Heeere's Johnny!

Rapidly reaching the breaking point, and going stir crazy!

The incessant pitter-patter of little drops of water on the slanted metal roofs creates the constant buzz that fills the ears, even in silence.  Children in colorful jackets splash about in the stream-like streets, without a care in the world.  Sitting in the window seat of a toasty café, I can see those caught unfortunately without the proper gear, dashing across puddle ridden sidewalks, finding only temporary shelter under overhangs or in doorways.  As I sip my Melange and dab at my slice of cake, the umbrella stand grows crowded as people file in to find refuge from the dampness outside.  I've just come from Mass in an empty Church, the weather having dissuaded even the most pious regulars.  As the priest muttered prayers in an ancient language, the accompanying music, written in a minor key, even seemed somehow sad, only emphasizing how dismal it's been of late.  It's been cold, damp, and grey for the past week, and it's rained continuously for the past four days - I wonder where it's all coming from?  A lot has changed within the last week, and from here on out, the experience will be a different one.

Just south of the city - it's been so long since I've been able to see the Alps, that I nearly forget they're there.

Last week was the last for teaching, and, as such, most of the other teaching assistants, my friends here, have already landed back home, with a few of the stragglers to join them in the coming days.  Of the four of us staying in Austria for a bit more, three are travelling, so, for the time being, I have the city to myself.  The University was closed this week for Corpus Christi, a holy day of obligation and a federal holiday in Austria. Not having a schedule, work, or classes to go to has been a challenge.  Even the libraries were closed for the week, and as I need to access them for research, there truly wasn't much to be done.  Having enjoyed some wonderfully summer-like days in April and the beginning of May, I was certain the worst of the weather was behind us, and I sent all of my warmer clothes home with my parents.  This past week has been an exercise in how many layers I can wear at once to stop shivering.  Because of those same warm days we had, the maintenance crew in my building turned the heating off, which meant sitting at my desk, wearing three tops, cocooned in my duvet.  I spent the majority of the week finishing a book, writing some letters, cleaning my room (twice in a day, to give you an idea of what it's been like), polishing my shoes, spent hours sitting at a horrendously out-of-tune piano in the basement, listening to music, cleaning again, grating cheese for fun, and even packing a suitcase.  As you can tell, life's been thrilling recently.  I had hoped to read, but one glance at my bookshelf nixed that idea - The Good Old Days: The Holocaust isn't exactly my idea of cheery reading for a rainy day.  The other day I went to the cinema and saw three films, just to be out and with people.  One was a Catalan film about Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, which was fascinating, Hitchcock, starring Helen Mirren and Anthony Hopkins, which I thoroughly enjoyed for its wit and intelligence, and for its overall good story, and then a third film produced by the Danes which was like a cross between the Swiss Family Robinson and Castaway.  It'd been so long since I could remember watching a movie on the big screen (let alone, three!), that I had forgotten just how much I enjoy just sitting there, watching a story unfold before my eyes - it was a completely perfect thing to do on a pouring day!

Alas, Gene Kelly was not to be found hanging off this lamppost.  

Despite the rain, and perhaps a little bit of cabin fever, I have to tell myself, I could be in a million other places, and I'm still pretty darn happy to be stuck in an endless rain here in Salzburg.  Thankfully Uni classes will be up and running this week, and I'm inexplicably excited for next weekend, as I have a little weekend trip planned.  I've been to Germany over two dozen times, and this trip will be my first time stepping foot outside of Bavaria!  I'm heading all the way to the northern part of the country, up to Hamburg, to visit Cecilia, one of my closest friends from last semester, and I am so, so looking forward to it.  It'll be great to hang out with a great friend, and as an added bonus, it's sunny up there!  

My regular waitress has just come up to me, asking why I'm all alone today, and why I'm not surrounded by girls - ha, what a year it's been!  As it's getting more and more crowded, I'm feeling guilty about taking up a table with my laptop, even though they'd let me stay all day - I think I'll head back to maybe organize my shirts by color, or perhaps place my spices in alphabetical order before I head back out tonight to another café to, haha, keep my sanity.  

Class Dismissed

Last summer I read an old story called The Once and Future King.  In it, T.H. White wrote a beautiful passage about what to do when it seems as if all is lost and there is no purpose to living - he says to learn something is, 

             ...the only thing that never fails.  You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds.  There is only one thing for it then - to learn.  Learn why the world wags and what wags it.  That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.  Learning is the only thing for you.  Look what a lot of things there are to learn.  

How true?  No man can understand all the mysteries of our complex universe, and the process of learning stimulates the mind and awakens within oneself a yearning to comprehend and conquer the unknown.  To White, learning was redemption.  I've thought a lot about this quote over the past months, and in times where I've questioned my effectiveness at work, it comes back to me and holds me up, challenging me to reach at least one student, to make him question, critique, understand, and perhaps walk away a bit more enlightened.  

For the past 8 months I've been working 12 hours per week in an Austrian school as an English language teaching assistant.  Working with a team of 27 English teachers, who average 9 classes each, I've visited with nearly 2,000 high school students, ranging from age 14-23, not including several adult evening school students.  The school is so massive, that even today, my very last day teaching, I was still introducing myself to classes.  This was a recurring theme throughout the year, having to repeatedly say "Hello" to new groups of kids, and on more than one occasion, I seriously questioned if my being there would have any positive effect on the students, as with many of them, I only visited them once.  I also came into the job with several major preconceived notions of what teaching entailed, and how it should be done - both of which proved to be misinformed.  On my first day, one of the older teachers told me, "Don't take any of this seriously, and just be open to whatever they throw at you," and those words entirely transformed my thoughts on being in the classroom.  I soon realized that the best made plans might work swimmingly with one group of students, and then flounder like a fish out of water with the next.  Flexibility is key.  Sometimes the students are outrageously eager to participate, and then at other times, trying to elicit engagement is worse than having teeth pulled.  Contrary to popular held belief back in grammar school, teachers aren't maliciously holding students hostage on beautiful days, and would like to be outdoors just as much (if not more) as the students. Same goes for school holidays, the source of life and hope for teachers everywhere.  It's a hard life, and one Hell of a way to make a living, but every so often, it hits you, just how incredibly privileged you are to be exposing these kids to the world around them, even if they don't always appreciate it.

My largest wrongly informed idea about teaching was that the teacher is the source of all knowledge, and that the job consists of walking into a classroom, spilling information for students to remember, and then leaving.  In fact, I had major reservations about accepting the offer to come to Austria, because I expected to research full time and meet "real" Austrians through the university, etc - afraid that teaching would bog me down and limit my immersion abroad.  So, so, so wrong.  I got to spend 12 hours a week chatting with the people who live here on a real level, seeing how they see our world, having them challenge some of my held beliefs, challenging them, learning about our similarities, our differences, and why they exist.  How cool is that?  I now know that teaching is a far cry from the authoritarian image I had in mind.  In fact, teaching is half learning - or, as that wise teacher said, "be[ing] open to whatever they throw at you."  You can read as many textbooks on Austria as you'd like, but if ever you've the chance to actually talk with them like I had, do it - it'll change your world.  

Today was my final day.  It's over; a closed chapter in my life.  But what a chapter it is!  Funny, how the condition of my grant about which I was most dreading before arriving here has developed into my most treasured.  Of the hundreds of students I met, I'm positive my thoughts fell on some deaf ears, but I've striven these many months to touch their minds and open their world view to how someone else sees it - it's certainly worked in the reverse - and even if only a single student walks away with a spark for something we've discussed, then that's rewarding enough.  Learning - "it never fails!"

My final class presented me with an engraved hammer / screwdriver that they made in class.  On the other side it reads my name and position.  The handle is a hollowed-out drill bit, and the ball cap unscrews to form a spinning top that's designed to "flip" and balance on its axis.  

From Afar

I often find it difficult to describe to friends and family back home just what it is about this place that keeps calling me back.  My default answers are flawed attempts to explain the culture, the cuisine, the experience, and I almost always fail to wholly convince them of this place's allure.  Many, not understanding my motives, are puzzled as to why, if I wanted to travel and experience something foreign to my own way of living, I didn't select to travel to a new region of the U.S.  Why travel thousands of miles away from home to experience something which could be explored a mere few hours away?  Mountains, old buildings, coffee and cake, beer, rivers and blue skies - all things which can be found at home.  But put them in the right context, a different context, and they mean something entirely removed from the learned conceptions people have who have experienced them in only a singular, or very limited, frame of reference.  It really takes being here, seeing the differences, both obvious and subtle, that one starts to comprehend why I speak about this place the way I do.  Two weeks ago, it was my parents' turn, and recently, I was able to show two friends my home away from home.

My best friend arrived last Tuesday, and after a quick tour of the city after flying through the night, the day was over.  The next morning we traveled to a sleepy village called Gmunden on one of the eastern lakes of the Salzkammergut.  Pastel colored buildings, a single church steeple rising towards the sky, a tree-lined promenade ran along the street-car avenue that leads up towards the quiet train station.  Before us, a wide, blue lake ever-expanding to the bases of snow-capped mountains in the far distance, interrupted only by a lonesome castle, the sole occupant of its tiny island, a tired bastion against the lapping waves.  Sun, fresh air, and a good chat by the shore - it was wonderful.  Over the next few days, we explored with another friend Munich, Vienna, the Obersalzberg, and Linz, as well as, naturally, Salzburg and its environs.  We ate countless times (too much, for certain), walked all over creation, had tons of good laughs, and above all, it was just great to see two good friends, one of whom I hadn't seen in nearly 4 years.  This place brought us all together again, and I think it's charm helped break down any remnant of misunderstanding.  Sometimes, "a day in the life" is all that's needed for one to understand everything, and I think we had a terrific time exploring, catching up, creating new memories.

The final resting place of 5,600 murdered victims of Nazism.

One of the more interesting visits we made during their stay was to Mauthausen, a Nazi concentration camp on a beautiful hilltop overlooking the Danube valley not too far from Linz.  I had been there once before, but for my two friends, it was their first visit to one of the camps.  There, at this place in the sun, thousands of people lost their lives to hatred.  Much of the original camp is intact, and that's partly due to its construction.  Mauthausen is one of the richest granite deposits in central Europe, and from its quarry, the fortified camp was constructed.  Its prisoners were forced laborers in the quarry, cutting stone and carrying it up an uneven and perilous staircase known as the "staircase of death."  For the amusement of the SS guards, groups of workers were occasionally marched off the cliff above in "parachute practice," to their deaths below.  Though it was not an extermination camp like those of infamous stature in Poland, Mauthausen was equipped with gas chambers and crematoria.  At one spot, one can stand on the mass grave containing nearly 6,000 people.  Memorials, images, and texts constantly remind visitors of the oppressive brutality and human anguish that occurred in the not too distant past.  It is sad, or at least it should be - and that is something that troubled me.  Seeing people around me, fellow visitors, young and old, with tears in their eyes, hearing gasps and quiet appeals to God, seeing the discomfort and sadness on faces - all appropriate reactions.  But surprisingly, and disturbingly to me, I felt nothing.  I walked through as if it had been a museum on dinosaurs, or some Roman settlement.  Names were only numbers, ovens only museum exhibits, graves only parcels of land.  Having been to almost a dozen camps, and having learned so much about this era in history recently, I feel like I've been desensitized to what others find grotesque.  I remember my first visit to such a camp, which was with a high school group on my first trip to Europe in 2007.  We went to the place most frequently associated with the camps, the place which must have been the deepest level of Hell, of greatest despair and violence, to Auschwitz.  I can remember being nearly physically sick - being in the same place where over a million people perished, smelling death 60 years later, wondering if the dust I had on my sleeve after brushing up against a wall was human ash or simply disturbed dirt.  It was terrible.  And now, they all seem the same.  No reactions, flattened affect, a place to be analyzed, a task to be done.  I always questioned how on earth people who had childhoods not unlike mine grew up to systematically follow orders and kill people in the camps without hesitation.  I guess, for some, after the first time, it only gets easier until it becomes such a mechanized action that it ceases to be a question of consciousness.  I feel as if the closer I have gotten to understanding the Holocaust, the further I grow from acknowledging the human element that seems to integral to it.  What a frightening and terrible field!

2 days of teaching, 6 weeks left, and still lots to do!

When You're Having Fun...

...time flies.  I had forgotten to turn my watch forward a day at the beginning of May, and when I corrected it just the other day, I realized that I've been here 8 months, with only two to go.  I remember distinctly my thoughts before I left home back in September, thinking that this would be an awfully long time away from home, a challenging year, a year of working and learning, a year that would be integral to the foundation of my future.  I thought it would be a lot of things, and it certainly has proven to be that way, but the one thought that was furthest from my mind was that it would be short.  The first month, I think, was the quickest, as there was so much to do, so many trains to take, so much moving around, so many people to meet, and so much adjusting that needed to happen swiftly.  Right off the bat, I became friends with an awesome group of people, and so then the hardships were balanced with great times being around a fun crowd.  8 months, 36 weeks, 3/4 of a year - it's a good chunk of time, and it's just crazy how fast it's passed by.  

Last week I took an early train about two hours north of Salzburg, to the tiny Bavarian city of Passau on the Austro-German border.  It's famous for being at the confluence of three major rivers, the Inn, the Ilz, and the Danube, and for its Italianate baroque architecture.  I had spent a day there on my first solo trip to Europe while participating in a summer German immersion program in northern Bavaria back in 2009, but this time, I wouldn't be alone.  There, in one of the most random of places in this neck of the woods, I met my parents.  Mom & Dad were taking a 15-day river cruise from Amsterdam through the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, and Hungary to Budapest, stopping at a new city each day.  It was surreal seeing them in Passau, of all places.  I met them in Lederhosen, of course, as they were on my turf, and we walked around the city for a bit.  It's really tiny, and I think we saw absolutely everything in under an hour.  We found a quiet street corner café and had some coffee.  I think the thing that surprised my parents most was how little coffee one gets, as compared to your average American cup, but, they really, really enjoyed it.  The café was sort of quirky inside, but it had two huge glass counters with sweets, one with cakes, and the other with a multitude of chocolate truffles of every flavor imaginable.  We actually liked the place so much, that we returned later in the afternoon and split three different cakes between us: a plum torte, a sort of cherry cheesecake, and a colorful liqueur-soaked cake that tasted a bit like cassata.  

Mom & Dad get a taste of my life for the past 8 months.

At midday we joined the the rest of the group from their boat at the Cathedral of St. Stephan for an organ concert.  The church has one of the most stunning ceilings I've ever beheld, and the organ is the world's largest cathedral organ, with nearly 18,000 pipes.  The organist started with a rousing Bach piece, jumped forward 300 years with a work by the French composer Marcel Dupré, and finished off with the finale from Widor's Fifth Symphony, which everyone knows and which really (literally) shook the building - it was incredible!  After the recital, we headed to a rooftop restaurant along the river for lunch.  Wiener Schnitzel, potatoes, and Weißbier - couldn't have asked for a more typical, or better, meal.  We headed back to their boat just across the street, and took some comfort in the shaded lounge chairs atop the deck and relaxed to the view of the pastel-colored houses across the way and the rush of the Danube as it flowed on to the east. A little bit later, and it was time to say farewell until I return home before the 4th of July.  

Stunningly beautiful and tremendously sumptuous sound in Dom St. Stephan, Passau.

Because of a few holidays, I haven't worked in nearly a week, so I took up some quality time here in Salzburg.  I've been to my favorite café here 5 times since they opened a little over a week ago, and the owner says I'm his best customer (which I'm slightly ashamed about, but it's SO good!)  I went with a few friends the other day, and the waitress already knew my order before I opened my mouth.  That's bad!  I hopelessly try and justify my going there so frequently, so I'll just say that because they were closed for 4 months, they could use the money, and, I have to get as much of this café culture as I can possibly take, because 2 months from now, there'll only be Starbucks back in the States!  Many of the museums in town opened their doors free of charge, and I took the opportunity to visit the Cathedral museum, which has the most ridiculous opening hours.  After months of hitting and missing, I finally got inside, and grabbed a pretty cool view of the place from the organ loft.  There were also some incredible treasures in there, like bejeweled vessels hundreds of years old, and vestments handmade in Spain of gold threads for one of the archbishop's elevation to the cardinalate in the 1700s.  A few days ago, I went to the local brewery, Stiegl, to pick up some gifts in their store.  Two friends came along, and we ended up in their courtyard beer garden for lunch.  I nearly ordered my go-to dish, Schnitzel, but they had a burger on their menu, and oh, how I have been craving one of those!  1/2 lb. of fresh, really fresh, meat cooked medium rare, cheese, thick bacon, lettuce and red onion - delicious!  Add some crispy fries and both a Weißbier and a seasonal Kräuterbier, and I was very, very happy!

The past few days Salzburg's been host to a regional brass music festival.  The bands were pretty amateurish yesterday, but this morning I caught about an hour of Salzburg's own Trachtenkapelle, a wind ensemble that specializes in the traditional music of the province.  There they were, dressed in the blue and brown Trachten from Mozart's time, playing Austrian military marches, Strauss waltzes, and even some Dvorak and von Suppé's famous Light Cavalry Overture.  It was quality music, a fun performance, and a wonderful venue set in the shadow of the great cathedral and the mist of the lively fountain in the Residenzplatz, and it's one of the things that I treasure about this place - a living tradition that attracts those from all ages, and brings them together (for free) to celebrate the Austrian way of life.  

Apologies for the atrocious picture quality - not sure why it's distorted here.

Franz von Suppé: Ouvertüre - Leichte Kavallerie

Guitar hero in the room next door has his final recital coming up before he returns to Colombia for the summer.  At this point, I think I'm going to pay for the ticket simply so I could hear how the end of his singular piece actually ends.  If he actually plays it through without erring, I can die knowing I've witnessed a true act of God, because that's really the only thing that'll pull him through.  In the meantime, as always, he's "trying."  

I booked a trip to see a great friend in England, my best friend comes in 2 days, 4 more days left of work, and a whole lot to do.  Time flies when you're having fun!

Klein Aber Fein

"Small but pretty" were the words once said to me by my barber here when he was trying to sum up all that Salzburg is, and I think he hit it right on the nose.  A friend and his sister were passing through town on their way from Munich to Vienna, the two largest cities in this area, and I could tell they felt a little claustrophobic here.  We walked through the old city and saw all the major sites within a couple of hours.  It is small.  But I think that's what I like most about it.  As much as I adore Vienna, for example, I'm overwhelmed at times by how vast it is spread, with a large multinational community, far laying suburbs and distinct neighborhoods, subways and tram cars, endless streets and apartment buildings, the business and rush of a major capital city at all times.  Maybe having lived in a smaller city like Salzburg has conditioned me to feel so small and insignificant when staying in Vienna, but I definitely lean towards life here.  

Salzburg has, in my opinion, the greatest combination of city and nature.  It is home to world class concert venues, attracting artists of the highest caliber all year round.  It contains over a dozen museums, over 20 beautiful churches, a plethora of quality restaurants and unique cafés, two major universities, a mountain top fortress, professional sports clubs, and beautiful, preserved architecture spanning 1,300 years.  My favorite aspect of the city is that within 15 minutes from city center, I can be in the Alps.  How crazy is that?  There's not a single American city I can think of where that's possible.  It's city surrounded by smaller cities, surrounded by smaller yet cities, surrounded by suburbs, upon suburbs, upon suburbs, until one can find nature on the scale that one does here.  Three alpine mountains are within the city limits, and, in fact, the old city is confined by two of these.  It is the only large city in central Europe to have cow fields within the city limits.  I love that I see the same people all over the city - it makes me feel as if I know them, like I've been here long enough to distinguish myself from the tourist.  Frequenting the same places, and having the people who work there recognize me makes me feel more like a local.  For example, one of my favorite cafés, Café Würfel Zucker, reopened after moving from their former location.  They were ridiculously busy on opening day, but I went back the next day, and the owner stopped to chat - he remember that I and my friends visited their old location often, and he was really glad that I had returned.  I know nothing about him, and he knows nothing about me, but simply because we've seen each other a few times, we can strike up a conversation and learn, and that's a really great feeling.  Salzburg's an unbelievably beautiful place, and it still doesn't fail to take my breath away on a daily basis.  There are some days where I wake up, walk down to the river, plop down on the side, and, while taking in the sheer brilliance of the view before me, think to myself "there's no other place I want to be."  It's often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I don't think a thousand words could do this place justice.  Beautiful.  It just is.

Small but fine, indeed.  

Thursday evening I was called by the school for something urgent.  Friday morning is the first day of the students' final examination, and the test begins with a listening section.  The test preparation books three of the teachers had came with a CD, which they assumed contained the spoken texts.  Wrong.  They waited until the day before to discover that it was just a practice test to use on the computer, which meant they needed their resident native speaker at the ungodly hour of 6:30 to read the selections aloud in 5 different voices, as it was a dialogue between 5 people.  I remembered earlier in the year when I had worn a tie and jacket to school, and consequently nearly gave several students a heart attack, that I was told only to wear a tie if someone's died or if the students have a major, major examination, such as this Matura.  So, I wore a suit and tie, thinking I'd fit in.  Wrong again.  Apparently that dress code is only for the final, final oral presentation, and I could have gotten away with wearing a t-shirt.  Oh well!  Some good news was that in return for coming in for a few hours at the last minute, and on my day off, 5 of my classes will be cancelled, and, as 4 of them had already been cancelled due to scheduling conflicts, I have only about 20 classes to teach over the next 4 weeks...and they can't come soon enough!

I'll be able to see my parents on Tuesday, and my best friend and another friend from university are coming the following week, and I'm really looking forward to seeing all of them again.  Getting caught up work, research, school work, and my friends here, I can sometimes forget that this isn't going to last forever, and that in coming here, I left my whole life behind me, including the people I miss the most.  Sometimes, in order to grow, though, you need to do that yourself, and that's probably the most important thing I've gained from this experience abroad.  7 weeks, and counting!