "excuse me"--Entschuldigung--to sound like a mumbled "I'm chewing gum.")

First I ordered, "Three teas, please," at a teahouse when my companions had left the table. I was able to throw in the numbers 1-3 in any setting, actually...but mostly where drinks were involved. When haggling, I could even use a sad-looking, "No, too much." But my crowning moment in Turkish was after my oil massage in the Turkish baths: I was able to whip out a confident, "Thank you. Good. Super." ...I mean, what more can you really say about a good massage? Finally, I went to meet a friend in Istanbul on my last afternoon in town. I was alone and took the tram to her stop. When I got off, I felt a tap on the shoulder, and I turned around to see a Turkish bottle blond who immediately said, "Pardon..." and then a bunch of Turkish I didn't understand. This was it--this was my moment. My moment to use a real sentence and say, "Sorry, I don't understand," or "Sorry, I don't speak Turkish." But when the words came out, it was a very English sentence and I'd lost my chance to use a real Turkish sentence in a real-life situation forever. But I was flattered by being taken for Turkish.

*Click on the link to hear the phrase "Do you speak Turkish?" in Turkish.

I Scream, You Scream:

We all scream for Dondurma!

I am a huge fan of ice cream. Forget chocolate, just tell me where the ice cream is. In Rome, I had the gelato at least once a day. In Graz, I can hardly get out of town without visiting one of the ice cream shops placed tantilizingly on every street worth walking on. And in Turkey...well they have ice cream too. And I couldn't wait to get my hands on it.

I first became suspicious of the Turkish ice cream when I went to give my order and the ice cream man pulled out a long-handled metal paddle. Now that's odd. And then when he put my two scoops on the cone...something wasn't quite right. They seemed to glisten unnaturally, and although mine was the first to be served, it hadn't started dripping down the sides of the cone by the time my two friends got theirs. And then we all tasted it.

It was cold. Now's that's familiar, I'm feeling it. But wait! It's...it's...chewy?! Yes, Turkish ice cream is downright chewy! It's got the consistency of a marshmallow turned into ice cream, which is an odd sensation indeed. The Turkish consider this type of ice cream "normal;"our stuff--like gelato, soft serve, and what you and I consider normal ice cream--isn't real ice cream from the Turkish perpective. And after more investigation, I was happy to find out that my first impressions of this Turkish ice cream were right on: the special features about dondurma are its texture (chewy!) and its resistance to melting. Very weird, but very cool. If you ever find yourself in Turkey, this experience should not be missed.

Squatty Potties:

I am so glad I was forewarned about the Turkish toilets. So glad.

As I mentioned before, being in a new country with a new culture brings new experiences. Such as squatty potties. Those of you who have spent time in Asia are probably laughing at me right now, and rightly so. But I am a spoiled, modern Westerner who values her clean, porcelain toilet bowls very much.

I was only able to avoid the inevitable for one day. Then, on my second day in Istanbul, I just had to go. The good news is, there's any number of public restrooms all throughout the city. In fact, just find a mosque (which is pretty much at every turn) and you've found yourself a restroom too. The bad news is, they are almost all squatty potties. Oh, and the other bad news is, you have to pay to use them.

The funny thing is, in places like Vienna, I will rather hold it in that pay for a public restroom...either that, or I spend way too much time searching for the nearest McDonald's, which is universally gratis. However, in Turkey one has no such luck. Sometimes you luck out when paying the bathroom attendant the 50 kuruş to 1 lira (30¢ - 60¢) "entrance fee" and you'll also get some toilet paper as part of the service. (Although I use the term toilet paper loosely: this could mean anything from a napkin to a couple sheets of actual toilet paper.) This is why the well-informed traveller carries travel tissues at all times. The actual device one uses to complete one's business is basically a glorified hole in the ground. A porcelain hole with ridges on either side to provide traction for your shoes, but a hole nonetheless. In the corner of your stall is a waste bin to throw in the used paper/napkin/whatever-resourceful-thing-you-find-in-your-purse-to-do-the-job, and in the other corner is a spigot and a small plastic container, for what I can only assume is rinsing off a sticky load. Ironically, although you hardly ever find toilet paper in a public restroom, I found that--without fail--there was always soap.

The first time I had to use one of these, I was terrified. I am not a go-in-the-woods kind of gal. Women just aren't designed for this kind of maneuver, and I think I was jusifiably concerned over the outcome. But let me tell you--I nailed it. A perfect 10 on the first try. And by the end of the trip, it was no biggie. So...anyone ready for a long hiking trip in the woods?

Street dogs--and cats:

Lots of stray cats and dogs roam the streets of Istanbul. I was quite surprised by the number of stray cats--something I've not seen in other countries--and pretty impressed at the docile and non-agressive nature of the dogs. They just kind of went around and did their own thing. (Compared to the Romanian strays, the Turkish variety belong in a petting zoo.)

This cat had somehow turned a bluish-green...pretty funny, actually.

Women and the Workplace:

It took me a while to notice it. Almost a week, actually. But then it occurred to me: you don't see women working in Turkey. Not in the shops, the markets, the restaurants, or the info offices for the tourists. In fact, the entire time I was there, I only saw three women at work: one heavily-armed policewoman for Obama's visit in Istanbul, one reporter for said Head of State's visit, and one shop assistant in Cappadocia. That said, it should also be noted that people tend to work really long hours. The hostel proprietor was basically working 24/7, the guy behind the counter of the coffee shop at 7 am was still there at 9 pm, and the shopkeepers seemed to work at their shops every single day.

It didn't take this reporter long to spot the foreigners and ask for an interview on the day of Obama's visit.

...Ok, still with me? Good. I think that's enough grab-bag for today. Next up: more potpourri and then--oh man, my stomach is growling already--the food!

Someone Worth Meeting

2009-06-24T19:26:00.005-04:00

One of the most interesting things about all of my travels these past months has been meeting some of the most interesting people along the way. Aside from seeing new places and experiencing new cultures, there's really something to be said for opening up a little and interacting with those around you. People have the most fascinating stories.

Sometimes you are lucky enough to live in a place like New York City where you bump into all sorts of intriguing people all the time. One of my favorite things about living in New York was learning what people did for a living--often you'd meet someone with a job you never could have even dreamed up. Not to mention that, as a city full of domestic and international transplants, everyone has a personal how-I-got-here, how-I-came-here, or who-I-was-before story.

I find that travelling opens you up to the same kind of thing, but on a broader basis. Over the past several months I've met quite a few people whose stories just floor me. Some of them have had life experiences I can't even begin to imagine. Some of them were kind people who've helped me along the way. Some of them are so inspirational that I want to fictionalize them into my next novel.

So today's next installment of the Turkey sequence is about the people we met along the way. Each interesting in their own way, and each somehow moving us along. (n.b.: Nor is this the last installment of people I've met in my travels. A few more notables from more recent travels will appear in a future post.)

The Cyclist

Our first day in the hostel, I started a conversation with a quiet looking man in the common room just as we were about to head off to bed. It was immediately apparent from the lilt in his voice that he was an Irishman passing through Istanbul. When we asked the usual questions about where he was from and what he was doing, we got the most unusual answer: he was cycling around the world. Okay, I'm just going to let that sink in a bit...

Yes, he was cycling around the world. Very few people have done such a thing, but his goal is to cross the globe on bicyle in the next two years. As we met him, he'd just cycled his way down from Ireland and through Europe into Turkey, and he was currently planning his way through Turkey into Iran and further on to Uzbekistan. In that area of the world he had to apply for entry and exit visas and time his arrivals and departures exactly, which doesn't leave much room for unplanned obstacles underway. Eventually he'll make it through all those countries ending with -stan and all the way across China before hitting an ocean and having to hop over to the next continent. As we spoke with him, he was just updating his blog.

President Obama

We also happened to time our trip to Turkey quite well with Obama's own visit on the last leg of his G-20 talks in Europe. He was pretty much omnipresent for a few days, from billboards to news shows, to the word on the street. Having wrapped up most of his business in Ankara, his trip to Istanbul was to include some sightseeing downtown at some of the major sites, such as the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, and a few other places in the historic district of Sultanahmet. Consequently, the city decided not just to shut down these sites, but pretty much the whole of Sultanahmet itself--including public transportation in and out. Nearby businesses, schools, and even the university closed for the day, and the streets were lined with a large and heavily-armed police force.

In response to all this hubub, we encountered a demonstration on the pedestrian shopping street of Istiklal, and as my travel buddy went closer to film the protest, we--clearly foreigners--were approached by reporters. Our Turkish friend was interviewed first, but we were told to stay put as soon as our nationality became known, as the reporter really wanted to get the American opinion on the matter. Many of the Turkish people I'd talked to felt pretty good about President Obama in general and his visit to Turkey in particular, but the country was still a little wary in general of Obama for referring to the Turkish killing of Armenians in WWI as "genocide," for the U.S.' tendency to side with Israel, and for our involvement in Iraq/Afghanistan (Iraq being one of Turkey's border countries).

When it was my turn to be interviewed, the reporter asked me a series of questions about how long I'd been in Istanbul, where I'm from and what I do there, what I thought about the protests, and how I felt as an American in Turkey since politics there have become rather anti-American. I did my best to answer her questions, but it really didn't matter...when the article came out, they had strung all of my answers together and printed them out of context, such that I came off sounding like an ignorant American and where I was quoted saying things I'd never actually said.

The next day, we made a conscious decision to avoid the Obama craziness and go to the Asian side of the city. We left our Sultanahmet hostel as they were preparing to close off the streets, passing a massive police force and throngs of reporters setting up for the visit. As it happened, the friend I was travelling with got interviewed by the local news station, and we didn't actually make it out of the European side of the city before Obama came through: we ended up seeing his motorcade around noon as it raced into Sultanahmet and again later that afternoon from the ferry as it crossed over the bridge we had just passed under.

So although we didn't actually see President Obama personally, we saw his motorcade. This was exciting enough for me and stirred up a surprising amount of patriotism, as it was the first time I have acutally been in the same country as Obama since he's been president.

Obama's motorcade: He could have been in this very heavily-protected SUV!!

A Friend of a Friend

One of the best things about travel is of course meeting up with your friends from around the world, right? Although I didn't personally have any friends in Turkey at the time of my visit, I knew several people who'd either visited or lived there before I went. One friend got me in contact with one of her Turkish friends in Istanbul, and this friend turned out to be such a gem to our trip. Not only did she agree to meet us and show us around, but she took us to some of the local places, introduced us to some of the sights and the food, and generously donated her time, energy, food, money, and language as she shared the city with us. The more locals we met, the more really great hospitality and generosity we experienced--it seemed quite a welcoming culture, and we were privileged to be the recipients. We came away from it having taken our friend's friends for our own.

The Proprietor

The proprietor of the hostel where we stayed was an incredible man. I arrived in Istanbul after midnight and took a pre-arranged taxi pick-up to the hostel. From the moment I arrived, the proprietor greeted me warmly, and that was just the beginning.

Ali was all-knowing and could gladly and willingly answer any question about Istanbul, Turkey, the Turkish language, or pretty much anything else that we posed to him. And we asked him a lot of questions during our stay. He was helpful and funny and had the incredible ability to deal with every type of person who walked in the door.

I've never met a better person than Ali when it comes to sizing someone up and dealing with them accordingly. As soon as he met a new visitor to the hostel, he seemed to know exactly what kind of person they were and exactly how to deal with them. His skills would be the utter envy of customer service representatives everywhere, or anyone who deals with the public for that matter. He first impressed me when, after our first night in the hostel, a Finnish girl in the room next door complained about our "loud" talking the following morning on her way out to the airport. As Ali related this incident to us at breakfast, I was expecting a reprimand and an appeal to be quieter; instead he went on to tell us how he'd defended us to the Finnish girl, explaining to her that we were just seeing each other for the first time in years and were probably catching up late into the night. From this moment on, Ali won me over, and I watched in awe as he put the rowdy British boys in their places with a genious and effective combination of humor and shame, dealt with the highly irritable man who kept complaining about how he couldn't trust the Turkish, and every other sort of person to cross his path. By the time we left for Cappadocia, he said goodbye with a tight hug and told us quite sincerely how he'd enjoyed having us there and would miss our smiles when we were gone.

Not only could Ali deal with any kind of person in exactly the way suitable to their type, but he also had the gift of making someone feel welcome and comfortable. For me, this was in very tangible ways. When I arrived back in Istanbul from Cappadocia--alone--before 8 am on a Monday morning after a sleepless 11-hour overnight bus ride, I had to ring the bell twice before he answered the door. He'd been sleeping at the office since they were short-staffed and I'd awaken him from only two hours of sleep that night. I assured him that I was in the same boat, as I'd not been able to sleep on the night bus, and announced my intention to take a nap as soon as my room was ready; however, the hostel was full and he told me I'd have to wait until after 11 am until the bed was emptied and made ready. As I settled down in his office at the public Internet/computers to wait it out, he did the unthinkable: he offered me a nap on his couch, promising to shut the door and keep guests out and only to come in himself to answer the phone. I've never been more grateful for anything in my life than I was in that moment.

When I left Turkey, it was another genuine goodbye and a sincere request to stay in touch...and we've both since followed through.

The Pigeon Guy

In Cappadocia, we visited the Göreme Open Air Museum, a complex of cave dwellings and cave churches typical of the area. Up near one of the caves, there was a flock of pigeons hanging out near a ledge, and my travel buddy went over to feed the birds some of her leftover bread from breakfast. As she was doing so, a man in the Open Air Museum uniform came out of the nearest cave entrance and told her to stop and wait there. We both thought she was in trouble, but the man returned momentarily with a handful of birdseed which he deposited into her palm and then showed her how to feed the birds. I was watching from a short distance with great amusement when the man announced that these pigeons were special pigeons. Yes, Cappadocian pigeons are no ordinary pigeons--they can roll. At first, I didn't understand him. But he made a rolling motion with his hands and repeated again that these pigeons could roll. We clearly didn't understand what he was telling us, because he then stood and told us to watch. Then, very slowly, he approached the pigeons and herded them off the ledge. As they took flight, they rose vertically, their wings making an unusually loud clapping noise; then, one of the pigeons flipped! Then another! As these pigeons rose vertically in the air, they did backflips while in flight! We were so amused by these birds that I think we in turn amused the museum employee, and he invited us into his office--the nearest cave--for a cup of tea. Tea is a very central part of Turkish hospitality, so we joined him and his colleague in the cave for tea and conversation. The man who invited us in spoke some English, but his coworker spoke only a few words here and there. Somehow we carried on a very basic conversation with a lot of repetition and gesturing and the few Turkish words we knew, but ultimately we all made ourselves understood. We stayed for two cups of Turkish tea (which I'll describe at a later time) and then left to go visit the rest of the museum. But this was the first time that someone had invited us in for tea for no reason at all--not because they knew us and not because they were trying to sell us something, but simply to be nice, to extend some hospitality, and for the sake of our company.

And finally, stay tuned...

Next up: Miscellaneous things about Turkey you've probably never considered. Oh boy!

A Letter from the Editor

2009-06-24T16:59:00.002-04:00

Dear Readers,

I am ashamed. I am a terrible blogger, or rather, blogger correspondent. I have so many interesting things to tell you but I've let the blog fall silent for way too long.

By now I should have finished telling you all about Turkey. After that, there was a pretty nifty trip to England and Wales I could have caught you up on. Not to mention the most recent developments with my immediate plans for the summer, involving Serbia, Malta and more of Austria. I could have already reflected on the end of my two years as a TA in Austria. I could have reflected on the past two years, period. I could tell you why Graz is wonderful in the summertime, and I could tell you how--after a four-year absence from the sport--I've just picked up biking again. Heck, I could even tell you about the book club I've helped establish and the writing group I've joined.

All of this, I'd tell you, has been put by the wayside in favor of finishing my NaNoWriMo novel from November. I could feed you all sorts of excuses about how I'm spending my current stage of unemployment trying to finish the first draft and how novel-writing doesn't leave much time for blog-writing.

But I won't. It's just too much to tell you. It's too daunting.

Instead I'll just promise you that you will hear from me. Soon, even. I'm going to get right on it. Because I actually thrive on your comments. Knowing that you read my posts and actually tend to comment on them makes me feel like we're actually keeping in touch. And that's important. I won't kid you--after two years here I still really enjoy it, but I miss you guys a lot. So I'm going to make an attempt at keeping up this one-sided conversation more frequently.

My apologies, and see you on another update soon.

Yours truly,
Rebecca

How to be a Shameless Tourist in Istanbul

2009-05-23T01:19:00.005-04:00

It's been quite a while since I've written anything, but I promised there would be more on Turkey. So here's the next installment...finally!

Tourist Attractions in Istanbul

Although we had many insider tips, we still ended up seeing all of the typical sights in Istanbul (...I mean, how can you not?...), plus a few more.

The Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, Basilica Cisterns, Topkapi Palace and several other attractions are all located in the old historical Sultanahmet district of Istanbul. It's pretty much the starting point for any basic sightseeing, and many of the city's reasonably-priced hostels and not-so-reasonably-priced hotels are located here. Our hostel was a mere 4-minute walk from the back of Hagia Sophia and Topkapi Palace, which also meant that everything to see here was within walking distance.

Our first stop in Istanbul was the Hagia Sophia. This was a structure I vaguely remembered from 9th grade history class, but whose medalions and soaring architecture had stuck in my head since I was forced to memorize about eight different images of it in Art History 101. Orginally constructed as a cathedral under Emperor Justinian in 532-537 AD, it was the epitome of Byzantine architecture for...well...let's just say, for a heck of a long time. It also remained the largest cathedral in the world for a whopping 1000 years -- that is, until 1453, when Mehmed II conquered Constantinople. This marked the end of the Byzantine Empire and the begin of the Ottoman Empire, and our good buddy Mehmed II converted the Hagia Sophia into a mosque. But you can't get rid of an epitome of architecture so easily, no sir! True to form, the Hagia Sophia continued to be a model for later Ottoman mosques, including the Blue Mosque, which you'll find right across the street.

Thus, it was a natural second stop to visit the Blue Mosque, or the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, directly across the street from the Hagia Sophia and separated from it by a well-kept garden. The Blue Mosque was built a bit after Mehmed II's time, between 1609 and 1616 by none other than one Sultan Ahmed I. The Blue Mosque is one of the largest mosques (and it is also the national mosque of Turkey), being so named for the heaps of blue tiles in the interior. There are something like 20,000 handmade ceramic tiles on the inside, and like the Hagia Sophia, one gets the impression of soaring gradeur when standing on the inside and looking up. The Blue Mosque clearly draws architectural inspiration from its predecessor, the Hagia Sophia, and thus pulls off a grand marriage of Byzantine and Ottoman architecture. (And yes, I said a "grand marriage"!) Visitors to the mosque -- or any mosque -- must remove their shoes, and women must cover their heads. Since it was the first mosque we visited, I was particularly struck by the non-stop blend of patterns, from the carpet to the tiles to the ceiling decorations; it was a beautiful, busy aesthetic and was something I kept marveling at in every other mosque we visited. Unlike the Hagia Sophia, which is now a museum, the Blue Mosque is still a functioning mosque.

To any visitor to Istanbul, I would also highly recommend Topkapi Palace. The first day we visited Topkapi, we didn't allow ourselves enough time to see it all, but perhaps the fact that we were willing to spend the 20 lira entrance fee to come back again can testify to its rightful place as a must-see attraction in Istanbul. Visitors pay outside and enter the palace grounds through a gate that is extremely reminiscent of the blue-and-white animated palace at the into to any Disney movie, so you already know that you're off to a good start. Inside is the palace complex, the main residence of the Ottoman sultans from 1465 (when Sultan Ahmed II commissioned himself a palace as the first Ottoman emperor) to 1853 (when Sultan Abdul Mecid I moved the official residence to Istanbul's other palace -- the newer, western-style Dolmabahce Palace), the modern-day visitor can see any number of imperial exhibitions. It's a good idea to check the display board by the ticket office to see which exhibitions are currently closed (unfortunately the kitchen was closed for our visit) or open. It's a full day's work to see the treasury, the stables, the apartments and chambers, and -- perhaps most intriguingly -- the imperial Harem. Although you'll pay a second, nearly equal admission price to see the Harem, it is well worth it. Not only can you learn the history of the harem (not at all glamorous), but you can see some of the most finely ornamented chambers in the palace. Topkapi is probably an all day affair, but it's a sight I wouldn't leave out.

All of that opulence made us feel rich as sultans, so what better natural outlet for our bulging purses than a visit to The Grand Bazaar or the Spice Bazaar (also call the Egyptian Bazaar)! The Grand Bazaar was nothing like the large flea market I had somehow envisioned -- rather, it's one of the largest covered markets in the world. There are over 1000 shops stuffed into countless corridors, some of which (to my surprise) even have glass-windowed storefronts. The merchants at the bazaars will call out to you as you pass to buy their jewelry, scarves, carpets, pottery and spices. Of course you'd be a fool to pay full price for anything, but there's only so much haggling you can get away with as a tourist.

Istanbul has the unique distinction of being a city divided between two continents. All of the tourist attractions are on the European side, but the Asian side offers a more authentic look at the city free from the throngs of travelers. The Bosphorus acts as the straight between Thrace (the European part of Turkey/Istanbul) and Anatolia (the Asian part), connecting the Black Sea in the north to the Sea of Marmara in the south (which, in turn, connects to the Aegean and by extension to the Mediterranean). The ferry runs back and forth and up and down the river, so we took it over to Üsküdar for a quick visit to Asia and then further on up to Eyüp (on the European side again) where we saw some more out-of-the-way sights.

If you find yourself back near the Hagia Sophia/Blue Mosque area with nothing to do, you may want to look someplace you'd least expect for a great attraction: underground at the Basilica Cisterns. You'll see the ticket office at road level, then as you decend into the cisterns you'll find another of Justinian's great accomplishments of the 6th century: a massive cathedral-sized cistern capable of holding 2,800,000 cubic feet of water. A boardwalk leads the visitor through the arcaded structure, and that same feeling of size and grandeur returns.

One of our accidental discoveries was the old City Wall. We were actually trying to go to a museum that happened to be closed (on a Wednesday?!) and ended up exploring the area instead. The old city wall still runs around the city in certain places, and remains open to the public. Although it would be a major liability in America, in Istanbul you can scramble up the steep and narrow ziggurat-like steps of the wall to the lookout station. This gave us a great and FREE view of the city, and eliminated the need to go up into the more touristy Galata Tower.

After all of this sightseeing, you'll want to wash the grit of the city off with a nice deep clean. Fortunately, Istanbul offers any number of Turkish baths designed with this very purpose in mind. We visited the Cemberlitas baths, the oldest, most touristy, and therefore most expensive baths in the city. All that being said, it was well worth it, and I wouldn't have done it any other way. Far from the classical pipe dream that Ingres depicted of the Turkish baths, the Cemberlitas was built in 1584 by the sultan's wife, for the purpose of bringing in a little extra revenue. Today visitors can come and experience something most adults haven't experienced in decades -- being bathed by someone else. Separated into men's and women's chambers, most guests enter nude or mostly nude into the large circular sauna room. In the middle of the room centered under a dome is a heated marble slab where you can stretch out and wait until it is your turn to be bathed. We got a package for a "bath," soap massage, and an oil massage...and it was well worth the splurge! I can't remember the last time I felt such a deep clean, and the best part of it is that you can hang out in the sauna or in the little pools surrounding the sauna as long as you like. But make sure you plan your trip to the baths for the end of the day -- it will take every last ounce of remaining energy out of you, and they only thing you'll be capable of doing afterwards is eating a big greasy kebab.

...So now that you've had a taste of the major sights in Istanbul, you can stay tuned for a taste of another kind...next update will be on Turkish food. Yummy!

Going East

2009-04-30T09:00:00.005-04:00

The second semester of school is by far the best in Austria. There are so many holidays and school breaks that it seems we are hardly ever in school. Even as I now write, I am enjoying a very nice 5-day weekend in Graz. (N.b.: Today, May 1, is Tag der Arbeit, or the Austrian Labor Day. No school!)

Since I take every opportunity I can get to travel, I decided to go to Turkey for my Easter break. A friend of mine from New York was coming to visit, and so we decided to meet in Istanbul and then travel on to Cappadocia. We were in Turkey together for a week and a half, but it only took me several days to realize that Istanbul was my new favorite European city and that I loved Turkey.

I shouldn't tell you all about my trip because it would be another novella. So instead I've decided to cover the trip over several posts (like my farm experience last summer), highlighting just certain aspects of our travels and our experiences. I'll treat the trip topically, and if you want to know more, please just email me and I'd be happy to bombard you with all of the minute details you can handle!

Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start.

Why Turkey? The reason is quite simple, really: it's cheaper than the rest of Europe and, from what we'd heard, very interesting. One of our main considerations when planning where to travel was the cost. We considered places like Poland and other Eastern Europe destinations, but I'd already heard a bit about Turkey from other friends who had been there and thought it would be great to experience a completely different, non-Western travel destination for once. Until now, I'd only ever traveled in Europe and Australia, and never in a non-Western, non-(traditionally-)Christian culture. Last year I'd even made a list of places I'd like to visit while I'm still in Europe, and Turkey still hadn't been checked off. My travel buddy immediately agreed, and we started researching our trip.

How does a self-professed "anti-planner" plan a trip to a destination you should really know a bit about before you go?

I hate planning. Anything. I hate planning parties, I hate planning events, and I even hate planning trips. My travel M.O. is to arrive on the scene and then check it out from there. I might read up a bit before I go so that I know what I should see when I get there, but I rarely have an itinerary until I'm on the scene. But Turkey, being so culturally different from any place I'd visited before, was worth a little travel prep.

My travel buddy and I decided to research Istanbul and Cappadocia on our own and then come together with our combined knowledge and plan the trip from there. So I spent a couple days on the internet, looking up articles and such, but this wasn't really the part that interested me. The part that interested me was the suggestions, tips, and advice I solicited from several of my friends who had either lived in or traveled to Turkey.

I got in touch with about 5 different friends who had been to Turkey for various lengths of time and collected their advice. I got tips on what to see, what to eat, how to get around, and--most interestingly--how to act while in Turkey. So for today's excerpt of my Turkish experience, I'll start with one of the most interesting bundles of information I got before the trip:

The Do's and Don't's of Traveling in Turkey and How I Followed Them...or Didn't!

1. You shouldn't make eye contact or chat with men as you're walking down the street, on public transportation, etc., as this can be seen as a come on.
Um, as we learned, pretty much *everything* in Turkey can be seen as a come on! But putting that aside, I have to admit that this piece of advice was pretty hard to follow. You don't realize just how much eye contact you make with people as an American until you're deliberately trying not to make eye contact. I have certainly toned down the eye contact since living in Austria, since people don't really do that here either, but in Turkey it was so much more difficult! Especially because people watching in Turkey was so much more interesting, and it's hard to look at someone without really looking at them. I did notice that any accidental eye contact with men was immediately returned with a smile or a wink or a pick-up line, rather than a simple break in eye contact like here. It wasn't until my last day in Istanbul when I was traveling by myself before going back to Austria that I really mastered this. I put on my city face and was finally able to walk the streets undisturbed by looking like I knew exactly where I was going and and mentally blurring out the faces of any men I passed. But getting to this point was hard work.
It should also be noted that we were two obviously non-Turkish girls walking around (one Caucasian and one Asian) and so that's bound to draw attention anyway. But we never felt really uncomfortable, and the attention we got didn't really seem like more than we'd get in other large cities.

2. It's not a good idea to speak English loudly or laugh in public, as this draws a lot of attention.
Me, not laugh in public? Yes, another challenge! There were enough tourists in Istanbul and Cappadocia that we didn't have to draw any extra attention to ourselves. And as an American living in Austria, I've already taught myself how to be quiet in public so as to blend in and not communicate "I am supporting the stereotype that American tourists are loud [and therefore obnoxious]" to those around me. But no matter how loudly or softly we spoke, we also noticed that the Turkish men had the uncanny ability to pick up on any phrase we uttered in passing and turn it into a pick-up line. ("Oh, hold on a sec--I dropped something." "Hello! Hello, lady! You dropped my heart!" Or: "Those British guys in the hostel were sooo loud, all night long!" "[singing] Youuu. Shook me alll night looong!") Finally, we decided it would make a good game to say something outrageous and see how our admirers could work with it. Best comeback gets a prize. ("And then my finger fell off!"...they could totally work with that material!)

3. Don't go outside with wet hair.
Some of you may recall my early posts about my arrival in Austria and some of the cultural differences I mentioned...including not to go outside with wet hair! Apparently it's the same thing in Turkey. Unfortunately, I don't have a travel hairdryer, so this meant that I could try my hardest to towel dry my hair but that ultimately I was, indeed, breaking this rule and going out with wet hair. As far as I could tell, there weren't any negative consequences. However, once we were walking down the street when my hair was completely dry, and a man called from a storefront, "How were the Turkish baths?" My travel buddy turned to me and asked, "How did he know we went to the Turkish baths last night?!" And as far as we could figure, it was my hair gel giving me the "wet hair" look. Oops.

4. Don't wear anything tight or low-cut, don't wear shorts or skirts above the knee, and don't wear sleeveless tops. It's also best to wear pants or long shirts that disguise/cover your butt.
One of my biggest questions before packing for Turkey was how I should dress. Although 99.8% of Turkish people are Muslim, it is a secular country (where, incidentally, headscarves are not allowed at universities or some government buildings) and you'll see the Turkish women wearing everything from conservative Islamic dress to far-from-conservative "Western" dress. As a foreigner though, it's best to be sensitive to the culture and dress modestly. The weather was nice and cool the whole time we were there, so we were able to dress in layers. Although none of my pants hid the face that I am a woman and therefore have certain curves, I didn't feel like that was ever a problem where I was. As far as we could tell, we never got oggled, and anything worth staring at was always covered. Fortunately we weren't there in the hot summer months when covering up more may have been somewhat hot.

5. Don't take layers of clothes off in public.
The most I took off in public was a jacket, so this is finally one rule we were able to keep!

6. Don't chew gum in public (especially blowing bubbles).
I forgot to ask why this piece of advice was here, but--like most of the others--we broke this one too. It was only after we were walking down the street chewing gum that I realized we were not supposed to do exactly that. And my friend had a habit of blowing bubbles. Oops.

7. If someone (especially a man) brings up the topic of U.S. foreign policy or politics in general, it's a good idea to avoid an inevitably heated discussion and politely change the topic.
Since our visit coincided with President Obama's visit to Turkey, this piece of advice was impossible to keep. Not only were both of us interviewed by the press (me for the English-language newspaper and my friend for the local news) about his visit to Turkey, but shopkeepers and hostel employees sometimes wanted to discuss Obama and/or U.S. foreign policy. I found that, for the most part, this was absolutely alright. One shopkeeper in Cappadocia even praised Obama and his politics (saying, sensitively, that he wouldn't even bother to address what things were like a mere 100 days ago with Bush), and told me that most Turkish people appreciated his visit. I only had one Turkish man tell me how bad U.S. foreign policy is, but I was just a bystander in the conversation, and he kept apologizing, saying, "I know where you're from. I'm sorry. But...."

8. Don't agree to pay full price for anything in the bazaars.
I'm sure we got ripped off enough as it was, but we were successfully able to negociate prices, usually to about 60% or so of the asking price. Which, for tourists, I've been told is reasonable. When we had the luxury of having Turkish friends with us, they did the haggling for us and we were able to buy our goods with much more confidence that we weren't getting horrendously ripped off!

...So, suffice to say that we broke plenty of rules and, at some point or other, went against pretty much most of the advice that was given to us. Fortunately we didn't have any problems...and now we know better for next time, right?

Home Sweet Socialized Home

2009-04-01T17:44:00.003-04:00

I've not had much luck this year when it comes to maintaining my health after a big trip. I got sick after going to Berlin and I got sick after going to Australia...and I hope it stops there! But when I realized that I didn't just have to suffer through my illness--that I could go to the doctor so easily and at no cost to me--I decided that I better take advantage of it while I can. I've already seen several doctors and booked all the preventative appointments I need while I still have my amazing Austrian insurance. And as I was thinking about how wonderful this all is, it occurred to me that I should share with you the wonders of living in a socialized country.

Taxes in Austria are only slightly more than in the U.S., yet their social security provides so much more. Basically, I can feel completely taken care of in Austria.

Since I'm employed by the regional school board, I get all of the same benefits as the Austrian teachers. This means that my health insurance is also provided by the government, through my employer. (In Austria, if you are self-employed or unemployed, you will need to provide your own health insurance; however, the rate is based on your income and there is government assistance for those who couldn't otherwise afford it.) At the beginning of my stay, I was provided with my e-card, which is an amazing handy-dandy credit card-sized proof of insurance and social security. The e-card has all of my insurance information stored on it and serves as an electronic signature, as well as a document of my medical records.

I can choose to see any doctor who accepts this national insurance, which is pretty much most of them. (There are also private doctors you can pay extra to see, but that is unnecessary.) The Austrian doctor's offices are much more relaxed than the American ones, with more (although sometimes unusual) office hours and a generous walk-in policy. The first time I went to the doctor, I simply showed up at the door and requested to see the doctor. There were not dozens of pages of medical history to fill out or a stack of forms to sort through; rather, I simply handed the receptionist my e-card and gave her my contact details, and a half an hour later I was called in to see the doctor. It was remarkably easy and astoundingly accessible.

A visit to the doctor, however, is not without it's fair share of Austrian formality. When entering the doctor's office you first must go through the waiting room, where it is customary to greet everyone as you enter. The receptionist is in another room behind a closed door, so then you must ask if anyone is already in there. If so, you wait there (not knowing in which order you are being seen) until it somehow becomes clear that it's your turn to enter. After giving the receptionist your e-card and telling her the reason for your visit, you go back into the waiting room and wait for your name to be called. Upon leaving, you once again wish everyone in the waiting room farewell.

The doctor's offices that I've been to are entirely unassuming, and they are often two or three rooms in an apartment building where only the one doctor has set up an office; the doctors I've seen are congenial and casual, often wearing jeans under their white coats. There's no changing into hospital gowns, and there's very little of an examination for any non-pertinent things. In my experience, the doctors are quick to give you a prescription and will simply give you a referral upon request...even the receptionist is authorized to give you a referral--so you can see basically whatever kind of doctor you want, whenever you want. The visit is free, with no co-pay required. The prescriptions can be filled at the pharmacy (where you have to get anything from ibuprofen to cough syrup to actual prescription-strength drugs), and the medicines are often quite cheap. As for more serious issues, hospital stays and treatments as well as ambulance rides are completely covered. ...So basically, if I were to get run over by a bus or get some terrible illness, I'd want it to happen here.

And it's not just the convenience of the health system (i.e., free doctor's visits, easy referrals, no forms to fill out) that's so great--it's also the attitude that Austrians take towards health in general. Whereas the American mentality is to work unless you're seriously ill, the Austrians have a much more generous definition of what constitutes a sickday. Likewise, the Austrians will encourage you to stay home until you're absolutely 100% better, acknowledging that being healthy is actually better for productivity than going back to work as soon as you're not deathly ill anymore. I was quite shocked when I went in with a virus that my doctor told me--before she even examined me--to stay home at least from Monday to Thursday and immediately wrote me a doctor's note; she made me come back on Thursday for a follow-up appointment and extended her doctor's note until Monday before even asking how I felt. My suspicion is that the Austrians are all slightly hypochondriatic at heart (taking into account their superstitions and their propensity to complain about their health), but it really does work to the sick person's advantage.

...Oh, and did I mention that the doctor can prescribe a week at the spa for your overall well-being?? Pretty much all you have to do is ask--and you better believe that the Austrians love that state-approved sick leave every year!!

It's not just the healthcare system that takes care of the citizens--they're also protected by certain laws ensuring optimal provision and care.

Let's take maternity leave, for example. Just as I'd want to be in Austria if I got run over by a bus, I'd want to be here if I had a baby. Mothers are required by law to stop working 8 weeks before their due date--no exceptions. This is called Mutterschutz, which literally means protection of the mother. After the baby is born, the mother is allowed to take up to 2 years of paid maternity leave! Even more impressive, there is even the option of up to a year of paternity leave for fathers--although this year counts as one of the 2 years allowed. It's a popular trend for mothers to time their pregnancies every two years apart, thus ensuring an indefinite amount of maternity leave. And let's also not forget the concept of Kindergeld, or the monthly payment of government money to support families with children. In Austria, parents receive the Kindergeld until the age of 26 for girls or 27 for boys (because they have one year of mandatory military or civil service and are often at university until that age), amounting to €105 - €150 per month (depending on the age of the child) for the first child, and more for any successive children. Some parents simply give this money to their children as allowance.

Austrian unemployment is also amazingly lax and generous in comparison with the American system. Not just those who have been laid off are eligible to collect--even if you quit your job, if for not other reason than you didn't like it, you are eligible for unemployment. The benefits kick in immediately and are about 80% of your former salary--which is almost certainly enough to live on. There is no going down to the unemployment office, and you do not have to prove that you are applying or even looking for other jobs; you can simply keep receiving unemployment benefits for up to a year until you find the right job; otherwise another social welfare program takes over after a year, offering about 60% of your former salary to keep you afloat until you get a job. During the time that you are collecting unemployment you may also choose to turn down jobs offered to you if you deem them not the perfect fit. While this is a wonderful safety net for those who have lost their jobs and have difficulty finding new ones, I personally find it a bit too lenient and terribly enabling for people to take advantage of the system. I've known several people to live off of unemployment money and not even bother to look for a job--including one woman who remained unemployed for three years, because she couldn't find a job that was "right" for her!

And as if that wasn't enough, as of this year Austria is back to free university education. In 2000, Austria decided to institute a tuition of about €360 a semster--roughly the cost of books in the U.S.! There was a terribly uproar and this decision remained controversial for the next 8 years. (Particularly laughable to me was the financial aid offered to cover this tuition to "needy" students! Although the cost of a college education in America is ridiculous, there are a lot of good arguments for charging a tuition.) But last year they voted to remove tuitions and restore university education to they way it had always been. This semester, the lack of tuition takes effect and students may once more enjoy the benefits of a free education.

America is a good country. There are advantages in America that Austria doesn't have. But I find that the social security here (in the broadest sense of the word) is something the U.S. could learn from. Through the healthcare, etc., in Austria, I get the sense that I am taken care of and valued as a member of society. It's no wonder I want to stay.

Austria's Notorious Fame

2009-03-18T10:00:00.002-04:00

In the past week or so, the whole world has been closely watching the criminal trial of an Amstetten man accused of rape, incest, forced imprisonment, enslavement, coercion, and negligent homicide. Nearly one year ago, we heard the shocking story of how he imprisoned his daughter, now 42, in a secret basement cell of his home when she was 18 and then fathered 7 children with her over the next 24 years. I don't want to dwell on the details of the crime, but I'd like to comment on how I've seen its treatment, both here in Austria and abroad.

As a little central European country that tends to evade the international spotlight, most U.S. Americans know Austria for its mountains, it's contribution to California's seat of Governor, and the timeless classic 1965 Julie Andrews musical it inspired. But recently this country has been thrust into the limelight for less flattering reasons.

It was only in 2006 that Austria was brought under the loop of the world's media for the case of Natascha Kampusch, a young woman who was abducted at the age of 10 and kept for 8 years in a secret basement cell of her captor's house until her escape. Austria was left troubled under the international scrutiny of the Natascha Kampusch case, so it comes as no surprise that is now deeply shaken with the case of the Amstetten man. This crime helps establish a precident in how the rest of the world perceives Austria: it is the country where young women are captured and kept in basements.

It's suprising that two such horrible crimes should occur in the same place at the same time. And it's unfortunate for Austria that it is now known for such things. You can sense Austria's sense of shame and embarrassment surrounding this matter, and it is clear that they'd prefer to earn their fame some other way. But coming from a country whose news media is splayed across every corner of the world, I have a hardened sense of sympathy for them.

As a foreigner from a world superpower living in this charming yet somewhat inwardly-focused nation, I find it hard to empathize. Nearly all of my three total years in Austria have been under the Bush administration. Did they ever get news of what America was doing right? Sure, our international as well as domestic politics have suffered a lot--but did they ever hear of anything good coming out of America? And during the past election, did both candidates receive equal and fair representation? Election news was streaming into Austria every day for months, but it was heavily biased towards Obama (i.e., the candidate whose party has no affiliation to Bush) both in content and in quantity. When my students consider an exchange year in the U.S., do they think about the extensive sports, clubs, and extracurricular activities not available to them in Austria or do they think about the danger of school shootings? I've learned to automatically apologize for my country in this culture; and it's a bad habit that simply reinforces the stereotypes brought on by bad news. Yes, Austria is making a bad impression on the rest of the world right now. But that kind of stuff comes out of my country all the time. How can they ask us not to judge them when they have a habit of judging us for the same thing?

Another phenomenon about the treatment of this case in Austria is that everything possible has been done here to protect the Amstetten man's identity. Known here as simply Josef F., not a single newspaper or news source I could find is revealing his last name. Yet all of the English-language media I've seen has provided his complete name. Indeed, even a Google search for "Josef Fritzl" yields largely English language results. The discrepancy extends as far as Wikipedia: the English-language entry on the case reveals his whole name, yet the German-language entry refers to him throughout the article simply as Josef F. It puzzles me why the Austrian media seeks to preserve anonymity when this information is readily available to the rest of the world. (N.b.: It's possible that this is some obscure law I know nothing about, but I cannot find any explanation for it in my Austrian sources. Even in the case of Kampusch, the captor's entire identity was known.)

In a surprising turn of events today, Josef F(ritzl) pleaded guilty to all charges. His sentence is expected tomorrow afternoon at the end of his four day trial. So, Austria, even though the rest of the world may be judging you by your atrocious crimes, maybe you're sending us a bit of hope as well...hope that one day we, too, will be able to conduct a major trial in only four days.

Hamster Circus Tricks

2009-03-17T15:52:00.016-04:00

I've discovered that my hamsters are incredibly talented. In fact, they might just run off and join the hamster circus. Here are just a few of the tricks they keep me entertained with.

Hamster Circus Trick #1:

Holly and Cotton often run together on the hamster wheel. It's pretty amusing, and sometimes there are funny collisions.

(video link above)

Hamster Circus Trick #2:

I've also discovered that Holly comes when called! When I put her in her hamster ball, she follows me like a dog. At first, I thought it was chance--that she just happened to come to me. But then I started testing her, putting her in different parts of the apartment and letting her roam for awhile before coming back and calling her. And when she sees me, she follows me. Yesterday I led her all the way from my room to the end of the kitchen and back again. Take a look, and--sorry!--please ignore the high-pitched cutesy voice!

(video link above)

Hamster Circus Trick #3:

Cotton as the habit of stuffing her mouth full of hamster food--but only the small, wheat-like kernels--and then depositing them in a pile somewhere. She can fit a suprising amount of food in her little cheeks; in fact, she can fit so much food in there, that she has to use her front paws to reach up behind her cheeks and squeeze it all out like a tube of toothpaste.

For the past three hours, the following scenario has kept Cotton Ball and Holly Golightly's little minds entertained:

Cotton fills her cheeks with little kernels of hamster food and then spits them back out again in her hamster wheel. She then spends the next few minutes scraping and digging at the wheel, trying in vain to bury her food. But it'll never work...after all, it's made of plastic!

Holly comes along for a run, sending the kernels flying all over the floor of the cage. After about 30 seconds, she gives up and moves on...after all, there are better things to do! Then Cotton comes along behind her, gathering the stray kernels from the cage floor and sucking them up back into her cheeks like a teeny tiny vacuum cleaner. After she's gethered them all up again in her cheeks, she returns to the wheel and deposits them yet again...and the process continues ad nauseum.

Part 1:

(narrated video link above, part 1)

Part 2:

(narrated video link above, part 2)

And finally, Hamster Circus Trick #4:

You know how sometimes cats get that crazy spooked look and then start running around the house wildly, tail puffed out, for no apparent reason? Holly has similar tendencies.

This morning I woke up and went to retrieve the cage from the bathtub. (Hamsters being nocturnal creatures, this is the only place in the apartment where no one can hear them at 3 a.m.!) Holly and Cotton were already up, and Cotton was running happily in the wheel. But Holly was darting up and down the different levels of the cage, and as I put the cage back into my room, she took one frenzied look in my direction and then climbed up the horizonal bars of the cage right to the top. But she didn't stop there--oh, no! She kept right on going, crawling upsidedown across the top of the cage, like a sloth. Using her paws to grab the bars, she shimmied from one side to the other, and when she met the opposite wall of the cage she simply dropped ungracefully onto her back.

This isn't the first time I've seen this trick, but unfortunately I haven't caught it on video yet. ...Video still to come.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

2009-02-26T05:13:00.005-05:00

Sunrise over Dubai

"This is the story of the musician Johannes Elias Alder, who took his own life at the age of twenty-two, after he had resolved never to sleep again."

And thus begins the classic Austrian novel Brother of Sleep by Robert Schneider. When Johannes falls in love with his cousin Elsbeth (ew!), he resolves never to sleep again until he had "plumbed the mystery of his impossible love," for time spent sleeping was time wasted by not loving. And as warped as this character may be, I can identify with him in my own particular way.

I just arrived back in Austria from Australia on Monday evening. It was a roughly 35-hour journey from Melbourne back to Graz, and due to my evening departure, I'd been up a good 40+ hours before climbing into my own bed. It's a time difference of 10 hours, and by all accounts, coming back home to Europe is supposed to be the killer leg of the journey. It's safe to say that I was pretty tired by the time I got home...and I looked like a strung out druggie with my watery red eyes and glassy gaze. But I was fine. Really.

You see, I have a bizarre immunity to jetlag.

It's largely inexplicable why I have this Gift of Travel, but as far as I can figure it boils down to this: I cannot sleep in moving vehicles of any kind. Train, plane, automobile, you name it--nary a wink of sleep. All those cheap overnight train rides through Europe: nada. All of my international flights: zilch. And somehow my body compensates for it. Whether it's adrenaline or simply a lesser need for shut-eye than the rest of my fellow man, somehow my body trudges through and still manages to perform on par. It's freakish.

The first time I travelled abroad was to Vienna, in the summer of 2000 at the tender age of 18. I remember experiencing jetlag for the first three days of being in Vienna--I had moments where I simply HAD to take a nap or collapse, my eating schedule was warped, and I don't really remember much of those first few days. But the au pair experience was so traumatic that on the flight home only three months later, I simply sat in my seat and stared blankly into the seatback in front of me, my mind racing. For the whole trip back from Vienna to Denver, I did not read, I did not watch movies, and I did not sleep. I simply stared, shell-shocked. And from that moment on, I've never exerienced jetlag again.

When I graduated from college in 2005 and took a trip to Australia to visit a friend, I thought that surely this jetlag thing would catch up with me. I'd already studied abroad for a year and had no problems, but that was merely a hop across the Altantic. Surely on the other end of the world, with a 16-hour time difference, I would be suffering. As a precaution for sleep, I drank two glasses of wine, took two sleeping pills (I'd heard second-hand that a doctor had said this wouldn't have any dire consequences!), stuffed my ears with earplugs and covered my eyes with the eye mask provided...and nothing happened. In spite of all that, I couldn't sleep a wink. So instead, I read 3 chronicles of Narnia and watched a few movies. I had no problems arriving in Australia, and no problems even on the return trip. And this convinced me: I simply don't get jetlag.

Even on my hellish return trip from Australia last year, where cancelled, delayed, and rerouted flights forced my trip home into a terrible 40-hour journey in which I arrived home at midnight and had to wake up at 5 a.m. the next morning for my first day of teaching at a new school, I bounced back with only the normal fatigue of a night out on the town. What's wrong with me??

It's a brilliant scheme, really: don't sleep on the journey, go to bed at a decent local time, sleep 8-10 hours, and then wake up adjusted to local time. If you can manage to NOT sleep on the plane, this is the anti-jetlag plan I strongly recommend for you! And having now conquered three trips to Australia and quite a few trips to and from Europe, it's my proven method...whether I like it or not.

So in my own way, I can identify with Johannes Elias Alder. It works. You can get a lot of ruminating done if you forgo slumber--whether because you're on an international flight or because you're incestuously obsessed with your cousin. Simply don't sleep till you're dead. ...Or at least until 10 p.m. local time.

My "Plus Two"

2009-01-31T01:51:00.005-05:00

Back in December, I decided I wanted a pet. I'd love to have a cat one day, but that is completely impractical until I am settled in one place -- or simply in one continent -- for the long haul. As I thought about it, it made more sense to get something small...and, practically speaking, something with a short life span. As cliche as it sounds, I wanted something cute and cuddly (proportionate to its size, of course) to keep me company. I mentioned this to one of my teachers, and she kindly offered to drive me to the closest thing Austria has to a pet megastore, located in a little village only accessible by car.

Right after school on our first day back after the holidays (also, coincidentally, on my birthday), we drove to Vogelfarm ("Bird farm"), which -- contrary to the image conjured up in my head of a greenhouse swarming with birds of all kinds -- carries everything from birds to cats to hedgehogs to monkeys to tarantulas. Just to name a few.

I went in thinking I'd get a mouse. Maybe a hamster. But as we found the rodent room, there were so many more choices to be made. Not only were there mice and hamsters of all kinds, but there were also gerbils and rats and things that weren't gerbils and rats but looked like gerbils and rats. The chinchillas were adorably tempting, but much too large and sporting much more longevity than suited my needs. So we stood around looking at the mouse-to-rat-sized creatures for awhile and then finally did what any good Austrian would do: we let ourselves be advised. (Apologies for clunky yet literal translation.)

We flagged down a sales associate who looked about 20 years old, and I explained to her that I wanted something small, maybe a mouse, that was cute but wouldn't live very long. My teacher was horrified at my wording, but the girl didn't even blink and promptly started pointing out various rodents on the wall, explaining their particular traits and qualities. The mice quickly lost their appeal when she explained that that were relatively stinky creatures, but the dwarf hamsters -- the same size as mice, and similar in appearance (though markedly cuter) -- were relatively odor free.

The sales girl left us to decide what we wanted, and now I had three different kinds of dwarf hamster to choose from. After another 10 minutes or so of observation, I was ready to make my decision.

And this is where the fun started. I knew I wanted a pet, but I didn't know how much that simple decision entailed. For a creature no larger than a mouse, there were already pages of government-mandated animal rights laws governing every aspect of my decision.

First, I had to take not one but two hamsters -- they are creatures of companionship and can only be bought in pairs (see 1. Article § 31 Paragraph 2 below). Secondly, I couldn't pick and choose from the different types...apparently the different breeds have a tendency to kill each other. So I chose the cutest (and the ones I saw playing in their sand bath): the Dshungarischer Zwerghamster. (After nearly 20 minutes of searching on the Internet, I found its English name: the Winter White Russian Dwarf Hamster...say that 10 times fast!) Then, after I chose my hamsters, I had to get all of their supplies...oh boy.

According to Austrian law (1. Article § 31 Paragraph 2 of the Animal Protection law to be exact), my Winter White Russian Dwarf Hamsters need a cage that is at least 23.5" x 12" x 16" (60 x 30 x 40 cm )...and this for a creature that grows to be 3" - 4" long! This is a BIG cage in comparison. And they have 3 levels, which is way more than I have. Then I HAD to get a hamster potty. ...Wait, a what?? That's right--hamsters in Austria are so advanced that they use a litterbox!! I've seen it with my own two eyes! And when they don't use it as a litterbox, they play in it and take sand baths...so advanced! Then of course there was the water bowl (yes, they also drink water from bowls, not bottles), the food dish, the food ,vitamin supplements for the water, the salt lick, the chewy gnawy thing so their teeth don't grow to obscene lengths, and of course the shavings AND the straw for the bottom of the cage. They're pretty much outfitted for a nuclear holocaust.

Naming my new roomies was much harder than I expected, and it took me nearly a week to settle on their names: Holly Golightly and Cotton Ball. Holly Golightly is distinguishable by the lighter-gray stripe on her back and her curious and outgoing nature. But, like the Holly Golightly of literature and film, you can try to get close but if you get too personal, she gets spooked and runs away. But she's friendly and nice and doesn't mind being held (though she has a habit of giving love bites if your fingers are dangling in front of her like a carrot). Cotton Ball has a darker gray stripe down her back and is relatively shy. She doesn't mind being held, but she's hard to catch! When she eats, she squinches her body up and looks like a cotton ball -- you could just pick her up and dip her in astringent and clean your face with her. She runs -- a lot -- and my roommate jokes that Cotton has trained more for the half marathon than she has!

Holly and Cotton have a life expectancy of 2-3 years....a little longer than I'd bargained for, but maybe things will work out and I can stay longer in Austria after all...

How David Hasselhoff Saved the World

2009-01-17T09:33:00.006-05:00

I thought I'd post a brief history of the Berlin Wall--about it's sudden overnight construction and its equally sudden fall--but then I realized that, although the story could be a fascinating one, there is no way for me to make it brief. Instead, I'll share one of the more random and lesser known bits of Berlin history.

The photo above -- DAVID HASSELHOFF SAVED THE WORLD -- is a message tagged on buildings, walls, and other graffiti-covered surfaces (of which there are many!) around Berlin. If you were to notice it walking by, you might chuckle to yourself about the unusual popularity of David Hasselhoff in the German-speaking world, but you probably wouldn't think twice about it.

By the time the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, David Hasselhoff was already an extremely popular singer in Germany and Austria, and his newest ballad Looking for Freedom had already been the #1 hit in West Germany for several weeks. With lyrics such as, "I've been lookin' for freedom; I've been lookin' so long; I've been lookin' for freedom; still the search goes on," it's no wonder that the song spoke into the hearts of a nearly reunified Germany. Hasselhoff was invited to play a concert at the Brandenburg Gate on New Year's Eve of 1989, where he belted out the hit atop a partially demolished Berlin Wall to nearly a million East and West German fans.

Later, Hasselhoff remarked on this event in an interview with the German magazine TV Spielfilm on a publicity tour through Germany, saying he felt he'd moved people on both sides of the wall...admitting, however, that very few of the East Germans could speak or understand English. Feeling that his performance helped unite the East and West Germans in attendance at the New Year's Eve concert -- thus leading to the reunification of Germany, which just happened to coincide with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Cold War -- he told the reporters: "I find it a bit sad that there is no photo of me hanging on the walls in the Berlin Museum at Checkpoint Charlie." Indeed, he was deeply moved by the experience himself: "After my appearance I hacked away at pieces of the wall that had the black, red and yellow colours of the German flag on it. I kept the big piece for myself and gave the smaller pieces to colleagues at Baywatch."

By highlighting his own important role in the reunification of Germany, and consequently the end of the Cold War, David Hasselhoff tells us -- in his own words -- how he saved the world. ...And maybe that does deserve a photo in the Checkpoint Charlie Museum after all...

Alive and Kicking in 2009

2009-01-13T14:53:00.009-05:00

After surviving NaNoWriMo, I found myself thrown into December with the holidays quickly approaching. I had every intention to write about the Austrian Christmas traditions in fascinating and epic detail, but between school and everything else...well...yeah. It's the holidays.

Promptly after Christmas, I flew to Berlin for a week to visit a good friend from college who was back visiting her family for the holidays. Again, I intended to write copious logs of my travels, but when I arrived back in Graz on January 1, unfortunately somewhat sick, all I wanted to do was watch "The Office" for hours on end for the next few days until I had to go back to school again.

After my birthday, I thought that I would surely, surely come back to my blog and write...but then there just seemed to be so much to make up. So, in short, I've decided to give a brief photo summary of the last month, and then I'll come along later and post more highlights.

So without further ado, I bring you...

THE HOLIDAY SEASON

Advent in Graz:

The city of Graz comes alive in the Advent season with Christmas markets, decorations, and events. Every year there is an ice nativity in the inner courtyard of the Amory, and I happened to actually catch it this year before it melted!

Glühwein and the First Snow of the Season:

One of the most fabulous Christmas "traditions" I can think of is meeting up with your friends at the Glühwein (mulled wine) stands at the Christmas market. It may be cold, but that nice warm spicy wine makes standing outside super appealing. Here we are with the first Glühwein AND the first snow of the season! (And I love how the snowflake on the right makes my friend look like a pirate!)

The Prettiest Fire Hazard Ever:

Austrians light up their trees with real candles. Sounds scary at first, but it's a beautiful effect, and far less scary if you have a bucket of water nearby. Traditionally, trees don't go up until the 24th--the day Christmas is celebrated in Austria--and don't come down till January 6, or Three Kings Day (Epiphany). It's the Christkind--"Christ Child", or basically a little blond-haired baby angel with wings--who flies in through the window on the afternoon of the 24th when the children are suitable distracted and puts up the tree and leaves the presents. On the way out, the Christkind rings a bell, and the child knows that the Christkind has been there! Time to open presents!

An American Tradition:

I had the good fortune to celebrate Christmas twice this year--once on the 24th, Austrian-style with Austrians, and then again on the morning of the 25th, American-style, with an American friend and her husband. Later that day we again celebrated Austrian-style: going to lunch with family...or an Austrian family, anyway.

Berlin:

What can I say? Berlin was an awesome city. I arrived on the 26th, when it was still in all of its Christmas glory--here you can see just one of the many ferris wheels at the various Christmas markets around the city. I stayed mostly on the East side, but between the tours and museums and history, I was hooked. I've got to go back.

Remnants of the GDR:

The East German TV tower is just one of the many remants of East Germany's past. It was contructed to boast of East German engineering, but since Berlin makes a city out of swampland, the original tower designed by East German engineers kept sinking. Literally overnight, Swedish engineers were secretly flown in with the expertise necessary to fix the plans, but when they got back, they broke their secrecy agreement. East Germany was embarrassed in the eyes of the West, but thanks to the ever-convenient policy of media censorship, the East Germans were none the wiser and ended up admiring the tower as their own handiwork and beacon to the world. Berlin is chock full of interesting history like this, and I couldn't get enough of it.

The Berlin Wall:

No visit to Berlin would be complete without a visit to the Wall. The history of the wall is intriguing--it literally came up and fell down overnight! It was so fascinating that I bought a book on the subject...and then 4 more books having to do with Berlin as well!

New Year's Eve:

New Year's Eve in Berlin is CRAZY. It's like being in a war zone. The city is crazy wild, with firecrackers and fireworks going off in every street all night long. Everyone is outside partying, and in their festive spirit, sometimes they throw a firecracker on passersby or under cars--one bounced off my leg before exploding! The police watch all of this go down--it's normal. And then some poor city worker is left to clean the streets in the wee hours of the mourn from more debris than I've ever seen in my life.

My Birthday--The Last Holiday of the Holiday Season:

I celebrated my birthday on a Wednesday--a school night--with some close friends in Graz. First stop was Chi-Chi's, our local Austrian Tex-Mex, where I got the closest thing to an "authentic" margarita I could find...and then they brought out this flaming birthday surprise! Oh, and they also let me keep the sombrero. Then we went to my favorite Austrian restaurant where, amazingly, the give you a free 4-course meal on your birthday! Can't argue with that! Then on Friday I had a joint party with a friend who shares my birthday at her spacious apartment on the edge of town. The theme was CREME ACABRIA--an anagram of our names (Rebecca/Maria)--and we encouraged our guests to come in costume, dressed as whatever they interpreted CREME ACABRIA to be. ...There was certainly a lot of coffee represented though...

AND FINALLY......

Holly Golightly and Cotton Ball:

I decided I needed a pet. A pet that offered somewhat cuddly companionship with a short life span...so I got some birthday hamsters. Not just any hamsters though--Dschungarischen Zwerghamster, which, after an inordinate amount of online searching, I discovered are called Winter White Russian Dwarf Hamsters in English. They're the size of mice, but much more adorable and have amazing skills like using a litter box...yes, Austrian hamsters are THAT amazing. They'll probably be getting their own blog entry soon... :)

Surviving NaNoWriMo

2008-12-02T12:35:00.007-05:00

I did it. I survived. I spent the month of November writing a novel.

At the end of October, before I started the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge, one of my good friends took me aside and expressed her concern: she was worried that a month of writing would send me into my own little bubble of self-absorption and selfishness...Basically, she didn't think it would be good for me. So I promised to take her words to heart and try not to fall into omphaloskepsis.

By the third week of November, she took me aside again. This time, however, it wasn't out of concern. She reminded me of what she'd said in October and then told me that those concerns couldn't be farther from the truth. She'd never seen me so driven or motivated before--and it wasn't just in writing. I had focus: I not only scheduled times for writing, but also for exercise and for quiet times and for the other things I always mean to do but tend to push aside. It wasn't until she expressed this that I saw it myself--she was right: writing changed my life, but not just because I could now call myself a novelist.

Of course there were things that got postponed...like cleaning...washing dishes...doing laundry...doing anything social... These were the minor yet predictable results. Did it bother me that my room looked like this?

Or that my dust bunnies were mulitplying by the minute and scampering around my floors whenever I walked by? Or that I used every last dish in the place until I was forced to take a break and wash up?

Well, yes, it did. But it was super convenient because my roommates came and went so much in November that I only really had one week when I didn't have the apartment to myself. (...Not to mention that that 5-hour cleaning blitz felt really good after it was over....) So I pretty much had an apartment free of distractions in which to write. My opera subscription didn't cover any operas in November, so all of my Thursday nights were free. And I started at the new school where I did a slew of introductory lessons--I didn't have to plan a single lesson (which tends to take me 4-8 hours per lesson) for the entire month!

I wouldn't have been able to put my finger on it without the helpful insight from my friend, but my month of writing was good for me--it gave me more focus and got me into some good habits.

For one thing, I made writing a priority. I made sure I wrote a minimum of 1667 words every day, striving for more if I could. Because I spent so much time writing, I got antsy. So I started running--every day. I actually got to the point where I was looking forward to my runs, and when it was raining too hard to go out I seriously felt like something essential was lacking from my day. My endurance improved, my flexibility improved...and then I got shin splints, so I had to stay in and write more whether I wanted to or not! One of the biggest discoveries of NaNoWriMo is: I write best in the mornings. Yes, that's right. My life has turned upsidedown and I am now one of those people who is most productive in the morning. This is a truly mind-boggling phenomenon, because all through high school and college I couldn't even think of writing anything before 9 p.m. My creative juices were at their peak between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. Now, I've found, I work best between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. It kind of freaks me out actually, because it seems far more grown up than my previous pattern. But so it is. I've found that a simple morning can demolish even the most stubborn case of writer's block. Amazing.

Perhaps the most amazing thing from my NaNoWriMo experience is that I feel like I've found a niche. I love writing this book. Even the tough days when writer's block drove me crazy were wonderful days spent forcing those words out like garlic from a garlic press. I find myself now fantasizing about my life as a writer--a big, big dream right now--but totally a place where I could find my groove. Janet Fitch, the author of White Oleander says, "But the essence of fiction writing is creating a character you love and, frankly, torturing him. You are both sadist and savior." And playing this role has totally driven me to write what I hope is going to be a great book.

I've writen a total of 57,768 words, or 145 pages...but I'm only halfway through my story. I've met the 50,000-word challenge, but I still have a long way to go--I've got a lot of torture still up my sleeve, and then a possible deliverance to take care of. I'm totally grateful to NaNoWriMo for getting me started on this project, and I'm excited about finishing it. And then, who knows... :)

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

2008-11-23T02:37:00.003-05:00

I name this entry thusly, not because I'm reading Nietzsche or have any idea what this particular work of his is about, but because these were the first words on my mind when I was startled awake this morning by a grating sound outside my window.

Before going to bed last night, I had accomplished a milestone 45,676 words on my book--officially only 5000 words from the finish line. (However, I've just introduced the wolf in sheep's clothing to my protagonist, and I'd say I've got another several tens of thousands of words to go before I'm really done...) I nodded off to sleep wondering, "I'm 10,000 words ahead of schedule...I wonder what kind of little treat God's got for me as a little reward..." (Again, not a theologically sound argument, but maybe a step up from my waking thoughts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra...)

So when I woke up to Nietzsche and the scraping sound outside my window at 6 a.m., I knew. This was my reward!

I went to the window and looked out, and this is what my extra 10,000 words looked like:

(except it was 6 a.m., so it was still dark)

I was happy for my little treat, but perhaps in return for my bad theology, I couldn't fall back asleep. Instead I tossed and turned with Thus Spoke Zarathustra repeatedly running though my head with the occassional Also sprach Zarathustra (the original, untranslated title) jumping in. When I finally dragged myself out of bed two hours later, I was tired, confused (Nietzsche has that effect on people), and ready to share the first snowfall of the year with my lovely audience.

If you were an Austrian teenage girl...

2008-11-21T11:09:00.002-05:00

...which famous people would be on your mind?

This past month, as I've mentioned before, I've been at the new school with all the girls. This has been fantastic, as most of my lessons have required little to no preparation, leaving me plenty of novel-writing time. I've done a lot of introductory lessons where I play the sentences game, introduce myself, and have a Q&A time where they can ask me anything about myself or America they can think of. (This year's highlights: What are Austrian men like compared to American men? Do you have a boyfriend? Would you get married and stay in Austria forever? ...Nary a question on war or guns and plenty of questions on boys...Yes, you can tell--I am teaching GIRLS!)

Usually this takes the whole lesson (and in one exceptional class, about 4-5 girls had their hands raised with burning questions right up until the bell rang!), but in a couple of classes the students opted for silence. Not even the usual questions such as 'Do you have brothers or sisters?' were asked. So then I turn the tables--I ask them questions. But eventually even I run dry of interesting things to ask them, and we're stuck with 10-15 minutes left in class...what to do?

I decided to play one of those time-filler games with a couple of particularly quiet classes, asking the girls to write the name of a famous person on a piece of paper, fold it in half, then pass it up to the front. Then I'd choose a student (my new favorite method, if there aren't any volunteers, is to ask, 'Is there anyone named Katharina in the class? No? How about Stefi?...' and so on...), seat her in front of the board, and then tape a name to the board behind her. She has to ask the class questions and try to figure out which famous person is behind her. (It's similar to 20 Questions, but not just yes or no questions.)

The funny thing is, this really gets into the psyche of an Austrian teenage girl. Who are they into? Who are their favorite singers/actors/etc.? I loved getting the answers because it is so telling about what's cool and in right now--and almost all of them were American! So, to give you an insight into what is on teenagers' minds today, here are some of their answers...

Johnny Depp (Best question: 'Is he old?' They couldn't reach a consensus on this one--half of them thought he was old and half of them thought he was just kind of old!)

Madonna (In contract to Johnny Depp, Madonna was considered 'very old.')

Elvis Presley

Heath Ledger

Hillary Duff

Bryan Adams (a surprising choice!)

Britney Spears (by far the most popular choice, with 6 entries)

Rihanna

Paris Hilton (also very popular with about 4 entries)

Orlando Bloom

George W. Bush

Heidi Klum (also pretty popular right now because of her show Germany's Next Top Model)

Christiano Ronaldo (I had to look him up...)

Brad Pitt (Britney Spears' counterpart, also entered 6 times)

Pink

Adam Brody (Yes, The OC has made it to Austria)

Leonardo DiCaprio (I actually laughed out loud when I read this one, because I realized he was all the rage when I was their age too--around the time that Romeo + Juliet and Titanic came out...and after 12 years, he's still going stong in the hearts of teenage girls!)

Quick Update: The Story of My November

2008-11-10T15:56:00.005-05:00

The last thing I want to do write now--um, I mean right now--is use the mental energy to update my blog or write a thoughtful email. Most of my mental energy is being consumed by another source, but more on that soon.

It's the second week of November, and my second week at the new school. I'm still mostly making the rounds and introducing myself to countless rounds of teenagers who somehow all look the same, but the contrast to my other school couldn't be any greater. I've seen only 3 male students since I've been at the new school--since it focuses on things like cooking, most guys go to other sorts of high schools. But these three guys and the countless girls are amazing. I love my students. They are quiet, they are well-behaved, they are attentive, and they ask questions. They're open and curious, and I've had nothing but good experiences in the classroom. Granted we're still in the honeymoon period with each other, but I'm really looking forward to spending my three week intervals with them. After one of my introductory lessons to a senior class last week, the teacher later came up to me and said, "The students told me after you left that they think you made the right decision to become a teacher." Hearing that from the students (albeit secondhand), was the biggest compliment/encouragement/affirmation I could have received.

I'm keeping this short (yes, you're allowed to cheer) because that other source of mental energy consumption is the novel I'm writing for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which I mentioned earlier. You'll notice the new NaNoWriMo badge to the right of this post--I thought I'd add some NaNoWriMo flair to the page to keep me going. I'm at 20,057 words, which is 50 pages (12 pt Garamond, 1.5 spacing to be exact) and counting. In these first ten days I've learned that no matter how much you love writing (or art, or music, or anything creative for that matter), it's still a discipline to keep it going. On a good day, I can pump out my 1667 words in a breezy two hours; if I'm not feeling the muse, it can take up to four hours. I've read pep talks (THANK YOU NANOWRIMO!!) from numerous published authors who've described the very same process. The fairy tale of the inspired author whose novel simply materializes in an endless stream of inspiration has been put to rest. And I'm okay with that. I'm in the middle of a massive creative process, and even the days where writing a few pages is like pulling teeth are valuable.

So that's it for now...I'll update again later when I need another diversion or hit an extreme case of writer's block.

My first words at midnight, November 1, 2008. ...Then I went to bed and started over in the morning.

The Advantage of a 3-Day Workweek

2008-10-31T06:31:00.007-04:00

For anyone looking for the perfect long weekend excursion from Graz, I can highly recommend a quick trip through Salzburg and Munich. Salzburg is about 4 hours from Graz by train, but it's pretty easy to get there, with direct trains leaving every couple hours. As Austria's fourth-largest city (behind Vienna, Graz, and Linz), this UNESCO world heritage site boasts one of the best-preserved Old Towns this side of the Alps...not to mention that it embodies pretty much anything Americans think of when they think of Austria: the Alps, Mozart, and The Sound of Music. Only a short 150 km hop away is the Bavarian capital of Munich, reachable by a most affordable €29 Bavaria Ticket, on which up to 5 people can travel quite economically. Though Munich's big-city population of 1.3 million inhabitants dwarfs Salzburg's 150,000, it's the cheaper of the two cities by far. With no lack of cultural events or big-city pleasures, a perfunctory 2 days in Munich is just enough to whet the palette till a return trip.

Leaving Graz right after school on Wednesday afternoon, I arrived in Salzburg and met up with my travel buddy around dinnertime. It was already dark and we were starving, so we decided to save the sightseeing for the morning.

Our main goal for Thursday was to visit the salt mines. Salzburg, literally "Salt Castle," has been a locus of the salt industry since the Celts, some of whom are still around today, preserved in salt in collapsed mine shafts. Having read the book Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky this past summer, I was already familiar with the history of the region and intrigued with getting a closer look for myself. Our super-helpful guesthouse owner booked us on an afternoon tour of the Berchtesgaden Salt Mines just over the border in Germany, and we spent the morning exploring the Old Town of Salzburg. It didn't take long for my Sound of Music fever to set in, however, as we wandered around Maria von Trapp's (a.k.a. Julie Andrews') old stomping grounds. This is one of the few exceptions I take to being a shameless American tourist: to the shock (and disappointment) of my Austrian colleagues, I really do love The Sound of Music, and my enthusiasm tumbled out in the form of, "Oh! This is where they sang Do Re Mi!" or, "This is the cemetery where they hid from the Nazis until that sellout Rolf found them!" As we weren't taking the Sound of Music Tour, this was my form of release.

After a massive cheese and bacon pretzel for lunch, we boarded the van to the salt mines. It was an interesting trip out, passing little villages and even Hitler's mountaintop retreat, the Eagle's Nest. When we arrived at the mines, we donned a large jumpsuit that all visitors are required to wear into the mine and rode a little train through the dark and twisting tunnels deep into the mine. Once we reached a large, cavernous hall, the guide explained how the mines have been in operation since 1517 and are still in operation today--an impressive history. To save time and descend further into the mine, the visitors, like the miners of old, straddle a wooden slide and whoosh 40 m down into the next level of tunnels. During the tour we learned how salt is and was mined, learned about the qualities of salt and its uses, and crossed an underwater lake of salty brine on a flat boat. It was a great hands-on aproach to the salt mining industry, and a fascinating must for any visitor to the area.

We arrived back in Salzburg just in time for a classical guitar concert by the students of the Mozarteum, the Julliard of Austria. But we were in luck and the musical enjoyment of the evening didn't stop there--it was quite the musical weekend in Salzburg, with an extensive Jazz Fest throughout the city. Since there was no cover charge for any of the bands, we went jazz-hopping and saw about 3 or 4 great bands before turning in.

Friday was to be our castle day. Salzburg certainly has its fair share of castles and fortresses, so our first stop was at the Schloss Mirabell (Mirabell Palace), where a little more Julie-Andrews-wannabe singing and dancing was in order. Leaving the Schloss Mirabell, we took a tour of Mozart's residence before heading up to the big Salzburg fortress on the hill. This fortress, much like Graz's own Schlossberg, was impenetrable for centuries (since its original foundations were built in 1077 to be exact) until forced to surrender when Napolean came into town--again, not because he actually defeated the fortress, but because the rest of Austria fell. Shame. It's the kind of place where you can expect to spend the better part of a day looking through the museum, taking tours, and simply exploring the fortress and the hill--well worth the small entrance fee!

Friday night we took the train up to Munich, realizing upon our arrival that we'd barely eaten anything all day. And what better way to rest your weary feet and fill your empty stomach than to visit the world's most famous beer garden, the Hofbräuhaus? The visitor is greeted with a mural above the entrance to the beer hall proclaiming, "Durst ist schlimmer als Heimweh"--Thirst is worse than homesickness. Taking these words to heart, we elbowed through the crowd, managing to find an elusive couple of free seats at a long table and ordered sausage and beer from our lederhosen-clad server as the oompah band tooted out a tune in the corner. Soon our beers arrived in the classic Munich Maß, or one-liter beer stein. (This is actually the equivalent of only 2 German beers, but it looks much more impressive in a Maß.) Having this stereotypical yet necessary visit to the Hofbräuhaus out of the way, we were free to eat wherever we liked for the rest of the trip.

Saturday was an unusual combination of attractions, which sound bizarre when simpy listed off: the Potato Museum, followed by the Dachau concentratin camp, and finally an evening of swing dancing. I'd come across the Potato Museum as I was searching for tourist attractions in Munich; having been there briefly 5 years before, I had left with the impression that Munich was a mediocre city with no particular draw. Curious, and wanting to give Munich another chance, I found a list of classic and not-so-classic tourist attractions, including the Potato Museum. And it was free admission. Having visited the Coffee Museum last year in Zurich, I was all about the small and random museums--it had given a great historical, cultural, and artistic overview of coffee, and at the end we got all the free coffee we could drink. (N.b.: Not to be abused. Man, that was a jittery afternoon!) Would the Potato Museum give us all-you-can-eat potatoes?? Fortunately my friend was up for a little starchy adventure, and we made our way over to the world-famous Potato Museum. But wait--how can the Potato Museum be world famous, you ask...well, it was conveniently located in the same building as the Guatemalan Consulate. Need I say more?... Much like the coffee museum, we learned about the history of potatoes over the world, their uses, and their influence in diets the world over. But alas, no potato tastings!

About a half an hour outside of Munich is the Dachau concentration camp, located in the town of the same name. Dachau bears the distinction of being the only concentration camp in operation for all 12 years of the Third Reich, a model and a training ground for all others to come. It was primarily a work camp, as opposed to the extermination camps of Eastern Europe, but an estimated 25,000 prisoners are believed to have died within its walls. Our tour was informative and sensitive, and although it makes for a downer of an afternoon, I feel that a visit to a concentration camp is a must if you are in the area and have never visited one before--to honor the memory of those who suffered and learn from the past.

After Dachau we grabbed a beer--probably one of the best things you can do to detox from an afternoon like that--and then went out later that evening to see the Roaring Zucchinis, a swing band playing in a local jazz bar. It was the first time I'd been swing dancing in over a year, and it felt GOOD. I was glad to have my dance partner back, and glad that it all came rushing back quite easily. The highlight of the evening was when an 80-year-old German man--and incredible dancer who was dancing the fast songs I didn't even want to try--leaned in and said to me (in English), "You dance quite nice, baby!"

Sunday was our last day in Munich, and we decided to take a 3-hour walking tour of the downtown area with Free Tours, which is exactly what it sounds like: free tours! (They've got a series of city tours set up in quite a few major European cities, and now I am a total fan.) Our Aussie guide, overzealously dressed in lederhosen he'd spent too much on for Oktoberfest one year and then never wore again until he realized it'd be perfect for the tourists, gave amusing and comprehensive explainations of the city's history and sights--and by the time the tour was over, I was completely sold on Munich. Wondering how I escaped from Munich 5 years ago with no impressions at all, whether good or bad, I now had such an appreciation for the city and regretted I didn't have more time to spend there before going home!

Leaving Munich for Graz on Sunday afternoon, I reflected on the weekend well-spent. It was just the right amount of time with just the right--and delightfully varied--amount of activities...the perfect mini-break.

Two more spots to tick off my list.

Round Two

2008-10-27T13:37:00.003-04:00

So I find myself one month into my new schoolyear in Austria. October came quickly, despite an eternal 24 days on the farm and a super-sonic 24 days in the States in September. (And to those of you I saw, stayed with, and/or got into madcap capers with--THANK YOU! It was great to refuel with you before coming back to Austria for Round Two.)

Once again I find myself at the technical high school (HTL) in Weiz with all the boys. I was glad to be placed in the same school as last year, but also a bit apprehensive about being in a place where they already know all my tricks and where I can't recycle last year's lesson plans!

I jumped right in from Day One with lessons on the U.S. elections, Ireland, and differences between the U.S. and Austria (see previous blog entry). Without the near-month of introductory lessons like last October, I had to crank my mind into gear and come up with "real" lessons right off the bat. My U.S. elections lesson received its latest facelift (originally aired to HTL audiences in January, it evolved into a series revamped and re-presented in April, May, and now October) and became a multimedia presentation analyzing the candidates through their campaign ads: a brilliant twist, if I do say so myself. I simply cannot imagine teaching before the days of the Internet and of YouTube! I've gotten into a good intstructional groove, and everything is going swimmingly. One particular plus about being back for my second year is that I am no longer the new kid on the block--the students know me, the teachers know me, and I don't have to prove myself to anyone...yet. However, all that changes next week when I go to the next school and get to be the newbie again, this time with a bunch of girls at the HLW, conveniently located in the same building!

Going to the HLW will be a complete 180 from my current situation. Right now I am teaching a bunch of technically-minded engineering boys, and next week I'll be in a school that's 99% girls learning about cooking, tourism, and economics. They even have one more hour of English required per week. I'll have 3 weeks there to learn the ropes before another 5-week stint at the technical school, and so on until the end of May.

As I begin the new schoolyear, I also begin some new endeavors in Graz. I find that being abroad really opens doors and encourages opportunities to try new things, and this year will be no different. I'll continue with the ballroom dancing lessons in the hope of being prepared for the upcoming ball season. Thanks to my sister's wedding in May, I even have another ballgown to wear! (A tip to other perpetual bridesmaids like me with heaps of only-worn-once dresses in their closets: come to Austria and go to the balls!) Overlapping with ball season is my subscription to the Graz Opera. I'm now Ms. Thursday-Night-Upper-Balcony-Row-4-Seat-8 on select Thursdays from now until June. We get to see a total of about 10 operas, having kicked off the season with Mozart's The Magic Flute and Wagner's Tannhäuser. This week's opera is the German version of My Fair Lady, which I am totally intrigued with--in this production, Eliza Doolittle speaks the local dialect and has to learn High German!

Also in the works is of course more travel (I'll post about my latest trip to Salzburg/Munich soon), for which I've made an actual list of places to go. Now all I have to do is start crossing these things off! Another long-term goal is one I've had since I arrived in Graz: to write more. With the exception of my blog, I've written nothing since I've been here. Pathetic. To this end, I've joined a writing group of other TA's in Austria, which will serve to motivate me and keep me accountable. Also, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo: http://www.nanowrimo.org/) for which I signed up in 2006 and essentially forgot about. But this year--this year I am participating! The premise is that writing a novel is a one day activity: that "one day" you mean to get around to finally writing it! The website describes it best:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.
Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.
Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

...So don't expect to hear much from me in November--I'll be up to my neck in word count!

Finally, I'll be training for the Vienna Half Marathon in April with my new roommate who inspiringly completed the Graz Half Marathon a few weeks ago. It's incredibly risky to state this publicly because it makes it harder to back out...but that's just one more way of keeping myself committed!

So those are the plans. Exciting, yes. Ambitious, maybe. But what a blessing to be in a place where I have the time and the opportunity to take it on. You'll probably hear from me once more before Saturday, and then...I'll surface again in December!

"That's SO American!"

2008-09-27T10:43:00.008-04:00

One of the first things that struck me when I arrived in America on September 2, was that all of the conversations I overheard on the street were in English--so weird! From that point on, I paid extra attention to all of the non-Austrian things that stuck out in America...had I really been gone so long that these very normal, everyday American things suddenly seemed like exceptions rather than the rule? I decided to photo document these things I observed in New York, Connecticut, and Virginia and then collect them into some sort of lesson for my students this coming year. So, rather than explain my comings and goings of the East Coast Tour in copious detail, I'll let these photos speak for the impressions of a young ex-pat......

STRIP MALLS

...Strip malls are an American phenomenon. For one thing, it presupposes urban sprawl--you need space for both the long strip mall and for the spacious parking lot. Secondly, it's very much a product of a car culture: they're really set up for people who drive there.

ENDURANCE ARTISTS ...This photo is of David Blaine's latest stunt in Central Park: to hang upside down for 60 hours without a safety net above Wollman Rink. [N.b.: Only hours into his stunt, he came up for medical checks and to relieve himself (apparently he was unable to drink and use a catheter upsidedown as originally planned), and proceded to do so once and hour until the end of the stunt. Even the finale didn't go as planned, which was disappointing even for skeptics such as myself.] This (and other stunts) was financed by Donald Trump; it seems so amazingly American that one could make a living by hanging upside down or standing on a pillar or remaining submerged in water for ridiculous amounts of time.

GIANT APPLIANCES...Things are generally smaller in Europe than in America, including most (large) appliances like refrigerators. This fridge happens to be particularly large (I'm in the photo for scale), which is something I'm pretty sure you wouldn't find in Austria.

WALL-TO-WALL CARPETING ...Most Austrian residences I've seen have hardwood floors with rugs. Wall-to-wall carpeting--especially on a staircase--is not something you'd really see over here.

NO ALCOHOL IN PUBLIC

...This sign indicates that there are no alcoholic beverages allowed in the park, which is true of just about every public place in America (with the exception of the Long Island Railroad!). There is no such law in Austria; however, alcohol was recently banned on Graz's main square to discourage the punks from loitering at the fountain. The mayor thinks it's working.

LARGE GROCERY STORES

...This is the size of a typical American grocery store. Austrian-sized grocery stores would maybe be the size of the produce section.

CLOSETS

...Houses and apartments in Austria do not have closets--instead you put your clothes in a wardrobe. Sometimes you can have the wardrobes built into a nook in the wall, but it's still very much a wardrobe and not a closet. This concept of each room having an actual door to a little storage space is pretty American.

DRIVE-THRU BANKING ...The first time I mentioned drive-thru banking to my students, they asked incredulously, "You mean, like McDonald's?!" They couldn't understand why you wouldn't want to go into the bank to do your business. I couldn't understand why you would. Drive-thru teller windows are such a mainstream part of everyday American life that we don't even think about it.

WAL-MART...No American community would be complete without a Wal-Mart. And amidst complaints that it takes away from local/small business, it really is more cost-effective to buy that big bottle of shampoo for the same price as the small bottle at the corner drugstore. I love Wal-Mart. So far there's nothing similar over here.

GREAT PUNS...I included this because there aren't as many puns (it seems) in the German language. At least, you don't hear them or see them quite as often as you would in English. Perhaps we're more of a punny culture.

LARGE DRINKS / FREE REFILLS

...At this barbecue chain, they serve your drink in a pitcher, presumedly because in the land of free refills you're likely to drink that much anyway! Here they just cut to the chase and give you the pitcher to drink from up front. And it really does make a difference how much you drink if you pay €2,50 for 0.2 l of Coke, or if you pay $2.50 for all-you-can-drink Coke. Or, on second thought, better make that a Diet Coke.

PARKING LOTS

...again, this is a major part of being a car culture, but the parking lots you find in America are about 3-5 times as large as the average Austrian parking lot. And the spaces are bigger--just like our cars.

HOLIDAY CONSUMERISM

...Note that you've already got the Christmas decorations (foreground) on sale with the Halloween decorations (background). Austria actually gets a bit of Halloween (thanks to America's cultural influence), but those decorations probably won't surface for another couple weeks. Christmas decorations won't surface for another couple months!

BIRTHDAY CAKES...You won't find sheet cakes here loaded with gobs of sugary icing. The cakes are also generally drier and less sweet than what the typical American palette is used to.

THE CEREAL AISLE ...The thing I love about this picture is that it's your typical American cereal aisle. Let me repeat myself: It's a cereal AISLE. Yes, the whole aisle is for cereal! So let's consider this word problem: If your average Austrian grocery store aisle is half this size, and if (maybe) half of that aisle comprises the cereal selection, then how much more of a cereal selection do Americans really have??

HAMBURGERS...You can get hamburgers in Austria, but they won't look like this! This was one of my first American meals--a taste of home!

SELECTION ...There is so much CHOICE in America. This is the selection of tomato sauce in the local market in Washington Heights--about the size of your average Austrian grocery store. Still here, the selection of tomato sauce is amazing. No wonder I have trouble making decisions, having grown up in an environment such as this!

TRASH COLLECTION...This is typical New York: the trash gets put out on the sidewalk to await collection. Alas, this is also why New York is particularly stinky in the summertime! You'd never, ever find a system like this over here: it's much too unsanitary and unpleasant, and besides--it's an eyesore!

SKEEBALL...OK, so this is a minor difference, but it's a shame nonetheless.

MAILBOX FLAGS

...This is a typical American mailbox, with the flag put up to alert the mailman (sorry--mailperson) that there is a piece of outgoing mail. In Austria, you must deliver all outgoing mail into an official street mailbox, even if you have your regular mail delivered to your home.

ROOT BEER FLOATS

...Unfortunately there is no root beer in Austria. But if there was, there is little chance that it would one day grow up to become a root beer float. The whole float idea hasn't really reached Austria yet, but when I suggested it to a select few Austrians, they wrinkled their noses in disgust.

LOCKING A BIKE

...The Austrian idea of locking a bike is vastly different from the American way! In Austria, bikes are typically propped up and the chain put through the back tire. This basically ensures that no one can roll the bike away, but it would be so simple to just pick the bike up and walk off with it! I've often marvelled that more bikes aren't stolen over here. In contrast, I took a picture of this guy in New York locking his bike the New York way: chain through the back tire, heavy-duty chain through the front tire and chained to the street sign, and removing the bike seat to take it with him.

The End

2008-08-20T18:03:00.002-04:00

Day Twenty-Two, or Hi-Ho, the Derry-O:

I spent the morning out in the herb garden collecting blossoms for herbal tea. Around noon, the farmer called me in for lunch. I sat down at the table across from him, and he picked up a pitcher of milk that had been sitting out for two days since collecting it on the Alm.

“Want some Sauermilch [sour/curdled milk]?” he asked, extending the pitcher of chunky milk in my direction. “It’s really good.”

I looked at his mug of Sauermilch, and that’s indeed what it was: sour, curdled milk. “No thanks,” I replied as politely and unalarmed as I could. Inwardly I was feeling disgusted—he drinks curdled milk?! Without knowing the German words for “curdled” or “chunky” or “lumpy,” I tried to explain that I’d never tried milk that looks like that, and is he sure it hasn’t gone bad?

The farmer explained that the whole milk from the Alm had been sitting out for two days, which had produced some really great Sauermilch. He then emphasized this point by swigging his Sauermilch with gusto. He showed me his mug and indicated how schön the lumpiness was and how there was still liquid swimming up around the curdled parts and how good that is for you…but he failed to mention exactly how it’s good for you… “You know it’s still good,” he explained, “by the nice appearance of the Sauermilch. It hasn’t gone bad until you see mold forming on the top.”

Again, I declined. I couldn’t bring myself to drink curdled milk, no matter what old farmer wisdom says…

I spent the rest of the afternoon continuing to pluck blossoms from the herb garden. I’d learned from my time on the farm that I am NOT a gardener, however collecting the blossoms was garden work I could handle—I got to pick pretty flowers and I enjoyed watching the bees!

Mama Said…: Since I’d been on the farm, I’d learned more and more old sayings and beliefs about your health. Most of these seemed distinctly Austrian and foreign to me, since I’d not grown up hearing such things. Some of them I’ve mentioned before, like the Austrian belief that you should always, always, always wear a scarf when you are sick. (This means summer or winter, indoors or out, and even to bed!) Sometimes it makes me shake my head: The Austrians occasionally wonder that I’m so backward for not knowing these basic things, and I have to wonder where in the world they got these crazy ideas in the first place. So in the interest of bolstering intercultural awareness, I will share with you these old pieces of wisdom I learned on the farm:

Your body can’t absorb the vitamins in carrots if you eat them raw. You need to have some sort of oil or fat with the carrots in order to get all the nutrients! (I’ve since learned that this idea exists in Hungary too.)

It’s unhealthy to drink cold milk straight from the fridge: it’s bad for your stomach. Nevermind that there’s a whole nation of Americans raised on cold milk…even that will eventually lead to problems, of course. Yes, we will be a whole nation with stomach problems, just you wait and see.

You shouldn’t eat raw tomatoes in the wintertime. The coldness of the tomato is a shock to your system and that’s unhealthy. Tomatoes are too cold to be winter food unless they’re cooked—so this means no salad with tomatoes in the wintertime either.

Sauermilch—the curdled milk that’s been sitting out for days but has not yet grown mold—is good for you. The jury is still out on why…

You can’t eat honey plain—your body can’t digest it. So when eating honey with bread and butter, you must use your knife to mix the honey together with the butter.

Working with a cell phone in your pocket will make you tired.

No need for bug spray on an organic farm—just rub yourself with grass, and this will keep the mosquitoes away. (Either I chose the wrong grasses, or this just didn’t work for me…)

Day Twenty-Three, or The Anticlimax:

It was my last day of work on the farm. I was grateful to have finally reached this point, and it was this thought that kept me going through another day of blossom picking. It was a rather anticlimactic end: picking blossoms until noon, breaking for lunch, and then more blossom picking until the evening and cleaning up my room.

I cleaned, I packed, and I got to a good stopping point for the evening. The farmer and the daughter came up later that evening to say goodbye, since they’d be gone the following day when I left. The farmer asked how my stay had been, and I told him how glad I was to be there and how I had learned a lot, and I thanked him for having me. He said that if I was ever in the area again, I should look them up. I still found it difficult to understand the farmer’s dialect, so when he said I was a hard worker, I nearly missed it. I didn’t quite follow everything he was saying, and it only registered after he was done talking. I realized that for him to say I was good to have around and comment on my hard work was quite a compliment—this coming from the taciturn and hard-working farmer himself! I didn’t have my wits about me enough to deny the compliment in typical Austrian fashion, so I thanked him and expressed my gratitude for the experience on the farm. Both the farmer and the daughter extended their hands, and we shook on our farewells.

Day Twenty-Four, or ‘So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye!’:

Because I was so excited about going home, I could hardly sleep. Having tossed and turned all night, I resigned myself to no more sleep and got up before 6 to finish cleaning the guest apartment where I’d spent my last week. When I went down for my last Tyrolean farmer breakfast at 8:30, the farmeress had already been up and about since the early morning hours as well. Shortly before noon she drove me to the train station, where she also expressed her sincere thanks to have such a good helper on the farm. She’d loaded me up with “payment” for my services—herbal teas, herb salt, a few other organic products, and some homemade schnapps—and I was now carrying more home than I’d arrived with. Again, a few slightly awkward but genuine thanks and goodbyes were exchanged, and I found myself on the platform, waiting for my train.

It was over. I was going home. I’d been without email or Internet for nearly a month (which nearly killed me at first), with barely any contact to the outside world. It felt somehow surreal to sit on the train in grubby farm clothes and know that I’d soon be back to life as usual back home in Graz and that all of this would step back from reality and become a memory. An experience. This prompted me to reflect on my experience…

Would I do it again? Well, yes, but not alone. Next time I would definitely go with friends! And I would probably choose a farm where I got to work less in the field and more with farm animals...

Do I like farming? Not gardening. I knew that going in, but I thought that on a farm setting it would be different. Despite the rigors of the hay harvest, I did really appreciate it. The time on the Alm was invaluable, and I really liked learning about and working with the cows.

What did I learn? Aside from practical life skills like harvesting hay or driving cows or churning butter, I do now have a much greater appreciation for organic products. Not because they’re trendy and healthy, but because you know where the food is coming from and I better understand the labor that goes into producing that food. Having been a part of that process, I can really appreciate and stand behind organic products…though I still can’t afford them. I also learned that I could never be a farmer or a farmer’s wife. It’s clear that the family I worked for thrived on their livelihood, but I couldn’t. For them, the work is an unending challenge that brings a sense of satisfaction; for me, a lifetime of that work would quickly become a burden. To be a farmer, you also have to be committed to one place—the farm—and stay there. If you know me at all, that’s clearly not in my nature!

How did I change? For one thing, I had to learn rather quickly to get used to or work in harmony with things that buzz, fly, or crawl. I also learned the value of manual labor and hard work—we could see the results of our efforts on the farm and in the products we produced (like tea), which was really cool. And whenever I felt like I didn’t like my job, I reminded myself that it was not about me—I was contributing to the farmers’ livelihood. I expanded my horizons. From New York City to a Tyrolean mountain farm…there’s just so much to life! So many different lifestyles in so many different places, each important in their own ways, and I’ve been privy to it! I feel more well-rounded to be in touch with my agrarian side, and this ironically taught me just how much of a city person I really am!

Would I recommend WWOOFing to others? Yes, I would most certainly recommend it. And who knows, I may even do it again. But now I know more what to expect, exactly what questions to ask of a family when choosing a farm, and how farm life works. It’s a learning experience on many levels, and everyone should have the opportunity to stretch themselves and learn what life is like when you have to work for the most basic of human necessities: food, shelter, etc. For most of history, people have lived a lifestyle that demands hard work with the land and the livestock, and this is still the case today in many places in the world. It’s easy to completely overlook or avoid this fact in our society, and I think we modern city and suburb people should have the chance to learn what that means on a personal level.

To sum it up the way Mom put it: Granddad would be proud.

Alpine Mountain High

2008-08-15T13:57:00.007-04:00

Day Nineteen, or Alm-most Perfect:

It was again surprisingly easy to wake up at 5 a.m. to go up to the Alm. The weather was cold and rainy, so at least we weren’t racing against the heat of the day for the latest novelty: butter-making!

Butter is made from cream, but we couldn’t use the fresh cream from the morning’s milking to make butter; rather, we took the cream that had been sitting in a cool, dry place for the past couple days. For obvious reasons, butter is harder to make in the heat of the day than in the cool of the morning, so ordinarily the Sennerin would have to start making the butter at about 5 a.m. if she wanted it to form in an hour…otherwise who knows how long it could take. And when you’re churning the butter by hand, an hour is already an eternity.

The farmer brought out an old butter churn—probably also 150 years old like the centrifuge—which took the form of a wooden barrel that rests on a frame and is turned with a crank. When the cream, which has been sitting out for a couple days in a cool dry place, is cooled to exactly 12°C (54°F) in a pot of cold water—no more and no less—it is ready to be churned. The farmer poured about 10 liters of cream into the barrel and sealed the top shut; we were ready to begin.

Churning butter takes about an hour of cranking the barrel around and around by hand. The cream inside the barrel sloshes back and forth as the barrel tumbles in endless circles—but always in a clockwise direction! For some reason, which remained unexplained but firmly assumed, butter does not churn as well in a counter-clockwise direction. Go figure. After awhile, the sloshing should gradually turn to thudding, and when the thudding ceases: voila! You have butter. Churning was hard work, and the cream and the barrel were heavy enough and create enough resistance that it was an hour-long arms workout. The novelty of churning butter faded drastically within the first 15 minutes, and then I just felt sorry for the Sennerin, who would have to undertake this long, laborious, and rather boring process every other day. Fortunately, she had an MP3 player.

After an hour, which we all agreed felt like 3 hours, we still heard sloshing. Something wasn’t right. Giving our churn the benefit of the doubt, we cranked for another 20 minutes. Still no thudding. The Sennerin stopped churning and the farmer OK’ed us to look inside. We screwed off the vices keeping the lid in place, peeled off the foam seal, and looked inside: a lumpy mess. Swimming in milk was a porridge-like mess of failed butter. In theory, we should have at least produced buttermilk with the leftover liquid, but even the milk wasn’t sour enough to be buttermilk! It was decided that the cream had not actually been 12°C all the way through, and that’s why the butter was not, well, butter. However, we could still salvage it. We drained the milk and drew out the semi-solid cream, placing it in cold water to harden into quasi-butter. But our quasi-butter was basically glorified whipped cream. (…Later we discovered that we had not cranked the centrifuge fast enough, and that the cream we used for churning was not completely pure and still had a milk content that was too high for butter-making…)

Cowabunga, Dude!: Being alone on the Alm with the Sennerin allowed me to ditch all pretenses and ask all my ignorant and embarrassing questions about cows. Fortunately she not only knew a lot about her companions on the Alm but she was enthusiastic about sharing her knowledge. Through her patient tutelage I learned:

Cows give birth to only one calf at a time, although, like people, bearing twins is a trait that tends to run in the family. The gestation period is about 7 months and one week, and cows can give birth as early as 2 years old.

It’s true that if you don’t milk a cow, it will be in pain. The cows are milked twice a day, and if you don’t milk the cow, the udders will leak. Again, there are parallels here to people…

Although it’s safe to drink fresh milk straight from the cow, it does have more bacteria than pasteurized milk; for this reason you shouldn’t give fresh milk to children under the age of 2.

Why do cows wear cowbells? So you can find them again! They’re not just quaint alpine bling—if the cows wander off to graze in foggy or rainy weather, you can find them again by the sound of their bells. And often the Senner/in can recognize a particular cow by the sound of its bell!

The cows stay inside the stable all day because they want to. It’s too hot outside, and the bugs are too annoying. So the cows wander off to graze at night.

A talented milker can milk a cow by hand in 5 minutes. A less accomplished milker could take half an hour!

Yes, even female cows have horns! However, sometimes the horns are removed to protect the other cows in close proximity in the stable from poking an eye out. Ha.

Day Twenty, or Till the Cows Come Home:

I never really thought about the origin of this expression, but on the Alm I finally got it: the cows are let out at night to graze and then they come home in the morning, all of their own accord! They can sense the heat of the day coming on, and that milk that’s been building up all night is getting uncomfortable, so they go back to the stable to chill and get milked.

The only downside to having the cows out grazing all night is that you can hear the ding-ding-dinging of their bells all night long. Fortunately I’d come prepared with earplugs, and that seemed to do the trick until about 6 a.m. when they came back to the alpine hut. It was crisp outside—I’d slept under a down blanket with a hot water bottle under the covers—and I decided to don every layer I’d brought with me: a tank top, a tee shirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a fleece sweater, and a fleece jacket. By the time I was dressed and made it out to the stable, the Sennerin was milking the last cow. She paused and then asked if I’d like to try…I’d been looking forward to this part for days!

First, she handed me a paper towel to clean off the udders, especially taking care that the area around the teat was free of gunk. Then we should have milked a few squirts by hand to get the impurities out before attaching the milking machine…but she forgot. Oops. Instead, the Sennerin brought out the milking machine and instructed me how to attach it to each of the four udders. Like a vacuum, it sucked right onto the udders; we watched the udder for the appearance of wrinkles (much like the wrinkles that appear when vacuum sucking the air out of a space-saving travel bag), indicating that it was sufficiently “deflated.” Finally, we disconnected the machine and milked the udders by hand one last time to make sure that the milk was out.

This was the part I’d been waiting for—I couldn’t wait to milk the cow by hand! The Sennerin took a teat and drew out a thin spray of milk. I knew that this was more than just a squeezing motion; you had to squeeze and draw down, and…who knows. I watched her technique, and then I gave it a try: nothing. Again, I reached high on the teat, squeezing and pulling down as I went. Still nothing. The Sennerin suggested a circular motion, wrapping my fingers around the teat and simultaneously squeezing; she demonstrated, drawing a stream of milk. I tried: nothing. She suggested squeezing harder, so I did: nothing. Finally, on my 5th try, I squeezed hard, pulled hard, and twisted the tip to see if anything was coming out; and finally—a drop! Success!

Udder Madness: Apparently, cow-tipping is an urban legend! I asked the Sennerin about it, and her expression was simultaneously confused and dumbfounded—she’d never heard of such a thing! She explained that she grew up with cows, and all the ones she’s ever known have slept lying down…thereby making cow-tipping impossible! This led me to ask about cud: cows actually chew their cud, right? Well not only do they chew their cud, but they have 7 different stomachs from which they can regurgitate it again and again! An old farmer saying goes that a healthy cow chews its cud at least 40 times…if not, there’s a problem!

Alm By Myself: When the weather finally cleared up, I decided to go up the mountain and see the summit. The Sennerin had to stay behind with the cows, but she told me I couldn’t get lost: just go up until I reach the ridge, then hang a right and keep going until I reach the summit cross…it sounded easy enough, but little did she know how poor my sense of direction can sometimes be—I was still getting lost in the school building during my last week of school! But I started up the mountain and towards the summit.

I’d never climbed a mountain alone or without a hiking trail, and it was an incredible sense of freedom as I neared the tree line. Up on the ridge the trees gave way to little alpine flowers and mosses and scattered white rocks. It was green and gently undulating, and the higher I went the more amazing the view became. I stopped along the way to take pictures and do a little alpine twirl a la Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music”…I am in the Alps, after all!

Soon I saw the summit cross up ahead and was surprised at how quickly I’d reached the summit. Something about being all alone on the green and rolling mountaintop without any paths to guide me filled me with an irrepressible urge to romp. So I frolicked up to the cross, bounding over rocks and alpine flora.

The view from the summit was fantastic. Being up there was reward enough for my time on the farm, and it made up for the difficulties I’d had up until then. Never before had I been alone on a mountaintop. It was just me and God’s great grandeur spreading out in every direction. What a feeling…and what an experience!

I stayed up on the mountain as long as the good weather would allow. I slowly made my way back down as the clouds rolled in again, taking over an hour to reach the pasture as I explored the macro details of the nature around me: a moth on a thistle, a bustling anthill, the bees pollinating the tiny alpine flowers. I could have stayed a long, long time up on that mountain with nothing but my eyes and my heart to keep me busy.

Alma Matter: Life on the Alm has a different flavor than life on the farm. The Sennerin was worried that I was bored, but I was actually quite content just to sit with the cat on my lap, looking out at the mountains. How could I not constantly look at the mountains up there? It was better than television.
The Sennerin loves her job and is clearly cut out for it. She really loves the cows. If the cows are happy, she’s happy—everything else is secondary. She brings the knowledge of having grown up on a small farm but has the worldly balance of having traveled and living in the city. We got on well together, and it was there on the Alm that I learned the most. It’s the thing that made the whole experience worth it. Totally worth it.

Day Twenty-One, or Say Cheese!:

I awoke once again to the tingling of cowbells through my earplugs. I could hear the repetitive thump-thump-thump of the butter churn, and I knew it must be about 5:30 or so. Not long after, I heard the farmer’s voice—I was surprised to hear him so early, but then I realized that he was here to teach us the next trick: cheese-making!

As the Sennerin finished up with the butter, the farmer explained how to finish this more successful batch. This time the cream had been pure, chilled to perfection, and left out an ideal 24 hours. And this time, after an hour, the Sennerin had a solid series of butter blobs thumping around in the churn. This time the butter had a nice, buttery consistency, and the Sennerin formed it into respectable butter shapes by molding it into a ball with her hands and then tossing it, omelette-style, in a wooden bowl. By flipping the butter, it should take a nice, smooth shape, force out any extra buttermilk, and ensure that it is nicely clumped together. Then the butter is wrapped in butter-paper or pressed into a butter mold.

Since driving the cows up to the high Alm, we’d already filled two 100-liter containers of milk! The first container was 3 or 4 days old and had been sitting out in the alpine hut to curdle. Now that the milk had soured for several days and a bucket places on the surface didn’t sink an inch, it was ready to use for cheese!

Every 10-12 liters of curdled, soured milk will produce about 1 kilogram of cheese. We scooped the chunky milk into a large pot and set it over the wood-burning stove. It was a bit revolting to see (and smell) all of the curdled milk, and I couldn’t help but wonder that mankind invented cheese at all! [For the story of how cheese came to be and other interesting matters involving salt, I would recommend the book Salt by Mark Kurlansky…] The sour milk is then heated on the stove to a temperature of 40°C (104°F); at 40°C, it is removed from the heat and allowed to sit for half a day. (When heated, some of the curdled milk separates and breaks down to become liquid again; this liquid is the whey, as in curds and whey.) Then, the chunky bits of the heated milk are collected into a cheesecloth with some salt and pepper, and the mixture is squeezed to get all the extra liquid out; the cloth is then regularly squeezed and turned and placed in a mold for the next several days until it forms and becomes real cheese.

Sadly, I wouldn’t be around to taste the first of the cheese. I left with the farmer and went back to the farm, where an afternoon of work in the herb garden awaited me. That evening I stepped under the showerhead for the first time in 72 hours. Although I hadn’t missed indoor plumbing or showers while up on the Alm, I was highly appreciative of it when I got back!

Movin’ On Up

2008-08-08T06:12:00.008-04:00

Day Fifteen, or Guest Apartment Sweet Guest Apartment:

The nice couple I’d befriended left for home, and I promptly moved back into the guest apartment. Earlier that day I’d arranged a departure date myself with the farmeress, and it felt good knowing exactly how long I had left of the farm.

What George Lucas Jacked from the Herb Garden: While working in the herb garden, I realized that flying beetles sound like light sabers as they whiz past your face. This new discovery was rather exciting to me, so when I spoke to a friend on the phone later that night, I asked: “Did you know that flying beetles sound like light sabers?” There was a slight pause before she repeated, “Flying beetles taste like Life Savers?!”

Day Sixteen, or Alm-most There:

A week earlier, the Sennerin (remember that word from our vocab lesson?) had said I could come and help drive the cows from the low Alm (remember that word?) to the high Alm. Most of the day was spent in preparation for the next day’s cattle drive. I amused myself with the thought that driving the cows makes me a cowherd, or rather a cowherdess, which sounds almost like “cowardess”…but my little pun was of course in English, which saved me from the embarrassing situation of actually uttering it aloud. (And now that I’m putting it out there, I can properly share an embarrassingly awful pun! Enjoy!)

Day Seventeen, or A Farewell to Alms:

When my alarm went off at 5:20 in the morning, I was already wide awake. I’d slept terribly—if at all—in anticipation of driving the cows from the low Alm to the high Alm. It was a distance of 11.5 km (7.2 miles) that we’d be driving the cows on foot, using sticks as prods to keep them all in line. It was such a novelty for me that I could hardly contain my excitement!

When we reached the low Alm, the Sennerin was waiting for us with the cows. Apparently I wasn’t alone in my excitement, as the Sennerin had also hardly slept at all in anticipation of the drive! But for her it was also a move to a new alpine hut for the next 5-6 weeks until they return again to the low Alm, and it also meant transporting all of her belongings up to the high Alm later by Jeep.

I had no idea what to expect, and I was given absolutely no instructions as the cows began to exit the stable. I was given a long stick to use as a cattle prod and watched as the farmer’s sons and daughters began to drive the cattle down the lane. There were 12 cows to be herded, and we scattered ourselves throughout the line of cows to keep them moving and together on the path. I had only my camera and my “cattle prod” with me, and at the risk of being labeled a tourist (because, let’s face it, I was!) I faithfully documented the experience.

Fortunately for us, cows are pack animals with a herd mentality. Driving cattle is much easier than, say, driving cats. Cats (oh what a nightmare!) would scatter when pushed in one direction; cows, for the most part, follow the leader. The challenge arises when one cow decides to stray from the pack and the others inevitably follow suit. When one or many wander off, you must jump into the woods or scamper up the hill or do whatever is necessary to bring those misguided souls back to the (not so) straight and narrow path. The trick, I discovered through trial and error, is to approach the cow from the side. Cows, I learned, are fast. They can gallop. It’s a lumbering gallop, but a gallop nonetheless. If they see you running up behind them, they’ll simply run away from you in whatever direction they happen to be facing. If you can approach from the side, you can use your prod to urge them back to the right direction.

Some cows seemed to respond well to a simple tap with the stick, while others required an all-out whack across the back. It was relatively simple to drive them up to the high Alm, with only a few exceptions that required the strategic roundup skills of a fledgling cowherdess.

As we were slowly driving the cows up the mountain, I thought of all the agrarian Scripture passages that were becoming so much more real to me as I worked on the farm. As much of the Old Testament is concerned with figures who worked the land, I now felt much more of a connection or an understanding for those who had to work the field or attend the flocks. That, after the Fall, man was punished to work the land by the sweat of his brow—I know that sweat! That people were constantly tending their herds and flocks—totally! That Jesus talks about the one lost sheep that goes astray and the shepherd who leaves the other 99 to go and look for it—I understand why the illustration wasn’t with cows instead! (Though I know absolutely nothing about herding sheep, I now realize that if the one cow had gone astray, the other 99 would have followed…and that would have been a totally different lesson!) Even the Psalms became more alive to me—after all, David spent a bunch of time out in nature with his flocks too!

It took about 3-3½ hours to reach the high Alm. It didn’t feel like we had gone 7.2 miles uphill, since the grade was gradual and, since it was essentially hiking with cows, it was slow going. Ambling, even. When we reached the alpine hut, we all sat around and snacked, just as the cows seemed to be doing in the pasture below. The view from the alpine hut was spectacular—from that elevation you could finally see the mighty Alps stretching out as far as the eye could see. Layer upon layer of rocky, craggy mountain ranges stretched out in a gently receding snow-covered panorama. For the first time since being in Tyrol I really felt like I was indeed in the Alps. In fact, I could hardly tear my eyes away from the view.

Most of the others left the Alm at midday, but I remained until the evening and got to observe the Sennerin for the first time as she milked the cows with a machine that looked like a giant metal octopus. First, she cleaned the udders and milked each one a bit by hand to get the impurities out. Then she attached the milking machine, which vacuum sucks a tube to each of the four udders and then pumps out more milk than I ever thought could come from a cow! (Two cows can fill a knee-high container, which must hold at least 5-7 gallons of milk.) Then, once the milk stops flowing and wrinkles appear around eat teat indicating empty udders, the milking machine is removed and the udders are rubbed down with a Vaseline-like ointment to moisturize, prevent chapping, keep clean, and repel flies. I watched on in “udder” amazement and hoped that I’d be able to help one of these days!

After all the cows had been milked, the farmer demonstrated how to use the 150-year-old centrifuge that separates the milk from the cream. This contraption is cranked quickly by hand and it separates the heavier cream from the milk—for every 10 liters of milk, you can get about 1 liter of cream. (The cream is then used to make butter and the milk is used to make cheese.)

As the farmer was pouring the milk, still warm from the cows, into the centrifuge, I asked if the milk would have to be pasteurized before drinking. To my surprise he responded that it was drinkable already. “Really??” I asked in astonishment. I mean, I know that back in the day people had to get milk straight from the cow, but I really though that nowadays milk was unhealthy to drink before it’s been pasteurized. That’s what illogical city girls think, anyway.

The farmer offered me a glass of fresh milk. With some degree of trepidation, I took a sip…and it was amazing! So rich and so pure—whole milk with the cream still in it, and pleasantly warm from the cow. (There’s a word for this in German, actually: cow-warm-milk.) I drank the whole glass and I could feel the creaminess coating the inside of my cheeks and the roof of my mouth.

My first impression of getting up to the high Alm and seeing the view was: This makes it all worth everything and worth coming to Tyrol just to come up here and be in this awesome creation. This is gonna be good.

I had quite a day with the cows. I observed, I learned, and I amused myself at their expense….

Highlights: Herding cattle requires more than just a strong hand with the cattle prodding stick. It requires many a sharp yet encouraging word to drive them on. While the others were able to get the cows moving with a few choice words in dialect, when I uttered those same words they just came out sounding weak and silly. What better chance, I thought, to use all the cowboy slang I’d picked up from all those old Westerns my mom watched when I was a kid? If I was going to sound silly yelling at cows, I was going to sound silly in my own language! I took to yelling things out, such as:

Head ‘em up, move ‘em out!

Move along!

Move yer cowhide!

These all, of course, came out with a cowboy accent. If yer gonna herd them cows, ya better herd ‘em proper!

Observations: Cows are simple creatures. They don’t seem to think independently that much. They seem content to go with the flow. They’re powerful yet gentle. They don’t seem to know their own strength, but you get the impression they wouldn’t exploit it if they did. Cows have kind, gentle eyes. They seem almost huggable at times…but they also have a lot of gooey snot. They can be kept clear of a field with an inch-thick band of plastic tape strung from spike to spike—they don’t necessarily need a whole fence to keep them out; they see the barrier and they accept it. I’ve decided I like cows.

Scooping up the field mice and bopping them on the head: I finally learned what Little Bunny Foo Foo was onto: field mice sound just like squeaky toys! When the cat caught a field mouse out in the pasture, it made the same noise as when you whack the gophers with a mallet in that carnival game. Go figure!

On Tyrolean Farmhouses: I didn’t realize until I got to Tyrol why Austrian farmhouses look so big: because they’re a house and a stable all in one! The farmer’s house is also like that, and even the alpine hut opens straight from the kitchen into the stable. As far as I know, American farmhouses are not like that!

Day Eighteen, or Buying Time:

The Sennerin agreed that I could come and stay with her on the Alm for a couple of nights. After the day of the cattle drive, I went back to the farm for a day off, buying time as I prepared my things for the next 2-3 days on the high Alm.

The high Alm is situated at 1400 m (about 4600 ft) above sea level. But don’t let that fool you—although it lacks the base elevation of Rockies, it’s just as spectacular, and the treeline is much lower in the Alps. The alpine hut is a wooden structure about 300 years old, in typical Austrian style: a tiny one-room hut with a bed and a wood-burning stove (with storage rooms to either side) and a door opening from the main room into the stable. The WC is an outhouse to the rear of the hut, and the water comes from a hose outside connected to a natural spring on the mountain. The generator provides electricity at night, and the wood stove heats the hut. It was rustic and sweet and I couldn’t wait to take a mini-break from the farm and work on the Alm.

Halfway There…

2008-08-04T09:50:00.004-04:00

Day Eleven, or Green Hectares is the Place to Be!:

Because the weather had again been uncooperative, we found ourselves once more harvesting hay on a hot, sunny Sunday. After giving the grasses a chance to dry from the morning dew, we found ourselves out in the fields by noon. It was a big day of harvest, working the hay from the lowest fields to the highest fields on the property, and the farmeress joked that with all of this up and down all day we’d be having a Sunday hike just as nice as anyone else!

As we were turning the hay on the lowest field, the farmeress paused and turned towards me. Leaning on her rake, she said, “You know, I’m impressed at your perseverance.” Unsure if she was referring to the hay harvest, I asked what she meant. “That you’re still here,” she replied. “I thought you would’ve thrown in the towel by now.” The farmeress went on say that she hadn’t thought I’d make it this far; she had even wondered aloud to the farmer when I’d come and say I was ready to go home.

I dared not reveal what a close call it had been. As I smiled and graciously accepted the compliment at face value, she went on to explain that usually the helpers on the farm come later in the season and that none before me had ever worked so much on the hay harvest as I had! I felt proud to hold this distinction, but I still didn’t tell her that I much preferred the rigorous hay harvest to the “easy garden work” as she put it!

We worked all day from the low fields to the high fields and back down to the low fields again, taking only small breaks for water here and there. By 7 p.m. my feet were burning from standing on the steep mountainside all day, and it felt terribly uncomfortable to stand—either on an incline or otherwise! I felt as if there were burning blisters all over my feet, about to burst open with every step. Despite taking measures to keep myself hydrated, I’d developed a headache…most likely from the intensity of the alpine sun, which was now starting to sink at a harsh angle. By 8 p.m. we were almost done with one of the middle fields, and I was at my end. My head was pounding, my feet were burning, I was noticeably slowing, and I felt I lacked the energy to continue. When the farmer said that we still had the lowest field to finish, something inside of me cracked. The 8 demanding hours of the day welled up inside me and threatened to overflow in exhausted tears. I tried to hold it back as we approached the house again, but as the nice couple from the guest apartment saw me coming and asked how it was going, I’d reached the breaking point. I felt embarrassed and weakened, especially after the farmeress’ high compliment earlier in the day about my perseverance, but I had reached my physical breaking point and could no longer keep from crying.

Still trying to pull myself back together, I went to my room to change my shoes for the final field. A member of the family must’ve seen my sorry state, and a sympathetic voice called up that I could stay there and rest—the daughter would help in my place. I felt bad that my breakdown should come on the same day as my “perseverance,” but on the other hand I had been working outside for 8 hours in the sun and the heat without stopping for a meal, and my body simply wasn’t used to that. But I couldn’t help hoping that the others wouldn’t see this as a sign of city girl weakness.

Day Twelve, or In Good Company:

The day after the spectacular hay harvest (and consequent collapsing point) was my much-needed first day off after working 10 straight days on the farm. I’d become friends with the couple staying in the guest apartment, and they were kind enough to take me along for a day’s excursion.

Our first stop was an open air museum of Tyrolean farmhouses. While this may sound somewhat boring (or perhaps a bit redundant for me), it was a fantastic museum and a very well-spent morning. The fascinating thing about Tyrolean farmhouses and tools is that they are made almost entirely of wood that has been fitted or joined—I didn’t see a single nail! The farmhouses dated as far back at the 16th century, but by the looks of it, they haven’t really evolved all that much in the past few hundred years. I would have loved to take a museum tour, but alas, there was no time…We had to catch a train!

Apparently my new friends were also train buffs, and they really wanted to take a steam locomotive ride through the Zillertal valley. An old-fashioned steam locomotive—complete with some poor guy shoveling coal into the fire—takes tourists and curious locals through a slow and scenic ride through the valley. We rode the train to the end station, grabbed some ice cream, and took the same stretch back. It was a beautiful and scenic ride, but my absolute favorite photo I took from the train was this one…priceless!!

It was awesome to hang out with my new friends, and having them around the farm had really helped with the homesickness. They were super nice and super generous, and I was so glad to spend my day off with them seeing a bit more of the area.

Day Thirteen, or ‘Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Eaten Alive! Eaten Alive!’:

I was a little nervous on my first day back to work after the hay harvest from Hades. To my surprise (and delight!) it was quite an easy day.

I spent most of the day picking blossoms in the herb garden. However, as I was in competition with the bees, I had to be especially attentive. We worked out a system where I would let the bee have its fill of a particularly “pollenous” blossom, and then I would come behind and pluck it. I found that in waiting for the bees to finish up with their blossoms, I’d become completely distracted from my task and end up simply enthralled by their fastidiousness and dedication to the task at hand.

The mosquitoes were out in particularly full force on the farm between the hours of 3 p.m. and 10 p.m. Whether you’re inside or outside, you can’t help but get eaten alive, and I’ve found that I’ve become quite skilled at clapping them or catching them midair—a skill I’d never intended to perfect!

A Note on Language: It was surprisingly not taxing to speak German all the time. I’d spoken a great deal of English before coming to the farm with friends from the States, but as soon as I was on the farm I slid quite naturally again into German. The Tyrolean dialect wasn’t a problem on the farm for the most part, but I could only understand about half of what the farmer or his son would say. But I found deciphering this new dialect to be rather like a puzzle—once you figure out where the pieces fit, the larger picture starts to make more sense… And, rather fittingly, I caught myself speaking in more dialect (i.e., Styrian dialect) than usual!

A Note on the Weakest Link: One of the things I found very difficult to understand on the farm is how they could look at a litter of 6 kittens and decide that half of them must go. And I mean go. You know…
The argument was that the mother didn’t have enough milk to feed the whole litter and in nature the weakest of the bunch would either starve (because they couldn’t get to the milk) or be pushed from the nest. On the farm, the fear was that all 6 would die if none of them could get enough milk. So instead of letting nature take its course, they decided to help it along.
At one point the farmer disappeared and it was suddenly apparent that he was “taking care of” the kittens. I know he’s a farmer and that’s life on the farm, but I have a really difficult time understanding how someone can kill a kitten. A chicken, sure, but a kitten?! Clearly I’d don’t have what it takes to be a farmer.

Farmer Mentality: I cannot relate to the farmer. He works from sunup to sundown and takes breaks only for food and water. He doesn’t have a free day if he can help it, and vacation is a foreign concept to him. A true farmer is a workaholic, and he thrives on it. He loves it—it’s his passion! He wouldn’t enjoy a lazy poolside afternoon or laying out in the grass of the park—his work is his niche. His existence. And the nonstop, full throttle work mentality is one that I simply cannot understand…

Day Fourteen, or The Last Supper:

My new friends in the guest apartment decided to leave a couple days early. As it was their last night on the farm, they invited me down for some watermelon in their apartment. Happy to get away from the seemingly self-replenishing supply of mosquitoes in my room, I decided to go down and visit them in the hopes that their place wouldn’t be so inundated with miniature blood-sucking vampires as mine. We ate watermelon and homemade bread with Nutella and talked for hours. I was sad to see them go, but we decided to keep in touch. I was glad to see that some permanent good had come from being on the farm—I made new friends!

It’s an Uphill Climb…

2008-07-31T12:45:00.005-04:00

Day Eight, or A Three Hour Tour [*thunder cracks*], A Three Hour Tour:

It was Thursday, tour day, and I was allowed to spend the morning away from tedious gardening and on the farmeress’ herb garden tour…in the hopes that I might learn something about herbs, thereby developing a greater appreciation for them of course. What was supposed to be a two hour tour, though, became a 3½ hour tour as the watchless farmeress explained herb upon herb. I took notes, but in the back of my mind I knew that I would never remember what these particular herbs looked like, or how they are called in English, and so this information was already obsolete for me. Though she was quite knowledgeable (did I mention before that she’s written two books on herbs and has had several TV appearances on Austrian national television?), her knowledge was sadly lost on me.

However, I was admittedly distracted during the tour by one ever-strengthening thought that had begun to creep in: I want to go home. I was lonely, and I missed my friends and my family. I’d only been on the farm for one week, but it had seemed like an entire summer. I missed people and I missed indoor plumbing and I missed email and I missed church and I missed beds I didn’t have to check for spiders and I missed the general connectedness I felt while in Graz. And it’s not like I was having a bad experience—it had stretched me, but I didn’t regret coming for one moment. But the biggest shocker for me was the realization that, for the first time in my life, I was suffering from “real” homesickness—the I-want-to-go-home brand of homesickness. In the past 8 or so years, I’ve traveled a lot and I’ve started over in many new places, and people everywhere will ask if I am ever homesick. And I’ve always replied, “Not really.” Not really, because given the chance to settle in or make new friends I was fine. For the first time in my life, I found myself longing for home.

Though my homesickness was both strong and personally alarming, I had two main reasons why going home was out of the question:

I committed myself to the farm for a month. Although I was technically free to leave at any time, if I left after only one week, they family would be out 3 weeks’ help. This is their livelihood I’d be messing with.
I had no money. It’s not the most upright of reasons, but the truth of the matter was that I was neither earning nor spending money on the farm, so the longer I stuck it out, the longer I could have absolutely no expenses.

Day Nine, or Alms for the Poor:

One of the reasons this particular farm had stood out to me in the booklet was because the blurb mentioned that helpers would be assigned to the milking of the cows. But there were no cows on the farm when I arrived—rather, the cows stayed for the summer months on the Alm, or the alpine pasture. From May to September, the cows live on a mountainside and graze out in the fresh green mountain pastures. They are cared for by the Sennerin, which is literally translated as “dairymaid” but entails much more than that. These are two terms that will come up a lot in the coming weeks, so let’s review:

Alm: Alpine pasture. In Tyrol, the family had a low Alm and a high Alm about a half an hour from the farm. Picture a mountain range. Now picture a particular mountain in this range. Imagine driving a ways up this mountain and finding a nice alpine hut with Milka-looking cows (though not purple in color) grazing all around: this is the low Alm. The high Alm was similar, but with a smaller hut, a steeper mountainside, and just below the treeline.
Sennerin: The Sennerin (or Senner, if male) is the dairyhand out on the Alm. The job description sounds rustically romantic: driving the cows from the farm to the Alm in late May (think cattle drive—no trucks involved!) and remaining with them on the Alm until September. The Sennerin lives alone in an alpine hut (sometimes without electricity or running water), caring for the cows—this includes milking, making butter, and making cheese. Once a week the farmer would come with provisions—for both the Sennerin and the cows!

So when the farmer was ready to make a trip up to the Alm to bring more hay to the Sennerin, I jumped at the opportunity to go! I really wanted to see the cows, the Alm sounded intriguing, and it would be a good distraction from my homesickness.

By the time we reached the low Alm, it really did feel like we were in the middle of nowhere. I had no cell phone reception, and the roads had long since ceased to be paved. The sun was already about to dip behind the mountains, and it gave a lovely Heidi-esque enchantment to the place. I was nearly giddy to be up in the Tyrolean mountains for the first time since my arrival, and I romped around taking pictures of cows and mountain sunsets. The Sennerin was an amazingly congenial person who patiently answered my barrage of questions such as “So how does one become a Sennerin? Do you get lonely? What time do you have to wake up to milk the cows?” (Incidentally, she’s a children’s nurse who gets to take unpaid vacation every year to be a Sennerin in the summers, she doesn’t get lonely because there’s enough work to keep her busy and people are always stopping by, and the cows can wait as late as 7 am unless the milk truck is coming or the butter needs to be made.)

Just before we left to go back to the farm, the Sennerin extended an invitation to me: Next week they’re driving the cows from the low Alm to the high Alm, and would I like to help? Cow herding?! Are you kidding?! I tried to play off my excitement as calmly as possible, but, really, I think she saw right through me.

Day Ten, or The Hills are Alive…With the Sound of a Tyrolean Marching Band?:

It took me 10 days, but I finally stopped calling the hay harvest (Heuernte) the “hay duck” (Heuente)! (As you can see, the word for duck, Ente, is dangerously close to the word for harvest, Ernte. Although I’ve known both of these words for quite awhile, when suddenly faced with both ducks and harvests in the same place and context, I’d started to say things like, “Did you see the harvests playing in the water this morning before we went out for the hay duck?” It was problematic…)

A couple from around Vienna was staying in the guest apartment, and we’d seen each other in passing for the past several days. Over the course of our short interactions, we’d started to become friends, and they offered to take me into the village for a music festival that evening. All I knew was that Brandenberg was having a music festival with what I assumed would be local folk music. We found the festival tent and sat outside with some drinks, waiting for the festival to begin. Scores of people were milling around or heading to and fro in the traditional Tyrolean dress; and I must say that even after all this time in Austria, I still find it hard not to openly stare at Lederhosen and Dirndls! There’s something about having a nation so small and relatively homogenous that a national traditional dress can exist that fascinates me. In the I-want-to-stare-at-you-shamelessly kind of way. (Coming from a culture where I have no traditional dress to wear to weddings and such, it has the appeal of both local pride and getting to dress in “costume”—what’s not to love?)

I asked if my companions would be embarrassed if I took photos, and thankfully they were tourist-minded themselves! The festival began with a small parade down the street—small as in two blocks long—by a throng of traditionally dressed musicians playing…marching band music? Seriously? The first song hit my ears with a bit of disappointment. This certainly wasn’t the kind of music from the last festival! The next couple songs revealed a musical trend, and my new friends weren’t all that thrilled with it either: we decided to opt for ice cream sundaes rather than another all-night party with a marching band!

One Week Down…And How Many to Go?

2008-07-26T17:56:00.003-04:00

Day Five, or The Burden of Free Time:

After my Tyrolean farmer breakfast, I was assigned to the weeding of the herb garden. Three hours later I was so over herbs and stray grasses, and I was actually missing the drama and activity of the hay harvest! I’d also made the unfortunate choice of a waist-length shirt that slid up my back when I bent over, and I had a wide red swatch of sunburn across my lower back that was starting to irritate me.

After lunch, I was told that I’d have the rest of the afternoon free. This was my first real chunk of free time since I arrived…what to do? I decided to get all that I could out of the guest apartment, as I’d be moving back into the sleeping stable the next day. So first I did some reading and had some God time. Then I felt a little sleepy, so I took a nap. Then I stumbled into the living room and turned on the TV. Then I did some German grammar exercises. Then I finally called a friend.

With all of my free time, it was finally starting to sink in that I was alone up there on the mountain…and a month suddenly seemed longer than I’d originally thought! It seemed like I’d been gone for ages already, and even the all-night party seemed weeks past. Instead of time passing faster in the mountains, it had slowed dramatically. And as soon as I had time to start thinking, I couldn’t help but think about how little contact I had with people and how lonely I now felt. When I arrived back from Australia in January, I felt so overloaded that I longed to become a hermit; now that I finally had my chance to enjoy a hermitical existence, I found myself feeling lonely and homesick. Part of me wondered: Could I last the month? I mean, I can. But I didn’t have to—technically I was free to leave at any time. And if the family can do this for a lifetime, surely I can do this for a mere month! I wanted to tough it out and I wanted to enjoy my time on the farm, but it just seemed that it would be a lot easier if time would just speed up a little.

Battle Scars: I was responsible enough to apply sunscreen to my face, neck, and arms; but apparently I was not responsible enough to protect my unwittingly exposed back! My sunburn was getting worse—tall, wide, red, and…wait a minute, what’s that?…sun blisters?!
The blisters on my hands from the hay harvest were peeling and healing, but the one on my thumb stubbornly refused to heal.
I’d acquired bruises and bites and scratches along the way, but I tried so very hard to simply accept them as the normal everyday appearance of a real farmer.

Day Six, or The Fear of the Unknown:

Again assigned to work in the herb garden, I thought to myself how ironic it was that I should choose an herbal farm since I’m not so big on gardening. In fact, I consider myself to have a black thumb…just ask my roommate who asked me to watch her plants while she was away for a week! Once more I realized that despite the heat, the sweat, the long hours, the steep mountain slopes, and the stressful time crunch of the hay harvest…I like the constant movement and the exertion and seeing immediate results!

After lunch I went back up to the herb garden with the farmeress to weed. When I got up there I realized that I’d forgotten my work gloves, but not wanting to appear weak in her eyes, I resigned myself to pulling weeds her way—with my bare hands. My major hesitation wasn’t the dirt…rather, it was the fear of the unknown: the unknown number of bugs and spiders I could blindly be reaching for. It really disturbed me, and I had to make a deliberate effort not to think about it. Especially when I saw 5 different kinds of spiders. (Later I discovered a bite mark on my arm with two entry points—fangs. What else has fangs? It must have been one of those dang garden spiders!)

I was astonished when I heard the farmeress ask, “Don’t you enjoy pulling weeds?” I looked up to find her expectant features completely serious and in rapt anticipation of my answer. Until this moment it had not even entered my frame of reference that someone could enjoy this sort of work—it was simply the tedious task that had to be done. I answered truthfully—honestly, I enjoy the hay harvest better. She was surprised and amused at this ignorant city girl who couldn’t recognize life’s little pleasures like this if they, like that spider, came up and bit her. She commented that I’d change my mind once I took her tour of the herb garden and learned a bit more about the plants, but I wasn’t so sure.

Day Seven, or Minor Inconveniences:

Often when there’s any sort of inconvenience, nuisance, or difficulty, it’s easy to blow it out of proportion and feel more burdened than we should. The inconveniences that arose on the farm were probably no big deal when separated from the big picture, but with a week into my stay on the farm, they only served to nurture my developing homesickness. So—deal breaker or whiny overreaction? You decide…

Minor (Stinkin’) Inconvenience #1:
Since I was back in the sleeping stable, this meant no indoor plumbing. This meant that I more or less had to time my biological needs around the family’s schedule…how late can I take my final bathroom break before the family goes to bed? If I wake up in the middle of the night and need to use the bathroom, do I attempt to hold it until daybreak or do I wander out in the dark to the outhouse down the hill that’s surrounded my massive spider webs with proportionally massive spiders?

Minor (Annoying) Inconvenience #2:
A farmer’s life is certainly a hard one—and a busy one. I finally realized that the way my free time is arranged is quite inconvenient. I only got one day a week free: Sundays…the day everything in Austria is closed. (And this, assuming that the time-sensitive hay harvest isn’t stealing my Sunday away from me! As the farmeress put it: If God didn’t want us to work on Sundays, he should have sent better weather during the rest of the week!) I got little breaks during the day, but not enough time to really start anything or go anywhere…it was more like being on call. As I was restricted to the premises for random chunks of time during the day, I never really had a chance to get out and explore the area. (On foot, of course.)

Minor (Distracting) Inconvenience #3:
The sunburn from weeding in the garden quickly became quite painful. It kept me from sleeping at night and prevented me from sitting back in any sort of chair. It was swollen and blistered and even my loose t-shirts brushing up against it made me cringe with pain. It was so bad that it totally freaked me out and I would have seen a doctor immediately had I been near civilization; instead I settled for smearing it with the Austrian equivalent of cream cheese for the cooling effect, hoping I wouldn’t become that random person you read about in the “Oddly Enough” newspaper section who died from a freak sunburn infection.