Lostria

The food just kept coming. No matter how much we ate, it seemed, the sound of Krysta preparing something else could be heard in the kitchen. First, there was the sliced pancake soup, of which Edi had insisted we eat second and third portions; then came a large salad each; then a plate full of delicious pork roast and potatoes; then a bowl of fruit salad; and finally, a plate full of coffee cakes, all of which we had washed down with a liter of beer each.

Now, Irwin was insisting we have a third glass of the homemade schnapps that was supposedly blueberry flavored, but tasted more like heavily chlorinated pool water. We politely declined, trying to explain that we wanted to regain consciousness for at least part of tomorrow. "Morgen?" he shrugged– that was tomorrow; a world away.  He refilled our glasses. By the time he lead us through the dark down to the guest cabin, we were both properly drunk. And of course, none of them spoke a breath of English.

Irwin, Reinhardt, and Krysta

Edi and "Speedy"

The journey from Vienna to the Saringer family farm, remotely situated on the mountainside above the tiny town of Murau had been quite eventful. While the journey was supposed to take under three hours, Google decided to take us on a preposterous route on a single-lane road that dizzyingly wound its way 1800 meters up and down a mountain, and it took almost five hours. It didn't help that we had to contend with some bad traffic–

Despite the inconvenience, though, we couldn't deny that our detour was undoubtedly the more scenic route–

–and we couldn't help but be a little thankful for the detour.  An unexpected gift.

Escaping to a secluded, rustic farmhouse seemed like a great idea after the exhausting tourist route from big city to big city.  We would be staying in the guest cabin, hand-built by Saringer’s great-uncle Reinhart, which was right beside the sheep pen. It seemed like a very writerly thing to do. Based on the prodigious amount of alcohol Saringer's relatives served us, I would say more Hemingway or Joyce than Thoreau.

"If I die, use this photo for the cover of my collected works."

After being so roughly stuffed with food our first night, we didn’t get up to the house until 11:30 the next morning.  When breakfast arrived, we dutifully ate everything they placed before us.  Except then they brought out a second plate.  Saringer and I plodded through the rest of the food.  We were both quite full, but we felt proud.  Like we had accomplished something.

Clearly these krauts believed they could kill us with hospitality.  Well! we were about to serve them– serve them a little cultural lesson that North American gluttony is not so easily defeated.  When we were finished, Irmi informed us we would be eating lunch in an hour.

Wait, what?

Lunch was a struggle.  I do not have a big appetite regularly, much less when it is a mere hour after I have eaten an epicurean breakfast.  “This is my Vietnam!” I thought to myself, though I probably could have just as well said it out loud, considering none of them would have understood anyways.  But we didn't want to be rude– didn't want to admit defeat.

We gorged ourselves to discomfort.  "This must be how dogs feel as they eat themselves to death in dumpsters," I thought.  "Or how Monsieur Creosote felt in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life."

So, after the gustatory savaging of our first few meals, I made sure to learn a little German, most importantly "Mein Magen ist voll"—my stomach is full.  “Don’t worry,” Saringer said as we walked up to the farmhouse that evening, feeling vaguely like condemned men slouching to the gallows.  “If I remember correctly, dinner tends to be pretty small here.  I think we’ll be alright.”

Dinner was simple, consisting of h’ors-d'oeuvres-like bread slices covered in ham and cheese, and, like everything we had eaten thus far at the farm, they were incredibly delicious.  We had already worn the phrase “das is zere güt!” pretty thin by this point, but I couldn't bring myself to remember anything from Jordan's German phrasebook back in Berlin other than "Vie weel kostet das?"  What will this cost?

The table was loaded with food, but no one else was eating.  They told us they had already eaten, and that everything was for us.  We thought that maybe if we took long enough to eat the food, we could out-wait them.  But no, another round of food came, inevitably, ominously.  It was time to test my new linguistic abilities. 

"Nein, danke," I said to Edi. "Mein Magen ist voll." He laughed in my face. "Ha!" he said, and rubbed his own great belly, speaking cheery German to my German-deaf ears.  No, he seemed to be saying, this is a truly full stomach.  Silence.  I ate some more.

All the while, the mischievous Irwin had been continuously refilling our beers. When we tried to decline, he began bringing the beers into the room pre-opened.  Once we finished eating, we began to reckon that we had each had three liters of beer since lunch.  Then we were served a few rounds of obligatory schnapps.

At this point, Edi felt the need to educate us a little about Austrian culture, so he turned on the TV, and we watched what appeared to be some sort of musical telethon where all of Austria's biggest musical acts lip-synced for charity in a big beer hall full of middle-aged people eagerly clapping along.

It was hilarious. No matter what "genre" the artist supposedly belonged to— the Michael Bolton-esque crooner, the Madonna-esque diva, the "punk" band, the teen idols—they all basically just played oompa-pah music.  It was awful.  Hilariously awful.  While I set out on this European odyssey with an aim of experiential open-mindedness and cultural sensitivity, at this point we were both wasted, and I began laughing out loud at the television.  I was laughing in their faces.  Laughing in the face of Austria.

"Murau's a really obscure town.  You've probably never heard of it"
-Hipster Max

The language barrier was a bit of a difficulty, so we mainly resigned ourselves to awkward silences, and smiling and nodding in agreement with basically everything anyone said.  But I'd like to think we made some progress.  At lunch, I would whip out my pocketbook, filled with German phrases I had crudely assembled using Saringer's German dictionary.  “Das ist köstlich.”  This is delicious.  “Interessant.”  Interesting.  “Das habe ich nicht verstanden.”  I do not understand.

Staying with Saringer's distant relatives was the sort of thing that restores your faith in humanity.  To be taken in to house and home so completely as more-or-less a stranger.  As we drove through Murau on our way back to Vienna, we stopped for a local police officer leading some small children across the street.  It seemed an appropriate symbolic bookend– after touring concentration camps and museums filled with relics and bloody histories of the wars and atrocities of antiquity, it had been easy to lose sight of the basic good in people, and our week of country living was a welcome reminder of the fact that we humans are all family.

And with that in mind, we hopped on the train from Vienna to Budapest, where we would stay with my own distant relatives...

Independencia!

Dear journal,

We seem to have taken a horrible wrong turn on our way to Barcelona...

Despite the chilly weather, I am not taking any chances with sun safety...

We got into our hostel at around 2 a.m., and despite our late arrival, the girl at reception figured it would be the perfect time to give us a 25-minute walkthrough of everything there was to do in Barcelona by covering in pen the comically oversized piano map of the city we carried around for the next few days.

The next morning we went to the amazing Bouqueria Market, which was incredible; bustling with people, and crammed tightly with vendors of practically everything, a maze of awninged alleyways hung with strings of sausages and great hocks of meat, lined with ice cascades full of colourful fish, shoppes with high-piled displays of bright candies, fruits, and exotic spices, and full of small, steam-filled kiosks peddling kebabs.  The food was all delicious, and it was one of the first places in my travels that has felt truly foreign– exciting, different, alive with a local flavour that made me truly feel I was in a different country, far from home.

lol

Our first night in Barcelona, we decided, had to be exciting.  So, we decided to go to one of Barcelona's infamous mega-nightclubs, which notoriously don't get bumpin' until after 2 a.m.  The place we went to was called Razzamatazz, and despite its terrible name, was not a gay club (although the distinction between "European" and gay fashion may be too subtle for a plaid-wearing schlub like me to appreciate, so who knows?).

The club was cavernous, with multiple rooms across multiple floors, each one with a different DJ spinning a different genre of music.  They even played "Debaser" by the Pixies and I peed a little.

This way to heaven.

The woman at reception had recommended a part of the beach removed from the main area, which she said was less crowded.  When we got there, we noticed there were a lot of nude dudes (sick band name, btw), either lying on their stomach with their plump, sunburnt buttocks held aloft in salutation, or walking around tugging absentmindedly at their dangling wieners.  Somewhat disheartened, Saringer and I stopped at a beach bar to grab a beer, which we soon noticed was a gay bar, with muscular servers and videos of shirtless men on the TVs, and a DJ spinning trance music.

Come to notice it, this whole area of the beach seemed rather gay– there were men laying together, there were some holding hands– in fact, there was a couple literally lying on top of one another right over there. I suddenly began to wonder if the woman at the hostel had recommended this place because she thought Saringer and I were a couple...

On our last night in Barcelona, we headed to the Born district for drinks and tapas.  As we left one bar for another, our attention was drawn by the cries of a torch-wielding procession marching down the Passeig del Born, chanting slogans for Catalan independence.  "Independencia!" they cried.  They cried some other stuff, too–they had a whole catchphrase going–but this was the only word we recognized.  But no matter!– tonight, they were our revolutionary brothers and sisters!  "Independencia!" we shouted along with them, rallying in the wave of esprit de la revolution as they passed with their banners and flames, Catalan flags draped round their shoulders.  This was our moment!  The world could ignore our voices no longer!  Take that, Oppression!

FUCKING BLOODTHIRSTY PROTESTER

There are few luxuries a traveler enjoys, between miniature towels, showers with palmfuls of handsoap and pilfered shampoo, budget breakfasts, and stiff hostel mattresses.  But there is an important one: non-commitment.  The ability to see a place with the freedom to fall in love with it or discard it casually, versus those who are bound there, and must accept it as home.  To become a revolutionary for a night, then head to the bar, and fly out the next morning.