Quiz!

Here's the solution to yesterday's Match the Name with the Face puzzle.
Seated(?) on the floor: Ayako
Front row, L to R: Me (duh!), Cathy, Pedro, Mandana, Tresa, Toey (Sutawadee), Ines (in white), Fabia
Second row: Raquel (partially hidden), Marta, Rui
Standing: Virginia

It really is a great group!

Icons

I often teach with icons and graphics and there seems to be a sore lack of both in this blog. And so I present to you a picture of my class in one of its typical wild moments. If need a challenge, try to figure out who is who. Hint: I'm the only one with red hair.
The Asian women are from three different countries. See if you can match the name with the face.

Rui
Tresa
Marta
Cathy
Virginia
Ayako
Fabia
Sutawatdee
Mandana
Pedro
Ines
Raquel
Me (but I don't count)

I'll post the results tomorrow.

Skiing without snow

The Salzburg bus system is truly an experience. I have a monthly bus pass and I often find myself riding the bus several times a day. The system is efficient and reliable which is rather boring, but there are several things which make it interesting and exciting.
All the busses here are electric. They scurry along like golf carts on a system of wires that run up above the streets. This is convenient because one day I got lost and I found my way back by following the wires. Sometimes at night you can see the electric sparks and flashes at the contact points between the bus and the wires. It's like miniature lightning bolts. The bus garage is very close to the Orff Institut and late at night you can see all the busses lumbering in to sleep. Although I called them golf carts, they are indeed quite large, with two "compartments" that are connected together with this large accordion. It can be quite entertaining to stand on the bus in the accordion, especially when going around corners. The floor shifts, kind of like a Tilt-A-Whirl at the county fair.
The other thing that shifts are the passengers. The bus that I take in the morning often resembles a mosh pit with all the students trying to get to the university, junior high and high school on the southeast side of town. Some of the bus drivers are very cautious, but some MUST get up on the wrong side of the bed and seem hell bent on careening around corners and speeding up before a stop just for the sheer joy of slamming on the brakes. This can give the effect of skiing without snow. I am not a regular skier but I DO remember that it's a whole lot easier to negotiate the slopes with your knees bent. I have taken to riding the bus in a similar fashion. I've learned that the overhead orange straps that are there for your hanging convenience are particularly useless when you get one of these bus jockeys. Bending your knees does not help and you end up twirling around several times and dumping the contents of your satchel on the nearest innocent passenger. Thank goodness I haven't spilled the contents of my Obama mug! One time the driver went up on the sidewalk and the resulting drop meant that a lot of us bumped our head on the ceiling. Well, almost...
One night I got on the bus and they were training a new driver. I think I have bruises from that one.
The bus runs on a sort of honor system. The powers that be trust that you have bought a ticket and woe betide you if you did not. Virginia and I were checked one day for tickets by a guy who wore jeans, a sweater and a baseball cap. He smiled pleasantly, said "Tickets please" and flashed a badge. I found mine pretty quickly, but Virginia had to dig in her bag. The guy told her to forget it but she insisted. She did finally find the ticket and all was well.
Today I was riding back to my apartment and a friendly woman came walking up the aisle asking in German to see our tickets. (I'm glad I understand enough German to get the drift!) She was dressed in the standard European outfit (see previous post!) and flashed a badge. A young couple got on the bus, she hugely pregnant and he some other nationality. The friendly woman asked to see their tickets.
It was like a crime show! They couple could/would not produce tickets. The woman snapped her fingers and a security person appeared. Like magic! From some other part of the bus! The couple was escorted off at the next stop where they were met by two MORE security police. Everyone on the bus knew that they were goners.
The fine I understand is enormous. I have no intention of finding out what it is. Besides, you probably have to go to four different offices with six different forms on two different days at different hours just to pay it.

The moral of the story? When riding on a Salzburg bus, pay for the ticket and experience the ride of your life!

It's cheaper than the Sound of Music tour.....

The Language Differential

I am the only native English speaker in my class. That includes the faculty. It's a fine line to walk. I am often torn between trying to help people with words and letting them say things in their own way. Some of my classmates have the same problem in English that I have with German: they understand a lot, but can't really turn it around and speak it easily yet. I am amazed by how quickly they can pick it up. One of the women has only been speaking English for a year and makes very few mistakes. One of the others is learning exponentially. But this past weekend left just about everybody wiped out!
Wolfgang Hartmann was here for the weekend to give us a history of Orff Schulwerk and some additional background on Carl Orff. In between we discussed philosophical issues. It was an intense session and A LOT of English, even for an American.
Everyone thinks it must be so easy for me because the class is in English but as I said before, it's a fine line to walk. How do I say things in ways that people understand? If it's too elementary, it's insulting. If it's too advanced or idiomatic, it's hard to understand. I have to deal with many different accents (so do they!). It's not always a good idea to fill in the blank either.
It's not any different when I try to speak German. I know the words but not the order. And sometimes if you can speak a little with only a slight accent, you get a volley of high speed German in return. But I keep trying anyway. My classmates are reasonably fluent in at least two languages. I should TRY to speak a second one.

Fried mouse

It's Thursday and a cold rainy one at that. Every Thursday, rain or shine, there's an open air market on Mirabell Platz. You can find all kinds of things: fruit, vegetables, skinned rabbits, polyester plaid skirts, houseplants, pig lips, whatever. But my favorite thing is fried mouse.
OK, so it's not REALLY fried mouse. It's called gemäuse. What it is really is a sort of doughnut/fritter thing that is deep fried. The thing I love is the amount of raisins. The woman who sold me one explained that it was deep fried (in German of course) and since the spelling looks a little bit like "mouse", I call it fried mouse.
Please don't send PETA after me.

A minor triumph

Today is an auspicious day. Those of you in the Orff world are probably well aware of my absolute allergy to movement. I cannot say why this is. There is really no basis for it, other than I hate to sweat. Today I have conquered my movement phobia.
It started yesterday with an excellent class with Andrea Ostertag. No, I should probably go back further.
Growing up I had no opportunity to take dance classes. All of my artistic efforts were poured into music. Gee whiz, I was in high school before the advent of Title 9 (yes, dinosaurs freely roamed the earth and there was only B&W TV!) so athletics weren't an option. When I got to college, the picture changed dramatically. I was in Madison with access to just about everything cultural. I got this bizarre notion into my head that I wanted toe shoes. I took every beginning ballet class that I possibly could and finally got brave enough to register for intermediate ballet with the dance majors. Our teacher was Madame Christova who had danced with the Bolshoi ballet in the not recent past. She smoked like a chimney, had a gut, and could still throw a mean combination of pirouettes across the floor. She could never pronounce my name, calling me "Kinseeyah Bickers" and she would count off for Johnny, the long suffering accompanist by shouting "Tree forts Chonny!! One, two, tree AND" whereupon Chonny would gamely play a minuet and add the extra beat. Madame always carried a blackboard pointer and thought nothing of "correcting" your point, or "lifting" your derriere. It just made class all the more exciting.
I got married and moved away. Somehow many years elapsed, and even though my daughter Emma is now an accomplished dancer, I never really returned to class except vicariously. Well, not until yesterday.
Andrea's class on Monday morning is "Dance Technique." It was like deja vu..... without the cigarettes and pointer. Ballet terms, center work, floor work.... I was in dance heaven. Zounds!
It was like the dam burst and now I can't get enough. I went to THREE movement classes today. THREE!!! And I have two more tomorrow!!!! BRING IT!!!
Here's the cool part. The last class that I took today was yoga. Completely in German! And I could do it! I understand far more German than I speak, and the instructor thought I would be okay. And I was!!!

You CAN teach an old dog new tricks. And I sweat like a pig. That's all the animal analogies for today.

The sacred and the profane

I told my mother that I was going to be Catholic while I was in Salzburg. I mean, why not? There are loads of beautiful Catholic churches here to choose from, each with glorious architecture, a noble past, and besides which, there has been an enormous amount of music written for the Mass. Today I went to the Dom for high Mass at 10 o'clock.
For those of you who are interested in such things, the Dom is where Mozart was baptized and it also features prominently as the church where Maria and the captain are wed in "The Sound of Music." Here is a link.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Dom_Salzburg.jpg

The photo is taken from just about exactly where I sat this morning. The color is a little washed out, so you will have to mentally ramp it up a couple of notches.
On deck musically this morning was a cathedral choir (and orchestra!) from Switzerland offering Muffat's Missa in Labore Requies. I am grateful for my background as a high church Episcopalian and as a teacher at a Catholic school for many years as I was able to sing, stand, sit and kneel at the appropriate times. It was also helpful because I could translate the language in the standard responses. I got really good at "Und mit deine Geiste" ("and with thy spirit")
I need to take a quick aside here and mention that my German is improving, but not at the rate I would like. Most people in the German speaking word have their own dialects and the Austrian one takes some acclimation. The first priest this morning spoke in hoch Deutsch (high German) which I was relieved to find I could understand, followed by lay readers who spoke in dialect. It sounds a bit like.... forgive me..... yodelling. The sermon was given in hoch Deutsch, so I got a lot of that, and there was a greeting given by a visiting priest in French. Apparently the visiting choir was from a part of Switzerland that speaks French.
The music itself was beautiful......kind of. Where I was sitting there was a lot of delay. Because the space is SO massive, the sound never quite comes together. It goes up into the dome and out into the transcept and meets itself on the way back. The conductor used massive gestures to keep everything together and I'm sure he felt like he'd had an aerobic workout when he was finished.
That being said, there is nothing quite as thrilling as being in a packed cathedral with choir, orchestra, pealing bells and my all time favorite, incense. It was spectacular and made my little high church heart go pitty pat.
I mentioned before that the Dom was the scene of Maria's wedding in "The Sound of Music" and as such, is a high point on the Sound of Music tour. There is of course more than one tour, and at any given point in time, a busload of movie fans will show up. In spite of the numerous signs posted that a Mass was being said and PLEASE do not enter, there were many unconcerned tourists wandering to and fro during the Mass. It would have been less disturbing had they kept off to the side or stayed in the back, but they wandered about like grazing water buffalo in their jeans and sneakers. I might add here that I have seen a lot of traditional garb here in Austria, far more than in Germany. Apparently Sunday is the day to wear it as the lector was in a dirndl as were many other members of the congregation.
The other people I saw wandering about were the homeless or mentally impaired. I have seen quite a bit of that here, something that surprises me rather. It's not unusual to be at a bus stop or walking along the street and to come upon a person rocking back and forth speaking gibberish or yelling at the pigeons. I've seen several women clutching bedraggled stuffed animals as well. There were a couple of people begging on the church steps, all of whom looked as if they were down on their luck, or hanging on to a thin tether to reality. I guess in the States we don't see so much of that for whatever reason.
After this beautiful liturgy, I stepped out into the square to the sounds of a polka band. The annual BioFest was being held in the church square. It's an open air market featuring organic products. In a bizarre twist of logic, the longest lines were for the deep fried items. A bit counter-productive, don't you agree?

I find it amusing that after purifying your soul, you can step outside into the square and gunk it all up again.

Does it get any better?

I am writing this morning on an absolutely spectacular fall day. It is our last weekend free before we have fourteen days in a row of classes. Yes, that includes Saturday and Sunday. But it has been a glorious weekend so far.
I am enjoying a big cup of coffee and a delicious piece of coffee cake courtesy of the Flohmarkt at St. Ana's church, just a block from here. Even without knowing German, I'm sure that you have figured out that it was a flea market. I thought I would stop by because I needed a few things for my apartment and I decided a flea market might be the best place to find them.
Wow! Did I hit pay dirt! I came home loaded down with an immersion blender, a food processor, an embroidered tablecloth, a coffee mug, a Mellita coffee maker and........ A PEARWOOD ALTO RECORDER!!!!!! The recorder cost more than the other stuff combined and I paid ten euros for it. I'm sure that you can do the math.....
It's a beautiful thing. It was tucked away behind a bunch of kitschy stuff. I'm sure the woman saw dollar signs when my face lit up and I pointed to it enthusiastically. She looked at me skeptically and said "Zehn" (ten). I opened my wallet and cheerfully forked it over. She wrapped it up very carefully for me which was nice. I think now that I must knit a case for it!! It only has one slight drawback: it uses German fingering. Who cares? It's beautiful!!
Now the other plus side of a flea market is that it is usually run by church ladies who bake. Oh baby!! Do they bake!! There was a whole entire room devoted to baked goods of every sort! It was without a doubt the best coffee house (and least expensive!) that I have been to so far. Huge slabs of homemade goodness for only 1 euro a piece. I ate a delicious peach and cream cheese cake there and brought the aforementioned coffee cake home to enjoy this morning. YUM!
Last night we went to a free concert put on by students of the Mozarteum. It's BachFest, so the theme of course is Bach's music. We managed to show up for contemporary night. All the pieces incorporated the B-A-C-H theme in one way or another and there was only one original piece by Bach in the first half. (The concert was four hours long) I have to say that I really enjoyed the ensemble pieces quite a bit. The solo things I didn't find as interesting. There was a duet for violas that sounded like a rhinoceros fight. And I play the viola!
This is just my personal opinion. You can disagree if you like. I am pretty open to most things, but I feel a lot of contemporary music is too cerebral. It's an exercise in sonic possibilities, yes, and I appreciate that, but it is so hard to play and to what end? If it takes a semi-professional group to play it, and a highly specialized ear to listen to it, and an even more specialized brain to write it, than it really is on the fringes and how often will it be performed? Perhaps the point is that it is cutting edge. I fall somewhere on the continuum. With pop music being a "1" and cerebral contemporary music being a "10", I would say my score is an "8." What's yours?
Today will be another adventure as well. Virginia (from Italy) and I are planning on going to IKEA (imagine that!) this afternoon, after which we will be meeting some friends and going to the BioFest in the Alt Stadt. Then I suppose we'll all have dinner, or cook dinner with things from the BioFest or something. We'll "play it by ear." This was an amusing expression for all of us. I am constantly reminded how fascinating English is and how frustrating at the same time. And that's a GOOD thing!

What a group!!

Here's a photo of some of my classmates after a concert at the Mozarteum. It's BachFest, and tonight's concert was all contemporary homages to Bach and all employed the B-A-C-H theme. Some were pretty cool and some were pretty abstract-random. The concert was four hours long but we only lasted until intermission.

From left to right: Toey, Ayako (with bicycle), Tresa, Rui (with his hands around Tresa's neck), Virginia (with the scarf), Fabia and Mandana. I'm in the back.

Let the games begin!

Well, here it is four days later and I've had no internet for the prior three. No blog, no email, no surfing, and, worst of all, no Facebook! My husband has been beside himself because he can't locate me and vice versa. All is well for the time being. Of course with the Austrian bureaucracy it took a couple of days to figure out where to lodge a complaint. I think that what happened is all the students are back (school officially started Tuesday, but since nothing is as it seems, most classes don't start until next week!?) and the demand overwhelmed the server. So I am back.
There are 15 in my class. Two of them have not yet arrived because of visa problems. Imagine that! (thinly veiled sarcasm). I am the oldest, although there are two other women from Columbia who are also of my generation. The majority are in their late twenties and early thirties. Here's who's who:

Fabia; Fabia is from Hong Kong, but has lived in Berlin with her husband for the last year and a half. Because she is from Hong Kong, her English is great and her German is pretty good too. She is a chatterbox in the best sense of the word.

Sutawadee: We call her "Toey." She has quickly become the "Go To" girl because she has been in Salzburg the longest (about a month) and has made it through all the bureaucratic cogs. Very organized.

Akayo: from Japan. She is a kindergarten teacher.... bless her heart! There's a special place in heaven for kindergarten teachers. Ugh. Herding gerbils, that's what I think of teaching kindergarten. Not my thing. Any way, Ayako is having some trouble with English, but she is hilarious and I think that will become more apparent as time goes on. She is also an incredible mover. She insists that she's had little prior experience and that she was "very bad," but this simply is not so.

Raquel: Raquel is one of three women from Bogata, Columbia. She is very quiet, I think because of the language differential. She is also a beautiful mover.

Ines: Also from Columbia. She works mainly with children's choirs. She is lovely.

Catarine: We call her "Cati." She is the youngest of the three from Columbia. She plays the violin. What a way to start the course! She fell and chipped her two front teeth and had to spend the second day of class in a dentist's chair. I must say the dentists are good here. Her teeth look perfect, but she says they hurt. I guess they would!

Marta: One of three from Spain. The others are Pedro and Tresa. Pedro and Tresa knew each other before they got here. I think that I should have been studying Spanish instead of German before I got here! Six of them speak Spanish, although Cati says that the Spanish spoken in Spain is different than that spoken in Columbia. Nevertheless, they manage to understand each other.

Mandana: Mandana is from Persia and speaks Farsi. She has only been speaking English for a year, but is amazing. She also plays the viola!!! How cool is that??? One of the other students who will be joining us, Mastaneh, is also from Tehran. She is still waiting for her visa.

Virginia is from Toscany, Italy. She is a violinist and very out-going. She does the wonderful Italian thing of adding "ah" at the end of most syllables and she is very expressive with her hands. Her English is quite good as well. We have plans to play some chamber music with one of the faculty who is a cellist.

Rui: A wild and crazy guy! He's into jazz and comes from Portugal. He also likes composition. I admit that I checked to see which section of composition and arranging he had signed up for, and I signed up for the same one. He uses Sibelius in addition to having a MacBook, which makes him VERY cool.

Me: the only native English speaker, period. None of the faculty speak English first, so I am constantly being asked "How do you say this in English?" So I guess that I'm the English teacher.

We are waiting for Serife to join us from Turkey, where she is still waiting for her visa.

The classes so far have been fun, but I think they will get more intense. The movement classes have been strenuous for people like us who haven't really moved all summer. There was a lot of lamentation about soreness.

Next week will be "Hell-ah" as Virginia says. Wolfgang Hartmann will be here to put us through our paces. We have class all day every day... including Saturday and Sunday!! For this we will need a special "blue chip" so that we can open the doors of the Institut on weekends...but not for more than 90 seconds or an alarm sounds and the police come. To get the chip you must:

A) find a student intern and request a form
B) fill out the form in German
C) Submit the form along with the requisite fee to yet a different person at yet a different office
D) Return with the stamped form and request the chip from the dreaded Herr Fischer (the head custodian at the Institut) who may or may not give you the chip.

It's exhausting just thinking about it.

On a sad note, one of our instructors was called out of class the first day because her mother was not doing well. Class ended early of course. The next day she was back, even though her mother had died. We all felt just terrible for her, but she felt that teaching would be a good distraction and would help take her mind off of things. It was a brilliant class. I think so far that it's my favorite - Movement Accompaniment. She also teaches a yoga class. I think I will go and try and twist my middle age body into a bretzel.......

First Day of Class!

After a fifteen year wait, this is my first day of class at the Orff Institut. If I think about it too much, I'll get all verklempt.

Dorm life

I am a little old for this.

Salzburg is in large part a college town and so it follows that there are large numbers of students. Unlike American universities, however, there aren't really dormitories, but housing units for students run by yet another bureaucracy. (see previous post) I live in Haus Mozart, a nondescript, recently renovated apartment building near the Haupbanhof (train station). It is a very convenient walk to the Mozarteum (music conservatory) and as such there are a disproportionate number of music students here, all of them young enough to be my children. Indeed, a lot of them are probably younger than my children.
I have a studio apartment In Haus Mozart which is actually very nice. It is brand new, or looks that way. It is furnished, mostly with stuff from IKEA. The bathroom is small but hyper-efficient. It seems to be a kind of fiberglass pod that was wrestled in through the door and then sheetrock was put up around it. I'll try to post a picture. It's lacking in storage; a problem I rectified by hanging up a shoe organizer to stash my stuff. The sink has one of those motion detectors on it that allows the faucet to dispense a pre-determined amount of water both at the required times and when you are least expecting it. Indeed, one day it lost all reason altogether and emitted a flood of water. In desperation I turned off the water supply, turning it on again only when I thought it was safe to do so. Of course there is no maintenance person to be found anywhere. To get it repaired probably requires 4 forms in triplicate which need to be handed in to 4 different offices with 4 different sets of hours. I'm living with it for now.
The kitchenette is functional. It has a refrigerator and a cooktop. Operating the cooktop requires turning on a little timer that has a maximum time of 15 minutes. This is fine if you are boiling water for tea, but I was making black bean soup today which meant that I had to stand in the kitchen for an hour and a half making sure to turn the timer on again. It makes sense if you have a building full of young people who are living on their own for the first time and prone to things like falling asleep while the water is boiling. Cuts down on insurance premiums. But for me, who likes to cook, it's a pain. There is also no oven. Thank goodness the special at Aldi tomorrow is on toaster ovens!!
There is a warbling voice major on one side of me (just like home!) and a bassoonist two doors down. Unfortunately the bassoonist has not figured out that there are practice rooms downstairs, so he practices in his room. It is spooky how he seems to know exactly when I am trying to take a nap. No sooner do I lay my head on the pillow than he starts tootling away. It is by no means an unpleasant sound. It's an expensive bassoon. You can tell by listening to it.
There also tends to be rock music of all sorts playing at all hours. Last night I was awakened by some drunken louts in the street.
Oh, to be young again!..........nah.......

How to Look European

How to look European:

1. Wear jeans that are slung low, have pockets at the top of your thighs vs. the top of your butt and look like they are spray painted on. Preferably black.
2. Wear heels or boots or better yet, boots with heels. Preferably black.
3. A leather jacket. Mandatory black.
4. A large scarf wound around your neck several times. A neutral color is best.
5. A knit hat pulled down to your ears.
6. Black eye liner.
7. Dye your hair black. If not that, then some bizarre flaming red. Purple, blue and or pink should be for highlights or shock value.

How to look like a midwestern American:

1. Wear jeans that are slung low and have pockets at the top of your thighs vs. the top of your butt and that are baggy and too big. Preferably faded denim blue.
2. Cross trainers or running shoes.
3. Denim jacket.
4. Scarf? Are you kidding? I'm always overheated!
5. Hat? See number 4 directly above.
6. No makeup whatsoever.
7. I like my hair the way it is, thank you.

Time and Bureaucracy

I once had a principal whose formal evaluation of my teaching skills was pretty much non-existent. The only things that he really had to say was that I was a) anti-social and b) allergic to paperwork. I took great exception to the first item, but had to grudgingly concur that the second was all too true. So what happens when a wood fiber challenged person like me meets an overwhelming bureaucracy like Austria?
There is an office and paperwork for EVERYTHING. In order to get anywhere or do anything, you must first take on the transportation system. Unless of course you decide to walk, in which case you need a map (paper!) because the streets don't run on a grid, and they have a tendency to change names every few blocks or so. Even having a map, I still managed to get quite lost. Which brings me to the bus. Salzburg has an extremely efficient transportation system which runs on a type of reliable grid. Some of the busses are electric, so the bus routes have overhead wires and very few low flying birds. To reorient myself the day I got lost, I looked for the overhead wires and followed them to the nearest bus stop. Because I was stubborn, and decided that I would just walk and I couldn't possibly get lost because Salzburg is a small town and besides there are all kinds of landmarks and how could I possibly get lost except that it was cold and rainy and foggy and you couldn't SEE the landmarks (the Hohensalzburg LOOMS over the city), I deliberately didn't take along bus fare. I didn't count on it being cold and rainy and foggy (like it is most days....DUH). I didn't count on getting lost either. So here I was at the bus stop with no bus fare. What's a wet cold lost person with no bus fare to do? Just what every other Austrian seems to do. Get on the bus. Riding the bus without paying is almost a capital offense...... if they catch you. None of the other people at the bus stop had any visible ticket, so I just got on with them. I rode to a place that looked familiar and got off, relieved that I had gotten away with it and resolved to pay double the next time I got on the bus just for karma's sake.
Of course, now I was wet and cold and irritated because even though I was now in the right place, it was the wrong time. The office I needed to go to was closed. They are only open M-W from 9-1. I had missed this week's opportunity to pay the rent. Let me just say here that the dorm room I live in is managed by an entity separate from the university and Institut. I had to go one place to get the key, another place to sign the lease, and a different as yet undisclosed location for maintenance. To add to the hilarity, you can't just pay the rent in cash, you need an Austrian bank account, which means even more paperwork and hit or miss business hours.
The behemoth of paperwork still lies ahead. You have to register!! Before you can register, you have to pre-register online, then report to a service point (yet another building!) which is only open a few hours here and there and is prone to unexpected holidays. Once you are done with the university registration, you have to take your stamped triplicate papers to the Magistrate which is another building somewhere else with a completely different set of hours. In addition to your university papers you must provide a formal 10 page application (in German), your passport and a copy of your passport, your birth certificate and a copy of your birth certificate, a letter from your health insurance company stating that you are covered for your year abroad, bank statements, and a letter proving that you have housing. Additionally, all these papers must be in German and not just any German, but professionally translated German! By now you can sing the refrain "Another building with different hours!!" (This can be sung to the tune of "Another opening, another show" for all you musical theater geeks out there.) I am NOT making this up. No wonder Austrians have a reputation for cynicism.

In what can only be described as an adverse (or perverse!) paperwork allergy reaction, I managed to leave all my paperwork at home, in a red folder, on the piano. And I mean home.... as in back in the States home.

There also seems to be a definite lack of clocks or timepieces. The myriad churches have clocks on their towers, but they don't always work. There are no clocks in evidence anywhere but the church towers. I never really know what time it is. I'm beginning to think that this is a deliberate attempt on the part of the bureaucracy to keep everyone confused about office hours! Everyone works on their own time and it's just too bad if your time doesn't coincide with mine.

I think it's time to buy a watch....

Trachten und rosa Haar .....

... or "Traditional Garb and Pink Hair".... or "My Experiences with Oktoberfest." Okay, Oktoberfest is this big beer event in München. It is world famous; so world famous in fact that the school where I used to teach had a mini-Oktoberfest every, well, October! It wasn't a lot like the one in Germany, I'm sure.
The Munich train station was full of revelers in traditional garb. For men this is lederhosen (leather shorts with suspenders) and for women, dirndls which are skirts, white blouses with poofy sleeves, a vest that looks like a corset and varying amounts of cleavage. There are also felted wool hats with hops tucked in the band, or other kinds of head gear which can include, but are not limited to, pink hair, flashing bunny ears, plastic cow udders, or beer steins. An equivalent hat in the United States would probably be the beer hat, the ubiquitous baseball cap with two cans strapped to the sides and the plastic tubing for consuming the contents of the cans. These hats would never work in Bavaria as 1) the beer is much to fizzy to drink through a straw and 2) you couldn't consume it fast enough and 3) American beer is lame in comparison.
Oktoberfest and the resulting beer consumption has a tendency to bring out the jocularity in some people and the worst in others. Many, but not all, seem to be quite drunk and extremely loud. It's pretty hard to ignore.
Riding the train during Oktoberfest is an interesting experience. The trains are quite full and very festive. There was one day when I spent 8 hours on the train going to and from Salzburg. The ride down was uneventful, except for a group of Chinese students who were being quite silly. The return trip was anything but peaceful. There was an extremely noisy bunch of Irish, yelling and blowing a train whistle from Salzburg to Munich. You could hear the collective sigh of relief when they disembarked. I was looking forward to a quiet ride up to Nuremberg but sadly it was not to be.
The man had spent the entire day at Oktoberfest. It was now mid-evening. He was by his own barely coherent admission very inebriated. To add to this, he also spoke in dialect. I understand a modest amount of German, but I struggle with dialect, and drunken dialect was the proverbial double whammy. On top of this, he had decided to do his part to promote world peace by striking up a conversation. I might add that he spoke/understood very little English. It was a match made in hell.
At the end of the valiant effort to communicate we had come to the following conclusions:

Bavaria: Good
Germany: Bad
New Jersey likes Bavaria
New Jersey KISSES Bavaria
Trees are green.
Beer is good.
Bavarian beer is best.
He was 44 years old.
Either that or he has 44 ears.
Bush is bad.
Hillary is good.
Chicago?

It was the high point of the other travelers evening to be sure. It certainly was entertaining.