weekend in steiermark

48 Hours with my Best Girl

1) That long walk through the vineyards and over to the next town.

2) The long walk back to our hotel alongside the reed marshes.

3) Making out like thirteen year olds.

4) Reading, reading, then reading some more.

5) The steam bath.

6) Listening to AOR love song radio last night, while she sat in bed reading Paul Auster, and I sorted a small bundle of stamps from Denmark.

7) Long conversations about her life and mine.

8) No conversations with or about our kids.

9) Trading smiles.

10) Sleeping till 8:30 am this morning.

My Halloween and All Saints (Holi)Day 2010 Top Ten

(not necessarily in order of enjoyamability)

1) Giggling hysterically as me and four little girls made two videos at Jib Jab.com: one with V. as a rappin' Dracula and me as a very green Frankenstein; the other with me and the little girls as, uh, Chippendales dancers. (Is that wrong?)

2) Walking through the enormous Zentral Friedhof (Central Cemetary), past other tourists and mourning Serbian families, on a brilliant autumn morning.

3) Walking down from Leopoldsberg to Nussdorf, looking through crimson and golden leaves, across rolling hills and vineyards, at Vienna laid out below us, nice and cozy-like.

4) An apparently limitless stream of bad-good and bad-bad Drive-In Sci Fi flicks uploaded at Demonoid by a mysterious schmaltz hound named Bippy Dog. It has included amazing stuff, like The Navy Versus the Night Monsters, Daughter of Horror and The Brainiac.

5) Laughing, holding hands with and just watching V., as she comes into her own. She is more confident, articulate (with actual words), and well, happier, I think.

6) Donning the Monkey costume (full-body fuzz, with an enormous cartoonish head) for the first party I've been to in a long, long time.

7) Reveling in Hot Blood's classic 1976 album Disco Dracula, which includes both "Soul Dracula" and "Baby Frankie Stein," which sound like Barry White with fangs, in a soft-core porno film.

8) Noticing that Adinah is still wearing her costume: sweat pants and a shirt printed with the image of a skeleton. Now it's her pajamas.

9) "Arguing" with Jan about whether or not zombies are monsters. (Of course they are, just like Sharon Angle and British Petroleum.)

10) Fondly remembering Booberry and Chocula.

Back to Sicily

One of the themes of our return to the beaches of the Corleone family was facing our fears. Or put another way, we learned that when life gives you jellyfish, make jellyfish salad.

We started off on the wrong foot. Packed and prepared early, got to the airport with plenty of time to make our flight to Rome, only to be told we were a day late. I hadn't looked at our itinerary very carefully.

After some tears and fears ("The airline won't refund, the campsite has surely given our trailer away, and every hotel on every beach within five hundred miles has got to be sold out!"), we convinced the nice butch lady at AlItalia to help us. She got us on a flight the next day.

The next day started out well enough. The other employees of AlItalia honored our quasi-legitimate rebooking, and we made it from Vienna to Rome, then on to Palermo. Then: 'Oops, sorry, one of your bags was put on a later flight to Palermo. Or maybe it was Milan.'

Eventually our other backpack arrived. But we had missed the last bus to our destination, a tiny village two hours away from Palermo. Anette talked a taxi driver into taking us to Menfi for 100 Euro. By the time we arrived some ninety minutes later, this fee had been adjusted for inflation to 120 Euro. I didn't mind the fare hike so much because I was busy looking around our camping village. It was dark already, but I didn't see or smell any trace of ocean anywhere nearby. Anette had booked it online. Had we committed two weeks to a hot little shack two kilometers from the sea?

No. A nice young man showed us to a roomy trailer with a refrigerator and a stove. We got the kids into bed, drank one large, very cold Morretti apiece, then Anette crawled under the covers, too. The campground seemed peaceful but strangely empty. It was a beautiful, cool summer night. I took a walk...and a hundred meters down a paved path, I stumbled into the Mediterranean.

Everything seemed peachy until the next morning. V woke up early, so I took her down to the beach.

Jellyfish everywhere. And not the cute, zoologically-interesting ones, but the ones that make you go "OWWWW!! Something is burning through my upper thigh!"

My vacation flashed before my eyes.

rainy day

Did I mention that the Austrians observe eight hundred Christian holidays a year? Not quite as many as the Ethiopians (who actually do celebrate more than a hundred per year) but close. Last Thursday was Himmelfahrt, which means "unpleasant odor in Heaven," (though I don't know why they celebrate that.) So Friday was a "window day"--stuck between a holiday and a weekend--and many of the not-so-hard-working Austrians took that off as well.

The streets were rainy and empty when I walked the kids to school. The halls of the place were half-dark. It made me remember something: when I was a kid, if I knew a place as busy and bustling, then it was really uncanny to see it quiet and deserted. Quiet hallways, different echoes, everyone missing.

Now I'm older, more sentimental, more egotistical. So my first impulse was to wonder if V. and Adinah think of these quiet days as somehow magical. Or maybe they think big empty buildings are scary.

But I like these days. It seems like I could take a nap on a street corner and no one would mind. Or notice. Schedules forgotten, everyday frenzies AWOL, all peevishness and stress evaporated. The city becomes dreamy. I drift off....

Hotel Panorama, SudTirol, “Italy”

We’re in a super comfortable lodge perched just above the northern Italian town of Tschars, just below two stupendous, snowy ridges of the Alps. It’s more Austrian then it is Italian, the whole of this region having been part of Austria until the end of the first World War. So that means that the hotel restaurant plays alpine schlager hits and the female hotel staff wears Dirndls. Yesterday, we took a cable car way-the-fuck-up these steep mountain walls, then hiked back down. For six hours. We have mountain goats for daughters.

It helps that we’re here with our favorite other Ethiopian-Austrian family. Adinah and V. probably never would have hiked like they did without their pals Teresa and Emily. But still: V. is just 3 ½ years old. And even though she cried and whined at times, she walked almost the whole way down by herself. For a kiddo who probably sees no point at all in clambering down a near-vertical slab of rock and scrub brush, that’s six hours of heroic effort.

Last night at the dinner table, in an effort to summarize her day, V. took a skewer and jabbed it into a giant chunk of her schnitzel, turned it upside down and started flying it around the room. “Look,” she laffed, “I’m a cable car.”

Our Big Fat Faschings Party Top 10

Best Kids Costume:
Tie: Oskar, who came as a Chemist (white lab coat with periodic table symbols scrawled on it) and Ainoah and her brother Andreas, who came as Ninjas (dressed all in black, with t-shirts that said 'Ninja')

My Daughters' Costumes:
Adinah-Witch, V.-Rockstar Fairy. (But she took the Axl Rose wig off after five minutes, and then she looked like every other pink girl in the place.

Best Adult Costume:
Christiana, who was completely done up in orange, with tights, cape and horn-rimmed glasses--apparently she was some kind of...Librarian Superhero!

Most Overheard Phrase:
"Gummi Bears-YAHHHHHHGHH!"

Bravest Costume:
Lino, who is six, came dressed as a Baby. With a pacifier. That kid was letting himself in for so much abuse from his fellow first graders. But apparently Adinah and her other friends at the party just laffed and said, 'Yeah, that Lino, he's so creative.'

Most Krapfen Eaten by an Individual:
4, consumed by the above mentioned Lino. (BTW, "Krapfen" is German for Jelly Donut.) At the end of the party, he did hurl.

Music on the small Jambox:
Miriam Makeba-"Pata Pata"
Elizabeth Mitchell-"You are My Sunshine"
Slayer-Reign in Blood

Ratio of Children to Meltdowns, Hissy Fits or other Conniptions:
25/8

Most Amazing Revelation:
Hand them a push broom and seven-year-olds love to sweep up streamers, confetti and dirty socks!

Most Dangerous Costume:
Our friend Andy borrowed my colleague Mark's full body Monkey costume, and the children tried to kill him. Last I saw, the Monkey was limping across the gymnasium floor, with a kid in a Tiger costume clamped to his foot.

New Year's Eve 2009, or Surf and Turf, Austrian Style

Pray for Snow

Our first Christmas without Anette’s mother was cozy for me and the girls, but not so easy for Anette. On Xmas Eve, we stood at Oma’s grave, lit candles and sparklers, and sang “Kling Glockchen Kling” (Ring Bell Ring.) That was always one of her favorite songs.

Opa is doing well—shopping and cooking for himself, and swimming almost every day. He’s the Burgermeister of the Bregenz Sport Zentrum, and he has said he’s very proud to introduce us, his American-Austrian-Ethiopian-Nigerian kids and grandkids, to all of his seventy and eighty-year old friends at the pool. But after four days of hosting and baking for us, he was ready for some peace and quiet. And he said so. Which is good because I know Adinah and V. would have happily stayed out here until February, just to eat those Christmas cookies he made. Mmmmmh, Rum Kokos and Vanilla Kipfel….

As luck would have it, one of Anette’s friends owns a company which owns an ski apartment in the beautiful mountain town of Brand. When Anette mentioned we were hoping to find a hotel for a few days, the friend told us the ski apartment was free, and free. We scrambled, the friend wrangled us everything we needed—from comforters, plates and pasta to cook--and that’s why I’m posting today from a very cozy bunkbed in Brand. V. is napping next to me, Adinah is in a kiddy ski class (loving it), and way high above us, Anette is cheerily whistling R. Kelly’s “I Believe I can Fly” as she hurtles down the slopes.

So I'm wondering: what have I done to deserve this?

Nowe Be Thankeful

I am thankful to Otis Redding, for writing "(Sittin' on the) Dock of the Bay," and for singing it.

I am thankful that I have a job and that we have enough to eat. I would appreciate more time to take hot baths by myself, but hey, two out of three is not bad.

I am thankful for my family: my mother, my father, my brothers, my wife and my daughters. They drive me nuts sometimes, so I'm sure they feel the same way about me. But I am so happy we are together. A family really is forever.

I am thankful to Vorarlberg, because it gave me a great Opa (Grandpa), and wonderful stinky cheese and our dear friend Katharina and especially my darling Anette.

I give thanks to Ethiopia, for Mulatu Asteque, injira bread, and our lovely rosa Fee, Adinah.

I thank Nigeria for Fela Kuti and Afro-Beat music, and Vienna, for a young mother named M, and both of these places, because they made our sweetest little disco dancer, V.

I am grateful for bad movies and good art.

I am so happy that our friends and family are safe, and (relatively) untouched by war, sickness and poverty.

I am thankful for my third Oma, Resi Baldauf.

I am thankful for foster parents and children, adoptive parents and adopted children everywhere. They have a lot to tell us. Angelina, please stop.

I am thankful for high and lo humor, belly laffs, pratfalls, and ironic, knowing winks.

I am indebted to all of my teachers--sacred, profane, wise and drunk.

I am thankful for all of this wonderful food. Let's eat.

end of a holiday

We’re just off an alpine forest trail near the Kristberg peak, high above the Silver Valley. V. is asleep on Anette’s jacket, and I’m lying on pine needles in the sun. Anette and Adinah are up at a panoramic lookout and goddamnit, they took our lunch of liverwurst and bread with them! We’ve been in the mountain region of Montafon, in the far west of Austria, for almost a week now. I’m taking pictures of tiny little mountain flowers. It is clearly time to go home.

Please don’t misunderstand: it’s been wonderful, it’s been great. These Heidi valleys and lunar mastiffs are gorgeous. Our daughters have been super troopers about hiking with us. And we’ve been staying at a “wellness hotel,” with sauna and indoor heated pool, where they do everything but pour the breakfast buffet down your throat for you.

But every vacation comes to an end, and I’m always ready for the end credits before anyone else. I’m usually set to get back to work—looking forward to it, even. I am American, after all. Plus, when you stay in one place for more than a few days, your hosts’ initial hospitality usually starts to thin. I regard this as a natural reaction to feeding and housing strangers, and despite all the smiles, hotel workers are, in the end, sort of human. This summer, when we camped next to the ocean in Sardinia, the campsite staff had had their fill of us after the first week or so, even before we melted one of their kitchen cutting boards on our grill. This week, our romance with our hotel ended when the owner told us Adinah and V. are not allowed in the sauna after all. This may or may not be because V. had just pooped on the floor outside of the steam room, but we’ll never know.

I’d like to come back here next year. I adore mountains, of any shape or divination, on any continent, all the time. It's just that enough is enough.

Sardinia 2009 Top Five Good/Bad Moments

1) My Last Swim:
Without either kid, I dog-paddled a ways out into the sea and pulled a dead-man’s float. Twice. Looked out the vastness, then back at my family on the shore. Decided to return to my family.

2) Anette’s Birthday:
On June 24th, on the porch of the trailer we rented at our campground, we celebrated my sweetheart with an awesome ricotta and chocolate-chip cake. Then we set out on our bikes for a nearby beach resort town. But Anette had a blowout before we’d made it five hundred meters. She may have run over a thorn. (I didn’t know thorns were sharp enough to puncture a mountain bike tire, but I guess the roses of Sardinia grow rough and tough.) We went back and borrowed a lesser bike, and pedaled to a much nearer beach, and a mind-blowing pizzeria named La Torre. And I gave Anette a hand-woven pillow case and two potholders, embroidered with a design of red coral—a symbol of Sardinia.

3) Adinah Loses her First Tooth:
This damn thing, a lower front one, had been hanging on by the slimmest of roots for weeks. Adinah was terribly proud of it—her first “waggle zahn”—and even more proud of what it meant: she’s becoming a little woman. She lost it as she bit into an ice cream. Unfortunately, we were on the beach at the time. She insisted on running over to some friends to show them her ex-tooth, and of course, she lost it in the sand. She was nearly inconsolable, and we all got down on hands and knees and searched through the pebbles for an hour, to no avail. The awful poetry of that—kid loses her first tooth, then loses it again among a million grains of sand—was almost unbearable. I promised her french fries so she would stop crying. She felt better the next morning, especially after a visit from the Tooth Fairy, who left her a note, € 1.50, and a pack of chewing gum.

4) Talking to the Donkey with V.:
Our short daily walk to the beach skirted the edge of another campground. A donkey lived there. One afternoon, when V. was particularly post-nap grumpy, and unwilling to walk, I tried to make her laugh by starting a shouting match with the burro.
“Damn it, you Donkey!” I hollered.
V. giggled.
“Come out and play!”
Another giggle.
“Come out, you damn Donkey!!” I yelped, like some berserk farmer.
V. howled with glee. She loves yelling and hearing anyone else yell. Or curse. So, thus inspired, she added her own favorite phrase.
“Donkey, ich haue dich um funf! (I’ll hit you at five o’clock.)”
“Donkey, goddamn it! Shut up!” I added helpfully.
“Ut up!” V. screamed hysterically.
By this time we were both laffing like complete loony-birds. But V. couldn’t resist a parting shot.
“Donkey, don’t eat my popo (butt)!!!”
The donkey never returned our calls, BTW.

Now I know I’ll always be able to cheer V. up by A) screaming hysterically, or B) finding a donkey.

5) Naptime at our Trailer:
While V. slept, and Adinah played with the neighbor’s kid, I drank espresso and read my book (Post War by Tony Judt.) Ahh, the sounds of silence.

back in Sardinia

Ho ho ho.

Hey folks, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I thought about this first sentence carefully, by the way. Coulda started with something finely wrought, or deadpan, or boring/reflective. But sometimes a fellow's just got to say the main thing and nothing else. So there.

We are back in the groove in Vienna after a week in the bizarre wilds of Vorarlberg and a nice New Year's Eve dinner party. Anette has been cooking with the giant soup pot that I gave her, the girls have been wearing the matching cowgirl outfits their Mimi sent them from Texas, and I'm rocking the thin silver chain that my wife gave me. We gave Adinah a new scooter and a watch, and V. a set of giant Legos and a Barbapapa plate and cup. I also gave Anette a book of pictures of our family, and my sister in law gave me Tony Judt's gargantuan book Postwar, about Europe after World War Two. We also got a very fancy new aluminum skillet. All in all, a pretty good haul.

For Christmas, we always go to Anette's hometown, Hard. No, really, that's the name of the place where my sweetheart was born. And it's a strange little dorf. It has always been a farm village, but in recent years, Vorarlberg has become one of the richest provinces of this rich country, and lots of the local tycoons apparently want to live in sleek gray minimalist boxes. Plus, both Wolford and Wolff, two different fancy panties companies are based there. So Hard still smells like wet cow shit, and houses just off the Hauptstrasse (Main Street) have chicken coops in the back yard, but there's also all these Architectural Digest showplaces and apartment houses that look like inverted and/or poorly stacked packing crates. In between various festivities, I had a lot of fun wandering around and taking pictures of the barns and lingerie outlets.

As for the festivities themselves, well, Anette's family really likes to sit together, sing Christmas songs and make bread. Anette's dad is about four feet tall and a complete clown, so Adinah and V. had a blast playing with him. It was a pretty cozy time, but the nicest thing is seeing our daughters with their grandparents. Adinah only met my dad once, and V. has yet to meet my ma, but after visits to Hard, I know they're always gonna remember their Oma and Opa.

Home for the Holidays

(Six ways of looking at) Thanksgiving 2008