What There's Time For

A Stranger in His Own Land

Yesterday after school, Mr. SlightlyConfusedPants whined in the car, "My teacher told me I couldn't take my shoes off at school!"

He wished he could have his school slippers again.

I explained that in America, schools are places you wear your outside shoes all the time, even though in Austria, you have to take your outside shoes off and put on your Hausschue before going to your classroom.  (I loved that rule.  I miss it, too.)

Driving to school today, he asked, "Why is my teacher a lady like you?"

I explained that she was born a girl and girls grow up to be "ladies".

He said he wanted to see Mr. Owl again.

I said I understood he missed him.

"Why does my new school not have boy teachers?" he asked, still moping.

I explained that, even though it would be perfectly ok for a man to be a teacher of little kids in America, it just didn't happen very often.  There just weren't a lot of men teaching little kids in America.

"Why?"

I tried.  I really did.  I took several whacks at it actually, getting closer and closer to what I didn't want to say (that most American men would be embarassed to be preschool teachers?  that most American parents would be creeped out by a male preschool teacher?) and asking, "Does that make sense?" after each try.

"No, that doesn't make sense," he said, every time.

This afternoon, when I ask him why he thinks there are no boy teachers in American preschools, he tells me, "Because no boys decided to be boy teachers."

And why do you think that is?

"Because they didn't want to be boy teachers."

And why do you think they didn't want to be boy teachers?

"I don't know."

It's really too bad.  Mr. SlightlyConfusedPants always loved his male teachers the best.  It did creep me out at first, but then I started to realize that most of the schools had several male teachers (usually though, in our experience, the head teacher of the class is female).  It's normal.  A good normal.

***

I hope you have a beautiful weekend and I hope you'll check in here on Sunday; I'm working on a post for it.

Somebody

I thought that if I had a chance to blog at all today, I was going to tell you about how yesterday was going just fine until somehow I found myself trying to boil water for spaghetti, first in the old enamelware pot I've been saving for the move, but that had rust inside and multiple internet sources tell me DON'T USE THAT, then in the big braiser pan, but I quickly realized that trying to carry a huge shallow pan full of boiling water to the sink would be STUPIDLY DANGEROUS, and finally in the old small pressure cooker, which is pretty light and seemed the best bet for shipping later.

The thing is that on about the time I'd locked the lid in place to bring the water to a boil super fast (and was feeling clever for having thought of that), Mr. Right started a phone call with the cell phone company to cancel our contracts.  And right after that, Shmoogie somehow fell off her trike and smashed her lip real good on the terrace pavers, blood everywhere, crying, blood...

Mr. Right reappeared after she'd mostly calmed down and handed me a bunch of paperwork and told me I had to call myself to cancel my phone (because the company wouldn't let him cancel it for me) and then he took Mr. Pants for one last delivery-of-stuff-we're-not-taking-with-us, leaving me with the nearly-forgotten pressure cooker, my phone and paperwork, and the weepy bleeding toddler.

By the time I was several iterations into the delightful experience of automatic speech recognition customer service in German (foreign accents confuse it, crying babies confuse it, and hissing pressure cookers confuse it) and talking to a real live human, mostly in English, who was telling me that I can't do anything without my password and the password that is right there in front of me on the paperwork is so NOT the right password... I've got Shmoogie on my hip and the phone pressed to my ear and I just want to start boiling the pasta so I almost just take the lid off the still-pressurized pressure cooker...

But — Thank God! — I remembered at the last second that you should NEVER do that...

And then the customer service guy is telling me how to reset my password and that is an ordeal and I have to hang up to do it and then call back and voice recognify myself all over again and re-explain to the new guy (who speaks less English) that yes, I do want to end my contract, really and yes, I do know I'll have to pay out the contract anyway and no, really, I CAN'T use it anymore because I'm moving to America...

And suddenly the guy acts like I've just told him I've won the lottery and starts speak-singing Start spreading the news...

And, um.  I did cancel my contract.  And it's a good thing, too, because it turns out cell phone companies here might be even more evil than they are at home (although at least they don't charge you for texts) because even though my contract is up in August and there's no way to not pay out the full amount of that contract no matter what, there's also no way to cancel the service at all without 90 DAYS notice.  So, say I'm totally clueless and I have this contract and I leave the country and figure I'll just let the contract lapse, but then I notice a few months later that even though I thought the contract ended in August, I'm still being charged for it, so I go through the pain of calling customer service from overseas... only to find out that although I have now finally officially cancelled the service, I'll have to pay for the service that I am not using and can NOT use for another THREE MONTHS.  Is it that bad at home?  Have I forgotten?

Oh, and in order to actually use this phone in another country (i.e. where I will be *living* in two weeks), I'd have to get the phone "unlocked", which is a process in and of itself and would cost €150, which is about the cost of a brand new, newer model iPhone with two year contract at home, so... Looks like somebody's getting a new iPhone!  Which maybe I can deduct as a business expense?  I mean, as a developer of apps for the iPhone, I really do have to have the newer model to test on, right?  Right.  Totally.  Lawyers?

And that, that whole story you just read right there, is what I thought I was going to blog about today.  But then, when Mr. Right and I headed down to bed near 11 PM last night, we spotted Mr. Pants scurrying back into his room.  Because we'd forgotten to lock the door when we put him to bed and, if I haven't mentioned it before, sound does NOT travel in this house, so we hadn't heard him wandering around doing who knows what for over an hour (we do hear him if he WANTS us to hear him, fyi).

Given that I'd just that afternoon emptied the medicine cabinet into the bathroom trash down there and that there was a strange dark substance in the sink (Mr. Right later remembered he'd dumped out some coffee), we then spent several minutes inspecting Mr. Pants, inspecting the trash, smelling the breath of Mr. Pants, attempting to smell the strange dark liquid in the sink, and interrogating Mr. Pants, who is, thankfully becoming marginally more trustworthy in these situations.

"What were you doing in the bathroom, Mr. Pants?" we ask sternly.

"I wasn't doing anything," he answers innocently.

"Was somebody doing something in the bathroom, Mr. Pants?" 

He starts to smile and his eyes slide sideways, "Yes."  He giggles.

"Did somebody put something in his mouth, Mr. Pants?"

"No," he says in a silly voice.

We eventually convinced ourselves he'd downed no medicines, though somebody might have treated himself to a previously hidden (by somebody) piece of chocolate.

Then, going to put him back in his room, Mr. Right realized the key to the door was gone.  "Did you put the key somewhere, Mr. Pants?" he asked sternly.

"No," he giggled.

"Did somebody put the key somewhere, Mr. Pants?"

"Yes!  Somebody hide it!"  In the nightstand drawer.  Where also were discovered two destroyed boxes of Toy Story band-aids.  Way better than a trip to pump his stomach, though.

I've been low on the pictures, lately, so here's one of Mr. Pants feverishly preparing for the movers this morning.

 

Last Minute Acquisition

This happens every time we leave a foreign place - the sudden (though long-contemplated) acquisition of some beautiful frivolous thing we will now put in a box to go on a ship and not see for months.

A little less frivolous this time, maybe, since the bowls and small plates we use every day from our set of wedding dishes have passed their prime (all but two of the bowls are gone, actually) and we really do need new ones.  Maybe we don't really need hand-stamped Polish ones that we had to drive to the Czech Republic to buy, but I do love them.  And I'm so glad Mr. Right was totally on board with getting no two alike.

"I took God to see Jesus"

Shortly after we arrived here, we went to our local parish's outdoor Thanksgiving Mass (in warm early October).  Shortly after that, I found myself at a party being asked by a new acquaintance (also not Austrian) what I was so far most enjoying about the culture here.

I think that what I wanted to express was something about how I had lived in several foreign cultures now, with dominant religions utterly different from my own (parts of which I have great affection for now), and that it was a novel experience to find myself in a country so unabashedly Christian and so specifically, unapologetically Catholic.  Because even though it's true that I was raised a Protestant in a majority Protestant country, religious life in America is so diverse and so scrupulously private that my wedding and my father's funeral are truly the only times I have ever experienced worshipping together with the full spectrum of my friends and family.  There's an appeal to the idea (not the entire reality here, but closer) that on any Sunday or holiday I could walk over to the parish church and be in the company of all my neighbors who that morning desired to worship at all.

Unfortunately, as I was struggling not only to figure out exactly what my feelings on this were (still not fully clear, a year and a half later) but also to find words to express them, what I said to this total stranger at the party was (along with a bunch of other stuff that did not quite save me), "It's kind of nice that it's so homogenous."

This person looked at me as if I'd just thrown a little confetti party to congratulate the Nazis on smoothing out the place.

Which... no.  No no no no no.  Not at all.  Please.

Now that we've gotten that straight (and bearing in mind that the Nazis had nothing to do with Catholicism; there is, in fact, a gruesome modern memorial in Stephansdom to a nun executed by the Nazis for refusing to remove crucifixes from the patient rooms of her hospital), can I say that living in a Catholic country has been a fascinating experience without being hideously misunderstood?

I love hearing the church bells ring.  I love and hate that you can't shop on Sundays (or holidays).  I am intrigued and creeped out by the huge amounts of real estate and vineyards owned by Catholic institutions here.  I love picturesque valleys dotted with stone parish churches.  I love that our local vintners bring their wine to be blessed once a year at a special Mass.  I love that we can go for an epic hike out our back door, stop for lunch at a little eco place and discover (in the back of the menu) the curious miracle history of the nearby spring (someone saw the Virgin Mary there, or maybe St. Agnes, and someone else saw a crucifix appear in a tree next to it, and soon up to 20,000 pilgrims a day were mucking through the woods towards the healing holy waters (or hoping that by washing their eyes with it, they would magically see the winning lottery numbers for the week; not kidding), it all got to be quite the unsightly mess and the authorities stepped in (late 1800's), yanking out the stone from which the spring had sprung, filling in the whole course of it with rubble, and chopping up the holy tree into kindling and burning it for heat at Klosterneuburg monastary).

I love that on our way home from said epic hike, we can happen upon a singing procession, handing us pamphlets that explain they are processing around the entire city over the course of five weekends, a ritual that attracted thousands in the 1950's, praying for the freedom of Austria, and which Pope John Paul II joined in on to celebrate (or pray for?) the falling of the Wall.

I also love that, although we've only taken him to religious services a few times, Mr. Pants has imbibed enough of the story just by being here that with no explanation of this procession for us, he launched us into a lengthy discussion of the whys and wherefores of Jesus again.

And I am amused and fascinated that the next day, out of the blue, he suddenly told me, "I took God to see Jesus."  

Really?  

"Yeah, people were hurting Him."  

Ah.  And what did God do?  

"He said stop but they didn't stop because they were very angry."  

Oh.  

"Then I took him back to where He was and He was very excited because no one was fighting here in Vienna.  He's nice.  He's really nice to me."

Things We Will Miss: The Water

To mollify inconvenienced drivers during street digs to replace the water pipes, the city of Vienna puts up gorgeous banners all over the construction fences proclaiming, "High-source water is Quality of Life" and reminding us that our tap water comes from the Alps, "Vienna is the only city of more than a million inhabitants that receives its water from the high mountains."

 
We took the cog railway to the top of Schneeberg this weekend.  The large snowfield behind the restaurant is marked off as a "protection zone" for Vienna water.

And it is fabulous water.  A little hard, I guess, since it does leave deposits in the sinks, etc., but quite delicious.  With a little patience to flush out the pipes, it comes out of the tap perfectly cold and wonderful, without the merest hint of chlorine.

(Photo by Auntie Doula at Schönbrunn, 10 days before Shmoogie was born.)

And there seems to be plenty of it.  Having lived in places where water was hard to come by at all and clean water was unheard of, Vienna is a fantasy world of luscious clear fountains.  The best tap water in the world, free for the taking from pumps all over the city.

Tap water that will not make you sick is a blessing I will never take for granted.  Tap water so plentiful and clean that a draught from the public fountain tastes better than Evian is a luxury I will miss.

Things We Will Miss: The Playgrounds

I've been reluctant to say it out loud, but now that we've done the pre-departure consultation with the moving company, here it is:

We're leaving Vienna.

Overall we're very happy to be heading back closer to friends and family (in time for several exciting weddings!) and saying goodbye to a few annoyances of living here, but we have had a wonderful time and you're going to have to put up with some anticipatory nostalgia over the next few weeks.

***

 

When we were getting ready to move to Vienna two years ago, lots of people warned us that Austria is not child-friendly.  Then we arrived and found a gem of a playground hidden around every corner, each one with its own quirky creative touches, but nearly all of them with sand boxes, really BIG sandboxes, and water pumps.

Playgrounds at home haven't been this much messy fun in 50 years.  And I say messy fun is child-friendly.

What God Lets Children Eat

When Mr. Pants gets Nutella on his sandwiches, it's always with peanut butter (and more peanut butter than Nutella), because that makes us feel like better parents.

When Mr. Pants decides to make Nutella sandwiches for himself before 6 AM, there is always peanut butter involved because, well, that's just the way it is, I guess.  Yesterday, though, he had gotten out the peanut butter and the Nutella, but when Mr. Right found him, he was in the process of wrapping his sandwiches up in several randomly ripped-off pieces of tin foil and there weren't no peanut butter in those sandwiches.

A bit later, after Mr. Right had gone and I was herding the proverbial cats towards departure for school, Mr. Pants was clutching his tin-foiled sandwich and searching desperately for his backpack to put them in.  "Why do you need to put your sandwiches in your backpack???" I demanded in exasperation.

"I want to take them so I can have them to eat at Essen."

His school provides a hot lunch prepared on the spot each day, which Mr. Pants usually tells me he didn't eat, but which I continue to hope he will some day eat, since his friends, like, eat the vegetables.  Willingly.  I told him I didn't think his teachers would allow him to eat his own food at Essen, but that he might be able to eat it at snack time before soccer.

"They let my friend eat food that he brings at Essen," he said.

"Aaaah," light dawned and I explained, "That's because your friend's religion says that he can only eat special foods and the food at school isn't it."

"Like what?" Mr. Pants wanted to know.

"Well, uh, a lot of religions have rules about what you can and can't eat.  Like Judaism and Islam - your friend is Muslim, that means his religion is Islam - have their own rules.  Your friend's religion says he can't eat meat unless it's been killed in a special way."

"Why?"

Huh, I thought, This is the kind of question you just stop asking yourself upon reaching adulthood.  "Uh, because... Nobody knows exactly why because these religions were started a very long time ago and they didn't write down why, they only said that it's what God wanted them to do, but they didn't say why."

This made perfect sense to Mr. Pants, except for one thing, "But God lets me eat the food at Essen."

"Yep."

Considering the matter, Mr. Pants restated previously discovered truth for secondary confirmation, "But God doesn't let my friend eat the food at Essen."

"Yep."

This was all fine with him and we headed out the door, me worrying slightly that he was now mulling over it all for possible advantage and only God knows what special dietary restrictions - applying, of course, only to Mr. Pants - would soon be pronounced as His Word.

But, for the moment at least, it appears he's going ecumenical.  Just before we got to school he told me with confidence, "God doesn't let children eat the Essen at soccer."  Perhaps by next week the Holy Nutella Sandwiches will be raised to the more secure status of religious obligation for Mr. Pants only.

This is a nice place because it's good.

Just a short drive out of town, vineyards blanket the steep rolling slopes that look back on Vienna.  The spring wind barrels out of the higher mountains and ricochets back up from the river, making a short walk from the car a grand adventure...

...billowing lounge chairs into tent hideaways (This is a nice place because it's good.  - Mr. Pants)...

...and tossing full wine glasses right off the table (solution:  don't let go).

Evidence that I drink but rarely (and little):

1.  After one weiss Wein gespritzt, my answer to Shmoogie's, "Wherz dis?" was, "Where's this?  This is Heaven!"

2.  Shmoogie found that so delightful that we spent a good few minutes putting our arms over our heads, squealing, and slapping them down again.  And high-fiving.

3.  When a second glass (actual wine) was nearly through and Mr. Right announced it was time to go home, Mr. Pants wanted to know why and Mr. Right answered, "It's time to take Mommy home," and Mr. Pants protested pleadingly, since Mommy was currently being more fun than she had been in a while, "Let's not take Mommy home yet!"

 

A Friday Smile

Is there such a thing as a tragi-comic ballad?  Because I'm pretty sure that's what this is...

 

Ah, the things I am getting out of my German lessons.  :)  I love this song, though the words seem kind of misogynistic.

Aber bitte mit Sahne, by Udo Jürgens.  The translation is (very very roughly):

 

They meet up every day at quarter past three, aaah, oh yeah,

at their table in the corner of the pastry shop, aaah, oh yeah,

and they rush to the cake buffet

to the Black Forest Cherry and the cream stuffed pastry,

to the fruit ice cream, pineapple, cherry and banana,

but please, with cream, but please with cream.

*

They chat and they smack and then get for themselves, aaah, oh yeah,

some more butter cream torte and Bee Sting [that is a delicious one, btw], aaah oh yeah,

they puff and stuff, almost nothing else will go in,

only a Moor's Head more, then it must must come to an end,

for Mathilde, Ottilie, Marie and Liliane,

but please with cream, but please with cream.

*

And the end of the song you have all surely guessed, aah, oh yeah,

Death skims them off, one after the other, aaah, oh yeah,

the ones left behind are too pained for words,

with Sacher- and Linzer- and Marzipan Torte

Liliane, the last one, stayed true to the flag

but please with cream, but please with cream.

*

Then also for Liliane was it finally all over, aaah, oh yeah,

she tipped off the chair in the pastry shop, aaah, oh yeah,

on the coffin instead of wreaths were sugared cakes

and the priest buried her with peaceful words

that the Lord God would pave her way to Heaven,

but please with cream, but please with cream.

*

One more little cup of coffee, but please with cream,

one more little cream puff, but please with cream,

or should it perhaps be only a cookie?

But please with cream.

Postscript to Yesterday

Found a new billboard today - perhaps my little avant-garde photographer has a future as a public service announcement designer...