They're multiplying

Remember this?

It appears to have spawned:


This of course begs the question, what will spring from the union Space Invaders Against Homophobia and Space Invaders Against Sexism? Space Invaders Against Anti-Semitism? Space Invaders Against Racism? Space Invaders Against Sexist Homophobes? Or just Space Invaders Against Straight White American Men?

I've said it before and I'll say it again

I can't seem to get out of the South for love nor money.

The Austrian term for "shotgun wedding"? "Kärntnerisch Hochzeit" or "Carinthian wedding," after the province where I'm living.

If this isn't the Mississippi of Austria, I don't know what it is.

Most likely causes of death while in Austria

1. Asphyxiation during housefire. To get in or out of my apartment, you have to go through two doors, one or both of which are locked at night and can only be unlocked with a house key. Likely scenario should a fire occur: me fumbling with my keys while my landlady stands behind me screaming in German as we both gasp for air before slumping to the floor.

2. Intentional hit-and-run. Austrians do not appreciate jaywalkers.

3. Second-hand smoke.

4. Run over by a train when I finally get tired of the smarmy sign at the train station informing me that walking over the tracks is forbidden and jump out onto them just to show the sign who’s boss.

5. Alcohol poisoning after some Austrian (or Brit, for that matter) drinks me under the table.

6. Run over by bicyclist after failing to move to the inside of the sidewalk because the music from my iPod drowned out the sound of the warning bell.

7. Embarrassment following any one of the many awkward moments resulting from imperfect German and an unfortunate tendency to smile and nod.

8. Drive-by-shooting, since I do live in the bad part of town. Wait, wrong town. Wrong continent. Scratch that.

People who should never procreate, and the pets that can't escape them

You’re kidding, right? I’m pretty sure that dog would never in a million years wear that hood, but I’d sure like to see someone try to force it to.

It’s not that I have a problem with the fact that people take their dogs *everywhere* here (malls, trains, supermarkets, restaurants, and cafes, like the one where I took this picture). I mean, it seems a bit unhygienic to me, but when in Rome and all… I’m just pretty sure shoving a dog into a get-up like that qualifies as animal abuse. Is there an Austrian chapter of the ASPCA?

Cultural exchange

I missed a call the other day from an American phone number, area code 323. Whoever it was didn’t leave a message, and I was dying to know who in the States a) knew my Austrian cell number and b) would call from an actual phone and not with Skype.

An hour and a half later the phone rings again, and this time I hear it in time to answer.

“Hah-low?” booms an unfamiliar male voice. “Seed-nee?”

“Ja,” I say uncertainly. Maybe it’s not an American number after all. “Das ist Sydney.”

“Hah-low,” the voice repeats. “Es ist MAHN-fred.”

Manfred? Do I know someone named Manfred? The name sounds familiar. I’m getting an image of a man, mid-forties, overweight and balding. The details start to sharpen: gold chain, fedora, moustache, inexplicably haggard eyes. And cigarette smoke. Suddenly I smell stale cigarette smoke.

Oh. That Manfred.

Shortly after I arrived here in October, I had a brief gig with a private language school that desperately needed someone who spoke American English. They paid me under the table to give ten hours of private help within two weeks to this guy who was about to leave for America on business.

Whatever I expected, and I didn’t expect much, it wasn’t a cross between a cowboy and every sleazy Eastern European you’ve ever seen in a bad movie. Manfred.

Manfred digs tunnels, and he is very good at what he does. When somebody somewhere in the course of putting in a subway or whatever else you need a tunnel for discovers the ground is too soft and the tunnel keeps caving in, they call Manfred’s boss, who calls Manfred. He high-tails it to the work site and employs his expert knowledge of rebar and other structural reinforcements to patch things back up.

The way he told it to me, he traveled all around the world, spending weeks or months in the Philippines, Brazil, Germany, Ukraine, Iran, or wherever else a tunnel needed digging. He would work twelve-hour days six days a week until the job was done and then take his overtime pay and blow it on several weeks R and R. His hobbies seemed to be limited to drinking, traveling, and fishing. I was careful not to ask what he did with his time off in the Philippines.

He’d been in Seattle for three months the previous spring, which was where he’d learned English, and was scheduled to leave for LA at the end of October. He’d picked up English pretty quickly, but was still a bit mystified by some of the slang used around the construction site and had talked his company into paying for private lessons to brush up before his re-entry into American society. That’s where I came in – a bona fide American, college educated, upper-middle class and fully prepared to explain the ins and outs of a Los Angeles construction crew.

We would meet at the language school every few days and make painful small talk for about twenty minutes. Then Manfred would tell me in his halting English about some experience he’d had in Seattle and ask me to explain it. Why did the checkers at the supermarket always have to make conversation with the customers? Talk, talk, talk, it slowed things down too much. And why wouldn’t the girl at the coffee shop he went to every day drive out to Mt. St. Helens with him?

I’d do my best to answer his questions, and then after about forty-five minutes, Manfred would start to fidget and suggest we go outside for a smoke. He’d have a cigarette in his mouth almost before we got out the door, and we’d walk the length of the parking lot while he smoked and pointed to various parts of the building or the nearby cars and ask for their English names.

A favorite topic of conversation was the classification and naming of different sized rocks. How big was too big for gravel? And what did you call something bigger than gravel but not bigger than your fist? What should he say when he needed a rock about this big (holding his hands about six inches apart)? What about this big (pointing to a rock on the ground)?

Bit by bit, I learned more about him. He showed me photos of his house, his brother, his girlfriend, her daughter. He lived right near the Slovenian border, and when he needed cigarettes or wanted to go drinking, zip, he’d pop across. He had a noise and accompanying gesture to indicate driving which suggested to me that zipping and popping were not just idle word choices.

In his past lives, Manfred had been a downhill skier, ski instructor, car mechanic, and had worked with explosives, although I was never quite clear in what capacity. Now, he seemed to be happy with his nomadic tunnel-digging existence, although he looked forward to retirement, when he would be able to sit around and fish all day.

We would talk for about an hour and a half, he would tell me to write down two hours on the log and then give me a lift home in his BMW, which had seen better days and sported an inconspicuous hammer and sickle on the front bumper. During our last meeting, he asked for my phone number and said he’d give me a call when he was back in Austria in December and tell me all about Los Angeles. I never heard from him.

Now here he is, calling all the way from LA. We chat a bit in German; he asks how I’m doing and whether I like Austria. I tell him I’m fine and Austria is lovely. How is he? Gut. How is Los Angeles? Kalt. Minus two today. I am intrigued by this piece of news, and also a bit guilty, since I told him before he left that Los Angeles would be fairly warm compared to Austria.

And how is work? Work is work. It goes on.

Try as I might, I can discern no particular reason for this phone call. He apologizes for not calling when he was in the country, but he was only here for four days. He tells me he will be back in mid-April and when he finds out I won’t leave until the end of May, assures me that he will call when he returns.

Have I seen much of Austria yet? Not too much, just Salzburg, Vienna, and Klagenfurt. I tell him how much I liked Ljubljana, Slovenia’s capital. My German is wearing thin at this point, but I think he is pleased, and tells me that when he gets back, we’ll drive down to Ljubljana. An image of the trip flashes before my eyes. I’m in the passenger seat holding on for dear life as Manfred drives hell-for-leather towards the Slovenian border. I decide it could be fun.

Manfred asks for my email address and I give it to him, trying my best to spell out my last name in German. We have some confusion over i’s and e’s and I doubt he has managed to get everything straight. I’m impressed that he’s gotten the hang of the whole email thing; he could barely turn the computer on back in October. I try to imagine what kind of email he will send. My money is on brief and to the point, although I can’t begin to fathom what that point will be.

And as abruptly as it began, the conversation is over. Manfred promises again to call in April and to email me in the meantime. I say goodbye, opting for “ciao” over “tschüss” (German for “Cheerio!” Can be made even more twee by saying “tschüssi!”) or the particularly Austrian “wiederschauen.”

I picture Manfred sitting in some extended-stay hotel in Los Angeles after a ten- or twelve-hour day, flipping through the channels and eating Chinese take-out straight from the carton. I find this prospect momentarily depressing, until I remember that he spent some time in Iran, where according to him, there was absolutely nothing to do. No TV, no radio, no drinking, no girls. He’s in LA. What better place for an Eastern European tunnel-digging cowboy?

I appreciate the sentiment but remain perplexed

Found on the corner of St. Veiter Ring and Bahnhofstraße in Klagenfurt. Still waiting for the invasion.

Burning question of the day

Does the Starbucks in Vienna put inspirational messages on its coffee cups like the ones in America? Must find out. Maybe I can find the German equivalent of this gem:

The Way I See It #197

Life is a school for angels. Love is the Teacher, so do your homework without fear. Death is merely graduation.

- Jeffrey Kuehl, Starbucks customer from Wilmette, Illinois

Words that should be reintroduced into common parlance (first in an occasional series)

Bully (synonyms: awesome, sweet, far out, crackerjack, kick-ass, nifty, swell, radical, ace, phat, groovy, wicked)

First of all, let’s tighten the definition a bit. Bully: adjective or exclamation expressing extreme approval.

But what distinguishes “bully” from “cool” or “cute” or “fly”?

Bully has more testosterone, more good ol’ boy spirit, more raw muscle. A good rule of thumb: Bully should only be used with reference to situations, people, or objects about which former president Teddy Roosevelt would express approval (full disclosure: I totally stole this from John Dos Passos. But Dos Passos is dead and therefore wholly unhelpful in reviving obscure adjectives, so I’m picking up where he left off).

Things Teddy Roosevelt would find bully:
Guns
Large dead animals, especially tigers and rhinoceri
Trust-busting
Big sticks
Panama hats
Stuffed bears
Canals
Moustaches

So, one might say, “That’s a bully new gun you’ve got there,” but not, “That’s a bully sewing machine.” (Still up for debate: Roosevelt’s feelings on modern handguns. Can one say, “That’s a bully Glock you just shot that guy with”?)

Other possible uses:
“It was really bully the way the Justice Department took Microsoft down.” (I know, but we’re not concerned with the accuracy of these statements, just whether TR would approve of the sentiment.)

“We’ve done a bully job reducing corruption in Latin America.” (See above.)

“That’s a bully stick there. But why are you whispering?”

Granted, using “bully” takes a bit more effort than just breaking out the standby adjective of your choice (personally, I like “top-notch”). But I think you’ll find the return well worth the investment. “Bully” puts a little more swagger in your step, makes you want to improve Central American infrastructure, take on Tammany Hall, and shoot big game. You may feel the urge to comb your recently more luxuriant moustache.

(Warning: acting on any of the sentiments provoked by the use of the word “bully” may result in mauling, machine politics, and/or yellow fever. It might also lead to a Nobel Peace Prize, but that’s less likely. Use “bully” only where appropriate.)

Why Austria will never produce country music stars

As European nations go, Austria might seem to have a lot more potential than most for honky tonk tunes, given its hillbilly accent, agrarian tendencies and passion for drinking, not to mention the obvious pairing of a nation of white people with a genre of music dominated by white people. Besides, polka’s got a lot in common with Cajun music, and didn’t Hank Williams make “Jambalaya” a hit? So why won’t the Klagenfurt Heuwagen be the next Louisiana Hayride?

I’ll tell you why:
1. Schnapps will never have the same ring as Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey.
2. While chaps and lederhosen may both technically qualify as leather legwear, you just can’t ride the range in leather half-britches and knee socks. Cowboys don’t wear knee socks.
3. Think of every country song you’ve ever heard that mentioned a pickup truck. Now imagine it was a Volkswagen Golf instead.
4. Willy, Johnny, Hank, Merle, Buck, Waylon vs. Lukas, Florian, Alexander, Fabian, Marcel, Tobias (and no, I am not making that up. Those were six of the ten most popular Austrian names in 2006).
5. “I knifed a man in Feldkirchen just to watch him die” doesn’t quite cut it.
6. Austrian patriotism. Instead of Merle declaring, “When they're runnin' down my country, hoss, / They're walkin' on the fightin' side of me”, Florian would sing, “If you’re runnin’ down my country, man, / I find I must respectfully disagree.”

It’s possible that with the addition of more whiskey, bigger cars, a few more guns, and a crop of manlier-sounding babies next year, Austria could have a bright future as the new center of country and western music. But until then, it looks like the nation’s musical fame will have to depend on that Mozart guy.