The Bass Hum: Advent in Austria

I think this is one of the longer streaks I've gone on without writing in the blog. I made the "mistake" at the beginning of the blog of setting its parameters as a blog that would try to translate cultural experiences. The problem is, I can't point out many experiences I've had in the last months that I found worthy of placing into a narrative. Most of the stories I've got are just... human.

I've done way too many lessons on Christmas in the United States, lately. In some lessons I used the Grinch Song to teach them words like "stockings", "chimney", "ornaments" and so on. In others I made them role play a conversation between parents and a kid questioning the existence of Santa Claus, or a kid who already knows. I asked them to raise their hands: "How many of you will lie to your children?" They have a similar thing going on with their kids here. They have the Christkind (the Christ Child). By some students' account, it's the blond-haired baby Jesus who flies from house to house to bring the presents. Other students say it's just an angel. In either case, its departure after leaving presents is noted by the ringing of some coyly hidden bell. How the story goes is often decided by the personal beliefs of the parents (religious, barely, or not). When they all raised their hands to say that they would gladly lie to their dear children I'd moan "but why?!" They wanted their kids to believe in magic! Christmas was never as special again after they found out the truth, they all agreed. "Yeah!" I half-facetiously spat, "Because you then learned that your parents - the two people you trusted most in the world - lied to you your whole life, and that the world is a cruel, horrible place." They laughed, and one of the students confidently shrugged, "They'll get over it."

Life in a foreign country is now barely foreign to me, and surprises are now few and far between. It's almost unsettling to know that. A few weeks ago, I was teaching one of the classes I have every two weeks. I had put the students into groups and made them answer my question. I like to roam the classroom in these minutes, squatting on my hams to listen, sneaking up behind them to see if they slip into German, and on more tired days just getting the blood flowing and staring out the window. In each school, and in almost every classroom, I get a spectacular view of some mountain(s) nearby. On this morning roam through the classroom, I noticed the sun laying its Robert Frost -gold onto one half of the mountain over yonder. It brought warmth, so I smiled and erupted, "Are you all seeing this?! How can you get used to this?!"

This last question has plagued me throughout my years over here. Time and time again I've wondered how these people can so calmly play part to such wonders, as if it were nothing special. It's not just the mountains. It is absolutely unfair how breathtaking some of the most cemented traditions here are. Yet, I'm starting to get used to all of it myself, just like them. It's all become normal, but just when I was getting comfortable Advent came along. This was the last week before the Christmas break, and it just so happened that I was in the Catholic girls' school. I've been asked many times to sing the Christmas "classics" like "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Jingle Bells" with them. At some point, I learned to ask them to sing me a song in dialect. The teacher said, "Ok! Let's sing 'Es wird scho glei dumpa'" to the students' pseudo-chagrin. (I just tried to find a comparable experience for you on YouTube and couldn't be satisfied with the horribly cheesy, artificial results) Then, six or so girls, with the leadership of the teacher, sang a humble but stunning rendition of one of the dialect Christmas classics in a cappella. I was ashamed that we'd sang "Rudolf" and the other things. When they asked me to sing something from back home, I couldn't think of anything on par and promised to come back if I thought of something (I came back a couple days later and sang one of my dad's and my favorites "In the Bleak Midwinter" for them. They seemed to appreciate it).

My heart melts every time I hear one of the more sentimental Austrian traditional songs. I joined a chamber choir here in Salzburg about a month ago, and it was one of the best decisions I've made yet for many reasons. One of those reasons is that it put me right in the middle of the Salburg Advent music scene. Around this time of the year, you get to hear a lot of really sentimental, slow yodeling songs. I never knew this stuff existed until I lived here, but it completely changed my understanding of yodeling (spelled "jodeln" in German). I'm a little caught up in the mood right now, yet I can't help but think that this is one of the most beautiful ways of singing. To give you an idea, here's a video of one of the most popular yodel songs. Everyone kind of rolls their eyes about it, because it's the typical tearjerker that leaves entire audiences sniffling and dabbing at their eyes, but it's pretty nice to hear, and it's even better to be a part of. It's hard to explain, but for example, the basses in a choir often kind of hum in the background of a piece, much like the bass in many songs (albeit fundamental). In these yodel songs, you'll already have a spectacular three- or four-part harmony, and then, all of a sudden, the bass will tenderly slip into a falsetto, and all parts switch slowly into and out of falsetto the entire time. I'm constantly taken by surprise, and it leaves me swaying. By the way, our choir sang yesterday with the group in the video, and the guy with the glasses that they zoom in on at the beginning of the video is my choir director.

This is my third year in the German-speaking world, and it seems I'm reaching the brim on obvious and frequent cultural moments. I could find more if I went searching, but I don't feel much of a drive to search anymore, and I think that's the point. There was a time when I just had to discover and be a tourist. Now, I've got families and friends all over the place here, and instead of taking a trip to some unseen attraction, I visit those loved ones.

So life has taken on a different kind of charm. It's not so flashy all of the time. Instead, it's subtle. Most days I go through the bass hum of every day life, but every now and then someone or something, or everything, switches suddenly yet subtly into or out of falsetto, and I'm left swaying.

You've been caught on Dan-did camera

I thought I'd change it up this time. I feel a little cheap not doing any storytelling, but I think it'll be nice for you to see some real visuals for once. The video above is of a festival that took place near Bad Ischl in the same place that I saw the cows come down from the mountain last year.

On the heel of a few bitterly cold days at the beginning of Autumn I climbed the Gaisberg, many natives' favorite mountain in Salzburg. I made sure to make the hike sound really hard just for you....

Check out what I did!











Just kidding.

This is the way I ride to school in the morning. These days it's a little darker than when I made this video, but it's still a wonderful ride.

A couple of weeks ago I made my way up a grueling path to the almost 2000 meter high Untersberg. They say Charlemagne sleeps inside of the mountain, waiting for the time when he will come back and regain his kingdom. There are many myths, but some say that he comes out every 100 years, and if the ravens are still there then he goes back to sleep. There are still many ravens there, and I think they'll be there for a while. I watched as a group of people fed them bread crumbs from their hands...

One man's trash is another man's... DINOSAUR LUNCHBOX?!?!?!

It's been a long day, and it's the perfect day to tell you about.

I woke up in my dark room at 6:30, and it stayed dark. I don't have any kind of artificial light in my room yet, and I'm considering whether I want it to stay that way. My room has been in the same relatively empty, blank, white-walled state since I moved into it about a month ago. It's not that I don't want to color it up, or fill some space, but I'm dirt poor for the moment, and it's not any fun to just fill space for the heck of it. I want the things in the room to actually mean something to me, or appeal to me in some way.

Today we had mean weather. I walked outside jacket-ready for Autumn weather, but the mist was so thick I couldn't tell if it was sprinkling. I rode my bike to the Catholic, all-girls school I'm working at half of my time here (last week I was at my other one). The ride to school is one of my favorite parts of the day, right now. It's a simple ride for twenty minutes along the main river running through Salzburg, the Salzach (click on the little speaker to the right of the word on the German side to hear it). The entire bike route is so nicely marked, usually with a sidewalk for pedestrians, and a separate, concrete trail with lanes and arrows to direct bike traffic. It weaves seamlessly across the sidewalk (most pedestrians know to look, and so do the cyclists), and under every bridge as you make your way past the famous, densely tourist-packed city-center. Much like car traffic, sometimes you get stuck behind someone slow, and you have to wait until the lane of oncoming bikes is clear to pass. It feels like you're part of a larger organism, doing your part in the circulation. It's the perfect way to start off my day: I need the movement, and my heart pumping to wake me up; not to mention the leaves are all reaching their prime Autumn hues right now.

Classes at St. Ursula, the Catholic school, have been largely very entertaining for everyone involved. It turns out I'm the first male Teaching Assistant they've had in a while, and it's an all-girls school, as I mentioned. I get the funniest greetings in the hallway, and the looks I get in the classroom are actually really distracting. I had one girl yesterday who didn't seem to realize her mouth was hanging open for about half of the class. It's a new experience for me, which I wasn't expecting. One of the schools I was at last year was almost all girls, but it wasn't nearly so pronounced. I guess having guys around, even if they're few, really makes a difference. They're all teenagers, ages 15 to 18 or so. There's been lots of giggling, whispering, and silly questions. The first week is always great. You get to be a rock star. It will pass, though. It's that tragic fate of novelty! Subtly, and sometimes suddenly, the bright or deep colors fade, the fresh scents turn familiar, and the veil falls.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves! I'll keep my head in check in the first couple weeks, but the rest of the novelty can stay as long as it likes. You see, I'm still getting used to this city, and I like the newness it offers. There are still so many undiscovered alleys and trails. My home is still so small in this "huge" city. I have to spread my roots.

I was done at work by 10am (I win). Hyped by the coffee a colleague had treated me to at work, I rode the 25 minutes home, switched clothes, and went for a jog. After lunch I felt the need to be productive, so I went out to see if I could find recycling containers for glass or metal nearby. When I came back from my search I pulled out an abnormally light key chain, only to realize that I'd forgotten to put the keys back on the chain after taking them off and putting them in my pocket for my run. Here's that moment. You know it. You've experienced this very thing. That whole list, all of the productivity, all of those oh-so necessary things you planned to do are suddenly endangered for the foreseeable future. Blood pressure rises, your body tenses, and you become aware that you are at a crossroads: this moment will either ruin my day, or make it. Today I straddled the paths for as longs as possible before the distance between got too great. After trying a lock-bypass with an old insurance card, trying to find a way to open an un-openable window, and considering asking my neighbors if I could attempt some Mission Impossible jump from their balcony up to mine, I gave up and decided being locked out would make my day.

On my way into town I passed by the Eastern-European man I pass almost every day, who (I think) plays the same song all day, every day. I could sing it for you right now. It gets stuck in my head. In the city center I heard some street musicians and came close. They were some of the best I'd ever heard. It was a trio (siblings?) who were most likely from some place in South America. I watched for about ten to fifteen

minutes as passerby after passerby dropped change into their small basket. They said thank you every single time, always on a rest or between versus, and they sang for about fifteen minutes straight, transitioning effortlessly and joyously from song to song. In a university building, two incredibly friendly students informed me beyond my questioning about where to find what. One of them turned out to be from Bad Ischl. We laughed at the coincidence, and he emphatically recommended a horror movie filmed there. As I squatted on my hams to write the name down on a flier they'd provided, he squatted with me so he could really get the message across. Taking a way back home I often take back from school, I finally noticed a shop I've been trying to find ever since I moved here: the British store. I'd happened upon it with my friend Florence last year, and it has so many things I love and miss from the U.S. Today, I went in, reveled in the homeyness of it, and took a Dr. Pepper for the walk home.

While taking the recycling out after getting let back into the apartment by my roommate Tanja, I realized a very special thing was happening today: Sperrmüllsammlung. I'd experienced it when I lived in Eichstätt three years ago, when our exuberant flatmate Stefan returned multiple times per day in his three day "trash" collecting marathon to bring back carloads of unwanted dish-ware, furniture, electronics, etc. I spent probably a total of three hours tonight sifting through discarded cabinets, children's toys, and broken furniture to see what I could find. The results are dramatic, and while my legs are complaining about the day, the rest of me is ecstatic about a fuller, carefully-chosen room and a very, very cool balcony.

This isn't the first time I've started a new life. I've been doing it just about every year for about five years

now, but it never gets old. The newness is always new: hanging things on your walls, moving furniture around, finding the shortcuts, stumbling into your new favorite alleyway. The shapes, the turns, the smells and noises are always different, and they all whisper promises. All of my "new-lives" have been planned, and I think it's pretty normal that, when you plan for that big change, you imagine often how it will look. You imagine new hobbies, new friends, learning that thing you've always wanted to learn, finally writing it, finally finishing it. More than anything, you imagine a new you, or at least I do. There are always those things I've been trying to change about myself, or I've been waiting to (be) change(d). Either that old life trapped me into the person I was, or I did. So I hoped this new life would offer me a new chance for a new me who's finally become that caped hero I've always imagined I could be.


Yet, this is fifth "new life", and I'm still not that guy. The promise of the fresh start, the clean slate is an illusion. We passively, or half-actively hope for life to give us that hand, but then another year passes by, the leaves fall, the harsh, cold winds blow, and we are stripped of the novelty. Looking at ourselves naked as we are, we most often find we are just about the same we've always been. I know it, because when I went back to my "old lives," I found that the old me didn't feel so old, and the new me didn't feel so new anymore. So, we'll see. There's only so many times I can write it or say it before I do it or don't.

Did you change the way you wanted to? Is it really about getting that fresh start, the clean slate?

BAM. Did I end it with a sucker-punch? Well if so, I hope it didn't hurt too bad. I'm pretty sure the promise is there regardless.

Every Day Who Writes the Book

So begins the life of a leech! As of last week, I'm homeless and jobless. I stole away into James and Lucy's house, and everyone's acting normal, so I'll just hope it stays that way until I can steal away into a plane back to the U.S. next week.

I'm not a total leech. I cooked them falafel for lunch, a good warm-weather meal for an almost warm day on the balcony. I spent most of the afternoon trimming their hedges. James claims I turned their lawn into an "English Garden", which he said fit the weather. It's been rainy and cool again, lately. Once he and I were done, he drove the tractor around and we threw clippings into the back. Right around that time the sun finally came out and flooded the fields with something other than water for a change. Cleared of obstacles and tricky turns, he surrendered the driver's seat to me. I hopped us into gear, as was tradition, and we chugged our happy way across the field to dump our leavings into a corner we don't have to look at. I turned, I reversed, I pulled levers with my elbow, and I lurched us forward back into the future before turning back toward the shed. Here came the hard part. I pulled us in, getting nervous as we crossed the threshold and the walls and ceilings closed in around us. I let off the clutch, put on the breaks, and, as was also tradition, we were only halfway in. Determined to get it right, I gave it one more try, this time hopping so high that James and I almost had to duck our heads under the ceiling. We made it out alive, and so did the tractor and shed.

I know it sounds like I'm pretty bad with a tractor, and I am, but I've improved. James just loves regaling others with the story of the concrete wall's oh so sure triumph over tractor last fall, as I confused brake with gas with clutch with hand. The only thing more triumphant than the wall was James' laugh, nearly falling out of his seat next to me onto the hay and manure below.

My days and afternoons in the fields around his house are the closest I've ever been to farm or ranch life. I drove around chickens on the side of the rode, I watched cows gather at the feed, I caught the glimmer of horse hide and fly wings in the light of a low sun, and I got used to the potent smell of manure. I felled dead
trees with a chainsaw (don't worry, we said goodbye. James has named each of them), dragged them out from the stream, cut them up for firewood, and later put their predecessors in the basement oven to heat James and Lucy's house during the winter. (You'll notice my handiwork on the left. This picture isn't from that day, but you can get an idea of the fields I drove the tractor over).

Someone else's daily life sometimes seems like a magical wonderland to me. Over the Easter break, I went to the Hesse Haus at Lake Constance with Hubertus. At one point, the owner of the house, Eva, asked me to go on one of her tours of the house with her and close doors and keep an eye on people. As I tagged along for free on her often-given "Arts and Crafts Movement" tour, I couldn't help but fail at my job. She seamlessly wove the history of an the architectural movement, the cultural lifestyle, and the personal of life of Mia Hesse (and thereby Hermann Hesse) that had built and defined the house into a story only a fool could forget, and she even managed to juxtapose all of that constantly to the preceding era and trace its tracks into modern day culture. I couldn't believe it. Someone made me care about architecture. And this was an almost "daily" activity for her.

The normal, every-year traditions that so many took for granted often literally called me out of my apartment. Every now and then I heard trumpets in the street only to find out that yet another tradition was being announced to the town. During Carnival in February, or Fasching as they call it the southern German-speaking region, just such trumpets were sounded. I grabbed my jacket and rushed through the courtyard out onto the main street to figure out what was going on. It was the Umzug through the city, the parade. Float after float passed by. One had skiers skiing down a small hill, off a ramp, and making some "fantastic" landing six feet below. Hunters "shot"  at and chased a guy running around "bushes" below a hunter's stand. Two groups of four traded turns "cross-country skiing" behind constantly moving targets, getting on their bellies, and shooting at the targets, then falling to the rear and sipping on their beer to keep off the cold and fatigue. Everything - the hunter's stand, the ski jump, the target shooting - everything was constantly moving past me in typical parade fashion.

Three months later, I was invited to help with the Maibaumaufstellen with the Faulesaupartie. I'll let the pictures tell you about it. It took about 2.5 hours to push the giant tree up without getting anyone killed or breaking the tree. Just scroll down until you see pictures of people pushing a tree. I'm the jerk dressed like a hipster.
http://www.faulesaupartie.at/fotos/
If you want to read about the tradition, check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maypole
Afterward we just sat at tables, ate Bratwurst with Sauerkraut, drank beer, and talked. Technically, we were supposed to be watching the tree to make sure nobody came in the middle of the night to cut it down (also a part of the tradition), but we didn't.

My daily life would be just as magical to anybody else. I woke up every day in mountain heaven, ate better bread than you've ever had (unless you live in Ischl), and I rarely taught more than four hours in the school in one day. Over the period of a few months, I translated the tourism website for the region I live in (they don't have it up yet), as well as the Hermann-Hesse-Haus (that I mentioned earlier) website into English: http://www.hermann-hesse-house.org/ 
I tutored two girls almost every week, and an older couple as well, all of which became good friends. The older couple, Wolfgang and Evelyn, welcomed me to their house with pastries, coffee, juice and wine every time I came. Just about every Thursday evening I met with students to speak for an hour in English. Once warm weather came around I started riding with the Faulesaupartie almost every Wednesday (the same link I gave from their site above has pictures of our other adventures). They even threw me a going-away...get-together, where they gave me this!!!

It's the mountain biking "uniform" that they often wear when we ride together. It's supposed to look like Lederhosen. I FINALLY BELONGS SOMEWHERE.

 One sunny day I sat next to the river Traun, and two boys aged about six and ten walked to the right side of my bench to the trash can. The elder brother dropped his empty cup in, and the little brother handed his older brother his cup to toss in, too. The brother took it with the one hand that wasn't wrapped in a cast, shook it, turned to his little brother, tilted and cocked his head, and raised his knowing, scolding eyebrow to his little brother. The little brother hung his head and took the cup back, and they went on. A ten-year-old scolding his little brother for not finishing his drink: golden. On a rainy day, a former opera singer, carrying a seashell and coral reef from his wife's hair shop, got right up in Jennifer's face and sang the opening line of some famous Italian opera. I had a twenty-minute conversation with an amnesiac who told how the glaciers formed the mountains, and when I saw him a few more times in the following months I always had the sneaking suspicion that he recognized me. When I heard there was flooding in Ischl a couple of weeks ago, I took a walk next to the river Ischl. Where the two town rivers joined I watched the wild current as it threatened destruction to everything around it. One concrete wall stood not a foot above the hurrying current as its only barrier, and right on the other side I could see a man at the water's level in his house calmly hanging his clothes on his clothes-line.

I so often become blind to the charms and tragedies of each day. You'd think that just because there's so many of them (for some of us) that the days are all the same, or at least as good as. "Every-day life": what a misleading phrase. As if all of these days could be grouped together under "every" and tied together with a hyphen. Yet every now and then, day breaks differently and then it all doesn't seem so "every." Every day has its mean and sweet irony, its stupid joke, its green hello, its long-drawn shadow. Be it here in Austria, there in Germany, or over there in the States, they all have that every day with all those every people, and it's all very every, but not really.

(p.s. in case you didn't get the title reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfFunjzyIsE )

What a pig weather for a tourist

Ugh, I'm in the middle of saying goodbye to my apartment. These are my last days in my domicile of solitude. Tomorrow I pack and clean. The day after I leave. In a time of my life where friends have been few in the place I lived, this place has become a friend. I trust its walls and sounds. It was one of the first places whose acoustics seemed to welcome my guitar and voice. Some days I rose, stretched, and sang my morning song before the sun. Without any flatmates I felt the freedom to turn up my music at 6:30 in the morning, to camp out in my living room for an entire evening with no distractions, to hog the entire kitchen, spreading my tools and ingredients as far as the eye could see in joyous inefficiency. I cleaned when I felt unkempt, and I built a sty when tired, and nobody had to wade through the disaster but me. When lazy, I faced the jury of silence, brutal and relentless in its countless accusatory voices. Nobody was there to distract me from my failure or weakness. I had to get to know myself, especially the parts I didn't like; the parts I'd ignored. I created every day from scratch, often listing off the possibilities, the promise, the potential in my head. "Okay Dan. What can you do, today? Hm... well the necessary things first: take out the trash, recycle, do the wash. Okay, now what? I could climb a mountain, read a book and drink a beer...", and very rarely did I pull it all off. Solitude and silence: These were often my most intimate of friends. They lulled me to sleep, kept me up at night, haunted me with their honesty, freed and imprisoned me.

I wasn't always alone. I've had a lot of visitors in the last couple of months. I spent months nagging friends to come and visit, only to be successful in rapid-fire succession in the final stretch. My mother was the first, and then came Tanja. Man, she was unlucky. The day before she got here Spring had sung quite the anthem, then Ischl welcomed her with fog and clouds for the entire weekend she was here. The day after she left, the sun dispersed the clouds to spite her. Not long after, my friends Basti and Hubertus came for a weekend. They also caught the alpine curse of whimsical weather. Julia was the first to see this paradise in all its glory. Every day the sun shone, and every evening it rained or hailed. Last Sunday, my first American friend came to visit: Jennfier! She came to school with me, endured my half-educated tours of the town and sleep-deprived moodiness, and attempted to say every German word or expression I taught her. She caught the worst weather of all. Every day, except for one, it was cold and rainy. We did have one glorious, warm and sunny day. I took her up a mountain, showed her a waterfall, and we ended it on the third floor balcony of James' house to watch the sunset.

I know that means little to you, but you see, that was my view of it. Maybe the most wonderful part of having visitors is that they have different views. How quickly we grow accustomed! How easily we grow spoiled. I remember standing surprised behind Tanja as she took in a hillside in the park next to the Kaiservilla. I'd never been there before, so it was actually new for me, too. She took pictures and stood drinking it in for minutes, and I watched her and the landscape, liking the hillside and her appreciation of it. It didn't mean as much to me as it did to her, but it sure was nice to feel her appreciate it so much. Feeling like I was missing something she could see, I looked closer and felt I came to see it, too.

A couple of weeks later, I brought Hubertus and Basti together with my other good friends James and Lucy. The delight of seeing best friends from completely different worlds and times of my life connect so well is hard to explain. It's so tempting, when a good friend to visits, to keep them all to yourself. Living apart is stupid enough without having to share them with other people, but there's something great about throwing your friendship into new situations. You get to see your good friend be the person they've always been, but you also get to see something new happen between them and those they encounter. It's like throwing two of your favorite spices together to find that they taste great together. Something wonderful happened between between me and each of those persons when we built a friendship, and it seemed nothing short of magic that the same wonder happened between each of them.

I had a favorite bench in Eichstaett when I lived there. Often, in the wintry days I spent there, I'd hear a knock upon my door. Julia would open it to assert something like, "I think we need some vitamin D," so we'd meander through streets and conversations until we reached our favorite bench. The winds and the cold did not matter. It was the sun we were after. So we parked ourselves there, sometimes in silence and sometimes deciding the fate of the world, and all the while we let the valley, trees, churches and bridges climb up to us. So when Julia came to visit me in Ischl two years later, the highest priority was showing her the new bench I've found here. Though it had not been our bench as the one in Eichstaett had been, it quickly became that. We looked on the landscape I'd meditated on a hundred times and did the same we'd always done. "You know?" She said, "that mountain over there kind of looks like a mans face." What?" I asked. I looked and looked, and finally I saw it. It was my favorite mountain from that view. I'd often admired it from that spot, but I'd never seen the face. All of a sudden, the entire landscape changed for me. I could no longer see it all as I had before, and I was so glad for that. Now, every time I go there I see the slumbering giant and his bent nose, rock-jaw, and the valley of his flowing, green mane.

For all the complaining I did while Jennifer was here, you'd have expected complaints to change the weather. Spoiler alert: they didn't. I almost felt responsible for the clouds and their cold, and I lamented the paradise lost behind their grey. Yet every time I complained. "I thought it was beautiful," she'd remind me. Aw man, what I jerk I am! The sun doesn't shine and I talk like there's no beauty left in the world.

I've been a visitor here in Ischl for eight months now. Have I? I don't know. I posed these questions to my students a few times: "What is a tourist? What is a good tourist? Do you like tourists?" Is a visitor the same as a tourist? Someone once told me, very matter-of-factly, that a tourist is someone who has been in a place for less than one year. I remember resenting her for saying that, because she was telling me that months into my stay in Eichstaett, and I already felt myself more at home there than I had in any other town I'd ever lived in. I knew people there whose only friends were other exchange students, who traveled almost every weekend, and who barely spoke the local language. No, time is not the deciding factor here. All that matters is how much we try to connect in the time we are given. A tourist eats the traditional food, buys the traditional clothing (buying the tradition), and learns the few words that seem necessary or entertaining in the local language all without trying to figure out what it's all about. A tourist is someone who's only interested in skimming the surface.

This week, Ischl held their annual "Weindorf" (translated: "Wine village") in one part of downtown. Wine makers from all over Austria come to Ischl and let people try their different wines. I brought Jennifer, and we met up with James and other friends. As we sat at a long table, eating something like Funnel cake and drinking delicious wine, everyone complained about the poor weather that was ruining the entire event. I had been teaching Jennifer some of the basics: numbers, Auf Wiedersehen, ciao, etc. I started telling her how to say things in dialect, and then our friends told me to teach her to say, "What terrible weather!" in dialect. So I said to her, "So. a. Sau. Weder" (direct translation: what a pig weather). I worked on it with her for a few minutes, explaining each syllable and helping her pronounce it. When I looked up, I saw not only everyone at our table watching and listening, but also people from many of the surrounding booths. They were all about as tickled as could be, saying "An American teaching an American how to speak in dialect!" They were so delighted to hear foreigners trying to speak like them. I'm sure I wasn't pronouncing everything perfectly, and Jennnifer was having to fight her way through every syllable, but that didn't matter to them. They were all just so pleased that we were trying to speak like they do.

Living alone for almost a year was one of the most valuable experiences I've ever had, but I'll be glad once I'm rid of it. Like I've said before, sharing is so much better...objectively. You can cook all the amazing meals you want for yourself, but nothing can change the fact that you're sitting alone. So, I invite my friends to visit. Through their presence, I remember what I've forgotten. I remember who I was when I met them and lived with them, and I remember the beauty of the place I call home as they experience it for the first time. I see the mixture of colors, the blending of tastes, as the best of my worlds collide. I celebrate how the old friends can bring newness to a new place gone old, or how new places bring newness to old relationships. I remember that what I have is beautiful, be it bathed in sunlight or draped in grey. Then I realize that I'm a visitor as my friends were to me, and that I always will be somewhere, and all that matters is how hard I try to connect well, connect right, wherever I am.

The Rules of a Rainy Day

There are rules to rainy days:
Rule 1: It can't be too cold. If it's cold, then snow is the appropriate response.
Rule 2: Rainy days are common in the Spring, hence there should be no cold days in Spring, especially late Spring. Europe fails on that one. It's been cold, grey and rainy for about five days now, or an eternity. What's the difference? I think Oklahoma and Arkansas (excluding present disaster in OK) win on this. Our Spring rains are most often the BEST thunderstorms. If it's cold and raining, being inside becomes a prison. If it's warm and storming, being inside is the most comfortable thing. Open your window, listen through the screen as rain and thunder pound and hum that sweet Spring melody.
Rule 3: This is more a rule for life, but for optimal enjoyment of rainy days one needs to live at ground level. One of the best parts about rain, aside from playing in it, is its sound. Droplets on leaf, tin roof, and especially in puddles are the best background music. If you're too high up, those puddle plops disappear.

I was in Croatia a little over a week ago. I went with one of the classes in one of my schools. I honestly don't even really want to talk about it. The students were great, and riding my bike on the coast was wonderful, but I was on a resort, and I don't think there are many things uglier than a resort. It's like living in a giant Walmart. They have everything you need, and there are lots of cool things and great deals, but it is completely ______ of anything meaningful. I was in a foreign country for five days, for goodness sake, and I got no taste for the local culture or history at all. I mean, I have a hard enough time being a tourist, but just using a country for its landscape? I think that's called being a leech.

I did get to taste some delicious seafood, though. On the last day we got some "bad" weather. It'd been sunny and warm every day, but on that day it rained nearly the whole day. Since James and I were in charge of the biking group, we kind of got the day off. In the morning, we got a group of students and took back the bikes we had rented. Since we and the students didn't have anything to do, we just planted ourselves in a cafe and chatted with the students for a couple of hours. While sitting, I noticed one of those dispensers filled with big bouncy-balls. I didn't have the change for it, but after I looked at them longingly for long enough, one of my students bought one for me. In the afternoon, James and I went out to find something to pass the time. James, with is trained eye, had spotted a small joint on the docks that looked to be one of the local favorites. As we walked there in a light drizzle, I bounced my ball and dreamed dreams of my future barber shop and my arcade/soda fountain with a small theater. Something about bouncing a bouncy-ball really gets cogs turning. Rule 4 for rainy days: always have a bouncy ball on hand.

We made it to the small shack and settled in the back corner of the non-smoking half. I ordered and ate calamari for the first time in my life, and it was amazing. James ordered wine for us, and we talked while boats rocked outside the window. Cozy in our seats, we grabbed the shack's chess board and began playing. That was one of my favorite afternoons in recent memory. We sat in thought as the Mediterranean rose and fell to the beat of Bob Dylan, CCR, and relaxing background music. A local sat behind James and watched our game, eventually commentating James' eventual doom. He muttered the few German words he knew to warn James, and James decried his inability to "finish" me. We spent a good four hours tucked into that back corner, and it couldn't have been more comfortable. I won a game, James won a game, and we declared ourselves of equal greatness. Rule 5 for rainy days: play chess.

I do have to pause to give credit to Croatians for their multilingual capacities. Because of the vicinity, many of them could speak Italian fluently. James and I often sat at a restaurant or cafe and listened as the fishermen weaved in and out of Italian and Croatian. Most waiters or waitresses could also speak a good amount of German and English. I mean, we probably wouldn't often expect waiters to be a highly educated group, but these people were on average much better educated than the average American.

Last week I went on another bike trip with the Faulesaupartie. It was the first day of this accursed week of cold, rainy weather. As some of the people leading the pack, James and I got to the top with another guy before the others. James and the other guy disagreed about which direction they were supposed to head in, and we went our separate ways. We soon found out that James was wrong and had to find a way to the hut to meet up with the others. There wasn't really a good path, so James decided to go the way he usually goes when skiing on that mountain: through a forest with no path. He had on shoes that clip into pedals. I had on running shoes, so he was able to get some traction and I wasn't. He led the way atop twigs and piles of dead, wet leaves, and I followed, slipping and falling the entire way. As I tried to figure out how to effectively move my body and bike, I bit it at least six times really hard; falling every time with my right elbow onto some hard surface. Until that point, I had been in a fantastic mood. I did my best to maintain a good spirit, but it is an art to be a happy camper without firm footing. Just about one of the most irritating things in life is the feeling that you can't find your footing. When the ground becomes your enemy, every painful throb reminds you of false steps and stupid mistakes, and you can't even trust your own feet it's hard to have a good sense of humor. Most of us just become this blustering, complaining fool; cursing at every step.

It's at times like these that I hear Dory's voice from Finding Nemo. "Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming." Every day I become more convinced that movement is the answer to just about everything. So I tread along, and eventually James led us out of the forest and onto a real path. My first step onto solid ground was accompanied by a furious sigh, a couple of curses, something like, "James, that hurt like hell", and then I laughed at myself. We rode on and scooted onto a bench with our friends in a hut. The stove was so old that you could see the fire burning inside through a large crack in the stove-top. Heck, the hut was so old it didn't have electricity. The owner harbored the greatest of beards, and the table we sat at was next to his bed. When it got so dark we were having a hard time seeing he brought out an old gas lamp and put it in the middle of the table. Through the hut's tiny, square windows we could see the fight ahead, but walls and warmth are never as far from us as we fear, so we enjoyed the warmth while we could, and when it was time to ride we rode. Rule 6 for rainy days: find good company.

So when the rain falls, and waves rise, my bouncy-ball gives good replies. Mostly it jumps to my hand, but sometimes it hops rebellion, so I chase and we do a dance. There's a subtle hum and shh, a patter, beat and occasional clap. I listen and bob, maybe sway or flop while looking for my next move. I move as I know, or I make it up as I go, but sometimes I just ain't got no moves no mo'. So I look to my mate to take the lead, and we bounce out the shadows and slip off the leaves. That's my rap. It's okay if you tapped your feet. Pitter. Patter. Peace.

The Mountain's Keeper

Warning to anybody with parental-protective feelings for me: this entry contains multiple instances self-imposed life-threatening situations, as well as the consumption of alcohol. Good news: I'm still alive. Bad news: it's not necessarily because I got smart. Continue reading at your own peril.

This is a different kind of spring for me. Just think about it. I'm in the mountains! I've never seen this before. Two weeks ago we were still trudging beneath cold and unforgiving skies. Finally, after months of natural torture, we hit the 20 degree Celsius mark and stayed there. Within two days buds made themselves known, within a week trees were playing home to yellow, white, and green revolutions, and after two weeks the brightest green has combed up the roots of mountains, up and over all but the highest. The giants are still doing their best to shake the remaining snow dandruff, and with the help of foehn it looks like they'll have managed the feat pretty soon here.

After a week of nice weather, the Faulesaupartie (the group of "lazy" mountain bikers I described in an earlier entry) was ready to begin the season. Before I get to that, though, I have to describe how the group has gotten to know me. I met them all at the beginning, at the Almabtrieb that I described in one of my first entries, and I've encountered them on a couple of other instances, but they probably got their biggest impression of me a week before our first ride. I joined them for a late afternoon game of indoor soccer. Keep in mind, all of these men are above 50. I was half the age of all of the men there. I did my best to keep up, and I managed pretty well. After playing for about 50 minutes or so I ran for the ball at the wall. Reaching it at a pretty high speed, I put out my hands to catch myself from crashing into the wall. Unknown to my eye's corner, the wall was only too eager for contact. Protruding from a crack in the wall, feigning the purpose of supporting some structure and smirking evil intentions, a small hook-like thing stabbed the middle of my right palm. I stopped immediately and looked at it. "Es gibt ein Loch in meiner Hand," (there's a hole in my hand) I said calmly. It was tiny, and it was probably only a couple of mm deep, but it was the first artificial hole I'd ever seen in my own body. Well, the problem is, I'm squeamish; in the least manly kind of way. I immediately assumed mental control. "No problem, Dan. Small hole! Little blood. It doesn't even hurt that bad. It's nothing!" Two minutes later I was sitting against the wall, pale-faced and barely conscious as James and one of the others opened the First Aid kit and wrapped my hand with enough gauze to stop a major artery from bleeding out. Five minutes later I was laying on the tile floor in cold sweats because I couldn't stand or sit. After feeling better, I went home to shower before meeting up with them for a beer. James came by and rang my doorbell twice to make sure I hadn't passed out. Point is: the 23 year old almost fainted from a prick to the hand in front of a bunch of fit "old men."

When I arrived at the meeting point for our ride a week later, I was greeted with, "Stop! Hand check!" I think it's going to take me the next month of riding to earn any kind of manliness back. Meanwhile, I spent the last two weeks doing my best to do just that. It really is remarkable how much of a joke age can be. James and I seem to normally take about the third position in the pack, and we work pretty hard to get there. As we made our long and slow ascent up a mountain, breathing louder than the wind and hearts churning faster than our chains, one of the older guys in the group shot past me nearly knocking me over to get to his rightful place. After squirreling our way up, down, and around a few mountains, we flew down into the valley of Bad Goisern to one of the men's huts. We arrived about two hours before the sunset, hung up our sweat-drenched shirts to dry, and sat on the porch to face the setting sun. Over 1.5 hours, I was handed three beers and told that I just had to try the local Schnapps, which I obliged. I have to assert that this is the best part. The men in the group talk about this as the "reward." They bust their bodies riding up and down the mountains, and then they reward it with a few beers. A cold beer never tastes better than then. I had to turn down a few other drinks. Biking isn't the only challenge to endurance these "older" guys have me beat at. As the sun threatened its departure, we strapped on helmets and jackets and raced it home.

I'm not going to discuss the moral implications of riding or driving drunk. It's a stupid thing to do, and I think I remember being told it's much more dangerous than driving a car. I agree, and I do feel stupid for doing it. Without excusing it, I'd like to explain some things that might ease a few peoples worries just a little. Driving culture is different here. Bikes play a much more central role in transport. Austrians are used to one lane streets, forcing them to be especially careful for absolutely anything. Sometimes the streets are so narrow that one car has to go in reverse for a block until the other car can drive around it. Drivers here are also much better trained. They have to pay thousands of Euros to take lessons and get the license, not to mention buy a car. So, the drivers are (on average) better, more aware by default, and especially respectful of pedestrians and bicycles. Plus, most of the time we ride on well marked and cleared bike paths, not streets. Most importantly, I don't drink more than a couple of beers.

Austrians seem to have a completely different way of thinking about health. As soon as they get a "break" or "holiday", many of them rush to the nearest mountain or to their bike to get their body moving. What many of us would think of as "work" in doing something athletic seems to be the opposite to an Austrian. The healthiest people I know seem to be "older" people who go to the extreme on everything. Work hard. Play hard. They really are healthier, too, and the way they eat and drink is an integral part of that. They nurture their bodies and souls throughout the entire event. Sport becomes this celebration of movement, eating the celebration of life, and drinking a celebration of company. It's a great big dance.

Today held so many surprises. There were guest singers in church today. I've been visiting the catholic mass in the town cathedral. I heard some of the most beautiful harmonies in years in renditions of "kyrie, eleison" and the like. Afterward, I watched a FANTASTIC episode of "Die Sendung mit der Maus" (the show with the mouse). They showed how a 3D printer works (my new favorite obsession), how aluminum sheets are made, and Shawn the Sheep (from the makers of Wallace and Gromit) and his fellow herd-mates ventured into the city to get pizza in one of the best episodes yet. A couple of hours later I decided to try and find a smaller mountain I hadn't been up yet. I took my bike and rode to the nearest ones I knew of. On the way, I noticed a small sign for a waterfall. I followed the trail and found it, small but perfect, at the base of the mountain foothills. As soon as I got there, three kids raced past me with a friendly "Grias di!", stripped to their shorts, and waded into the ice-cold pool beneath the waterfall.

After trying a few dead ends, I realized I'd probably be blazing a new trail up either of the two small mountains I'd found. Resigned to my fate, I rode my bike as far up a road as I could. When the path got to difficult to ride, I hid my bike, locked it, and went up by foot. When the trail suddenly stopped, I followed a spring bed toward what looked like a peak. Sinking inches into the mud from melted snow, and tripping over vines and roots I fought toward the top. I got to a rock wall, and decided it looked climbable. I promised myself, "Dan, you're alone, nobody knows you're here, and you don't have any of the right equipment with you. If it looks iffy, don't try for it." Before I knew it, I was sweating bullets and praying to God to help me get down the constantly shifting wall. I swear, no rock I grabbed would stay put. I admitted defeat and inched down the wall calling myself an idiot. Once down, I kissed the ground, thanked the heavens, and went a responsible route. Turns out the rocks were so loose was because I was climbing up the depository side of a hollowed out mountaintop, or quarry.

On my way up the mountain, the helmet attached to my bag had somehow wiggled loose unbeknownst to me, so on the way down I tracked my steps. With eyes freshly peeled I surveyed the landscape while descending, when suddenly I noticed an oddity. Low to my right was a hollow stump, and standing from the stump was a thick limb with a crown of broken twigs. It looked planted. As I got nearer I saw what looked like a typical improvised rock marker on the stump in front of the limb. I pulled out the limb to see if there was something underneath, thinking someone might have hid something there (ever heard of geocaching?), but I found nothing. I crouched and noticed something yet more mysterious. Someone had carved a very straight square into the side of the stump beneath the stone marker. Sitting on the floor of the square was a large stone. I removed the larger stone and found one smaller, but alien. It was an odd red, almost see-through in some places, suspiciously round and smooth. Maybe it is hardened sap (amber? copal?), I thought. Something about it made me scared. I was stealing someone's treasure, and I knew it.

Finders keepers, right? Just because you hid it and marked its location doesn't make it yours, right? I felt like I was stealing some other pirates treasure. The wind whispered warnings, and a darkness seeped up from the ground and set a shadow on my sunny surroundings. I started looking over my back, sure that the treasure's keeper was bound to it by the mountain's magic. Would I crack this stone to find a secret? What was this thing I was holding? I realized where I was. I had just left a death bed. I had just skirted the edges of a hollowed out mountain. I'd scaled a dead mountain, and somebody, either its murderer or its protector had found and hidden, maybe buried its heart. Ditching the comfort of security, I zipped the mountain's heart in my bag. Fearing the mountain's keeper, I quickly left, but not before I noticed striking colors not ten feet from the grave. Cradled in the roots of a small tree stemmed one of the more beautiful flowers I've ever seen. There was only one, and I never saw another nearby or far from thereafter. I ran downhill, fighting the mountain as it tried to trip and tie me down. Thorns on vines and lying limbs grabbed at my feet, and I kicked them off. Seeing my helmet, I snatched it and ran further to my bike to race home. I do believe I'll keep the mountain's heart. Maybe the mountain's keeper will come to find me. I don't know what to fear, so I won't.

It's so much easier to walk the beaten path, and it might be that it's ultimately wiser. What did I gain today? Scratches on my legs and a couple years off my life from fear of falling to my death, and I found a cool looking rock. That, or I stole a treasure. I stole the mountain's heart, and its keeper must be as mighty as the mountain.