I don’t speak German

I don’t even know how to say “I don’t speak German.” This is one of those things I probably should have thought about before flying to immerse myself in a German-speaking culture.

As you may have intuited from the title of this post, I am now in Vienna, at an Internet cafe. This is just another stupid blog entry for most of you, but for me it’s the culmination of an almost-Sisyphean journey. This is a huge city, and I’ve been hiking all over it for the last four hours, accomplishing various tasks essential to being here: repairing my wrist watch, withdrawing money from the bank, paying my tuition, and of course finding this cafe to tell all you people about it. I’ve been lost all morning, but not all that worse than I would be in, say, downtown Seattle – at least I have a map here, which is more than I can say about any of my forays there.

Two urgent things before I can continue. First, the address I gave previously is incorrect, as I learned this morning. The real address is Hollandstrase 9/5, which is much simpler than what you see below. You still need the zipcode and Wien, but there aren’t nearly as many slashes in the main address line as I originally indicated. Second, the equipment I’m writing this on is against me. None of the symbols, including slash, number sign, at sign, single quote, etc. are where I expect them to be on the keyboard. Most annoyingly, the z and y are switched. There’s also a ‘brilliant’ security system in place, which only allows me to use a propitary browser and chat program; I can’t get to the windows desktop or run any of the standard applications you would expect. At first I thought this meant I wasn’t going to be able to download putty to check my email, but I tried just executing it from the download dialog, and that worked. Nice try, Austria. However, I still can’t do a spellcheck without a lot of magic. This, combined with the z/y problem, means there will be spelling errors which seem strange to you. You can deal.

So I am in Vienna, but not without a horrific cost on my mental and physical energy stores. I got roughly four hours of sleep before waking up to catch my flight out of Seattle at 8, and arrived in Vienna at 1pm the next day. No sleep in the interim. Trying to combat jetlag, I attempted staying up until bedtime to the locals, and made it until around 7 local time before passing out. I’m nine hours ahead of you folks, for reference. I have 45 minutes left before they kick me out of here, so I’ll try to summarize significant aspects of the journey before then – without bullets!

The flight from Seattle was almost unbearable. The man next to me was immense, sallow, and slack-jawed. I had to compress my whole body up against the window to avoid being swallowed by his flesh, which oozed copiously over the hyopthetical border between our seats. I couldn’t help watching him, such was my revulsion, and I swear to you: in the four hours from Seattle to Washington, DC, he didn’t take his eyes off the tiny television display a single time. Nor did he breathe out of his nostrils. Getting up to go to the bathroom, past that guy, was the single most awkward thing I’ve ever done on an airplane.

In DC, I transferred to Lufthansa Airlines, and things got markedly better. We flew on a 747 which was filled to capacity – 500 something people plus crew – a new experience for me. I got short of breath at takeoff and landing, sure that the laws of physics would rear up and strike the plane down from the sky. I didn’t sleep, as I mentioned, because sleeping on airplanes is horrible. I did the exact opposite: read The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut, and chugged coffee. By the time we landed in Frankfurt at 8 local time, I was only a few dozen pages away from the end of novel, and starting to feel the effects of scorning sleep.

I had three hours to kill in Frankfurt, but nothing to do, so I plunked around on Kelly’s guitar for a while, which we’d agreed I would carry so she wouldn’t have to deal with it on her train from Munich. I met two friendly Austrians at the gate, one who played guitar and his friend who juggled, and we talked, played and threw beanbags until the flight left. They both spoke fluent English, of course.

In Vienna, the guitar player helped me to find a train after I’d changed my money – fifty dollars and ninety, pesos all of which came from either cashing in the change in the jar on my desk the night before or had been forgotten since Mexico. Waiting for the train to arrive to take us north to the city proper, I met Harry, a Swiss architecture student who spoke enough English to understand me and was going to the same stop as me. It was a good thing I had him along – I paid what I thought was the proper fare, but the scary, non-English-speaking ticket-collector on the train had other ideas, and only Harry’s translating and spare change saved me from being thrown off the train or into Austrian prison. If you’re reading this, Harry, I owe you €1.50.

After transferring to a subway and then stepping outside at the stop the guitar player told me was correct, my first thought was “it’s Seattle.” It was pouring rain, overcast, and windy, exactly the weather that I’d left behind a day earlier. Teetering under my bags and clutching my map, I wandered the streets, getting very cold (I was still wearing my Chacos), and finally found the place I was supposed to live. (Note to other travellers: “Einbaum” is not a street name. It means “one way”. This was my chief reason for confusion, “why isn’t einbaum on this map?!”)

An Italian who spoke very little English and only halting German opened the door. He had no idea who I was. Somehow I convinced him that I had the right place, showing him the email from the apartment’s owner, and got inside. He had no useful information for me, such as where in the apartment I would be sleeping. The owner’s 16-year-old daughter, Tara, came home a half-hour later, and set me up. Tara is funny. She speaks some English, but hates it, and does so very poorly. But she has a good attitude about the endeavor, and tries her best to understand me. Whenever I say a word or phrase she doesn’t know, her eyes bug out and she looks terrified. She and her friend have thus far been my sole guides to the city, accompanying me to the grocery store and pointing me in the general direction of a bank. I managed to feed myself last night before passing out, which is a tribute to her mentorship. If I seem overly proud of this simple accomplishment, don’t be overly concerned. I’m absurdly proud of myself for success in the most routine tasks – buying groceries, getting directions somewhere, taking a shower, operating the gas stove, etc.

My room is huge and bare. It has a couch, a futon made of cardboard, a table, some shelves with plants on them, and a couple windows looking onto the street three stories below. I am terrified of it. The ceiling is fourteen feet high by my best guess – every ceiling I’ve seen in the city is – and the room is almost twenty feet on a side. I took all of my belongings and unpacked them when I woke up at six this morning, and they took up such a small space on the shelves that I started having serious doubts as to whether I’d brought enough things. But the room is enormous, plenty of room for my pacing and such, and the acoustics are fantastic, as I learned while playing a few songs this morning. Despite its charms, this morning I had to leave it and explore. I was going stir-crazy.

Let me explain: I don’t know what to do with myself. After the initial challenge of arrival itself passed and I recovered some sleep, I had no idea how to proceed. It’s not like I can just call up some friends to hang out at a local beer hall, because I have no friends. I already read one of the three novels I brought with me, so I need to pace myself with the rest. And, present evidence excluded, I can’t just hop on the Internet to kill some time whenever I’m bored. Leading up to the trip, I was completely petrified of what would happen once I arrived. This feeling melted away to excitement once I got onto the plane, and that lasted until I sat down on my bed last night. Excitement then gave way to a much more inarticulate fear, embodied by the gigantic unknown lurking outside the door and windows. I’m a little better now, but this morning I sat in my room for around four hours trying to occupy myself in order to avoid going outside. After being outside, I don’t consider it such a big deal any longer, but the hours I have to somehow fill still press onto me like tiny weights. There are a lot of them.

If you wanted to write me a letter, I wouldn’t mind. Kellz should be arriving at the train station presently, so maybe I’ll go wait for her at her apartment. In any case, my time is nearly run out, so this is goodbye. Keep things real for me back home