This is a personal narrative I was assigned to write for my Teaching Writing P-12 class. It's a reprise of a poem I wrote and posted here about a year ago, recalling my most terrible event while living in Austria. This, obviously, details the event a little more closely than does the poem. Whether it's as good, I can't really say.

Tragedy Raised a Hand

 
    All summer long Jana had been promising me we would take a trip to the thermal swimming pools of Baden. While most people would find the idea of plunging into heated water during the swelter of a Viennese August uninviting, nothing invokes such a sense of euphoria in me. Swimming in heated pools is like returning to the womb, letting yourself simply be as the water envelopes and suspends your body, while your mind drifts into limbo, unaffected by anything above the surface. I had first discovered this felicity several years before in Vienna on semester exchange. Some friends and I somehow stumbled via trolley upon the most elaborate swimming facility any of us had ever seen: dual heated pools of varying temperatures, both partially in- and out-of-doors, with ambient music playing from clandestine speakers beneath the water. Floating face-up with ears submerged and quaffing the faint mixture of submarine tunes and the muffled din of humans at play above ground, I knew I was in love.     

It goes without saying, then, that today I was poised and ready to return my body to the incalescent depths. I had the car packed, my recently purchased goggles in hand, and I was already wearing my trunks under my pants. Jana was still bustling about the kitchen, whipping up just one more pie for her arsenal of delicacies (packed as tight as dynamite in our picnic basket), while calling upstairs for her son, Fridolin, to come down and bring her his shoes. Jana never could settle on a single task, and she would flit and fly deftly about any room she found herself, much to the detriment of her French bob, and constantly worrying about when she could work in her vacuuming. She was like a master chess player, always thinking several moves ahead. Were there awards in Austria for the most industrious homemaker, she would have undoubtedly made the short-list.

I knew it was best to stay out of Jana’s path in the last half-hour before any departure, so at this point I was in the basement listening to a few tunes on Chris’s phonograph. Generally Chris worked during the day and I stuck around to help Jana out with household chores, but mainly to entertain Fridolin. Since I had come here a year earlier, he and I had formed an unusually close friendship, in spite of our ample generational gap. By now I had been out of work for a few months, with my visa expired, so I made myself useful to Chris and Jana, my two best adult friends. Since the young Fridolin was only now reaching what Piaget called the preoperational stage, it was safe to say he considered all things culled merely for his own enjoyment, and perhaps in me he had found a toy like none other: interactive, larger-than-life and always (usually) smiling upon him.  

For several months now Fridolin had been testing the limits of his mettle, and with it the limits of our smiling approval. Lately he was most concerned with doing the only the things that amount to defying his parents’ wishes. Eating with a fork? Nein! Wearing a helmet on your bicycle? Nein! Withstanding the urge to throw everything out the tree house window? Nein! He had recently expressed his hope to jump from the upstairs window of the house to the tippy-top of the cherry tree he had seen me climb now and again. By all accounts these positions could have been deemed outright insolence, but as Frodo (as we had nicknamed him) was only two, we took them to be due to the audacity of hope rather than of spite.

But Fridolin’s hopes had slowly been growing larger than the wrought iron fence around his parents’ yard could contain. Not only had he started to toss valuables over the fence into the street – something even his usually sanguine papa couldn’t abide – but he had even tried his hand at opening the gate to take a stroll all on his own. Thankfully up until now he hadn’t succeeded in this latest endeavor, as the gate was generally wedged shut, and little Fridolin hands couldn’t manage to open it.

I was probably listening to my fifth or sixth tune on the phonograph downstairs before I noticed how late it was getting. Was Jana ever going to finish that last pie and call me upstairs? I had woken up that morning practically salivating at the thought of thermal swimming, and here I found myself in a damp basement flipping a record over. The longer we waited on cooking pies, the less time we’d have to blissfully atrophy our bodies in the calm, smooth warmth.

I lifted the needle from the vinyl and set it aside, hit the light and ascended the stairs. When Jana heard me shut the door to the basement, she started and looked toward me as though I were a stranger. She had been so wrapped up in her preparations, I thought, that she almost didn’t recognize me.

“Where’s Frodo?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” she said. “I sent him outside to find you and play a little while I finished here.”

“Well, I’ve been in the basement waiting on you,” I replied with a grin. “I’ll go out now and keep him occupied.”

I walked out on the veranda and was immediately warmed by the morning sun. It was late in the month, and the mornings had begun to stay cool up until around noon. The air was brisk enough to isolate the sun’s rays when they hit your face and neck, and quicken the hairs on your back beneath your shirt. In fact, it was the perfect weather for thermal swimming.

I glanced about the yard for Fridolin, but found no sign of him. The yard was relatively big as far as Austrian yards go, and there were lots of terrific hiding spots the little Lausbub loved to exploit. I looked behind the mini-skateboard ramp, where Jana grew her roses. We often had to remind Frodo that the roses would give him an “owa” if he got too close. I didn’t find him there, so I walked over and peeked under the pine trees that buffeted the yard with the neighbor’s, where Fridolin had fashioned his “workshop.” There was stacked his usual bunch of leaves and sticks, his “tools,” but there was no Fridolin. I walked to the back around the plum tree and strawberry garden, thinking perhaps he was sneaking a berry or two into his mouth while unmonitored. We had explained to him how the berries weren’t quite ripe yet, but I think the sour taste only whet his palate more. Strangely, all the berries hung silently and undisturbed.

Growing a little concerned, I trotted to the gate, but it was shut as usual. Perhaps he’s still inside, still upstairs without his shoes on, I thought. I hurried back to the veranda and through the door, and without a word to Jana I hustled up the stairs, taking two with each stride. No sign, no sign, I began to recycle in fear. When I came back down, Jana knew something was wrong and had left off her pies.

“Where is he?” she spoke, suddenly gripped as I was.

“No sign, no sign!” I struggled to announce in German.

Next we were out on the street, calling his name, sprinting up one street and down the next. Jana was crazed, had jumped into her car weeping, shredding her larynx on his name. I had absolutely no idea how it had come to this, how we had shifted from the high anticipation of genuine calm to complete hysteria. I was running up and down the streets and alleys, in and out of strangers’ yards, asking anyone I saw where he could be, the mesh of my swim trunks drawing tighter around my thighs.

I ran to Napoleonwald, a thinned-out wood where there was a playground we often took the Lausbub, and just a block from Chris and Jana’s. I remembered there had been some construction workers operating tractors and dump trucks that week – Fridolin’s favorite things to watch after his papa’s skateboard videos. I reached the edge of the wood and stopped. I saw the machines and the men working them, but no sign, no sign, I couldn’t see him. I ran back to the house and began combing the streets again. I ran harder than I had run in years, harder than I had ever run in 18 years of playing soccer. I ran like I had run from Jason Summers, who once chased me down with a tennis racket after two neighborhood kids and I had spent our leisurely afternoon throwing crabapples at him and calling him an albino. I couldn’t breathe and I felt ready to collapse and die, or puke, or all three.

In the distance I could hear Jana still screaming, still revving up the steep streets. I prayed she wasn’t going so fast she couldn’t stop if she saw him, if we were to ever to see him again. I had entered a state of mind tethered neither to hope nor despair. I could not chalk this up to my usual philosophy of how things just work out for the best, because I was beginning to think this time they might not. I began to wonder how I might take it, how I would cope and offer consolation to the mother who thought she had merely sent him out into the yard only to find me, and not to his death. I recognized that tragedy was completely foreign to my psyche, that I hadn’t cried over someone in a decade, and then only for a broken teenage heart.

I still wasn’t crying. I was racing against it, up and down those steep streets, and turned the corner one last time back onto the street where it had all started. The gate was still closed, as it had been after us when we rushed out to begin our search. But Jana was there now, having just pulled up and leapt back out of the car to snatch up her boy, who stood there, now starting to cry, as though he understood only then that he had been alone.

There's just no time anymore. I leave for france in two days, like 52 hours. I'll be there twelve mind-warping days and then I'll be back in the USA. It's really hard to comprehend. I keep thinking: Saturday I am leaving, going home. But then I remember it'll be a couple weeks yet. Bizarre!

But while it's nearly impossible to imagine leaving my dear Austrian friends behind, I know at least I have a heap of good friends back home anxious about my return. This was reconfirmed for me this week when I got this video full of eager faces in the old email box... In case anyone is wondering, that character hopping around at the end is actually me after a couple weeks not shaving.

So last week I took my last personal trip through Austria. With Chris and Jana there seems to be a little trip somewhere nearly every week (for instance, yesterday we went to Wels and then Steyr, yet another tiny beautiful town), but I went to Hallstatt on my own and stayed a couple nights. I had both read and heard often of its grandeur, so the decision to go wasn't a hard one, and the only question was how long I'd have to save up my illegal earnings to afford to get there. All I can say is that that little place lived up to its reputation for capturing every magical element of Austria and tucking it all neatly into one small lake valley. Be advised that no photo I took really did Hallstatt justice, but I do what I can with my little cyber-shot.

Ever wondered what it'd be like to exist within a Grimm's fairy tale? Go to Hallstatt. Don't drive there, but instead take the train through the mist-shrouded mountains and allow the immense Romance of it all wash over and submerge you until you nearly drown. When you arrive at the depot, you walk down the small path labeled "Schiffweg" and board the Stephanie, a small boat that trolls across the lake. You can gasp as loud and long as you please before the mountains' immensity and your first panoramic view of Hallstatt: houses, churches, hotels lining the lake and more houses wedged into the side of the Salzberg and what seemed to be on top of those on the lake.
The train ride there:

The trip across:
From the moment I got off the boat I don't think I stopped smiling for the first several hours of my time in Hallstatt. It was like my childhood steeped in legend and fantasy books come to life. Hallstatt is a town of about 1000 people, and given its being wedged between a mountain and a lake, there's little room for growth (I read it peaked around 2000 in the 19th century and has been dwindling since). The town itself dates back 4500 years and somehow you get a sense of that even if your tiny head could never truly comprehend so long a time for something to survive. Towards the end of the Austrian empire, the Kaiser Franz Joseph (uncle to Franz Ferdinand) and his wife Sisi, beloved by her people perhaps even more than Diana was by hers, visited Hallstatt often as one of their favorite vacation spots. Sisi was a big fans of swans, so the locals loaded the lake with them, and even today you can see them hanging around on the lake. I saw for the first time a mottled swan. I'm not sure if that was an indication of sex or what, but I was able to up close and personal with one of them before she/he started hissing at me.
I walked around for a while with my "luggage" (my computer bag filled with clothes) because nothing was open at midday. I hadn't booked a room or anything beforehand though I had done a lot of searching online for a place. As touristy as Hallstatt is said to get, I couldn't find anything in the right price range online (i.e. cheap). Eventually I did get a room booked via the nice lady at the city's TI station. She only had to make one call to Frau Gamsjäger and I was set. Frau Gamsjäger was just a nice old lady who let out a few rooms of her house. The room itself was pretty much what you might expect from a nice elderly woman: nicely but sparsely furnished, picture of Jesus and lambs hanging above the bed, and a beer bottle opener sitting on the table. The room featured a fantastic view of the lake, and I spent a lot of my chill time in Hallstatt just up on the balcony looking out at the calm. The nice Frau was the wife of a nice old man who could barely speak. But despite his difficulty making himself understood, he was always bearing his beautiful dentures with a big smile and pointing me this or that way to show me something in his house worth knowing about. True to his name (game hunter), the walls of the house downstairs boasted his exploits of the hunt, and this sort of clued me into something else I had already started to notice about Hallstatt: that aside from the salt mined from the Salzberg -- which comprised for thousands of years Hallstatt's primary commerce -- the town bore the remnants of a hunting and fishing culture going slowly down the buffalo's road. Around town there hung the antlers of small animals as well as wooden anomalies from trees, and every menu I passed advertised fresh delicious fish. Another quirky thing I noticed was how they planted trees flush against their houses, growing them up out of the pavement it seemed and then basically binding the limbs to the side of the house. Later in my trip, to reinforce the whole hunting & fishing theme, I found a pretty mean-looking fish-head choir, all mouths opened wide and held in an eternal note silent to my human ears.
After dropping my things off at the house, I took a self-guided tour of the town and tried to get lost. As it really only takes about 15 minutes to stroll the length of the city, I had to be a little creative. Eventually I found myself looking at some nice old houses and got a good view from above on the other side of town. I found a big yellow mansion that was unlocked and being renovated. I stepped inside to see if there was anything interesting to see, but really it wasn't all that great inside so I left. I strolled back along the riverside and played on the town's one playground. I tried riding a seat chained to a zipline but I was just too heavy so my butt scraped along the melting snow. Heading back through the center of town I found a lot of small alleys and narrow steps and tried to check them all out. At one point the sun broke and the whole town started to gleam. A lot of these old Catholic towns have the stations of the cross "stationed" throughout the city, giving passers-by something of the Lord to think about. I stopped and tried to shoot a few good shots of Jesus in the garden as his disciples slept and the Roman guards approached. Eventually I found the best view of the old town near the Catholic church which houses the famous Beinhaus, which I would enter the next day and I'll talk more about in a bit. For now I just went into the Catholic church and sat a while. I lit a few candles for friends before going, and when I came out the sun was already behind the mountains and I could tell the town would be winding down soon (not that it had really been all that wound up). While I was up top I made friends with a chubby orange cat. I took a few blurry fotos of the cemetary before heading down. On the way down I noticed another narrow stair that I would be climbing the next day (foreshadow!). Here's a mishmash of pics from my walk in the town:
Night fell soon afterwards. I realized in Hallstatt once the sun goes down there's nothing really left to do. I had read about a single pub that stayed open late, but I was really already pretty tired and didn't feel like sitting in a smoke-filled room. So instead I ate a pizza from one of the town's two pizzerias and then strolled again through the town after dark. I walked up a set of stairs I had seen earlier but not gone up. This is where I found my little cat buddy again strangely enough. I got to the top of the stairs and found there only a parking lot and a long tunnel for cars to pass through, so I took another set of stairs back down and into the small very dark streets. I eventually found another station of the cross, and tried to photograph it despite the darkness. When I finally realized that really and truly there was no one to meet on the streets, and no where for a young robust man of nearly 28 to romp, I headed back to Frau Gamsmjäger's. It seems it was the best decision anyhow, as nearly as quickly as I plopped myself in bed with a book and a friend's letter to read, I was drifting off at only 9 PM!
The next morning was beautiful. The mist hadn't yet lifted from the lake but I could tell it was going to be a bright, sunny day. Perfect for climbing the mountain Hallstatt was dug into. I found out later that this mountain was the Salzberg, and had I known, I would've done my best to get to the top, but as it was, I reached about 1500 meters, noted my soaked and numbing feet, and having no idea just how much further I'd have to go to reach the summit, I headed back down the slope steeped in knee-high snow for fear of losing a toe or two. But on the way up I nevertheless saw many a wonder, and as usual with mountain climbs, had to stop time and again to catch a breath-taking view and fail miserably at capturing it with my camera. Most of the way up, actually, there wasn't all that much snow. It was nevertheless a difficult climb as my shoes had hardly any traction after a year of trekking here and there and everywhere in between. Had I known better I would've worn my big black and white-laced boots, despite the fact that most Austrians automatically think "white-power" and "neo-nazi" when they see them. The boots are a lot warmer and keep out the wet much better than my leather/rubber-soled Clarks. But before any of that, while still at the bottom of the mountain I stepped inside the town's only protestant church. For a long time Roman Catholicism was the only legal religion in Austria, and while most of the town was made up of protestants (the working class), only the rich were allowed to have a proper church building. Until the late 18th century, Protestants would meet in home churches, but once the Kaiser of the day gave the green light to allow for Protestant churches to also be built, the working class pooled their resources to build this impressive church (the pointier steepled one from without). From inside you notice pretty fast that it's Protestant. The focal point of the whole interior is clearly the pulpit, and less attention is given to the Saints (though I was pretty surprised to see quite a few saintly icons displayed, which is not really something you see at all in most P churches). Not to mention there was a painting of Martin Luther hanging on the wall next to the pulpit. So after the church I climbed the narrow stair again to the Catholic church I had seen the night before, where I again entered the cemetary and this time paid my one euro to see the legendary Beinhaus, a crypt where the bones of the previously buried dead are on display. I'm not quite sure of the history, but at one point in the 20th century, in order to make room in the ground for the newly dead, the long-deceased were exhumed and their bones stashed in this small room beneath what I think is the priest's living quarters. Then, the families of those unearthed would come and hand-paint their skulls to mark just who they had been, when they had lived and died, etc. Pretty wild. And the painted skulls made for a very eerie experience, all staring at me as I treaded on their sacred concrete. Having never really even seen a human skeleton before, I committed sacrilege (or maybe just a major dis) and reached across the rope barrier to place a finger on one of the skulls. But now that I've finally satisfied the urge to handle human remains, I guess I can cancel that killing spree I had planned. (Black humor, anyone??)
Before the climb (church & beinhaus):
And... the climb (gradual progession upwards -- if yr looking for a more detailed desc. of the climb, I'm gonna try to give a little more detail to each picture, but not at the moment):
I made it down the mountain just in time to save my feet from falling off. Two working fellers sped down the mountain and I hitched a ride. I'm really really thankful for them given just how wet and cold I was, and how loooooong the alternative way down I was going to choose would've been on foot. I honestly didn't understand a lot of what they were saying to me in the truck, so strong was their Hallstatt accent (which is somehow a problem I didn't have with any of the other locals). Anyway, tonight was my night to go to the pub I had shunned the day before. I finished out The Town and listened to the locals howl and cackle at their own jokes. The two tiny rooms were pretty packed with both natives and tourists (tourists I could tell by the Rick Steves books they were toting upon their entrance), and I sat alone and pondered just how good God had been to me this whole year abroad, despite what seems to be a constant forgetfulness or ungratefulness on my part. He's a very patient God.
On the walk back from the pub, I stopped by the lake to look up at the full moon, which shone behind the clouds. Its light illuminated the the mountains' shape and lined the clouds themselves. I thought to myself I'd never before been privy to so sublime a beauty and calm as I was in that moment. There was no one there, and yet I felt surrounded with the saints and angels who down the ages had also looked out over that peace.
Still more to come....

  

OK people! I've got less than a month before I head backwards, or westwards if you will, following the sunset until I reach Louisville, Kentucky. It boggles the mind to look back and remark just how long I've been here. Now granted I'm no Ulysses but a lot has happened over the last year and some months. I've grown a lot in ways I don't think I could have ever imagined prior to my trip. Sometimes I'm tempted to think I haven't changed since high school, that only the world and people around me have changed, but this is a half-truth and it's ludicrous. But as every creature of God's creation I too am given to change, and sometimes I'd like to think change for the better. So after putting my mind to it these last weeks I've come up with a list of things that have changed about me in the last year, little habits or common activities I've picked up in my time here that I want to keep doing once I'm back in the USoA. Some convey simple comforts I've become used to and don't think I should give up even if my native culture doesn't comply. Others evince a distrust I've had for parts of my native culture for a while now but have become more focused in my time away from it, and so the my habits here are part of my rebellion. (Of course, the rebellion won't really begin until I'm back on native soil, so I need everyone reading this to contribute by keeping me accountable.) Others are just things I think are funny about the way I live now.

So here we go:
The ABCs of Austrian Living (according to Derek)

A. Take my shoes off when I come inside the house.
B. Wear slippers in the house.
C. Use cool Austrian words like:
    "Leiwand" (the coolest word for cool)
    "Sapalot!" (sort of a soft fun way to say "Dammit!", sort of like our "dangit!" or "dagnabit!")
    "Pfiati" (God protect you in dialect)
    "Ciao" (Not really Austrian but we use it here like it were our own)
    "Servus" (for hello in a humble way)
    "Bist du deppert!?" (an incredulous expression like "You gotta be kidding!" or "Are you nuts!?")
D. Walk places. (Not having a car and preferring to use the public trans. anyway, I get the chance to walk just about everywhere here -- to and from the buses & trains, through neighborhoods, through canals, alleyways, forests and fields)
E. Buy organic meats and vegetables.
F. Eat GOOD bread. (Seriously, we're killing ourselves with the white stuff)
G. Really, truly, and seriously recycle. (As the small country that Austria is, people are simply more aware of the limits of natural resources, so the government has a pretty effective system going, which most observe. It's going to be more difficult working against the grain back home, as the existing system in most places is laughable at best.)
H. Play with 2-year-olds often and on a regular basis.
I. Mix my juice with water. (It's great once you get used to it.)
J. Greet friends with a kiss. (usually girls but I'm open-minded)
K. Hang my clothes to dry. (In other words, don't spew nasty fumes into the air just 'cos I like soft clothes)
L. Use butter, not margarine.
M. Sit around in restaurants or cafes longer enjoying the time. (We have a way of rushing off back home. It's that protestant work ethic I guess. Austria tends to be a "sit-around-and-relax" culture.)
N. Drive the country backroads. (Trying always to save time we lose a great deal.)
O. Never use ice.
P. Grow fruit trees and eat from them. (seems like everyone here has their own apricot or apple or plum tree... maybe even their own vineyard)
Q. Pay with cash. (Stay out of debt! The hell with plastic!)
R. No fast food and no Wal-Mart. (OK, granted, there's no Wal-Mart here, but the point is I'm not giving my money to them or companies like them)
S. Don't drink soft drinks save Almdudler (which you can only get in Austria).
T. Eat outside weather permitting.
U. Make conversation with strangers. (People do this here a lot, and not just the elderly. It's a sign people have at least a basic trust of one another, and find one another interesting enough to shoot the breeze)
V. Climb mountains.
W. Eat GOOD chocolate.
X. If possible, avoid using the car. (It's amazing how people can function without one. Plus, it sure is nice to save all that gas money)
Y. Don't use air conditioning. (I've thought about this for a long time. What good are we doing our bodies and the world by using AC? We train our bodies not to sweat, ergo retain whatever toxins we should be sweating out, and the money we pay and the energy we use to keep those machines running really is nuts. Like using ice, what was a luxury fifty years ago is now a necessity, and few are counting the cost)
Z. Be less than dependent on the cell phone. (That isn't to say independent. The cell phone has its use, but people here as well as at home I've found that use has become something much more like an abuse. Plus tests are showing it causes tumors and prostrate. Good thing my friends here are few enough to keep me off the line.)

And since there aren't any more letters in the Alphabet, I'll just leave this last one to the visual realm:

   

Well, I'm probably cruising for a bruising from my mom in posting this. Or at least a big boy spanking. But lately I haven't had too many opportunities to stretch my legs in photography and I'd like to share with you one such chance I did have. Recently my friends and I took a trip into Burgenland to a small town which hosted an old castle called Rotenturm (Red Tower). Rotenturm was built around the middle of the 19th century and after the second World War was occupied by Soviet soldiers as an outpost, as were many such old Austrian castles. Apparently the place has been out of use and in disrepair since the Soviets left, and as is usual in Austria was in danger of being torn down, until recently the state undertook the task of renovating it. Being in disrepair, under renovation, and owned by the state, you can imagine that this is not a place where just anyone can prance in and have a gander. Only given our love of old abandoned buildings and Chris's penchant for getting into them somehow, we decided to take a chance in the name of rebel photography.

Now don't misunderstand me. I was plenty nervous about breaking into a castle in Austria, no less while I'm living illegally here. I actually dreamed the night before of being deported for having done something stupid at a party and then easily caught by the police because I was dressed up like a clown, make up and all. So I was doing my part in acting inconspicuous walking around the fenced-in castle exterior at first. We were just having a look-see, was all. taking a few photos of this beautiful bit of brick deterioration, and observing the vegetation, including the weirdest looking fruit (?) we've ever seen. We called it a turkey plant.

    

Tonight I fooled an Austrian woman into thinking that I was actually. Honestly I wasn't trying to fool her. I was just speaking German, and she thought I spoke so well that she wouldn't believe me when I told her I was an American. "You spent time here as a child, yes?" "No." "Maybe one of your parents is Austrian, yes?" "No." "You've lived here for many years, yes?" "No." She asked to see my ID but I had forgotten my wallet at home.

I started working illegally at a nearby cafe whose owner (Noah) is American and who's become a good friend. I worked alone last night for the first time, and things were a'mighty slow. The previous night had been pretty rowdy. I served a lot of drunk people more alcohol and had to help kick a guy out when he started choking his wife. We also watched Buffalo '66, which was a mind-blower. But I'm glad nothing like that happened last night. Instead, I sat around mostly alone, writing letters and listened to Johnny Cash and eventually a few customers came in, along with Sam, Noah's best friend from back home, and we somehow were launched into a 4 hour long discussion/debate on God, Nature, & Anarchy. We were listening to Jeff Buckley and MF Doom. I got home at 6 AM.

I also attended a convention for Jehovah's Witnesses this weekend. Noah, his wife Lydia, and Sam are all JWs, and we've been having a lot of discussions around that. They asked me to come to this convention and I figured it'd be an interesting experience, which it was. It was like sitting through a 9-hour long infomercial, complete with weak, perhaps even bogus interviews of first-hand Witness accounts. But now at least I'm more comfortable with JWs.