I come from a land down under, where beer does flow and men chunder
Going to replace the music soon, so if you still wanted any from the last post, grab it. Other than that, not much interesting to say. But there’s a lot of it!
Last Friday, I ended up being drafted to attend an Emmylou Harris concert, which I went to with a lot of ill grace and muttering, not because I dislike Emmylou Harris, but more because I had just gotten home from work and was looking forward to slouching around in sweatpants. I ended up being rather glad I went though, because she put on a hell of a show. She also had her act opened by Teddy Thompson, who bothered me through his entire set because I knew that I knew his name from somewhere and just couldn’t put my finger on it. And also, he was singing fairly country and bluegrass-type sort of music in a generic-country accent, but he spoke with a British accent, which was kind of confusing.
Finally, near the end of his set, it hit me. “That’s the guy from the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack!” I said very loudly, and promptly got glared at by the elderly couple sitting next to me.
But yeah. He’s the guy who sings “I Don’t Want To Say Goodbye” on the BBM soundtrack. He also sang “King of the Road” with Rufus Wainwright. It’s hard to explain how weird it is, unless you listen to “I Don’t Want To Say Goodbye” and then instantly follow it up with hearing him say something in his normal speaking voice. But he was a good performer, and fairly decent-looking, so all in all it was a pleasant experience.
Emmylou Harris did a lot of covers, but she has a fantastic voice. I think my top favorites out of her set were “Red Dirt Girl”, “Michelangelo”, and “Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby” which you might remember from O Brother Where Art Thou. And man, she and her other two singers just belted that one out. It was amazing.
On Saturday, I went to a tailgate party for the UM vs. NCS game, because I like to cheer for the Terps. It was pretty much exactly what I expected, which was a lot of barbecue and cars and hundreds of UM students dressed in red and black, milling around a parking lot and rip-roaring drunk at nine in the morning. We cooked far more food than we could ever eat, drank far more beer than was probably strictly wise, and loudly urged Maryland to beat the snot out of North Carolina. (And they did win, as a matter of fact.)
One of the members of our tailgate party was terribly hungover from an event the night before and visited the woods several times. On our way out of the game, we had to pull over for him again so he could throw up on the side of the road. Dozens of cars full of only slightly-more sober University of Maryland students cheered and honked their horns for him as they drove by. He gave them all a brave thumbs-up even as he was tossing chunks.
On Sunday, I went to a farm, bought pumpkins and taunted a territorial llama, which is pretty much all you need to know about that.
I like visiting that farm though, because they always do themselves up very elaborately for Halloween: haunted house/barn, hayrides, maze of straw bales, apple fritters, etc. It’s a little different to go back and realize that the once-mighty maze now only comes up to your waist, but I still get nostalgic visiting them.
I think I only have four more days of Czeck Hijinks to yak about after this. To be honest, I didn’t expect myself to get even this far. I thought I’d cop out after the first three days.
I woke up the morning after the wedding feeling like something that had been scraped off the bottom of someone’s shoe. Oozed out of bed and into the shower, where I sort of sat down and zoned out for a while. I had a killer sore throat, and wedding-unrelated revelry had woken me several times in the night.
The entire family was in a huge rush to check out of the hotel, so it was all arguing, packing, and rushing down eyeball-decorated hallways and trying to avoid bashing into the creepy tree with a rolling suitcase because God only knows what forces of darkness that would have released. My father and two other brothers were going to drive back to Prague and fly home the next day; my mother and I were going to stay for another couple of days. So, I oozed back out of the shower, packed up, and then very stupidly went to check on my parents which meant I got roped into last minute gift-assembly, since we were going to go have lunch with the newlyweds and the new in-laws before everyone scattered to the hills.
Met up with Nick in the Square and walked along the river to the restaurant where we were meeting everyone. It was nice, actually, because now that the whole damn thing was over, we could all look at each other and breathe easily, knowing we were all shackled together for better or for worse. The newlyweds looked very happy and were sitting maybe an eighth of an inch apart.
More schnitzel for lunch. Beer seemed like a terrible idea, so I skipped it for water. I never did get used to the carbonated water. “Without gas” was one of the first things I tried to get my brother to teach me to say in Czech. Dalibor brought his laptop and burned a copy of all the pictures he had taken and downloaded from his digital camera.
Since the table was again arranged with the parents and the couple at the head and the rest of us sort of scattered below, we had a decent range of conversation going on that went from the best way to kill a Christmas carp to horror films. For a good chunk of the meal we ended up talking about horror movies that involve killer animals, and trying to explain the nuances of films like Tremors and Deep Blue Sea in broken Czenglish. This is something that involves a lot of mime and bizarre hand gestures, and is somewhat difficult. Because, I mean. How exactly do you translate or communicate the idea of “giant blind underground worms with tentacles in their mouth that later turn into a lot of smaller blind hopping monsters with lots of teeth and heat-vision that later turn into smaller blind hopping monsters with lots of teeth and heat vision and wings”? Then, the resulting argument over whether the transition of underground monsters to flying monsters was symbolically significant, or just plain stupid.
Hell, trying to work that one out makes miming “super-intelligent sharks eat Sam Jackson” look easy.
Anyway. When my mother married my father, my aunts presented her with a jade ring. This was tradition, sort of. They also did the whole Chinese tea ceremony and everything at their wedding; my mother’s side of the family looking on in polite beswogglement.
(And man, looking at the pictures, that was an interesting state of affairs when it comes to cultural divide. China meets Ireland. They also did the “whole roast pig” as a part of wedding tradition; however, the pig was too big to fit into the oven, had to be chainsawed in half, cooked in two separate ovens, and then reattached on the platter with a parley belt to futilely cover up the divide. The funny thing was, though, that one of my uncles marinated his half of the pig with something different, so the pig in the picture is noticeably two-toned. This was probably a metaphor.)
Anyway, my mother got it in her head that my other brothers and I should do the same thing and also give the bride a jade ring. (“Isn’t the ring something that the groom supplies?” I asked in confusion. “Go buy a damn ring,” she told me.) So, like, two days before we flew to the Czech Republic in the first place, I found myself in front of some tiny old Chinese lady in a hole-in-the-wall jewelry store, dickering for a ring. Dickering prices is not my strong point.
I put it off as long as I possibly could-the night before at the wedding I had “forgotten” the ring at the hotel, and was thus unable to present it to her at the wedding banquet itself in front of everyone-but eventually I got tired of having my leg kicked or being significantly coughed at, so I stood up and banged on a glass a few times.
I had written my toast/speech on a piece of hotel paper, forgotten it of course, and so stumbled through a bunch of stuff about traditions and surprises and how I’d always wanted a sister until I got tired of mucking it up so badly, and basically just thrust the ring in its box at her and fled back to my seat. So that was that, and at least I didn’t have to do it in Czech or in front of more than a dozen people, and that’s what counts. I chalk it up as a victory.
After lunch, we needed to kill some more time, so we drove to Holasovice, a preserved example of a traditional central European village that was a bit outside of České Budějovice. It has a large wooden statue of a Christ with a barbed wire crown, and another statue of a dwarflike man, the most outstanding features of which I remember were that he had four toes on each foot and appeared to be clutching a beer stein. I’m sure he was historically significant somehow. The town was nice, but a little creepy in its utter Pleasantvilleness.
My father and brothers took off, and my oldest brother and the bride got my mother and me to the train station. My mother had gotten it in her head that we absolutely needed to visit Vienna or our trip would be somehow incomplete. I was dubious, but it was an opportunity to get Louise another condom, and I wasn’t calling much of the shots on the trip anyway, so: Vienna it was. Except that involved navigating the train system with a suitcase, which I never want to do again, ever.
We were set to transfer in Gmünd. The train ride went through some beautiful scenery and several goat farms, but I was too busy coughing my lungs out, scribbling down filthy dialogue for an Oz piece, and being mildly terrified that we were going to miss our transfer point since the trains only stop for, like, a minute at each station so you really need to know what station you’re at and whether you’re getting on or off, and trying to lug a suitcase with you just doesn’t help.
My mother refused to worry, which was probably smart on her part, but I got to be self-righteous when she fell asleep and I had to wake her up and navigate us both off at Gmünd, about thirty seconds before the transferring train took off. Fortunately, the conductor was extremely kind, figured out very quickly that we were stupid tourists, and went out of his way to make sure we knew where we were going, when to get off, and what train we should take on the way back. Good man. This would have been terribly helpful if my mother hadn't accidentally told him the wrong day we were returning, thus rendering his whole slew of schedule information useless.
My brother had set us on the train with instructions along the line of “Ride the train, transfer at Gmünd, go to the information desk when you get to the station at Vienna, find out which train you’ll be taking back, and then call me so I can have Nick meet you at the station when you come back.” Which was pretty much as useful as his instructions for doing scripture reading at the wedding, since we got into the train station at night and the place was dead, not to mention lacking an easily identifiable info desk. Or a bathroom you could get into without having coins on hand.
So, instead, we used an ATM to get a few euros, went out, and I was again unable to practice my taxi hailing skills because one was idling right there at the curb. Rode to the Marriot, over-tipped the driver, who had previously been uninterested in our state of affairs, but then sprang to carry our bags. I was yanking the bag up towards the stairs, thinking only of getting in to find a bathroom, the driver was running after me and trying to get the bag away so he could carry it, and then I hear an extremely broad southern accent go, “Ah’ll help ya with that, miss!”
And this guy in jeans strolls up the sidewalk and makes for my suitcase at the same time as the driver, and then there was a very few confusing moments where everyone was going for the suitcase at once, and finally the driver won and triumphantly heaved it up the last three steps. He paused to gloat for a second, and then went back for my mother’s suitcase.
And I, ridiculously happy to hear an American accent, gawped for a second and then we shook hands in thanks. “I guess I can figure out where you’re from,” I said.
“Well, Ah’m from Kentucky, miss,” he said, and we chatted a bit while getting the second suitcase up. My mother checked us in, I changed some more money, made a break for the bathroom, and then died on the bed for a while, only reviving long enough to eat an overpriced hotel sandwich and drink a Sprite. It tastes a bit tarter over there, not as sweet. My mother was talking the whole time about what tours we should do because we only had one day, I was grunting things that passed for agreement, and I vaguely remember her calling down to the desk to make sure we’d have tickets to the tour I had apparently agreed to. Then, a whole lot of nothing because I fell asleep to avoid my throat feeling like it was full of broken glass.
In the morning, the alarm went off at six. I swatted ineffectually to make it stop and whanged my hand on three different lamps in the process; Marriot is big on oddly-situated lamps. Throat still hurting like a bitch, getting a fever. Breakfast almost made up for it though, because they had fantastic croissants with chocolate in them, and I ended up meeting a terribly nice middle-aged black gay couple named Ed and Willie who were also from Maryland-Baltimore, actually.
(You know, it’s almost election time again, and so all the politicians are doing their mudslinging commercials on television. When the one that Ehrlich sponsors which rags on O’Malley comes on, it always runs through a bunch of statistics about homicide and murder, but it always has the opposite effect when watched, or at least on those who’ve been in my presence when it airs. “Baltimore is six times deadlier than New York? Ha! In your face, New York! How d’you like them apples?”)
Anyway, Ed and Willie turned out to both work for BWI, had been around the world quite a few times, and were touring around Vienna as well before heading back to London. There was another tour group at the hotel who were also going around; it’s funny how perfectly clear all the different accents jumped out after hearing nothing but Czech for the past week. California, New York, Boston, Texas, Georgia, all of them distinct and easy to pick out. I suppose your hearing for that sort of thing gets hyper-sensitive after being isolated for a while.
The bus eventually came to take us to another bus station where the tour would actually begin. We had arranged to go on a bus tour of the main parts of the city, then took you on a walking tour of Schönbrunn palace, and finished off by dumping you at the opera house. The bus driver was mildly crazy, honking wildly and shaking his fist at young girls on bicycles, old ladies on crosswalks, and things that I think only he could see. But he got us there, and we all lined up dutifully to get on the next bus.
Signs I misread and caused me to double-take while the bus was tear-assing through Vienna:
“Kunst & Kultur”
“Weiner Spezialitaten”
The word “wiener” is everywhere on signs in Vienna. It’s kind of great. The German language is a lot easier for me to figure out than the Czech language, probably because of it being closer to the Romance languages I’ve studied. But all the words are so damn long. You get the impression that when all the languages were being created and parceled out, German went around and took way more than its fair share.
GERMAN: *sidles up to Czech* Hey. Hey you. Yeah, you. Gimme some vowels.
CZECH: What?
GERMAN: C’mon, let me have some vowels.
CZECH: No way.
GERMAN: Oh yeah, mein freund?
*German quickly looks around, beats the everliving shit out of Czech, and takes its vowels*
*Czech lies on the ground, clutching itself in pain and groaning*
GERMAN: *sidles up to French* Hey. Hey you. Gimme some consonants.
FRENCH: Quois?
And so forth. And that is why some languages seem to have unequal distribution of vowels and/or consonants: German got to them beforehand, and probably took their lunch money too. Hell, I bet that’s what happened to those native African dialects that seem to be composed solely of clicking and buzzing; German decided to just take everything. Man, that German.
The tour was pretty much Cliff Notes for Vienna. Schönbrunn was nice, but again, there’s only so long you can look at Very Important furniture and paintings before it starts to lose its charm. After a while, I had to get my kicks by predicting which people who were trying to take covert cell phone pictures were going to get busted by the guards first. There were, of course, interesting things at the palace, one of which was the room of infinite riches, or something like that. The way that works is that there are these two mirrors lined up so that if you stand at a certain point on the floor and hold up a coin, you see it reflected back in infinite succession.
The gardens are lovely, but you don’t have much time to explore. We had to do a windsprint back to the bus. In order to reward the whole group for making it back on time, the tour guide sang a Bavarian song about a love triangle, or possibly a quadrangle. It was kind of awkward, but he seemed to be having a good time, so hey. Sing on, man.
The bus dumps you at the opera house, the tour guide stops singing, and everyone flees the bus in a stampede. We ended up having lunch at the Sachar hotel and trying their famous chocolate cake, which was nice but not something I’d kill a man for. I mean, maybe for a lot of cake, but it would have to be a pretty bad guy. And they’d have to give me extra whipped cream. Everyone had been urging us to try and find the Demels restaurant/coffeehouse, which was apparently much better.
After that, it was all about finding Stephansdom so we could wander around the cathedral built to honor the first martyr who gave literal definition to the phrase “Rocks fall! Everyone dies!” As usual, good stuff: lots of paintings and sculptures, although none were as gruesome as the ones Louise and I saw back in Rome. My mother asked if I preferred to climb to the top of the cathedral or go through the catacombs; again, I drew on my experiences with Louise from Rome and voted for the catacombs. There is much less climbing involved with catacombs. On the other hand, there’s always the potential of zombies but: less climbing. I was also feeling pretty damn sick by that point, and figured it would be more convenient for everyone involved if I happened to drop dead in the catacombs instead of the roof.
So, we went down on a tour of the catacombs, and it was cool enough to make me stop contemplating my own death and think about other people being dead instead. The tour guide was from Germany, and was really gung-ho about the whole death thing. They have a lot of urns filled with various anatomical bits of the royalty, but by far the more impressive rooms are the ones filled with the bones of plague victims. Bones just piled everywhere: heaps of tibias, mounds of femurs, skulls popping up and lining the walls like strange mushrooms.
It was just as dark and creepy as the St. Sebastian catacombs, but at least I didn’t have to worry about Louise going off on her own and accidentally waking up some ancient curse. I didn’t wander away at all on this tour; I was afraid the extremely zealous tour-guide would make me do pushups. He seemed the type.
He also told us a story about a musician named Augustin from back in the Plague times who cheered people up by playing his bagpipes, because nothing cheers an expiring plague victim like a jaunty bagpipe tune. Augustin got drunk one night, tripped over a curb, knocked himself unconscious, and was therefore accidentally buried alive in one of the plague victim mass-burial pits. When he woke up, he was understandably somewhat confused and freaked out, but he started playing his bagpipes, which eventually alerted diggers to the fact he was alive. Augustin was retrieved from the pit and lived a long life, even though he had been wallowing in corpses. Eventually, he had a monument built for him.
The lesson of this story is that you should always carry a set of bagpipes with you wherever you go. And try not to pass out anywhere that people can easily bury you alive. Staunch life lessons, those.
Oh, and while the Jesuses (seriously, should that be Jesuii?) of Prague looked very angry, the Jesuses of Vienna looked very unhappy. The Jesuses of Rome were more relaxed looking. I compare Jesuses, beer, toilets, and gelato all over the world. Speaking of which, Vienna has a lot of gelato places, and we stopped for some. Featured flavors: coconut and Nutella. A surprisingly palatable combination.
The rest of the day in Vienna was mostly spent walking around, shopping, and getting lost every few blocks just to shake things up. Occasionally, I would pause to either hawk up snot or whine about my throat hurting; my mother, being a nurse, just told me to suck it up.
THORNE: I just coughed up blood.
MOTHER: Only a little. That’s nothing compared to the plague victims.
THORNE: I think I’m running a fever.
MOTHER: Walking is good for fevers.
THORNE: Gonna faint.
MOTHER: I think I see another historically significant building.
THORNE: I shall die, and then you’ll have to fill out a lot of paperwork at Customs, and then you’ll be sorry.
We finally found Demels-fifteen minutes after it had closed. If you were listening closely on October 25 at about a quarter past seven in the evening UTC/GMT, and you heard a faint “GODDAMNIT!” echo around the world, that was probably me.
Out of sheer dumb luck, we ended up back at the Lipizzaner training school and oriented ourselves using that. From there, it was a quick walk to the St. Michael’s cathedral, and twigcollins, you seriously would have loved it. It’s a beautiful cathedral, and there’s an awesome sculpture of St. Michael duking it out with Lucifer.
So, we lit candles, tiptoed around in the dusk-dimmed room, and there was a book you could sign with your name and any peace wishes you wanted to make. I signed it, was relieved when it didn’t burst into flame, and let my mother know about it. She went in to sign it, I went to look at some postcards to see if there were any Louise would like, and, uh… Some stuff happened. And, uh. Yeah. Uh.
Now, no one can say that I don’t own a piece of St. Michael’s cathedral floor.
After that, we went out to find a place to eat, paused to stare at the plague victim monument, and ended up at a Hungarian café for soup and goulash. Two thumbs up for quality and quantity. After that, we went back out to the Hoffburg palace, and I successfully hailed a taxi. I was so excited by the utter success of my Hitler Arm Heil that I was hard-pressed not to add a Pelvic Thrust Of Victory to it.
So, we rode back and packed our suitcases up again. Because we weren’t sure about the train schedule, we were getting up at five in order to make sure not to miss the train we were sort of sure that we were supposed to maybe kind of be on. We arranged for a taxi to meet us at five thirty. Mostly, I remember going to sleep muttering about how someone would pay for this.
And I’ve been tagging after the meme bandwagon, whining “Wait up, guys, wait up!” because I want to do the one I’ve seen surfacing on several of the journals on my f-list.
Comment with the name/title of a fandom, no matter how obvious you think the answers will be, and I'll reply you with the relationships -canon or not - from it I ship. I'll give favorite romantic relationships as well as favorite platonic ones. Also, you're free to reply in subthreads and ask me why I ship or don't ship something.
Mostly I just want an excuse to talk about stuff. And I’ll add the caveat that I’m at least aware of a lot of fandoms, even if I haven’t ever mentioned them, so, you know, feel free to try something even if you don’t think I know it. I’ll let you know if I don’t, or maybe just make something up. If I know your original universe, feel free to ask that.
Back to fighting Pale Sky now.
Last Friday, I ended up being drafted to attend an Emmylou Harris concert, which I went to with a lot of ill grace and muttering, not because I dislike Emmylou Harris, but more because I had just gotten home from work and was looking forward to slouching around in sweatpants. I ended up being rather glad I went though, because she put on a hell of a show. She also had her act opened by Teddy Thompson, who bothered me through his entire set because I knew that I knew his name from somewhere and just couldn’t put my finger on it. And also, he was singing fairly country and bluegrass-type sort of music in a generic-country accent, but he spoke with a British accent, which was kind of confusing.
Finally, near the end of his set, it hit me. “That’s the guy from the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack!” I said very loudly, and promptly got glared at by the elderly couple sitting next to me.
But yeah. He’s the guy who sings “I Don’t Want To Say Goodbye” on the BBM soundtrack. He also sang “King of the Road” with Rufus Wainwright. It’s hard to explain how weird it is, unless you listen to “I Don’t Want To Say Goodbye” and then instantly follow it up with hearing him say something in his normal speaking voice. But he was a good performer, and fairly decent-looking, so all in all it was a pleasant experience.
Emmylou Harris did a lot of covers, but she has a fantastic voice. I think my top favorites out of her set were “Red Dirt Girl”, “Michelangelo”, and “Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby” which you might remember from O Brother Where Art Thou. And man, she and her other two singers just belted that one out. It was amazing.
On Saturday, I went to a tailgate party for the UM vs. NCS game, because I like to cheer for the Terps. It was pretty much exactly what I expected, which was a lot of barbecue and cars and hundreds of UM students dressed in red and black, milling around a parking lot and rip-roaring drunk at nine in the morning. We cooked far more food than we could ever eat, drank far more beer than was probably strictly wise, and loudly urged Maryland to beat the snot out of North Carolina. (And they did win, as a matter of fact.)
One of the members of our tailgate party was terribly hungover from an event the night before and visited the woods several times. On our way out of the game, we had to pull over for him again so he could throw up on the side of the road. Dozens of cars full of only slightly-more sober University of Maryland students cheered and honked their horns for him as they drove by. He gave them all a brave thumbs-up even as he was tossing chunks.
On Sunday, I went to a farm, bought pumpkins and taunted a territorial llama, which is pretty much all you need to know about that.
I like visiting that farm though, because they always do themselves up very elaborately for Halloween: haunted house/barn, hayrides, maze of straw bales, apple fritters, etc. It’s a little different to go back and realize that the once-mighty maze now only comes up to your waist, but I still get nostalgic visiting them.
I think I only have four more days of Czeck Hijinks to yak about after this. To be honest, I didn’t expect myself to get even this far. I thought I’d cop out after the first three days.
I woke up the morning after the wedding feeling like something that had been scraped off the bottom of someone’s shoe. Oozed out of bed and into the shower, where I sort of sat down and zoned out for a while. I had a killer sore throat, and wedding-unrelated revelry had woken me several times in the night.
The entire family was in a huge rush to check out of the hotel, so it was all arguing, packing, and rushing down eyeball-decorated hallways and trying to avoid bashing into the creepy tree with a rolling suitcase because God only knows what forces of darkness that would have released. My father and two other brothers were going to drive back to Prague and fly home the next day; my mother and I were going to stay for another couple of days. So, I oozed back out of the shower, packed up, and then very stupidly went to check on my parents which meant I got roped into last minute gift-assembly, since we were going to go have lunch with the newlyweds and the new in-laws before everyone scattered to the hills.
Met up with Nick in the Square and walked along the river to the restaurant where we were meeting everyone. It was nice, actually, because now that the whole damn thing was over, we could all look at each other and breathe easily, knowing we were all shackled together for better or for worse. The newlyweds looked very happy and were sitting maybe an eighth of an inch apart.
More schnitzel for lunch. Beer seemed like a terrible idea, so I skipped it for water. I never did get used to the carbonated water. “Without gas” was one of the first things I tried to get my brother to teach me to say in Czech. Dalibor brought his laptop and burned a copy of all the pictures he had taken and downloaded from his digital camera.
Since the table was again arranged with the parents and the couple at the head and the rest of us sort of scattered below, we had a decent range of conversation going on that went from the best way to kill a Christmas carp to horror films. For a good chunk of the meal we ended up talking about horror movies that involve killer animals, and trying to explain the nuances of films like Tremors and Deep Blue Sea in broken Czenglish. This is something that involves a lot of mime and bizarre hand gestures, and is somewhat difficult. Because, I mean. How exactly do you translate or communicate the idea of “giant blind underground worms with tentacles in their mouth that later turn into a lot of smaller blind hopping monsters with lots of teeth and heat-vision that later turn into smaller blind hopping monsters with lots of teeth and heat vision and wings”? Then, the resulting argument over whether the transition of underground monsters to flying monsters was symbolically significant, or just plain stupid.
Hell, trying to work that one out makes miming “super-intelligent sharks eat Sam Jackson” look easy.
Anyway. When my mother married my father, my aunts presented her with a jade ring. This was tradition, sort of. They also did the whole Chinese tea ceremony and everything at their wedding; my mother’s side of the family looking on in polite beswogglement.
(And man, looking at the pictures, that was an interesting state of affairs when it comes to cultural divide. China meets Ireland. They also did the “whole roast pig” as a part of wedding tradition; however, the pig was too big to fit into the oven, had to be chainsawed in half, cooked in two separate ovens, and then reattached on the platter with a parley belt to futilely cover up the divide. The funny thing was, though, that one of my uncles marinated his half of the pig with something different, so the pig in the picture is noticeably two-toned. This was probably a metaphor.)
Anyway, my mother got it in her head that my other brothers and I should do the same thing and also give the bride a jade ring. (“Isn’t the ring something that the groom supplies?” I asked in confusion. “Go buy a damn ring,” she told me.) So, like, two days before we flew to the Czech Republic in the first place, I found myself in front of some tiny old Chinese lady in a hole-in-the-wall jewelry store, dickering for a ring. Dickering prices is not my strong point.
I put it off as long as I possibly could-the night before at the wedding I had “forgotten” the ring at the hotel, and was thus unable to present it to her at the wedding banquet itself in front of everyone-but eventually I got tired of having my leg kicked or being significantly coughed at, so I stood up and banged on a glass a few times.
I had written my toast/speech on a piece of hotel paper, forgotten it of course, and so stumbled through a bunch of stuff about traditions and surprises and how I’d always wanted a sister until I got tired of mucking it up so badly, and basically just thrust the ring in its box at her and fled back to my seat. So that was that, and at least I didn’t have to do it in Czech or in front of more than a dozen people, and that’s what counts. I chalk it up as a victory.
After lunch, we needed to kill some more time, so we drove to Holasovice, a preserved example of a traditional central European village that was a bit outside of České Budějovice. It has a large wooden statue of a Christ with a barbed wire crown, and another statue of a dwarflike man, the most outstanding features of which I remember were that he had four toes on each foot and appeared to be clutching a beer stein. I’m sure he was historically significant somehow. The town was nice, but a little creepy in its utter Pleasantvilleness.
My father and brothers took off, and my oldest brother and the bride got my mother and me to the train station. My mother had gotten it in her head that we absolutely needed to visit Vienna or our trip would be somehow incomplete. I was dubious, but it was an opportunity to get Louise another condom, and I wasn’t calling much of the shots on the trip anyway, so: Vienna it was. Except that involved navigating the train system with a suitcase, which I never want to do again, ever.
We were set to transfer in Gmünd. The train ride went through some beautiful scenery and several goat farms, but I was too busy coughing my lungs out, scribbling down filthy dialogue for an Oz piece, and being mildly terrified that we were going to miss our transfer point since the trains only stop for, like, a minute at each station so you really need to know what station you’re at and whether you’re getting on or off, and trying to lug a suitcase with you just doesn’t help.
My mother refused to worry, which was probably smart on her part, but I got to be self-righteous when she fell asleep and I had to wake her up and navigate us both off at Gmünd, about thirty seconds before the transferring train took off. Fortunately, the conductor was extremely kind, figured out very quickly that we were stupid tourists, and went out of his way to make sure we knew where we were going, when to get off, and what train we should take on the way back. Good man. This would have been terribly helpful if my mother hadn't accidentally told him the wrong day we were returning, thus rendering his whole slew of schedule information useless.
My brother had set us on the train with instructions along the line of “Ride the train, transfer at Gmünd, go to the information desk when you get to the station at Vienna, find out which train you’ll be taking back, and then call me so I can have Nick meet you at the station when you come back.” Which was pretty much as useful as his instructions for doing scripture reading at the wedding, since we got into the train station at night and the place was dead, not to mention lacking an easily identifiable info desk. Or a bathroom you could get into without having coins on hand.
So, instead, we used an ATM to get a few euros, went out, and I was again unable to practice my taxi hailing skills because one was idling right there at the curb. Rode to the Marriot, over-tipped the driver, who had previously been uninterested in our state of affairs, but then sprang to carry our bags. I was yanking the bag up towards the stairs, thinking only of getting in to find a bathroom, the driver was running after me and trying to get the bag away so he could carry it, and then I hear an extremely broad southern accent go, “Ah’ll help ya with that, miss!”
And this guy in jeans strolls up the sidewalk and makes for my suitcase at the same time as the driver, and then there was a very few confusing moments where everyone was going for the suitcase at once, and finally the driver won and triumphantly heaved it up the last three steps. He paused to gloat for a second, and then went back for my mother’s suitcase.
And I, ridiculously happy to hear an American accent, gawped for a second and then we shook hands in thanks. “I guess I can figure out where you’re from,” I said.
“Well, Ah’m from Kentucky, miss,” he said, and we chatted a bit while getting the second suitcase up. My mother checked us in, I changed some more money, made a break for the bathroom, and then died on the bed for a while, only reviving long enough to eat an overpriced hotel sandwich and drink a Sprite. It tastes a bit tarter over there, not as sweet. My mother was talking the whole time about what tours we should do because we only had one day, I was grunting things that passed for agreement, and I vaguely remember her calling down to the desk to make sure we’d have tickets to the tour I had apparently agreed to. Then, a whole lot of nothing because I fell asleep to avoid my throat feeling like it was full of broken glass.
In the morning, the alarm went off at six. I swatted ineffectually to make it stop and whanged my hand on three different lamps in the process; Marriot is big on oddly-situated lamps. Throat still hurting like a bitch, getting a fever. Breakfast almost made up for it though, because they had fantastic croissants with chocolate in them, and I ended up meeting a terribly nice middle-aged black gay couple named Ed and Willie who were also from Maryland-Baltimore, actually.
(You know, it’s almost election time again, and so all the politicians are doing their mudslinging commercials on television. When the one that Ehrlich sponsors which rags on O’Malley comes on, it always runs through a bunch of statistics about homicide and murder, but it always has the opposite effect when watched, or at least on those who’ve been in my presence when it airs. “Baltimore is six times deadlier than New York? Ha! In your face, New York! How d’you like them apples?”)
Anyway, Ed and Willie turned out to both work for BWI, had been around the world quite a few times, and were touring around Vienna as well before heading back to London. There was another tour group at the hotel who were also going around; it’s funny how perfectly clear all the different accents jumped out after hearing nothing but Czech for the past week. California, New York, Boston, Texas, Georgia, all of them distinct and easy to pick out. I suppose your hearing for that sort of thing gets hyper-sensitive after being isolated for a while.
The bus eventually came to take us to another bus station where the tour would actually begin. We had arranged to go on a bus tour of the main parts of the city, then took you on a walking tour of Schönbrunn palace, and finished off by dumping you at the opera house. The bus driver was mildly crazy, honking wildly and shaking his fist at young girls on bicycles, old ladies on crosswalks, and things that I think only he could see. But he got us there, and we all lined up dutifully to get on the next bus.
Signs I misread and caused me to double-take while the bus was tear-assing through Vienna:
“Kunst & Kultur”
“Weiner Spezialitaten”
The word “wiener” is everywhere on signs in Vienna. It’s kind of great. The German language is a lot easier for me to figure out than the Czech language, probably because of it being closer to the Romance languages I’ve studied. But all the words are so damn long. You get the impression that when all the languages were being created and parceled out, German went around and took way more than its fair share.
GERMAN: *sidles up to Czech* Hey. Hey you. Yeah, you. Gimme some vowels.
CZECH: What?
GERMAN: C’mon, let me have some vowels.
CZECH: No way.
GERMAN: Oh yeah, mein freund?
*German quickly looks around, beats the everliving shit out of Czech, and takes its vowels*
*Czech lies on the ground, clutching itself in pain and groaning*
GERMAN: *sidles up to French* Hey. Hey you. Gimme some consonants.
FRENCH: Quois?
And so forth. And that is why some languages seem to have unequal distribution of vowels and/or consonants: German got to them beforehand, and probably took their lunch money too. Hell, I bet that’s what happened to those native African dialects that seem to be composed solely of clicking and buzzing; German decided to just take everything. Man, that German.
The tour was pretty much Cliff Notes for Vienna. Schönbrunn was nice, but again, there’s only so long you can look at Very Important furniture and paintings before it starts to lose its charm. After a while, I had to get my kicks by predicting which people who were trying to take covert cell phone pictures were going to get busted by the guards first. There were, of course, interesting things at the palace, one of which was the room of infinite riches, or something like that. The way that works is that there are these two mirrors lined up so that if you stand at a certain point on the floor and hold up a coin, you see it reflected back in infinite succession.
The gardens are lovely, but you don’t have much time to explore. We had to do a windsprint back to the bus. In order to reward the whole group for making it back on time, the tour guide sang a Bavarian song about a love triangle, or possibly a quadrangle. It was kind of awkward, but he seemed to be having a good time, so hey. Sing on, man.
The bus dumps you at the opera house, the tour guide stops singing, and everyone flees the bus in a stampede. We ended up having lunch at the Sachar hotel and trying their famous chocolate cake, which was nice but not something I’d kill a man for. I mean, maybe for a lot of cake, but it would have to be a pretty bad guy. And they’d have to give me extra whipped cream. Everyone had been urging us to try and find the Demels restaurant/coffeehouse, which was apparently much better.
After that, it was all about finding Stephansdom so we could wander around the cathedral built to honor the first martyr who gave literal definition to the phrase “Rocks fall! Everyone dies!” As usual, good stuff: lots of paintings and sculptures, although none were as gruesome as the ones Louise and I saw back in Rome. My mother asked if I preferred to climb to the top of the cathedral or go through the catacombs; again, I drew on my experiences with Louise from Rome and voted for the catacombs. There is much less climbing involved with catacombs. On the other hand, there’s always the potential of zombies but: less climbing. I was also feeling pretty damn sick by that point, and figured it would be more convenient for everyone involved if I happened to drop dead in the catacombs instead of the roof.
So, we went down on a tour of the catacombs, and it was cool enough to make me stop contemplating my own death and think about other people being dead instead. The tour guide was from Germany, and was really gung-ho about the whole death thing. They have a lot of urns filled with various anatomical bits of the royalty, but by far the more impressive rooms are the ones filled with the bones of plague victims. Bones just piled everywhere: heaps of tibias, mounds of femurs, skulls popping up and lining the walls like strange mushrooms.
It was just as dark and creepy as the St. Sebastian catacombs, but at least I didn’t have to worry about Louise going off on her own and accidentally waking up some ancient curse. I didn’t wander away at all on this tour; I was afraid the extremely zealous tour-guide would make me do pushups. He seemed the type.
He also told us a story about a musician named Augustin from back in the Plague times who cheered people up by playing his bagpipes, because nothing cheers an expiring plague victim like a jaunty bagpipe tune. Augustin got drunk one night, tripped over a curb, knocked himself unconscious, and was therefore accidentally buried alive in one of the plague victim mass-burial pits. When he woke up, he was understandably somewhat confused and freaked out, but he started playing his bagpipes, which eventually alerted diggers to the fact he was alive. Augustin was retrieved from the pit and lived a long life, even though he had been wallowing in corpses. Eventually, he had a monument built for him.
The lesson of this story is that you should always carry a set of bagpipes with you wherever you go. And try not to pass out anywhere that people can easily bury you alive. Staunch life lessons, those.
Oh, and while the Jesuses (seriously, should that be Jesuii?) of Prague looked very angry, the Jesuses of Vienna looked very unhappy. The Jesuses of Rome were more relaxed looking. I compare Jesuses, beer, toilets, and gelato all over the world. Speaking of which, Vienna has a lot of gelato places, and we stopped for some. Featured flavors: coconut and Nutella. A surprisingly palatable combination.
The rest of the day in Vienna was mostly spent walking around, shopping, and getting lost every few blocks just to shake things up. Occasionally, I would pause to either hawk up snot or whine about my throat hurting; my mother, being a nurse, just told me to suck it up.
THORNE: I just coughed up blood.
MOTHER: Only a little. That’s nothing compared to the plague victims.
THORNE: I think I’m running a fever.
MOTHER: Walking is good for fevers.
THORNE: Gonna faint.
MOTHER: I think I see another historically significant building.
THORNE: I shall die, and then you’ll have to fill out a lot of paperwork at Customs, and then you’ll be sorry.
We finally found Demels-fifteen minutes after it had closed. If you were listening closely on October 25 at about a quarter past seven in the evening UTC/GMT, and you heard a faint “GODDAMNIT!” echo around the world, that was probably me.
Out of sheer dumb luck, we ended up back at the Lipizzaner training school and oriented ourselves using that. From there, it was a quick walk to the St. Michael’s cathedral, and twigcollins, you seriously would have loved it. It’s a beautiful cathedral, and there’s an awesome sculpture of St. Michael duking it out with Lucifer.
So, we lit candles, tiptoed around in the dusk-dimmed room, and there was a book you could sign with your name and any peace wishes you wanted to make. I signed it, was relieved when it didn’t burst into flame, and let my mother know about it. She went in to sign it, I went to look at some postcards to see if there were any Louise would like, and, uh… Some stuff happened. And, uh. Yeah. Uh.
Now, no one can say that I don’t own a piece of St. Michael’s cathedral floor.
After that, we went out to find a place to eat, paused to stare at the plague victim monument, and ended up at a Hungarian café for soup and goulash. Two thumbs up for quality and quantity. After that, we went back out to the Hoffburg palace, and I successfully hailed a taxi. I was so excited by the utter success of my Hitler Arm Heil that I was hard-pressed not to add a Pelvic Thrust Of Victory to it.
So, we rode back and packed our suitcases up again. Because we weren’t sure about the train schedule, we were getting up at five in order to make sure not to miss the train we were sort of sure that we were supposed to maybe kind of be on. We arranged for a taxi to meet us at five thirty. Mostly, I remember going to sleep muttering about how someone would pay for this.
And I’ve been tagging after the meme bandwagon, whining “Wait up, guys, wait up!” because I want to do the one I’ve seen surfacing on several of the journals on my f-list.
Comment with the name/title of a fandom, no matter how obvious you think the answers will be, and I'll reply you with the relationships -canon or not - from it I ship. I'll give favorite romantic relationships as well as favorite platonic ones. Also, you're free to reply in subthreads and ask me why I ship or don't ship something.
Mostly I just want an excuse to talk about stuff. And I’ll add the caveat that I’m at least aware of a lot of fandoms, even if I haven’t ever mentioned them, so, you know, feel free to try something even if you don’t think I know it. I’ll let you know if I don’t, or maybe just make something up. If I know your original universe, feel free to ask that.
Back to fighting Pale Sky now.