I met an interesting man on a mountain today. Well, it isn't really a mountain; more like a dignified hill. The cold was biting today, but I finally ventured out mid-afternoon to take one of my favorite strolls up onto Ischl's Calvary Hill. Remember? I already told you about it. Informed more by my hope at the sight of sunshine than any realistic considerations, I strapped on my Chucks and set out. It was an odd kind of sunny afternoon. The clouds were somehow thin enough to give the impression of a sunny day, but the sky was cloudy through and through . At the foot of the hill, I passed what I thought was a couple. I offered a friendly "Grüß Gott" and continued on my way. A minute later I heard someone overtaking me from the rear, and it turned out to be the man from the "couple". He immediately addressed me in a friendly way. Alas! He had one of the stronger accents I've heard in a while, and so it was also the greatest comprehension challenge I've had since the bird catcher experience in January. More relaxed and cheery than usual, I made no qualms about having him repeat about every sentence and making it known I wasn't from these parts. He was. He's from Pfandl, which is pretty much just around the corner, or rather right around Calvary Hill. Once again, crazy how "distance" kind of gets turned on its head when it comes to accents here.
He immediately proved to be very nice. Pretty much right off the bat he let me know that he had had some sort of head injury thirty years ago, which had resulted in what sounded to be a pretty dramatic memory problem. It sounded like some kind of amnesia reminiscent of some of our favorite stories like the film "Memento", or one of my favorite Radiolab episodes "Memory and Forgetting", in which a man incapable of creating new memories conducts a choir for the first time in...decades(?) like he'd never stopped doing it and then forgot again. In any case, this man on Calvary Hill said short term memory was normally less of a problem, but if he had seen me an hour later he wouldn't remember meeting me, and by the end of the day he wouldn't know what he'd done that day (if I understood correctly). He proceeded to illustrate his point by retelling certain stories and facts in a concrete formula at least four times within our twenty minute conversation. The main one was something to the effect of, "Short-term memory is no problem. I can dominate in chess for two hours straight, no problem." He seriously said the exact sentence nearly word for word every time. I've heard older people repeat stories, but this was different.
He had lots of interesting facts up his sleeve. While overlooking one of my favorite views of Ischl he pointed to the mountains naming them. He was right about all of them except one, which he called the Loser, and which looked like the Loser, but was not (look at me. Goodness, I'm a punk). Talking about the nice weather, he started talking about our ensuing doom as a species, as global warming would soon be getting the better of us. He didn't sound crazy or religiously fanatic or anything, just a little dramatic in his interpretation of scientific findings he'd heard or read about. He insisted that our local glacier, the daunting Dachstein at over 3000 meters (almost 10,000 feet), would be "gar" in 30 years. I have to admit that my German knowledge reaches it's limit here. I could have heard him wrong, and even though I'm familiar with this very common word, I'm afraid I only know its relation to potatoes and other foods that need to be cooked until soft. I'm afraid that he meant the glacier will have melted in 30 years, but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, because of my insufficient German, and imagining that he meant the glacier would... be soft in 30 years?
He told me how the Jainzen and Siriuskogel (two of the other small "mountains" in Ischl) were formed by the moving glacier. I got excited and said, "Yeah! When I went up the Siriuskogel recently, I saw a big boulder with a sign next to it stating that the boulder was left there by the Dachstein"; a common geomorphological process (Don't worry. You don't have to think me a jerk for trying to use big words. I'm probably using it incorrectly) in which glaciers leave behind "moraine" as they move through the landscape. Yay! So the geomorphology class I took in Eichstaett two years ago wasn't all for naught. Education works! Check out the cool Wikipedia article on it! (I'll donate if you do): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moraine
Nodding and smiling at the confirmation of facts already known to him, he shot in, "Yup! The glacier forgot 'im!" or something like that. Ha! What a charming and fitting description!
When an older woman's wiener dog came up and made friends with me she came up to chat with us. She saw the man I was talking to and said she thought she recognized him from somewhere. "Oh no," I thought. "Dude's got a memory problem, ma'am!" I thought, but he then suggested, after some pondering, the situation in which he thought they had met each other. I believed the man about his amnesia, so I decided I didn't quite get how this memory thing worked. That, or this was a trick he used a lot, seeing as peoples memories are so undependable anyways that you could probably often just plant the memory with some vague yet conceivable possibility. After all, it's a pretty small town, and the possibilities are limited.
Man, I'm duped about how this guy's memory works. Now that I think about it, it seems like he had short-term memory problems, but was actually alright when it came to long-term memory. Just goes to show how well I could understand his accent.
Well, I'd like to tell about my mom's visit last week and some of my recent experiences in the classroom, but I'm just gunna let you chew on that little story for now, and I'll try and write another blog really soon. It's Easter break now! I've got a week and a half off! Yay for vestigial religious holidays! So hopefully I'll have some time soon. I'll be adding some pictures and videos pretty soon here.
Take care.
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