7 posts tagged “vienna”
One year ago today I boarded a train to France and stared blankly out the glass at what I felt could have been my best possible life. Chris, Jana, Fridolin. Max. Vienna, Austria. All of it about to float backwards as the compartment doors sealed and gears rattled and shifted. I could have stood up, screamed NO! thrown my bags out of the car and never left. Yes, I could have stayed there. There are days yet I wonder if I shouldn't have.
B. Wear slippers in the house. Only now that it's gotten colder do I don a pair.
C. Use cool Austrian words like:
"Leiwand" (the coolest word for cool) Not often.
"Sapalot!" (sort of a soft fun way to say "Dammit!", sort of like our "dangit!" or "dagnabit!") I do use this one.
"Pfiati" (God protect you in dialect) Unfortunately, no.
"Ciao" (Not really Austrian but we use it here like it were our own) This one is part of my regular vocab.
"Servus" (for hello in a humble way) No one would understand...
"Bist du deppert!?" (an incredulous expression like "You gotta be kidding!" or "Are you nuts!?") No, again. Except with Nim.
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) Not nearly as often as I'd like. Too busy... but I have been biking!
E. Buy organic meats and vegetables. I do my best...
F. Eat GOOD bread. (Seriously, we're killing ourselves with the white stuff) It's very hard to find here...
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.) I haven't given up the fight, though it's an uphill battle here...
H. Play with 2-year-olds often and on a regular basis. As often as I can... Winston is a blessing.
I. Mix my juice with water. (It's great once you get used to it.) I sometimes break this rule.
J. Greet friends with a kiss. (usually girls but I'm open-minded) This happens at Church!!
K. Hang my clothes to dry. (In other words, don't spew nasty fumes into the air just 'cos I like soft clothes) Impossible here!
L. Use butter, not margarine. I've kept this habit... though at Flabby's, to my chagrin, we do use margarine sometimes.
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.) This is partly why I was so intent on working at Flabby's. It offers such an atmosphere, though it's very rare.
N. Drive the country backroads. (Trying always to save time we lose a great deal.) I make too many excuses...
O. Never use ice. Oh, how greatly I've sinned here...
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) With what land shall I plant trees???
Q. Pay with cash. (Stay out of debt! The hell with plastic!) I try my darndest... Oh those cursed check cards!
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) I've stayed true on the Wal-Mart front. I even have had arguments with folks about it. The fast food front has been less successful. Working at Flabby's only helps develop my palate for greasy foods.
S. Don't drink soft drinks save Almdudler (which you can only get in Austria). I do pretty well at this, save for when I'm extremely tired (almost always) and need to rejuvenate at Flabby's via the complimentary Mountain Dew.
T. Eat outside weather permitting. Oh, mea culpa!
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) Yes, this has been happening... not as easily, but Americans are distrustful of shady-looking dudes like me.
V. Climb mountains. (weeps for the absent mountains)
W. Eat GOOD chocolate. Hardly eat any chocolate at all. A snickers now and again...
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) Now, this one I have been ridiculously bad about. How about a weekly trip to Nashville/Bowling Green for band practice? When gas prices were at their zenith, I was shelling out $50+ a week!
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) I was hardcore about this. Luckily we had a cool summer. Of course, I could afford to be hardcore about it, since there was a single vent pumping central air into my room throughout the summer, even though I paid not a cent for it. But I refrained from using the window unit.
EDIT: If you feel like a little music to go along with this last entry on Wien, I've added some tunes at the bottom I thought might be appropriate.
I tried to do and see as much as I could in the days leading up to departure. Things got tighter and heavier as each day passed; until finally everything culminated in tears and long waves goodbye. Here are some shots from the last week and a half:
I really have no idea what the first official week of autumn is, but for me in Vienna last week was the it. I first noticed it in the air Tuesday -- that rich saturating smell of drying leaves. The sun was shining hard but it didn't affect the coolness in the air. I was heading over to Jana's to hang with the boy and it just sort of hit me... "Wow, Autumn's here!" There lit up within me all the inmost affections that come along with the year's falling off into history. In fact, I was so inspired that I wrote the lyrics to a song I've been tooling around with on the guitar the last few months. It's my first ever song with lyrics. Here they are:
Herbstlied (Lady Autumn)
Long cotton undies over my knees;
my scarf works a wonder of warmth.
The air about me has fallen ten degrees
I wonder what we have in store
Lady Autumn - you see,
she has come to us to roost.
With Lady Autumn you know
that Winter's about to be loosed!
Chilly breathes upon me an early evening wind.
The squirrels make ready for bed.
That prickly wind has told them to tuck their children in.
Oh look! My ears & nose are turning red.
Lady Autumn - you see,
she has come again to roost.
With Lady Autumn you know
that Winter's about to be loosed!
She stamps her feet,
and on the trees
a thousand color-
turning leaves.
She stamps again
and then, my friend,
the leaves come falling
from their limbs.
The sun, he shines,
and it feels fine,
but we can sense
his sleepy eyes.
The days are shorter
and the boarder
'tween night and day
is growing colder....
Lady Autumn - you see,
she has come to us to roost.
With Lady Autumn you know
that Winter's about to be loosed!
And here are the early Autumn activities of the week:
Thursday we had a Lagerfeuer beim Chris (Camp fire at Chris's): Some of these pics actually came out pretty smooth, despite the very poor lighting, so be sure to zoom in.
So in several of my recent trips around Europe, I've been lucky to take in a few great concerts. I took a few of my journeys just to see the show, more or less, though the surrounding time in the cities I visited was also nice. A while back I took a trip to Munich (and then afterwards Dresden) in order to see Blonde Redhead play. I had never seen them before and as they're one of my favorite bands, I didn't think I could let the opportunity to see them pass me by, even if it meant traveling five hours by train & renting a room for the night, thereby spending way more than the "mere" thirty euros to see the band live.
For anyone not familiar with them, Blonde Redhead is a band based out of NYC and is made up of a pair of Italian twins and a pretty Japanese lady. They started out very avant-garde and hard to listen to but gradually developed it into some of the most gripping music I listen to. It's driving, melodic, atonal, the vocals are taut and mesmerizing in spite of (or because of) their unordinariness. A few of their early albums literally never get old for me, as they really shaped my vision of music. So you can see why I was so eager to travel far. Lately their albums have taken a mellower, more pop-related tone, but nevertheless continue to push the listener.
I got to Munich and had to first find my hostel. I hadn't a clue where either that or the venue for the show was, but after a lot of serious map scouring and a little frantic internet viewing, I realized the venue wasn't all that far from where I was staying. Thus instead of buying another train ticket, I decided to hoof it with hand-drawn map in tiny determined fist. The path turned out to be a little longer than I had expected, but I arrived well before show-time, got my hand stamped, drank a beer, then realized I was hungry so I went searching for something to eat. Wherever I was in Munich happened to host few to no restaurants, and as my hunger grew I was even willing to eat at McDonald's if I could just find one. Only the Lord saved me from the dangers of transfat and let me go hungrily treading back to the venue having found nothing worth sticking into my mouth for nourishment. By the time I got back the show was ready to begin, so I got my spot up front behind a very in-love (drunk?) couple who were apparently more stoked about the show than even I was. They were dancing before the music even started.
I was excited about seeing Blonde Redhead because they're a band that usually includes in their live set music from a range of their albums and not just whatever new album they were touring on (I knew this from live recordings I'd found on the Net), so while I wasn't real familiar with their newest album at the time, I figured they'd be playing enough oldies that I could still sing along and knowingly dance with the beat. They didn't disappoint in this regard. They played several songs from their more recent albums but also several from the albums that had become so ingrained in my understanding of good music. The coolest part of the show, though, was while they were playing one from their newest album, which goes on and on at the end on a single guitar riff, at which point the guitarist, who had been a bit reticent up 'til then, actually climbed down off the stage and kept playing his guitar among the public, rubbing his head up against us and starting something of a soft mosh pit! See below pics from the show and videos of one of their classics.
Slint broke up right as "Spiderland" was being released, so as the years passed and its fame grew, Slint themselves grew to legendary proportions -- and they never even had to tour on the thing! Its massive fame is due solely to word-of-mouth, mixed-tapes and the protective devotion of its fans. Plus, I think that since Slint belonged to Louisville and then broke up, they left Louisville musicians with big shoes to fill, so a slew of great bands -- while never so famous as Slint -- grew from the dark recesses of Louisville basements and nightclubs, building upon the shadowy heritage Slint had established. 90s bands like Rodan, Crain, Endpoint, Falling Forward all came to the fore and added their own brick to the house that love of good music built.
Well, probably because they could get rich off their legend, Slint more or less reformed a few years back and played a "reunion" tour, basically living up to everything the faithful believed they would be. I remember seeing them in the Brown Theatre the first show of the tour -- the air was teeming with expectation; the massive theatre was packed out and they were even serving alcohol, which made things even more interesting. The first band to play (called Pink something...) was so bad that I personally thought it was an intentional joke that they would be opening for Slint. Finally when Slint took the stage I witnessed something I don't think I've ever seen at a concert before: complete silence. Not the silence of disapproval but the silence that happens when hope is about to be fulfilled. Granted, people applauded like wild at first and after every song, but once enough hands had been clapped silence took hold again, gripped and waiting again for the next song. I remember being awash with joy as they played. Seriously few concerts have ever brought me to that point, and I almost feel guilty taking such joy in something as ephemeral as this silly performance, but for me it was a culmination of surprise at the thought that this living, yet defunct, legend was actually playing before me and playing everything just as everyone wanted it (I remember only one small mistake).
Since that original reunion tour, Slint actually hasn't been very active. They have agreed to write music again together, but what they've been up to of late is touring a little as part of the "Don't Look Back" series a group called All Tomorrow's Parties puts on, where Slint was asked to play their seminal "Spiderland" front to back. Other bands in the series are Sonic Youth (see below), Mudhoney, Girls Against Boys, etc. -- i.e. bands that really reshaped the face of music 10-15 years back. Hence, that's why I was in London. I wanted to see Slint performing "Spiderland", and I really was happy by the end of the performance.
They played everything perhaps even better than they had in Louisville, and once again I witnessed the phenomenon of silence at a rock concert, as most everyone in the crowd stood through the song, not screaming, not chattering to one another, but actually listening. Below are a few pics from before and during the show. Also there are two videos (there is a third but I'll have to add it later) of two different "Spiderland" songs. My apologies for the idiot singing partway through "Breadcrumb Trail" (OK, I admit I think it was actually me... sorry), as well as the very drunk woman beside me who seriously couldn't contain her excitement before, during, and after every song, spilling beer over the people in front of us which prompted her to yell, "Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!" I seriously thought this lady was going to have a seizure during some of the songs.
Now that you've read all this crap ahead of time, I encourage you to watch the videos. But if reading all of this has eaten up all your precious time, at least do yourself a favor and watch "Good Morning, Captain" to get the proper flavor of the Mystery of Slint on stage. Note that hardly any attention is given to the actual players -- white and lightly colored lights lit only behind the band, hiding everything but their forms from the crowd -- while the music explodes all over the listener.
Sonic Youth are true soldiers. They've been a band since the early 80's and are still making good music and playing good live shows. The woman singer, Kim Gordon, is 54 years old. It's simply impressive that they're all that (or nearly) old and still making this weird and hard to listen to music with a big payoff.
They were also the first band that I really tried to own every album. As they had been playing and writing well before I was even listening to music, they had quite a catalog for me to go back and buy up. Of course they kept making music and as my tastes grew I had to stop buying every album of theirs, esp. since the newer stuff they were releasing wasn't nearly as good (thinking Washing Machine and the terrible A Thousand Leaves), but eventually they struck the right chords again and I got back into and have enjoyed the last three albums.
As with the previous two shows, this show lived up to my hopes. Seeing a band whose music I've upheld as critical to my tastes for so many years certainly could make for a big let down. But it wasn't, and was actually one of the more fun shows I've been to in a while. Not to mention that the band themselves seemed to be having a lot of fun. Sometimes I see great bands that are apparently having no fun on stage (thinking Built to Spill), and treat the performance more like a task or job than anything they really enjoy doing. So I was grateful that SY had enough humility and pride in their music that they could enjoy themselves along with the crowd.
This show was held at Arena, an old slaughterhouse turned large underground venue in Vienna. It was an outdoor show, which made for a lot of fun pictures beforehand, instead of just dark visions of the band on stage. I was there with Chris, Andi, and Max, and at some point we got separated because Chris and I went up more towards the front and Max and Andi stayed back thinking their spot was good enough (which ended up being "too quiet" a spot for them in the end). Chris and I were standing right behind a small group of finely dress teenage girls, which also impressed me that these old geezers could continue to stimulate and intrigue the youth of today. I took several pictures of their attire and their affectionate loveholds, as well as others in my general area. I also filmed the last song of the SY set (that is, their actual set, which was followed up by no less than three encores). The sound on this one may be a little muffled due to my holding the camera against my head to keep it steady against the crowd of moving people. It still sounds all right, I think. So have a gander.
I also filmed the amazing final scene as well. I didn't quite have it on center, but you can hear it, and that's what counts. Besides, I think it sort of creates an interesting eeriness watching it off center like this....
Around 8:30 PM our train arrived and we boarded, looking for the cabin we would be spending the night in. I myself was no seasoned veteran to this type of travel. Some years ago I took a trip to Rome with a class from my University (actually, pedagogic academy) and we rode through the night there and back, sleeping in the sleeper cabins. (Incidentally, I had an interesting experience on the way back, though it might be inappropriate to tell in this space.) Anyhow, since I was the only one of we three who had ever slept in such a vehicle as a train, I had to be the expert, find the right cabin, confirm that the train would be going straight through to Vienna, etc. I was sort of a dunce for not taking any pictures of what ensued as a most hilarious experience with my parents, nor of the two women (and later a third) who shared the cabin with us, two Idaho natives trying to make a 15-day trip through Europe in about as many countries. I could hardly believe my ears. They sounded crazy but were having a great time doing it, so I'm not one to criticize. But whenever I told any of my friends what exactly my parents and I would be doing for a 12-day trip (four cities), they were all pretty surprised that we'd be taking things so fast and here were these women traveling at the speed of feminimity.
Things really reached the height of hilarity when the third woman -- a round, middle-aged, friendly German named Helga (go figure), who had just come out of an intensive language course in Italian, some smaller city a ways from Venice -- joined the party and we all made ready for bed. Both mom and Helga had a helluva time getting into the middle bunks, laughing their heads off to the point of tears as they tried their best to squeeze, rather awkwardly, into the bunks back first, rather than headfirst on their stomachs.
Once that episode was over, we all attempted to sleep throughout the night, though I don't think anyone in our cabin was successful in doing so. It's very difficult to sleep in a moving object, which is constantly stopping and starting again throughout the night.
We made it to Vienna around 8:30 Thursday morning. The surprise of the day would be that the two Idaho women who shared the cabin with us were only planning on two hours in Vienna, before heading off again from the train station to another destination. Admittably, my account of Vienna with my parents is going to be sparse, as I didn't take many pictures (I'm sort of pictured out on Vienna by now), and at this point it's hard to separate exactly what we did on which day. But here are some highlights:
On Thursday, we spent a couple hours getting accustomed to Vienna in my flat, letting us rest up a bit after all that rest we got on the train the night before. I then took mom and dad down to the city center and let them gaze at St. Stephan's from within and from without. We were tired enough at night that we didn't feel like walking around a whole lot, so we just went to Mariahilferstraße where mom and dad had their first Käsekrainer ("the king of hotdogs") and I had a crappy slice of pizza, and then went to the English cinema, where we saw The Last King of Scotland in all its riveting intensity, Sturm und Drang, and harrowing violence.
On Friday, we got up and went to Schönbrunn, royal hunting grounds cum public garden. We walked through the massive gardens and up the pretty big hill, mom and dad probably having flashbacks of the Salzburg fortress, and enjoyed the warm weather and colorful flower patterns, not fully in bloom, however. Then we made our way back to the city center and went in the Lippizaner museum, where those famous horses resided in luxurious stalls. We couldn't see the actual horses training, so we just spent a while watching footage of the exhibitions, which, though feeling a bit dated, was very entertaining. Later we went to Good Friday mass at the Augustinerkirche, which I had heard has fantastic music. Being Good Friday, however, the music was not joyful, but mournful, and comprised of a single monk singing beautifully in the flooring acoustics of that church. It was really a beautiful mass, culminating in not in the Eucharist but in filing down the aisle to a cross held up by the monk, and kneeling down and kissing it. I know this experience must have been extremely foreign to my parents, especially to my dad, who had grown up baptist and had never attended a Good Friday service in the Catholic church, not to mention it was all in German. My mother, having been raised Catholic herself, certainly recognized the form of the service, though she couldn't understand the language. It was all pretty foreign to me, too, even if I understood the language. I think it probably was my first Good Friday service, as well. It all gave me pause afterwards, however, thinking of how my parents couldn't understand a lick of what was being said, and made me think of this whole debate still being waged in Catholicism regarding the use of Latin in the Mass. While ideally the layman would be familiar with enough Latin to comprehend the Mass, this ideal was rarely met in history, and led not to a enriched faith in God through the Church but a faith in merely the Church without the Word of God proclaimed in a common tongue. We need only quickly peruse the pages of history to see that this was something the early Protestants took issue with, though perhaps too zealously, as much has been lost in the way of Christian unity in their aggressive battle against against what they felt to be misleading practices, leading to misleading practices of their own.
After the Mass, we all made our way into the heart of the city again to dine at Zwölfapostelskellar, a nice little venue I wrote about a while back. It was really busy that night, with only one waiter to serve the entire lower level crowd, and the people around us were all getting pretty impatient. I was a little disappointed, too, as the location was so cool and I didn't want my parents' only experience there to be a negative one. But they seemed much more patient than anyone else, and eventually we got our drinks (still cold) and delicious food (still warm) and had a good meal, accompanied by the music of the accordian and fiddle players who were travelling from table to table taking requests. For us they played "Edelweiss" from The Sound of Music (since we could think of anything else to request), and then, upon finding out our nationality, played a few classic American gospel hymns. I really cherished this entire day, esp. from the beginning of the church service to the end of the meal, because I my parents and I talked at a level of intimacy we had rarely used before, and I learned a lot that I hadn't known about my parents' childhoods, early years of marriage, and friends from those eras who are no longer present in their lives. It's strange to think of one's parents sometimes as anything but one's parents, and to imagine that they themselves once had a life independent of their children, hopes and aspirations of their own, and struggled in ways they would never wish for their children.
On Saturday, the three of us got up pretty early to go see Chris and Jana so Mom and Dad could meet my best friends here, along with my "boy" Fridolin. The whole morning was herrlich, heavenly, as we went to Lainzer Tiergarten, a huge park nearby with a petting zoo, and took quite a stroll around while I played with Fridolin and my American family and my Austrian "family" got to know one another. Later, we went to the Naschmarkt, a huge open air market where you can buy just about whatever you want, especially as there was a fleamarket there, as well, that day. We were planning on going to see a Marionette production of The Magic Flute, but opted to hang out at the Naschmarkt a bit longer and stroll among the throngs of people and salesmen calling out their wares. The freshest fish! fresh olives! fresh onions! new wine! fresh fresh fresh! We bought Josh a nice leather wallet, and kept an eye out for a nice print of Vienna for mom, as she had bought one for both Salzburg and Venice in those respective cities, but never came upon one.
Perhaps the highlight of highlights came that night when my parents and I went to the Konzerthaus for a concert of Mozart pieces, with full orchestra and choir, as well as a couple opera voices to boot. Nothing full blown, but well-chosen pieces from his wide-ranging repetoire. While we had missed the marionettes playing out the Magic Flute, we were lucky to hear parts of it that night. I was really happily surprised afterwards by how greatly my parents had enjoyed it. Dad expressed to me that he had never in his life expected to have the chance to go to such a concert like this, in such an authentic context. Mom expressed a similar sentiment. I was really happy and proud that I could have helped to provid my parents with that sort of joy. For whatever reason, I was really exhausted throughout the concert, though I enjoyed it quite a bit, myself.
today at school was pretty dumb. i had three classes, which is actually unusual because most days at least one out of three classes is canceled. but today i happened to have all three and yet all were completely pointless. my job at this school is to tag along with another teacher to an english class and elicit some good discussion in English. only today, in each of the classes, none of the teachers ever stopped talking in german to really let me take over in english. it was so absurd. i sat there for three 50 minute periods, waiting to do what the teachers had told me I would be doing, and yet they never stopped! haha. I just have to laugh about it. Basically, I got about 10 minutes at the end of the class for discussion in English in the first two hours, and in the last hour, the teacher had some important news to tell them about a trip they're taking next week to England, at which they all started worrying about the news (apparently they found out that somehow they won't all be on the same plane), and the teacher actually let them start calling their parents on their cells IN THE CLASS. this particular teacher has no clue whatsoever. Of course for the entire rest of the class she had no control, as at least three students were cellphoning (I'm coining that term right now). It's a very ridiculous position I'm in every time I go to class with this teacher (I've written on her before). I'm tempted to complain (that's not what I'm doing here), and I'm tempted to be very discouraged, but the Lord is good; I know eventually he will let me be a real teacher again, so for now I'll just laugh about it and pray for these poor kids, who have in many respects become 'my enemies', as they're so caught up in being cool and fashionable that they're completely inhibited from understanding that am there to HELP THEM learn english, something they're told from an early age they will always need (like we're told from an early age that we'll always need math -- and you know, to a basic extent, we do). one girl dislikes me so much that she made fun of me with her friends the whole hour today while I was in the class, asked me if I liked Star Wars (I am wearing a Star Wars t-shirt today), and when I said yes, she audibly called me a freak. Can you believe it? She called her teacher a freak? Her real teacher just stood there and didn't say anything (this was a different class from the cell phone class, but same teacher). During that particular class, I could feel Satan batting around my heart and trying to make me hate those girls, but I kept praying for them and eventually they calmed down. They even started listening to me (during my 10 minutes at the end of the class) when I was telling them ghost stories about Kentucky. That particular disturbed girl was even asking me interested questions. So God's good. Very good.
BTW,
the new Blonde Redhead is mucho glorioso. I don't even know if there's
such a word. Would upload a song at this ponit, but VOX ain't having
it. UPDATE: in order to get back at VOX for not letting me post
yesterday, today i am posting TWO new songs from the new Blonde
Redhead. Enjoy!
And somehow I found my way to a MxPx concert in Vienna last week. Much
to my surprise and cynical expectations, it was absolutely FUN!
Whatever touch those guys were given, they haven't lost it so many
years and similar sounding songs later. VOX ain't having the pictures I
would post, either. Stupid VOX. UPDATE: and here are some pics from
that MxPx show.
