um, hello again....

I started this blog with the admittedly ridiculous notion of documenting my transformation into a "European." In the last few months, I slowed down then finally stopped posting to it, but not because I've finally, irrevocably, become a Euro-like me. Instead, it's just that, to paraphrase Big Daddy Kane, bloggin' ain't easy.

For instant gratification and quip exchanging, Facebook is better, more zipperless. Maybe Twitter is better still, but I'll never know--I just can't stomach the idea of joining a revolution which could elect Ashton Kutcher king. Magazines are so old hat (so why do I still drop everything else when I have a chance to contribute words or pictures to them?) And having a website is just dopey. (So why am I building another one?)

In short, I am mediacentrically mixed up. If this is an Attention Economy, I've confused my paper money with my small change.

I've also been really fucking busy.

Anyway, I definitely am more Euro-like now. I believe, for example, that lo-cost, hi-quality childcare is a right. I don't drive. I appreciate good bread and smelly cheeses.

But my friend Rich will be glad to know I also still shower or bathe regularly. (He must have had a traumatic encounter with a French person.) And I think about the USA a lot. I miss my homeland terribly. I just don't miss the bullshit....

Speaking of the Tea Party, I was thinking of them the other day as I read The Downfall of Fascism in Black Ankle County. That is a short chapter in the most excellent Up in the old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell. It was writen in 1939, as Americans were really coming to grips with the nature and implications of Nazi Germany. Mitchell documents the very short career of the Ku Klux Klan in his small North Carolina hometown. In just a few pages, he paints a picture of the KKK as hilariously inept and almost pitiable douche-lords, and he goes a long ways towards draining them of all of the fearsomeness they so clearly desire. This is a lesson I hold close to my heart: humor is the Death Star for assholes.

I'll try to remember that when I see pictures of Rand Paul and Governor Rick Perry.

one night at the book store

“Open 24 hours” is not a phrase uttered lightly in Vienna. In fact, it’s not uttered at all. Most of the stores, boutiques, and trading posts here shut down by 6 or 7. But as a patriotic American, I still have the right to confuse shopping for entertainment. So last night at 7:30 pm, I really only had one choice: the Thalia.at superstore at Landstrasse. It’s Borders for Wieners.

Does anyone go to bookstores anymore? I can now report that yes, they do, especially when there isn’t anything else to do. Last night I was just another clod who was shuffling around, gathering up a bunch of books I had no intention of buying, just so I could indulge in a little “late-night” libro-philia. The tables, chairs and banquettes were mostly occupied, largely by people who were awake.

I plopped down with six items: Sebastiao Salgado’s Africa (beautiful, astonishing but ultimately clichéd black and white photographs of the Continent); a coffee-table book about cathedrals (did I not mention I am addicted to big picture books?); a smaller book about a Viennese movie poster artist who was working in the forties and fifties (nice local color); a black and white graphic novel about Stu Sutcliffe (who was he again? A fifth Beatle, right? Wait, this is in German!); a gargantuan new Taschen book of vintage funk and soul album covers (uh-oh, there goes thirty Euros!); and another graphic novel called The Night Bookmobile.

After a few pages of the Taschen book of funk and soul art, I knew I would have to possess it. The Night Bookmobile, on the other hand, looked sort of amateurish, and the author’s name--Audrey Niffenegger—meant nothing to me. The title is what put the hook in me. ‘Bookmobile?’ I thought. ‘That’s a phrase I haven’t heard in—oh--forty-five years.’

CAUTION: Middle-Aged Jaunt down Memory Lane to Follow! When I was seven, the Bookmobile kicked ass! The Public Library in my town had lots of branches, but it also had a book-filled Winnebago that drove around then laid anchor in various supermarket parking lots. It didn’t really have a lot of stuff in it, and looking back, I’m sure it was the same things I could have gotten at the smaller libraries. But there was something so cool about climbing up into a big recreational vehicle full of copies of Charlottes’ Web, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and those Alfred Hitchcock mystery stories for boys. Anyway….

So, The Night Bookmobile turned out to be a great, though slightly macabre, sorta sad book. A very nice story actually. I won’t ruin it for you. But it’s about a woman who loves to read. And after reading it, as I left the superstore and started back down the stairs to the subway trains, I felt all gooey inside. I’m really too young to feel nostalgic, but I miss books a little.

Now I live in Screen World. I’m looking at screens all day: my computer at work, my computer at home, my other computer at home, my wife’s computer, the tv screen, the screen in the u-Bahn station, the screen in the U-Bahn train. In New York, of course, one may watch tv in the back of a taxi now. Whoo-hoo. And the thing is, Screen World is sort of cold.

But a good book? Whoa, that is hot stuff. It’s really delicious to luxuriate in a long, totally fascinating history book (or novel or biography) by a writer who not only has style but really knows her or his shit. Books don’t have emoticons. Books have complete sentences. Many of them avoid slang! No one ever writes ROFL in a book.

I’m going to read one now. After I finish this post. And check Facebook. And send that e-mail.

Hosencheißer

Well, the Viennese voted yesterday. The Mayor gets to keep his job, but that's the only good news. The real winner was Hans Christian Strache and the anti-immigration, Nazi-apologist Freedom Party (FPO). They ran a campaign of hate, insisting, among other lies, that the other parties would institute mandatory headscarves for women (!) The FPO gained ground in the last election largely because Austria has given 16-year-olds the right to vote, and lots of these little pantshitters cast their ballots for Strache. Yesterday the FPO again made frightening gains, especially with "lesser-educated" male Wieners.

Assholes.

A Hunkpapa in Vienna

Sitting Bull has been appearing all over town. A late period photograph of him--red eyes burning through the viewer--adorns a poster for a new exhibit at the Museum of Ethnology Vienna. The show is called Sitting Bull and His World. A few weeks ago, we decided we would like to see it. Then our friends Andy and Ursula, who also adopted their daughters, Teresa and Emily, from Ethiopia, decided to join us.

The other day, I mentioned our plan to Rosa, our radical history student babysitter, and she shook her head. "You know that's a bad museum, right?" she asked. She told me that this Museum of Ethnology possesses an Inca headdress which was stolen from its last Peruvian owner. The government of Peru has asked for its return, and the Museum said...Nope.

We went to see the show anyway. Man, that was some squeaky clean American a-history right there. The text placards of the show made frequent mention of the Lakota and the Sioux moving to reservations, and of their "awareness of the need to adapt," but scant mention of the betrayal, germ warfare and murder which forced them to those places. The exhibit named no causes, only effects. White people, if mentioned at all, were portrayed as the ones who gave the Indians horses, as patient negotiators, as brave initiators of "police actions," like the one which killed Sitting Bull at last.

In other words, bullshit.

Many Europeans are ignorant of some of the basic facts of American history; others tend to regard Native Americans as an exotic species. And a museum here is just as unlikely as any in the world to use the word "genocide" in an exhibition, even when it's appropriate. (Part of a near-universal unspoken agreement to avoid that word, lest we mistakenly tell the truth about something.)

I grew up with a different view of the Native American experience. My father was a social worker on a Sioux reservation in North Dakota, and he often told us stories about Woody, a WWII veteran he met there. My father (and mother) told me as much of the truth as they knew about what happened between Native Americans and the Great White Father. But I think they also taught me to be proud of these amazing people who lived in North America so long ago. They made me feel like Sioux people were part of our heritage as Americans, our story. Crazy, right? What a concept!

Once, when my father visited me in New York City, I took him down to the National Museum of the American Indian. After walking through it, my dad couldn't stop talking about the Comanche. He insisted, with no little admiration, that Comanche horsemen were so skilled that nineteenth century European horse soldiers began to study and imitate Comanche strategies and maneuvers.

I wonder if the Lippizaner trainers over at the Spanish Riding School know that....

who, me? homophobic?

I met a couple of Americans for drinks the other night, and our conversation took me back to one of my initial impressions of Austria. I used to think that this country was socially conservative, and politically progressive. Now I'm not sure about the progressive part. For example, the government provides very generous childcare subsidies and maternity leave programs, which makes it easier to be a moms. But this could also be seen as an inducement to women to become housewives instead of artists, bankers or brain surgeons.

Another example: Not only do many Austrians have no grasp of political correctness--lots of them think it's okay to refer to black people as "negers"--they're also a little shaky on the subject of hate crimes. If there are any actual laws here against discrimination because of race or sexual preference, those laws are toothless.

Check it out: a lesbian couple we know have adopted a daughter, and they want to buy an apartment. About a month ago, they found a nice place, and one of them got in touch with the owners about buying the place. The owners asked for an application and some financial statements from our friends. Then the owners called them back and said, 'Let's make a deal.'

Our friends then went to their first face-to-face meeting with the owners, who are both men. Shortly after they walked in together, they were told the property was no longer for sale.

Then the bashing started.

"So you're from Hamburg?" one of the owners said to one of our friends. "Why aren't you blonde then?"

At first our friends were confused, then struck dumb by disbelief.

"How would you live in a place like ours?"

"As a family," our other friend answered.

"Is that legal?" one of the apartment owners asked. "I have to make a phone call to check on that."

"You have a daughter?" they asked. "Why didn't you adopt a son? Is it because you have a problem with men?"

At some point, our friends declared this "meeting" over and they walked out. One of them was so shocked (and hurt?) she only started to gather her wits on the way out of their office. But then all she could do was complain to the owners' receptionist.

Here's the punchline: our friends went to a local gay rights organization to get help. The people there told them, 'Sorry, there's not much you can do. But thanks for coming to us--will you sign our register? Then we can continue to get government funding for our anti-discrimination programs.'

Representing

When she suggested it, I snarked and sneered to Anette that it might be a total sham. I made all the jokes that a seasoned (or cynical) culture industry operative should make. But of course, to prove that I'm a stand-up guy, I then agreed to it. So on Saturday, we took the kids to the Africa Days festival on the banks of the Blue Danube.

Several stages and about fifty small, turreted tents had been set up on a hot, dusty stretch of the Alte Donau, and once we got through the gate (admission: €5 before 5 pm), the first thing I saw was a table full of Obama t-shirts. These items were splashed with a picture of the Man and words he's probably never said, like "Love and Peace will triumph over Fear and Hatred." And the sweetness of that--both the shirts themselves and the possible motives of the people who were creating and selling them--this disarmed my suspicion and skepticism about Africa Days. For about thirty seconds.

It was actually a very nice event. I've always scorned white people with dreadlocks and college boys who proclaim their love of reggae music, even though all they've ever heard is Bob Marley's Greatest Hits. It's pretentious and fake and sometimes worse: some people do this sort of stuff as a way of performing "blackness," and I (still) think that's fucked up. [See: the Rolling Stones.] So as Adinah and V. and Anette and I watched the African styles fashion show, then drank mint tea at the Moroccan tent, and then watched a (great) performance by a dancing-singing-drumming troupe in tribal leopard-skin, I sneered and snarked a bit more.

So Anette let me have it.

'What's wrong with people expressing their love for a culture. Or a continent?' 'If people can't do this, then how can different people ever understand each other?' 'Why are you so suspicious?' 'If you feel this way about these white people, how will you ever be able to explain yourself to our daughter, Adinah?'

All good questions. And we were still discussing them the next night.

But when we left the Africa Days festival, a young all-white band, perhaps Austrian, was onstage, playing what sounded a lot like...ska music.

Okay, there is a real, historical connection between Jamaica and the Motherland, but Still. What the fuck was that band doing playing an African culture festival?

This is my beef: ignorance. If that band, or the event promoters, thought they should play that stage simply because they could do a passable imitation of a music style created by people with dark skin, they're idiots. That's like saying, 'I like black music.' Or 'I like Asian people.' Stoopid. Insidious.

After the festival, I thought my question for that band, and for some of the other (caucasian) people at the event, was 'What connects you to Africa?' Now I know that what I'm really asking is, 'What is my connection to Africa?' Because after all, there we were, at a festival called Africa Days. And as Anette later pointed out, this is our scene: an ersatz community of white Europeans who love African music, or to be more precise, a community of white people who love black people.

So. Is my connection to Africa more real because we've adopted one Ethiopian girl, and another who is half-Nigerian? Am I less pretentious, less guilty of fronting because I continue to listen to Deep Purple (quite frequently), instead of proclaiming my love for all things Ali Farka Toure? I don't know.

But there is a dignity in trying to be yourself, and no one else. Our last stop at the festival was a hair extensions booth. For another €5, a nice woman attached a single braid, interwoven with orange thread, to Adinah's hair. And Adinah was thrilled.

On the way out, she asked me, "Don't you want to get one too, Papa?"

"Naah," I said. "That's not my style."

Does it really need to be any more complicated than that?

Warsaw, July, 2001

in a waiting room

Okay, alright, after bringing in some documents and shelling out another 110 euros in my semi-annual visit to the immigration office, I'm legal again. I can live in Austria with my family for two more years--hooray!

MA 35--I know the place well. The young clerk with a dozen fotos of Elvis taped up above her desk; the harsh, barely understandable voice on the loudspeaker (' Did they call my name or was that a sneeze?'); the looks of desperation all around me. I'm usually sitting with lots of Turkish people, some Croatians, and one or two Indian or Thai people, all of them hoping for permission to stay in Vienna.

To me, the staff are usually kind. Bemused. I have to hack up the German language for the first few, lower-level employees, then for the first few minutes with one of their bosses. Then she will probably smile--in a strictly non-patronizing way--and start speaking English.

But God knows how they treat Turkish applicants, black applicants or anyone who doesn't speak any German.

I don't know if Austria ever thought of itself as an immigration country, but it needs to start. There is a certain tone that creeps into conversation and media and everyday life here which makes me think some Austrians still think of their country as some sort of imperial powerhouse, drawing people to it like moths to a flame. If I'm perceiving it correctly, some Austrians will continue to believe the country should be selective and elitist and xenophobic about immigration, perhaps in the belief that only the best of the best deserve what Austria has to give.

The New Yorker, and the American, in me thinks this is precisely the wrong approach. I think Austria (and the rest of Europe) is gonna have to get right with immigration. Make it easier. Accept it. That's the only way this fossilized old country will ever get any new ideas. That's the only way Vienna will be able to join the 21st century, to return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Otherwise, Austria is living in the past.

Top Seven Important Facts about Post War Europe

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

(The Last Part of this) Police Story (I Promise)

My friend J. brought this to my attention the other day. It appeared in the conservative, schlocky free subway paper Heute, and is clearly a response to the treatment J.'s friend Mike Brennan received at the hands of the Vienna Police. The repro's terrible here in my blog, but the cartoon shows Obama on a world tour, and ends with what he could probably expect in Vienna. Maybe there's more self-reflection (and criticism) in the Austrian soul than I had thought....

{Another Part of (Another)} Police Story

(The Story so Far: A friend of a friend was attacked by some racist Vienna cops, and I'm a little disgusted about it....)

As in the US, this particular sort of police brutality has happened plenty of times before in Austria. The cops use racial profiling and they have a record of severely beating black men who are already in handcuffs or lying on the pavement. The difference here is that Austrian police continue to do these things without any apparent concern about oversight, let alone being caught. They have the open support of many politicians, particularly those of the loathsome Freedom Party, one of whom once told the newspapers, " If you see a black man in Vienna, he's a drug dealer."

A lot of Austrians, young and old, have a profound sense of entitlement, combined with a certain sort of nineteenth century obliviousness. Some claim to be baffled by the (American) concept of political correctness. Oftentimes, a claim like this is merely a prelude to a statement like, 'Well, you know, a lot of black people are drug dealers.' Friends of ours have actually said shit like this!

So when my colleague J. told our staff about how his friend got beat up by a gang of undercover cops who never bothered to identify themselves, it sparked some interesting discussions around the water cooler. J. is African-American too, and when he talks about racism or some other bullshit, his voice goes up half a notch; he is as baffled by Austrian ignorance as they say they are by American 'sensitivity'. J. told me a story about being on a city bus, and overhearing a man make a goddamn fool remark. The man probably assumed, like many Viennese, that J. doesn't speak or understand German, because he's black. Of course, J. does, and he did understand the hate speech the guy was slinging, so he looked over at him and said, in German, "You're an idiot."

The man, apparently unconcerned with being busted as a fucking racist, didn't blink. "You should address me with 'sie,' " he said. "Sie" is the more formal way of saying "you."

I laughed when J. told this story, especially at the way he screwed up his face to show his incomprehension of the guy. You would think that this asshole would understand that by calling him an idiot, J. was already dispensing with manners. But no. Austrians aren't always concerned about racism or police brutality, but they worry a lot about good manners.

One of the less funny things about all of this is that it could have easily been J. who was attacked by the Vienna police.

I worry about raising two black daughters in a place like this. Am I going to have to worry about Viennese policeman attacking Vivien when she's 17 years old?

The other night, I was watching tv, and I was dumbfounded by an almost perfect example of why Austrian police think they can assault black people without cause. As I was channel-surfing, I stumbled upon a broadcast of some sort of costume party banquet. (It may have been scenes from the Villacher Faschingsfest, a notoriously offensive event held in Carinthia, the provincial seat of power for the Freedom Party.) I watched a man flanked by two "Secret Service agents" take the stage to the tune of "Hail to the Chief." He began to speak German with a broad American accent and a squeaky (i.e. young and inexperienced) voice. He was obviously meant to be Obama. He was a white guy in blackface.

I started to float in a strange fog of confusion and disbelief. I was watching a minstrel show on Austrian television. I thought, 'What kind of people would allow this sort of 'entertainment'? (Answer: A people with nary a shred of understanding of black people or black history.) But I also thought, 'Is this maybe okay? Could an argument be made that this is a legitimate form of comedy?' Haven't American tv comics put on brown-face to imitate Middle Eastern people? (A: Yes, and I thought that was offensive too.)

And as I sat there staring at the pretty lights on the television screen, I came back to a question I've asked myself a few times before: How am I going to explain all of this to Adinah and V.?

(Another) Police Story

A couple of weeks ago, J., one of the teachers I work with, came into the office with a story. Seems a friend of his, who teaches and coaches at the Vienna International School, was attacked on the subway here. He had been on his train and noticed several men staring at him. When he got off at his station, they jumped him. One of them literally jumped on Mike's back. They beat him pretty badly, then left him there. Luckily Mike's girlfriend had shown up to meet him, and she helped him to a hospital.

Guess what? They were undercover cops. They didn't tell Mike that. They later claimed they had mistaken him for a drug dealer. You see, Mike is black. It's possible the police mistook him for an African. Nope. Mike is African-American.

Oops.

That morning, after the hospital doctors fixed him up and put him on crutches, Mike actually went in to work. He told his coworkers what had happened to him. They were outraged. They told him he had to file a complaint with the police. And, crucially, they insisted that Mike go to the American Embassy with his story. He did both.

Then a familiar chain of events unfolded. After complaints from the US Embassy and some press attention to the case, the police claimed that there had been no incident. [Curiously, they also claimed that there was no surveillance camera footage of the incident, even though there are cameras all over every U-Bahn station in the city.] Then the police claimed they had identified themselves, but Mike had resisted arrest. Now "police experts" are claiming that Mike's injuries may actually be from some earlier time in his life. Even though the doctors who treated him have said, nope, he suffered these injuries that day.

(To be continued)

Dog, Sick as a

Depending on who you ask, between twenty and forty thousand people have the flu in Vienna right now. Last week, I was just another one of them. But I was only woozly for about 36 hours--I don't get sick too often, and when I do, the only thing I ever seem to get is a Lite version of whatever virus is stalking my town at the moment. (Must be all those Cheetos I ate as an infant.) Lots of other people in Vienna have been laid low for one or two weeks. At Kindergarten, Adinah's gruppe, which normally has about 22 kids, is down to twelve.

A famous friend of one of my colleagues died from this epidemic.

We got a flu for fancy birds, too. One of our swans is missing.

Look, in Europe in the nineteenth century, the Flu was Public Enemy Number One. I keep telling people, but everybody says I'm being alarmist. Fine. But I'm stocking up on Emergen-C.

That's all I got. I got nothing else.

Down by the River

the Great? Outdoors

One of my colleagues is also a male American knucklehead married to an Austrian woman. We sometimes share a bitter laugh over our wives inscrutable ways. Both his and mine believe in fresh air and wilderness expeditions on Sundays. I believe in padding around in slippers and pajamas for as much of the weekend as possible.

I was thinking about him Sunday as we were putting on our hiking boots and checking the train timetables. The weather was gorgeous, so it was hard for me to argue for padding around. Anette suggested we take a trip to the old village of Hainburg.

On the train, Adinah and I drew pictures, while V. got bored, got screamy, then got asleep. Anette is always so patient. Outside our windows, Vienna waned into farm fields and lonely mills under a warm winter sun.

In Hainburg, we saw ten minutes worth of town, and forty-five minutes worth of playground. Adinah laughed and laughed, but I think the merry-go-round gives V. the creeps: too much dizzy-spinningness.

After awhile, we started down the inevitable hiking path along the Danube. (I like hiking, really I do, but I prefer that someone does it for me. Or at least brings nachos and beer.) It wasn't too bad. Until Anette said, 'Let's play hide and seek.' I groaned. For the rest of the walk, the girls would periodically run ahead, tuck themselves behind a scraggly bush or a tiny tree, and I would have to pretend I didn't see them. Then they would jump out and "scare" me. That was ghastly.

There we were walking a beautiful piece of river, goofing off on one of the rare sunny January afternoons in Austria. But I was drowning in a sea of cantankerousness, my friends. Actually, I was just hungry. After we stopped and ate some salami and bread, I was better.

We walked to the edge of a marsh, and broke off chunks of the ice sheets in the shallows. Then we threw them out onto the frozen river, and watched them break into ice cubes. All the girls "oohed" and "ahhed" and giggled.

Then we turned around and headed back to Hainburg. As we reached the quiet edge of the village, I looked around at the train trestles and the empty streets. I was hit by a sudden wave of longing for the US, for America, for my home. Sometimes I think I won't be able to make it here for much longer. Sometimes it feels like a long dream, and I wonder what's happened to me. Sometimes I just want to be back in the land I know, the one I understand with my eyes and all my senses and my body.

I don't know where this ache comes from so suddenly--is it always in me? I don't know how long I will feel this way. Somehow I still can't believe I'm going to live in this strange old place for the rest of my life.

Then the wave passed. I started taking pictures of the strange old place. 'Wow, that looks funny.' Hey, isn't that cute and medieval!' Click-whirr-snap.

So it goes.

Neat, Neat, Neat

Blur did a song called "Magic America," about a land where, according to one verse, "the air is sugar-free." So when I meet people who are going to the US (with stars in their eyes), and when I want to tease them a little, I sing it, in my most miserable falsetto,

La la la, I'd like to go to Magic America/
La la la I want to live in Magic America/
With all the Magic people.

But I don't know why I'm singing. I live in Magic Austria. The magic people here dress neat, and even the punks wear spotless, new black jeans. No matter their background, cultural or sexual preferences, the Austrians are well-shampooed, tucked-in and carefully shaven. It would be nice to see an occasional hair out of place, but I never do.

the sunday afternoon zoo research project part 2: sea lion fans

the thin pink line

So outta nowhere, Anette bought me three nice new shirts. (Well, maybe she was responding to my awesome Mothers' Day present to her, but...) Normally, this would be all Good. But one of them has caused a bit of a furor here at the Euro Like Me editorial headquarters. Here it is:



This may finally be too much for me. Note the tight fit, the plunging neckline, and, well, the hue. Because, as an American male heterosexualist, I can only go so far over the thin pink line.

Once upon a time, I got a few kicks by provoking micro-bursts of homophobia, gender confusion and bizarre color prejudices simply by wearing a pink shirt. Even the most seemingly progressive people, particularly Americans, go Neanderthal when they see a man in pink. "Oooh, Pat, are you trying to tell us something?"

European men, even straight ones, seem much more comfortable rocking the rosa. But I just don't know if my transformation into a full-on, stinky cheese-eating, high tax paying, color-care-free Euro-dude is complete yet. It seems that the pink chickens may have come home to roost. Or maybe it's perfectly normal for a guy to occasionally ask, 'Do I look gay in this?'

And would it matter if I did? Some of my best girlfriends have been fag hags. (It's a very sneaky maneuver: at first, they think, 'He's gay-I'm safe.' Then you pounce.) And it's not like I haven't ever been mistaken for a lesbian. It feels a little funny the first time, but then you move on.

Is it really so important that strangers on the U-Bahn know which team I'm playing for? Apparently so.

question of the week

Here is a strange place.

Yesterday as I was walking down to the Strassenbahn stop, I saw one come around the corner, and started to run for it. Then realized I didn't want to run for it.

I saw a woman, mid-thirties, dressed for work, in heels, barreling up the street as fast as she could, to catch another train. This has always struck me as funny. Vienna has an excellent public transportation system. Miss a train, there'll be another one in three minutes. Yet you see otherwise dignified citizens sprinting, galloping and hooking-ass down the street or stairs to catch the 8:13 38a or the U4 or the U6. Never saw that in New York City (where, if you miss a train, you might be waiting for awhile.)

Why is shaving three minutes off our commute so important to us?

Have it Your Way

So I leave the office at 8:30 tonight (and yes, I'm staying late because I like my job again.) I'm hungry. I want a hamburger. I'm leaning towards Mickey D.'s, possibly because it's my night out and well, Anette doesn't have to know, does she?

Then I remember that someone told me that the restaurant at the Marriott serves a decent cheeseburger.

McDonalds would be easier, but...it's so, well, it's McDonalds. I do go there sometimes, despite everything we all know about their fecal matter count, their Amazon destoying activities and that evil clown/CEO.

But not tonight. I decide to take the high road. I'll eat a burger at a hotel bar instead.

When I get to the Marriott, my heart sinks a little bit. I see that the place is a sports bar, which I half-expected. But it's also called Champions. This it too much.

Naturally I go in anyway.

And I am not disappointed. I order a chili cheeseburger, and there's corn in the chili, and even I think I taste a little mustard in the middle of the thing, both of which would be cardinal sins at a burger joint back in the US, but I do not care, goddamnit. I'm even eating it with a knife and fork like a real Euro-pussy by the end, but hey, I'm trying to assimilate here! In fact, I devour the burger and the largish pile of fries so fast I barely have time to breathe.

So you see, homesickness can take many forms.

I look up from my now empty plate like a besplattered serial killer taking a cigarette break. The various tv monitors in Champions are showing one soccer game, one sports news program, one game which resembles a cross between basketball, soccer and dodgeball, and one shopping channel. Wow. The sound system plays Bruce, AC/DC and Lenny Kravitz at a polite volume. It makes me think even the sports bars in Vienna are restrained.

Did I want to eat like this tonight, and write like this too, because Vienna is feeling pretty permanent to me? Maybe.

Would that be such a bad thing?