Walking on the Dead.

Sorry, I've been behind on my blogging.  And, for future reference, I hate that word.  "Blogging."  Ugh, it sticks in the back of your throat and is a completely unsatisfying noise. 

First off, I love cemeteries.  I love the mysteriousness of them.  I love imagining the lives of the people who are buried there, what they saw and who they know.  I love what they chose to represent them to generations to come.  I love it even more when those monuments fall apart and the names are worn off. 

In any case, awhile ago James and I went to the Zentral Friedhof- the Central Cemetery.  We actually didn't get to the Cemetery of the Nameless; it turns out it takes, like, 2 hours to get to by public transportation and isn't terribly impressive.  That being said, the story about it is totally interesting.  So I'll diverge for a minute.

Friedhof Der Namenlosen.  Just sounds mysterious.  In the days before CSI, people would drown in the Danube and, due to a vortex in the Danube (I'm psyched I just got to use that phrase), they would wash up at a particular spot on shore.  Being as they had invariably swelled and bloated and were probably looking a little worse for wear, they weren't able to be identified.  So the kind people in Simmering, Vienna decided to dedicate an entire cemetery to those lost and nameless.  The last person was buried there in 1940.

Super fucking cool, eh?

Anyway, back to the Zentral Friedhof.  It's the biggest fucking cemetery I've ever seen.  And I've seen a fair share.  We were in there for about 3-4 hours and probably saw about an eighth of it.  And it was incredible. 

So, feast your eyes on some of this business.

 You're welcome for the nightmares.

Biggies like Johann Strauss are buried here.

 Franz Schubert

 Memorial for the big guy, Mozart

Hugo Wolf has two people gettin' it on next to his face for all of eternity.

Well, y'all, it's getting late and I leave for Kiev and Chernobyl stupidly early tomorrow.  There's tons more, plus some great pictures from Luzern, but alas, you'll have to wait with baited breath for my return.  I'll leave you with this super creepy baby.

He even creeped out Armande.  Yikes.

Shocking Culture

Dictionary.com defines "culture shock" as:

noun
a state of bewilderment and distress experienced by an individual who is suddenly exposed to a new, strange, or foreign social and cultural environment.

I personally haven't experienced much of said "distress," given that I've now spent a cumulative of some 14 weeks in Europe.  I more or less know what to expect.  But, occasionally, I find certain things super amusing or crazy bizarre.  

Like, these stick figure pictures.  One is clearly saying that said seat is reserved for people with unruly toddlers sitting on their laps.  The other I find a little less clear.  Is this a seat for pregnant women?  For fat women?  For women with bad haircuts? For cross-dressing men with really bad haircuts?

 For women with ladder legs?

This place mysteriously makes enough money to stay open:

This lamp has a hat.

The king of all the lamps!!

This horse is super pissed.

Rawwrrrrr!

This is the happiest stuffed fish I've ever seen:

I still laugh every time I look at this.

Yet some things remain the same, no matter the language or the place.

Kids like to sit on things and parents like to take cute pictures of them sitting on things.  I come off as a creepy adult standing alone, watching families and occasionally taking pictures of them.

 

There are ridiculously shitty books for guys to think they're cool for having next to the toilet.

It takes me a few tries to get a self-portrait, and I still can't make a proper face.

People totally take their surroundings for granted.

Dinosaurs are ALWAYS awesome.

James and I went to the Naschmarkt, which is a cool/dirty place, not unlike a permanent farmer's market, but with a lot of people shoving food in your face and a stupid amount of flies and bugs on food that people buy and (presumably) eat.  But, I got some awesome pictures.  The people watching was top notch.  Armande makes his debut hence.

 I like to make up stories about what these people are thinking.  Feel free to contribute.

 Open air yummies.  Covered in bees.

The middle guy looks like he's asking for help.

I want ALL of the spices!!

 Too pretty to eat.

Tomorrow we're going to the Friedhof Der Namenlosen (the cemetery of the nameless)-  I hear good things.  Excited!

"I Think You're Nice, But You Scare The Shit Outta Me."

Thus spake James, referring to my profession (the Big Girl one) and martial arts prowess. I responded with, "Why do you think I'm still single?"  Perhaps simple truth, but I took it as a compliment.

Saturday we went to the city and James showed me around.  He took me to a record shop, turns out there're even European Hipsters.  They look much the same, down to the skinny jeans and flannel shirts.  Not as many beards.  I found some great stuff that I would totally buy, if I still had a record player.  (...And half of my Denver audience just decided I'm not worthy.)  I love this city.

I have no idea where this was taken.  There're about a million parks in Vienna.

Take a book, give a book.  Did I mention I love this city?!

 This place actually exists.

Then James took me to a cafe with CATS.

So, that totally happened.

We walked around all day and ended up in Prater, which is an amusement area.  It felt uncomfortably similar to a carnival at home, which I'm not sure if I appreciated very much.  There were a lot of kids, therefore a lot of crying and a lot of strange smells.

Really, German?!  How many "r's" do we need now? This is just ridiculous.

We rode the Ferris Wheel right around sunset and were able to see a lot of Vienna.  It was beautiful.

Get used to the selfies, I'm doing a lot of traveling by myself and have trust issues.

I met Christian and Kerstin's neighbors, Victoria and Adi (short for Adolf- he's pretty old and can't use his full name.  For obvious reasons.).  Two very sweet and active individuals, they just got back from biking through Germany.  We sat around after Frida fell asleep and consumed an insane variety of alcohol: 3 kinds of wine, 2 bottles of different champagne, grappa and limoncello.  Victoria has a different glass for every alcohol.

Seriously.

Yesterday I took Armande (my big-ass Canon 40d, for those of you whom haven't been introduced) into the city, accompanied again by James.  I'm still trying to figure out how Photoshop works, so y'all'll have to wait until I figure that out and have some time before seeing those, because I'm shooting in RAW now (which apparently means something to some of you).

Last night, Christian, Kerstin, Frida and I drove out to the middle of the field and tried to watch the Perseid meteor shower.  I love that they think special outings like this trump the need to get to bed early on a Monday night.  However, the effort was somewhat in vain.  We had cloud cover moving in, temperature dropping, and a 4-year-old who decided it was time for bed around 10.  Not a single Sternschnuppe in the sky.  She gallantly made it home, but today was not so easy; she was tired and a little angry about it all day long.  I've learned that she's viciously independent when she wants to be; she broke down in tears today because I insisted on getting toast out of the hot toaster for her (apparently there's a towel-trick her dad taught her, and she really wanted to use it).   So she put the toast back in the toaster, and tried again once it was retoasted.

Tomorrow I venture into The City alone for the first time, wish me luck on not getting lost in the massive spiderweb of public transportation.  At least, not getting irrevocably lost.  Not having a cell phone and instant communication can be intimidating sometimes.  But I think that sometimes, the best experiences are the unexpected ones.  Although, sometimes the worst experiences are the unexpected ones, too.  Na ja, que' sera sera (Like that?  Suddenly I'm tri-lingual!) 

The Thing About German...

German is a funny language.  It's very precise (how German of them), but also really bizarre in a lot of ways.  For instance, the verb always goes in the second position ("I go to school."), but if you have more than one verb, Germans kind of just pile them at the end of the sentence, like so much garbage.  So, "I want to the school today with my friend go and run."  There's a bunch of other rules about the order of the rest of the sentence, but I don't really remember them.  Just know that they're there, and that a run-on sentence can equal like 7 verbs you have to remember and dump on the end.  It's confusing and a little bit like Ad Libs-- I need a verb to insert in the sentence, which of these FIVE properly go here?

Frida is finally starting to realize that I don't really understand a lot of what she's saying.  The last few days have been great for my German skills, but I'm still only getting about 40% of what's going on.  I'm remembering some vocabulary and picking up some distinctly kid-related words (like "princesses").  I've noticed she speaks slower and clearer to me than to her parents; her lisp gets thicker with them.  She has also picked up the habit of saying "weisst du?" ("you know?") to me after a lot of her sentences.  I originally thought it was a quirky thing she just said, but she never uses it with her parents.  She's really catering to me, and I think it's cute.  

I'm in love with this family unit.  Christian is so adorably attentive to Frida, and manages to expect and manage time with her to really help her learn and become an independent individual (as much as a 4-year-old can be).  Kerstin is the type of woman who will lay in the grass or run through the sprinklers because it feels good.  Frida is happy and talkative and curious (and sometimes demanding).  Frida may be an emerging genius of a photographer.  She loves my camera and rolls around taking fairly interesting pictures.

Both taken by Frida.  Not bad, eh?

Middle Europeans are also distinctly not-American (duh).  The last couple of days have sweltering; miserably, horribly hot.  So we've been going to the local swimming area in the afternoon.  They are extraordinarily nonchalant about child nudity, and I'm not sure at what age that stops.  They have a sign that specifically mandates wearing a swimsuit in the pool, but that seems to stop literally at poolside.  Most adults and pubescent children seem to keep themselves more or less covered, but they'll totally change out in the open with the aid of a towel.  I watched in surprise as a woman in her mid-20's changed with a towel slung around her hips, swinging her mammary glands around, and not a single male stopped to oogle her in any sort of manner. 

Tonight I had dinner with the only other native-English speaker in our tiny town.  He's an au pair named James, who stays with Frida's friend's family.  We went to a place in town that was a brewery (made me think of you, Nathan!) and had some great "typische" Austrian food.  I had schnitzel and James got the largest plate of ribs I've ever seen in my life.  For less than 15 euros.  It was nothing less than a Meat Miracle.  Then we missed the last bus back to our respective houses (he lives only a couple blocks away) and had to wake up Kerstin to pick us up.  I felt like an irresponsible teenager and kept expecting to be chided and grounded or something.  Of course, she was very graceful and accommodating. 

The Meat Miracle.

Totes delish.  Don't hate me for that last sentence.

 

Today my tentative plans fell through, and so did James', so he's taking me to a cafe where they have cats you can pet.  Um, yes please.  Oh, yeah, around Vienna, too, blah blah blah.  But, CATS!!

 

First Impressions

After nearly 18 hours in airports, on planes, then in more airports and on more planes, I arrived in Vienna.

Back up.  First I had to get through Keflavik Airport near Reykjavik, Iceland.  We flew into the island over the ocean reflecting the newly-risen sun, all purple and gold and majestic and stuff.  It was pretty enough that I forgave the kid behind me whom I've affectionately nicknamed, "That Asshole French Kid Who Won't Stop Kicking Me."  Seriously, it was the middle of the night, why aren't you sleeping?  I suppose he probably hadn't stayed up until 3 am the night before frantically looking for razors unlike some people, you know, sitting in front of him. But, still.

In the distance?  That's totally Greenland.

On the flight, I met Walt and Ruby who sat next to me.  Ruby immediately handed me a Clorox wipe to clean my area and started extolling the virtues of the Travel Wall at the Cherry Creek Bed, Bath & Beyond.  Ah, one of those people.  Despite being those people, they were very nice to sit beside and occasionally bump knees awkwardly with whilst trying to sleep in between kicks from That Asshole French Kid.

I've never seen an airport that looked more like an IKEA in my life.  Seriously.  Bleached wood flooring, white stone walls, clean smell, everything except the wild-eyed shoppers looking for discounts.  Rather, everything was ludicrously overpriced.  And, oddly enough, made of wool. I learned, thanks to an informational mural, the Icelanders have a saying, "Everything is hay in hard times."  Something to do with the fact that in olden-Iceland-times, their lives revolved around sheep (and their delicious meat and warm wool) and having enough hay to keep them from dying during the cold months.  I don't know, maybe I should have paid better attention before trying to explain the quote to actual people (that's you!).

This was on my plane seat.

I got to Frankfurt and waited by the luggage carousel anxiously.  You know that feeling, when the bags start dropping.  What if my luggage isn't there?  What if there's a luggage thief who decides to roll out with my stuff because it's looking particularly well-stocked (not like anyone would ever do that with my old, ratty-looking luggage)?  What if it spontaneously dropped out of the plane somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean?  You know, all those things that never happen.  Except that one of those things did.  No ratty-looking red bag coming my way.  They said they managed to track it and are sending it to my location in Vienna (thank God I actually had an address and some phone numbers for them to send it to).  Still waiting for it, actually. 

I met Christian, Kerstin and their daughter, 4-year-old Frida at the Vienna airport, sweaty and dirty with my bangs sticking to my forehead in a decidedly unsophisticated manner.  There went my intentions of meeting them looking impeccably clean and made-up and respectable-looking.  To their credit, they hugged me like it wasn't no thang.

After a quick shower, they treated me to some authentic Viennese pizza-- salami and "vegetarian" (actual vegetables, not a maimed hippie) and some riesling.  I like these people.  Christian and Kerstin are incredibly polite, sweet individuals who couldn't love their kid more.  Frida is obviously spoiled and thoroughly loved.  Several times during our dinner, Christian got up to chase Frida around the back yard, much to her delight.  She was so excited to meet me that she managed to stay up until 10 pm before acquiescing to bedtime pleas.

Despite Kerstin's protestations that her English is horrible, they both speak English reassuringly well.  Frida, on the other hand, can count to 10 and say, "My name is Frida!" along with "Happy Birthday!!"  She is adorably self-assured and, in the way of most only children, can occupy herself quite well, babbling and singing to her dolls or whatever is nearby.  She doesn't quite seem to grasp that I can only understand about one in 4 of her charmingly lisping German words. Tomorrow is our first day alone and we'll see how well we do with me nodding to unintelligible statements and miming to each other.

At least we both know who Pinocchio is.

Kerstin and Frida showed me around Vienna today.  It was excruciatingly hot but completely incredible.  I fell in love with the mash-up of super new, modern buildings connected to centuries-old architecture. 

Outside Stephansdom (Vienna's cathedral), a man in a traditional Austrian outfit saw me approaching and yelled, "hola!" at me enthusiastically.  When I looked at him, he exclaimed, "Mexico?!"  I realized this man thought I was Mexican.  I feel like that's an oddly specific conclusion to jump to when he's literally surrounded by camera-toting Asian tourists.  I walked away before I could do/say something really awkward.  Yay, discretion. 

I obviously did not take this picture.

I find myself starting to talk with the cadence that Kerstin and Christian speak English, an odd-lilt with a bouncy cadence that's easy to fall into mimicking.  I've also started rearranging my English into a more Germanic sentence structure, which sounds funny to me, even as it's coming out.  My German is starting to come back, Gott sei Dank, although my accent remains atrocious.  Luckily, Frida doesn't giggle the way my other German nanny kids do when I try to talk to her.  Sometimes she even seems like she understands what I'm saying.  Wuencht mir Glueck am morgen. 

K