Vienna. I am now in Vienna. There is nearly nothing to report, as I have been in bed most of the time. Sick. Hack hack kerpluf hack.
I could report that, actually, instead of being in bed, I am laying on a trisected arrangement of couch cushions on the floor, trying to remain stationary enough that the cushions don't separate from each other, leaving me to droop uncomfortably between them. As we settled in for sleep last night, my friend Alys was kind enough to inform me that the cushions were stuffed with horse hair. Ewwwww. Somehow, that just feels very ewwwwww. Which reminded me of the fact that it seems the French eat horsemeat, which reminded me of a conversation with a friend about the time I ate raw horse in Japan, which then reminded me of the picture I saw in the photographic exhibit of Robert Frank's "The Americans" while I was in Paris. This amazing collection of 1950's Americana as seen through Frank's eyes was paralleled by a second part of the exhibit called "Paris." There was an awful photo of an entire horse, presumably dead, hanging upside down in a butcher shop, being bled or dried or whatever butchers are doing with animal carcasses when they hang them upside down on hooks. Again, ewwww. And, sweet dreams.
Let not that image of grotesquerie sully you on the French, though. As I walked through the Paris exhibit, also shot in the 1950's, I noticed so many photos with flowers in them, that I walked through the entire collection two more times so that I could calculate the ratio of photos with flowers in them. 21 of 70 photos of Paris in the 1950's showed flowers, as compared to 1 photo in the American exhibit, which consisted of about 100 photos (these I did not count). There were bouquets of flowers being bought on the street, vases of flowers on coffeeshop tables as seen through the window, men holding flowers behind their backs before presenting them to a lover, flowers tacked onto a bridge across the Seine, and vendors selling flowers. In the case of the Americans, the one photo featuring flowers was taken in a cemetery in Chinatown.
But back to Vienna. Really, I have not done much, but there have been a few particularly sweet moments over and above the reconnecting with friends. The first night I arrived, I walked for awhile outside around midnight, in the extreme crisp cold. My companion and I climbed some stairs and entered into a kind of town circle, featuring St. Stephen's Cathedral, which is a huge gothic cathedral from the 1300s. The moon looked nearly full, and again, I was forced to stop, let the dumb smile spread across my face, and enjoy the fact that I was seeing a gothic cathedral with its long spindly spires rising up against a full moon while standing in a cobblestoned square in the middle of one of Europe's capitols.
The second sweet moment occurred today, when I made the decision to make my way outside on my own in search for food, The foraging instinct is surely the most strong of all our animal instincts....or perhaps, that is the case with me. In me, is is stronger than the urge to nest, to stay warm, to be comfortable, to stay safe, and to not appear a complete buffoon due to language barriers. Basically, I was sitting home reading and trying to get rid of my cold while Alys was out studying. The hunger was rising, and I knew Alys wouldn't be home to put food in my beak for a few hours. I remembered where the local grocery was, and figured I wouldn't need to speak to buy something a simple at the store. So I ventured out, and lo and behold! I looked in a storefront before reaching the supermarket and what did I see but....Fried Chicken! Yes, fried chicken, being kept toasty warm under a heat lamp in a lovely steel basin near the window. Those of you who really know me understand how this would have made my heart flutter. But still, I hesitated. I could forage safely at the grocery store, not worrying about my complete lack of German language skills, or I could forage rapturously for some truly satisfying fare, but I would have to verbally interact with the large frightening Austrian man behind the counter (who actually turned out to be Romanian).
I went for the chicken. I walked in, gave a hearty "Gross Gutt" for a greeting, and was greeted back quite naturally in, yes, German. At this point, I looked bashfully at the man and said "Ich no sprechke Deutsch." You see, I know the word for "I", the word for "speak", and the word for "German". But how to negate the verb? Or, as Alys instructed me later, how to negate the noun, for in fact, in this sentence, you negate "German", not "speak". Anyway, everyone knows the word "no" in English, right? Hmmm. The man looked at me dumbly for a second, as I shook my head slowly back and forth to further indicate that I didn't speak German, and then asked me what I would like in English. I pointed gleefully to the fried chicken leg/thigh combo, asked the man for a few language tips, completed the transaction with giggles, and scuttled back home as quickly as possible with my chicken in tow. This was the highlight of my day, and what a high point it was!
I am hoping I will be better tomorrow, as Alys and I will begin our cultural excursions then. We bought awful, can't-see-anything seats for the Barber of Seville tomorrow evening for about $12 US. For that price, I'll be happy to just listen, as opera tickets at home are so prohibitively expensive that I have only seen two operas in my whole life. Sunday we will go to the symphony, where standing room tickets cost about $6. This means we will listen to Beethoven and Mendelssohn while sitting on the ground in the back of the concert hall, which again, is just fine by me.
Next week, we may take a quick drive to Bratislava, which is only about an hour away. As Alys put it, why not go see another European capitol, though Slovakia has only existed as an independent nation-state for 16 years!
And then, next Wednesday, I continue on to the next stage of my 8-month plan and fly to London for a week. But more about that soon.
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