Der letzte Tanz

In only a few hours our shuttle to Munich will arrive. We'll spend the night near the airport and fly out early tomorrow. We are giving everything a quick cleaning while Nikolas enjoys his last morning at school. If there was a compelling reason to stay, we would. We love Europe and the European life style. We'd love to come back some day for another extended period of time, but that will be some day...

The most compelling reason to leave here is the people we've missed so much and the ones we can't wait to see again. It will be good to be home. Our bags are packed and we're ready to go. Like all good journeys, this one must come to an end. It's been quite a ride.

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The Top Ten things I'll Miss

Before a good-bye email, I'll tell you about the things I'll miss. In no particular order (ok, there's a bit of an order):

The food: Austrian/German food is great stuff: Schweinebraten mit Knödel, Wiener Schnitzel, Geröstete Knödel mit Ei, Tiroler Gröstl and, of course, yummy desserts. Luckily, they didn't get the better of me (see Taking the bus, train and bike below!).

Taking the bus, train and bike. We loved our car but the fact that you can get around reliably by bus and train is something we just don't have at home. And as far as going to the Universität or into the Old City, there's no quicker way than riding a bike. Plus, it helped me shed some pounds which means I'd better get a bike in New Jersey or else I'm in trouble!

Parks and playgrounds. We have these in New Jersey, but they're not the same! The climbing and sandbox structures are much more interesting, and then of course there's the "sideways" swing which we don't have at home.

The views. I've never gotten tired of my ride to the Uni. The Untersberg and Staufen on my left, Gaisberg on my left, the Fortress right in front of me...there are uglier rides to school.

Nikolas' Kindergarten. Thank you Irene and Christina (teachers), Monika (lunchtime teacher), Erna (cook)--what a great year Nikolas had! They are people who aren't in it for a paycheck. When we've run into these people outside of school, they've always had so much time for Nikolas as he explained whatever it was that was important to him in that moment. Never were they bothered or in a hurry, and Nikolas appreciated it as did we. Nikolas loved his people there, and they loved him back.

The students and the Uni. I was lucky to have the group of students I had. I really enjoyed their sense of humor, listening to their troubles, and sharing laughs. I worried sometimes if I was "doing right" by them, thinking there was always something else I could be doing. But they seem to have enjoyed themselves, and they learned a lot! The Germanistik was the same building, the same halls I walked 18 years ago. In fact, so little had been done to the building, it could've been 1990! There are some professors still here from that time. When I told one professor what I remembered from his course back in 1991 on Austrian dialect, he promptly took me to his office where he presented me with a free copy of a book he'd written on the topic since then.

Nikolas and Jenny learning so much German. Sure, I'll continue to speak German to them just as I've done with Nikolas since Day 3 or 4 (Jenny had to actually convince me when Nikolas was an infant that I needed to start and start YESTERDAY). But there's nothing like being here, being immersed in the language. Even though his two best friends at school were Canadian and English-speaking, Nikolas learned so much from his teachers, staff, and his other little buddies. And what I couldn't accomplish in teaching German to Jenny with lessons here and there over the last 14 years, the German-as-a-foreign-language department could! Now the mission: maintaining the language and trying to learn more.

Travel. We did get to travel this year, but don't be jealous. If you were in Pennington and said you were going to Long Beach Island, nobody's THAT impressed. You just do it because it's so close by. That's the way it was here. Being in Salzburg, beautiful cities, towns and regions such as Regensburg, Krumau, Innsbruck, Schladming, Vienna and Südtirol were just too close to pass up. Yes, we also went to Turkey and England twice, but I'm telling you--if you can just afford to get to Europe, traveling around IN Europe is not a bad deal at all.

Radio. Bayern 3, Antenne Bayern, Ö3, Radio Salzburg... Whenever I went out in the car or did the dishes, I turned on the radio--great memories from long ago! In 1990, when I moved to Salzburg, my mother was with me and she bought me a little radio. I thought, "Jeesh, thanks," being the ingrate that I was. But she explained that when she moved to America, she listened to the radio all day and it helped her learn English because she'd found that if she couldn't read people's lips, she couldn't understand as well. Dang if she wasn't right! Danke, Mutter.

Roggenbauer. Professor Roggenbauer was one of the reasons I stuck with German back in 1987. The other two were Professors Small and Zollitsch. Theses guys cared--they all opened up their home to us, fed us, entertained us. Who did NOT want to learn German under these conditions?! My original plan was to take one year of German just because my mother's side is German and I figured I should learn a little. Roggenbauer proctored my German 102 (second semester German) exam, even though he wasn't my professor for the course. I asked him after the exam if the word that I heard my mother and grandparents use (it sounded like "won") was really the German word "geworden" which means "(has) become". He laughed and said, "Hmmm, Bavarian dialect. We say the same thing in Austria--I need to meet your mother." (Read an earlier blog to see how ironic that statement was!) Roggenbauer is retired and lives in Salzburg today, and we enjoyed meeting up with him throughout the year. He's the reason I came to Salzburg the first time--he was MY resident director. If you believe that life events can fall like dominoes, he's the reason why I came the second time when I met Jenny. And so he's the reason why I came the third time. Vielen Dank, Herr Roggenbauer!

Danke!

After making such a nice birthday card for me back in December, my students went and did it again, this time making a nice "Danke" card.

The cover is full of inside jokes, trips we took this year, stories I told, even some famous quotes by Nikolas such as, "Why is she biting her finger?" I was amazed at how much they remembered! Thanks, Amanda!

The inside of the card is a picture of Salzburg done using cut-outs! Thanks, Krystal!

What a nice card! Thanks for everyone's kind words on the back. What nice memories! What a nice group!

To get a car or not, that was the question

To get a car or not, that was the question weighing heavily on my mind before we ever returned to Salzburg.

I remembered quite vividly how much freedom a car afforded my buddy John when we worked at the international school in Salzburg back in 1992-1994. I was able to tag along on many occasions, and we were able to see so many towns in the area.

Yes, the trains and buses are much better here than in the States. And yes, it IS possible to get to many places. But it simply takes longer. And a bus or train can't take you everywhere.

Jenny wasn't sold on the idea at first. And I admitted that it was an outlay of money. But I was certain that a car would make our experience here more enjoyable.

I looked at a used car which a young kid was trying to sell. He gave me a list of things the state inspection service (ÖAMTC) said needed to be done within the foreseeable future. I thanked him and visited the ÖAMTC the next day, and they not only told me about the repairs--they looked up the car I was interested in buying! This would never happen in the States. The guy told me that I could do better.

I got on my bike and told myself that I was stopping at the first car dealership I passed (and then hoped that it wasn't going to be BMW or Mercedes). It was Citroën, a French car manufacturer. I didn't know anything about it. But, I asked Herr Wieland what his cheapest car was, and he showed me: a cute little red buggy. Part of me was convinced. Part of me was still second-guessing.

I actually sat on Herr Wieland's information for about two weeks. Jenny sort of gave in over time, telling me to just do it or else I wouldn't stop talking about it! I think we were both convinced, though, the Sunday the three of us tried to find a bus stop across town where a bus would take us to the Freilichtmuseum outside the city. We were at the wrong bus stop, even though it shared the same name as the one we were supposed to be standing at, and the bus shot passed us, the driver waving his finger "no" at me. I wasn't happy.

The next day I stopped into Citroën and asked Herr Wieland to get the ball rolling. I think he'd thought he'd never see me again, but there I was. He even set me up with an unorthodox 10-month lease! Within days, we were car owners...or Leasers as they known now in Austria.

Was it the right choice? Well, 162 car rides later (incidentally, the number of games in a baseball season!), I'd have to say "yes." There were many short rides (18 times to Nikolas' Kids Club Tennis during cold/bad weather months, 12 trips to the video store) and then some great trips to Cesky Krumlov, Regensburg, Südtirol in Italy, and shorter trips to Gröbming, St. Johann, Schladming, and Werfen.

Today, I took the little buggy back to Citroën. It cost money, but we had a much different year than we would've had without it. A better year.

Thanks, C3!

Below, all the places we went....

American International School - Salzburg
Augustinerbräu (restaurant, brewery)
Austria Video 12x
Train station 2x
Bank 4x
Bauhaus (store)
BauProfi (store) 2x
Bowling 3x
Bozen, Italy (1 hour from hotel)
Brixen, Italy
Cemetery (Regensburg)
Cesky Krumlov, Czech Rep. 3 hours
Doktorwirt (hotel)
Dr. Grabherr (Nikolas)
English Center
Eurospar (Friedenstrasse) 3x
Eurospar (Sterneckstrasse)
Flatscher Lukas’ b-day party
Stocker (butcher/Thanksgiving)
Flee Markets (various) 10x
Florada (flower shop)
flood (Salzburg)
Freilassing, Germany 2x
Freilichtmuseum
Gaisberg 3x
Glockengasse (dorm) 6x
Golling, Austria
Gröbming, Austria 2x (1 hour away)
Hangar 7
Hellbrunn 3x
Hinterbuchner Family (Bergheim)
Hoppolino (indoor amusement) 3x
Hofer (grocery) 3x
Hofer (Schladming)
Humboldt (dorm) 4x
IKEA 4x
Kern family
Kindergarten
Königssee, Germany 2x
Langenloiser (restaurant) 7x
Ristorante Milano/Minigolf (pond) 3x
Lepibad (swimming)
Lucas/Thomas’ house
Lüson, Italy (3 hours away)
Maximarkt 3x
McDonald’s 4x
Minigolf 2x
Mostwastl (restaurant) 3x
Paracelsus (dorm)
Recyclinghof 2x
Regensburg (3 hours house)
Reiterhof (restaurant) 2x
Roggenbauer family 7x
Schider Schilder (sign store)
Schladming, Austria (1 hour away)
St. Gilgen, Austria
St. Johann im Pongau, Austria (1 hour away)
Stieglbrauerei-Fest
Paracelsusbad (swimming)
Tennis 18x
Toys R Us
Trampoline (Regensburg)
Watzmann Therme (swimming)
Werfen, Austria 2x

Auf Wiedersehen!

A friend told me once when I was at my first German immersion May Term in Camden, Maine, that life was full of Abschlussfeiern (good-bye parties). It was the last day of our 15-day experience, and everyone was furiously exchanging addresses...real snail-mail addresses, not email addresses. It was, after all, 1988.

Yesterday, we had our Abschlussfeier: a gathering here at the apartment with frankfurters, cheese, salad, rolls. Ironically, it was essentially the first meal we had here as a group that September evening before orientation began when most everyone was just getting off a plane, exhausted, starving. We had starving students last night as well, many saying that it's time to go home because their money's dried up. Some things never change with time--it was the same for me 18 years ago.

After an afternoon of hanging here, watching Peter Pan (Nikolas' choice), and eating, most everyone headed to Augustinerbräu, a raucous beer hall on everyone's list of places to go on a nice summer evening. Eightteen years ago, my Abschlussfeier which was also held at my place happened to fall on the first day of sunshine in what had been three straight weeks of miserable weather. My landlady, Frau Ballwein, was gracious enough to let us host some 35 of us. We started at noon and the last people went home at midnight.

In 1991, leaving people you'd just spent a chunk of time with might mean that you wouldn't see them again. Letter writing worked in only a few cases and that for only certain lengths of time. Today, through Facebook, I've connected with about 18 of the 40 people who were in my group. I was largely motivated to contact people because my resident director, Herr Roggenbauer, lives in Salzburg now. He remembers the group fondly and often wondered aloud about where all the "kids" may be now.

It's been a great time getting in touch with these people. Marriages and births, of course, have taken place over the years. Sadly, even one of our 40 left us before any talk of reunions could take place. Kevin Greene, a great kid from UMaine, went on a 5-mile jog one morning, something he did a lot. He came back home, walked through the doorway, and collapsed.

My students are also on Facebook and I'm already connected to them. Unless they defriend me or unless Facebook goes totally screwy and makes it difficult for people to stay with them, I don't anticipate losing touch too easily. I look forward to hearing about their career choices, their marriages, their parenthoods, their travels. It was a great bunch of kids, each one very different than the other, but each one unique and interesting in his or her way.

I feel for them--I remember my year AFTER Salzburg. Your experiences are still fresh in your mind, you want to share stories with old friends from home and show them photos. But people are only interested for a few minutes-- you get the feeling that they don't want to hear any more. In many cases, people just won't understand why you went away in the first place. You heard songs all year, English ones, that were popular in Austria, and no one's ever heard them in the U.S. You complained about the food in Austria, but once you're back home, all you want is a currywurst with fries. Around October, you're walking to class remembering that just months ago, your walk to the Universität took you across a picturesque river and past as castle.

But there was a reason why we were coupled up with them just like there was a reason why Herr Roggenbauer led us to Salzburg in 1990. I know now why I had to come all those years ago. For my kids, it might be years before they truly understand why they did. But they will.

German educators can't throw anything away (except for me)!

Where were you in 1996?

I've been astonished all year as to how many broken or incredibly old and useless things have been left in our apartment, in our storage unit in the basement, and in my office at the University.

When we first moved in, we had the chance to toss many things in the Big Garbage Day we wrote about at the beginning of the year. Among other things was the couch missing a side.... But since then, we've continued to toss. Finally, we found an IKEA shelf to take the place of the shoe storage case in our hallway that was essentially standing on one leg.

The funny thing is that there's a budget in our program to replace old, useless things. For whatever reason, people have been reluctant to use it, I guess.

I think it's a German teacher/professor thing. It's got to be. Why would people year after year keep stuff that should be tossed. Afraid someone will find out? Who would know if it's suddenly gone.

The final straw came when Jenny was organizing the medicine cabinet the other day. There were countless open and unopened medicines, some of which we did toss. When we saw the unopened bottle of eye drops at the beginning of the year, we must've thought that it was still good since it hadn't been opened.

But then Jenny took a closer look the other day--you can have a look, too--it expired before Clinton was elected to his second term!

There are lecture notes in my office at the University that don't even belong to our program but must've been there when the program started sending a resident director to Salzburg back in 1979. The notes are from the 1960s! I am NOT kidding! Yet, no one has had the nerve to toss them, and they take up a HUGE amount of shelf space. They're the only thing I haven't tossed yet.

Maybe it's the German teacher in me.

Rain, rain, rain...

When I was a student here back in 1990-1991, it rained all year, I swear. I lived about 20 minutes by bike from my classroom buildings and often I would sit in class totally drenched, chilled, miserable. I ruined more than one pair of shoes.

When I worked at the international school here, I didn't bike as much so I don't remember the weather as clearly. Jenny claims her year here was pleasant, and I believe her.

But Salzburg can be so miserable, and that's what it's been lately. It's the end of June and we've seen day-time temps between 50-55. Today is the first day in about 8 where we've seen the sun, and that was only after a full day of rain.

Back in the fall, we were a flea market and I saw these pair of galoshes. I asked the guy how much they were (something like $3), and because the fall had been so pleasant, I then asked him if he could guarantee that it was going to rain this school year so that I'd use them. It's an inside joke if you're from Salzburg because it always rains here.

A new professor in the German department (he's been here a month), a young guy from Southern Germany, told me yesterday, as I'd never heard anything like it, that he'd ruined a pair of boots the previous day peddling to and from the University.

Willkommen in Salzburg, buddy.

The miracle of language learning

Jenny took her final German test of the year today--for all intents and purposes, her German course is finished. I'll be the first to tell you that Jenny doesn't put off studying to the last minute. She's been working towards this test all year really, but she studied intensely for the past 10 days or so.

Coincidently, just as Jenny began to master some of the more complex verb constructions (ex. the passive voice: "Consumer goods have been manufactured" instead of "Factory workers have manufactured consumer goods"), Nikolas has been mastering these as well. The only difference is: he's doing it naturally, without books and grammar lessons.

The other night in the bath, he spotted some grime on the lower part of a shower door. "Papa, die Tür muss geputzt werden! (The door has to be cleaned!)" What takes third-year German students some serious consideration before they've mastered that type of sentence, he's been able to do just be listening to it being used.

Jenny's been working hard to learn all her irregular verbs in the past tense. Nikolas uses verbs in the past tense when he's speaking about something in the past. He still makes mistakes saying things like "Ich habe es gebringt" instead of "Ich habe es gebracht" (I bringed instead of I brought), but he understands what he has to do.

Jenny's goal was to learn enough German so that we can all speak German in the home once we get back to Pennington. Since Nikolas was born, it's been me primarily who's been speaking to him in German. I'd say she's achieved that goal--she's learned so much!

And learning German is so much easier today for those who speak English. German speakers are in love with English much like Germans loved David Hasselhoff in the 1980s. For those who can read German und would like more info on the "Englishness" of German, click on the image above to read my letter to the editor published in this past Wednesday's Salzburger Nachrichten.

What's in a price?

If you think like I do sometimes, you've wondered why the cost of a meal out is so much. Regardless of where you are, though, prices of meals in Austria are not much different than they are in our area of New Jersey. The drinks here, if anything, are more expensive. Depending on where you are, a half liter of soft drink (about a quart) can run around $6.50--no joke! It's cheaper to drink wine or beer, and it's been that way since I started coming here as a kid.

But the back page of the menu at a restaurant we were at the other day really made me think about what goes into the price of a meal and a drink at a restaurant. The list was put together tongue-in-cheek, I'm pretty sure. Usually, like in the States, you'll see a message somewhere stating that prices don't include tip. This menu went a bit further, though. This is what it said, translated into English--

It's understood that our prices:

are in euros not including tip,
and include 10 to 20% value-added tax,
tourism tax,
salary tax,
church tax,
income tax,
sales tax,
business tax,
social security and health insurance,
fire and liability insurance,
life insurance and old age care insurance,
theft and broken glass insurance,
fire department contribution,
liquor license,
treasury contribution,
gas and heating costs,
warm and cold water costs,
sewage costs,
electricity costs,
chimney cleaner,
security technician,
leasing contracts,
garbage removal,
compost removal,
washing and cleaning detergents,
toilet paper,
paper towels and hand soap,
repairs,
maintenance contracts,
telephone costs,
decoration costs,
live music costs,
fees to AKM (royalties),
radio and TV fees.

(Interestingly, from a cultural standpoint, there are some costs here we do NOT have in the States: church tax, radio fees, old age care insurance).)

Our meal came to €19 (about $25), which for lunch, isn't something we'd want to spend everyday, but it wasn't the end of the world. And when you consider all the stuff you're getting (and you know what many paper towels some of you use in the bathroom!), then $25 isn't a bad price at all!

Arguments and Statements of a 4-year-old

Nikolas loves to learn--he really does. If I explain to him how soap works (no mention of ions, of course), he runs to his mother and tells her what he's learned.

But he reaches a point when he'd like to have something to add. It might mean changing the rules of a game (not to make it easier for him to win--if anything, his rule-changes make it difficult for anyone to win) or it might mean changing chemistry concepts. Or sometimes he says things to just be different or to get a rise out of us.

Today included some dingers.

When we got back from being away, we put a pot of coffee on to brew. After a few minutes, Nikolas called out, "Mommy, I smell coffee." Jenny replied, "That's because I put some coffee on." Nikolas whined, "But I don't want to smell coffee."

Okay.

Both Jenny and I took turns hitting the tennis ball with him. It was hot today and we practice on the tarred surface of the entrance to a church. I know. It sounds silly but it's a BIG entrance. Anyway, we were both exhausted from running around. Nikolas hits everything but it doesn't always go right to us (which it shouldn't in tennis). While we're both panting, desperate for shade and water, Nikolas says, "Ok, this is the game--I run around this area and you two try to catch me."

Uh, no.

As Nikolas watched an ice cube melt into water, I explained that water can exist in three states (I don't know why my high school chemistry is coming out lately--it was 20 years ago!): solid or ice, liquid or water, and gas or steam. "No," Nikolas said in German, "there are four states: ice, water, steam and noodles."

Okay.

Later, Nikolas said, "You know that show that has a character in it that wears a white shirt and has hair like me?" We didn't know what show he meant. "They found dog bones on that show. I eat dog bones, you know."

Okay.

My favorite snack (right now, anyway)

Austria is a land of the most delicious desserts on earth. Seriously, Salzburg has countless cafés and Konditoreien (a confectioner--they just bake goodies!), and the assortment of Kuchen, Torte, and other inventions can make your mouth water as you speed by a showcase on your bike.

But right now there's no other snack for me than the one you can only get at Hofer right now. That's the discount grocery store that we go to almost daily. The name of this snack has a very German name, so please don't despair if you cannot pronounce it. The name:

Chocolate Chip Cookies

They're chocolatey, they're good. I want to drink a liter (about a quart) of milk with each cookie. I want to eat a whole pack of cookies in one sitting (12), but I stop myself at three.

I should be craving Apfelstrudel or Sachertorte, but instead I can't get these Chocolate Chip Cookies off my brain. Tell me it's not bad. I mean how could something that tastes so good be so bad?

Antauchen, Part 2!

There's an update in the "Antauchen" saga! I know you've been hoping there would be. (Please read previous post first if you haven't already)

Gabriella, next year's Resident Director, is in town for three days to learn the ropes. I've been taking her around to meet the people and see the places she'll need to know about next year. While viewing one of my student's CLEAN dorm rooms, I started telling my "antauchen" story.

Gabriella, whose father is from Salzburg, actually lived here as a 6-8 and 14-15 year old back in the 80s and 90s. She remembered the word, again really just an Austrian word, and she remembered it meaning not only to push someone on a swing, BUT also to "push" yourself or to pump your legs so that you swing on your own! So you can "antauchen" someone else and you can "antauchen" yourself.

Mystery solved. Nikolas was right, which means that he DID teach me a word I didn't know!

Antauchen

I predicted that it would someday happen, as long as Nikolas continued to learn German. That someday was today. Sort of.

I remember a professor at UMaine once telling us that if we kept up with German, it wouldn't be long before we learned words that HE didn't know. How could that be? we wondered. He was a native speaker, for goodness sake. He went on to explain that we all have our own interests and if you pursue those in a foreign language, there are terms that not everyone is familiar with. He used pottery as an example. If you're involved in making pottery with a wheel and using techniques that don't involve everyday words, well, you're learning vocabulary that not everyone knows.

So Nikolas was swinging today and very proud to show me that he can now pump with his feet to make himself swing. Interestingly, Jenny and I have both, throughout the year, tried to explain this to Nikolas, but he either didn't get it or he secretly didn't want Mama or Papa to stop pushing him on the swing!

I asked him how he learned this. I often ask him this question when he talks about things he knows, and he always says, "In der Schule" (in school). But when he said that what he was doing involved "Antauchen," I really wanted to know where he's learned that word.

Because I didn't know it.

Now I knew "tauchen" and "untertauchen" mean 'to dive' and 'to dive under' or 'disappear,' but I'd never heard it with the "an" prefix. He said that his friend Cornelia (next to Nikolas, she dressed like a zebra, he dressed like a monkey for Sommerfest at Kindergarten) had used the word. He's understood it to mean "kick with your legs."

So after he went to bed, I looked it up. It wasn't in my dictionary. So I looked it up online, and it wasn't in my favorite online dictionary (LEO). Then I went to Beolingus, which I don't use that often, and there it was. It's an Austrian German word. Much like British and American English, there are many differences in vocabulary between German in Germany and German in Austria. The same goes for Switzerland.

Interestingly, "antauchen" doesn't mean to kick with your legs after all, but instead it's the Austrian term for "anstossen" or 'to push someone on a swing.' My only guess is that Cornelia was telling Nikolas that if he pumped with his feet, he wouldn't need someone to provide "antauchen."

So although it wasn't quite the scenario I predicted, Nikolas' German-learning did lead me to expand my own vocabulary, even if it is Austrian German. Will I tell him what "antauchen" really means? Yes and no. The next time we're swinging, I'll ask him, "Kann Papa dich antauchen?" His mind might puzzle over it for a bit, but he'll learn it if we keep it in context, the way he's learned so much this year.

Things you don't see in an American newspaper

Aside from the fact that you hear German on the street and most everything else is in German, you can sometimes forget that you're somewhere other than home.

An average reading of the The Salzburger Nachrichten, the city's major newspaper, reminds me that we're not in the U.S. (not the fact that this, too, is in German!). Here's a sample of "different" things from this week:

* a job ad for a handyman who will live in the apartment complex he'll take care of asks that the man (women need not apply) be of Christian upbringing. This is short for Don't be Turkish (Muslim) or Bosnian (Muslim) or Christian-god-forbid from some Middle Eastern country (Muslim).

* most job ads ask for a photo to be included with the résumé. This is short for Don't apply if you look like a foreigner (Muslim) or are Christian-god-forbid unattractive.

* A Salzburg brothel is having its license revoked because two of its 12 prostitutes were not officially registered. That means the number of legal brothels in Salzburg is down to 14.

* a 15-year-old Salzburg girl was fined € 80 ($110) for underage drinking (she had a can of beer in her hand). She cried bitterly because she was about to turn 16 in a couple of days, which is the legal public drinking age.

* Salzburg police ushered Mexican tourists off a plane arriving from Frankfurt this past weekend and banged them into quarantine until it was determined that they didn't have swine flu.

Welcome to Austria!

Sonntag Ruhetag

Sundays in Austria are deader than a doornail as we say up in Maine. If you haven't shopped for Sunday, you're out of luck. There's nothing open aside from gas stations and their little shops, but you have to be mighty hungry to buy anything there since the prices are outrageous. In the time we've been here, we've only ever bought coffee cream at a gas station on a Sunday, and it wasn't even good.

I appreciate that stores are closed on Sunday, that a country as a whole considers it important enough to mandate a break for everyone. I appreciate it, but I don't like it.

If you go away for the weekend and don't plan for your Sunday return, you're not happy. If you like to have fresh rolls daily, you're not happy. Yes, open restaurants can be found seven days a week, but that's not an option for every meal!

I should consider myself lucky. When I was a kid and traveling with my mother to Germany, it was much worse. During the week, stores, the post office, you-name-it closed daily from 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. Supermarkets were not a thing 25 years ago. Instead, there were mom-and-pop groceries and they closed. Then everything closed again at 6:00 p.m.

Originally, everything was closed on Saturday as well just as it is today on Sunday. Then the change-over began. They introduced Saturday mornings. You could shop until noon now on Saturday. Yipee! The entire weekend wasn't shot after all. Jobless teens like me could shop (although we didn't have money). People who had to work no longer necessarily had an entire weekend off.

Then German state after state introduced "langer Samstag." The first Saturday of the month would be like a "normal" work day. People could shop longer...unless they had to work.

Then the work week was affected. "Langer Donnerstag" was introduced. Each Thursday, stores would stay open until 8:00 p.m. Now people who worked all day could shop after work on the weekday...unless they had store jobs and had to work the later hours.

Then state after state said the heck with half-day Saturdays. "Langer Samstag" became every Saturday. For the first time, schedules were introduced where people no longer had two consecutive days off a week.

Then it went back to the work week. "Langer Donnerstag" wasn't enough. Soon Thursday turned to two days a week, then eventually five days a work week. Germans and Austrians could shop, shop, shop...unless they had to work later shifts.

Every year, many states vote on the right to decide whether they can have stores open on Sunday. It's still a nation-wide mandate in Germany and Austria that Sonnday remain a "Ruhetag" or a day of rest. The idea is that there should be one day guaranteed for most people that they have a day off from work and school so that the family can be, well, a family.

Many believe it's a matter of time before Sonntag Ruhetag goes the way of the other supposedly sacred days off. While I don't like not being able to buy fresh bread on Sundays, I do like the fact that retail workers aren't being forced to work on a day when the kids are home from school. Germans have a 37 1/2 work week the last I checked, and they're one of the least likely Europeans to say "yes" to the option of working overtime hours. The reason they give most always has to do with the family.

If these countries do decide to do away with Sonntag Ruhetag, I think it'll be a sad day. Because there's no turning back. If you mention the term "Langer Samstag" to a German or Austrian college student, you might as well be talking about the ancient Greeks!

Animation

Animation used to have a much different meaning for me. Cartoons are what I always thought of. Since Turkey, though, animation has come to mean “Kindergruppe”.

In Turkey, there were people in our hotel who entertained both kids and adults. The kids had a play room where one person was on duty. The adults had people getting them to play darts and bachi ball on the beach. At night, the animation crew would lead adults in karoeke and dancing. Because it was off season, there were only ever a couple of other kids around so there wasn’t much appeal for Nikolas to hang out in the play room.

Here at Familhotel Sonnwies, it’s a very different story. First of all, it’s a family hotel. Second, it’s Easter vacation so kids are off from school. There isn’t a room in the hotel occupied by people without kids, so there are playmates of all sizes here.

The animation crew is made up of four young woman, all from South Tyrol although one seems to be primarily Italian-speaking.They’re all very nice and they play well with children. They publish the list of things to do each day so that you can read at breakfast what the crew has in store for the kids. This allows parents to talk up the activities to get them excited about leaving their parents for hours at a time and playing with people they’ve only just met.

Nikolas has had some reservations from time to time. The first and only cry came the second evening. It was the weekend so the only activities were playing in the late afternoon, eating dinner together, then playing afterward. We took Nikolas down to the enormous play area after dinner, knowing that he wouldn’t want to leave us for the meal. We signed the paperwork with contact and room numbers and I watched Nikolas out of the corner of my eye pacing around in circles. I said, “How you doing?” Instantly, his face crumpled up with sadness and he bawled and bawled. Poor guy! After some discussion, he agreed that he could play with all the fun stuff (building blocks, riding tractors, slide, games) if Papa sat out on the terrace (right outside the big window to the play room) and Mommy sat in the entrance room where kids took off their shoes.

By the next day, though, he’d gotten used to the idea. With visits to the animals in the morning, a pony ride, animal feeding, and a parachute game in the afternoon (with intermittent visits to Mommy and Papa to get some extra love), he was convinced that Kindergruppe wasn’t a bad thing at all! Since then, there have been some times when he wasn’t too sure if he wanted to go along with the kids, but he wasn’t alone. Everyday, we saw parents and their young kids dealing with some separation anxiety.

By the end of the week, he’d put together quite an impressive list of activities: feeding cows, pigs, and rabbits, sweeping the stall several times, riding ponies on three separate days, playing with homemade play-dough, brushing the horses, playing two types of lawn games, Easter activities (nest building, egg coloring, bread baking), playing in a big sandbox, jumping on trampolines, and eating several meals with other kids. I’d say he had quite a vacation. That’s not even mentioning swimming with us every morning and going into Brixen and Bolzano on day trips.

What it’s meant for us is that we’ve had some time to do our own things, some of which we’d almost forgotten we like to do such as read a paper! But we’re also not alone in this regard. A German mother of three young kids told me that she’s read three books this week, a feat she hasn’t been able to accomplish over the course of a year!

Jauche-Mobile

One day when it was obvious to Frau Ballwein, our farmer landlady, that we three Americans didn’t know a lot about farming, she shook her head and said, “I’ve always said kids from the city should all spend a summer on a farm so that they can learn the birds and the bees!” This to me, someone who grew up in a town of about 500 people!

One thing I didn’t understand was liquid manure. Why would farmers in our area subject us to that horrible smell? They ride around in their fields spraying it into the wind, and that’s supposed to help the crops grow? Like Frau Ballwein said, I needed some educating.

Jauche as it’s called in German is where it’s at. If a farmer has cows and pigs, you better believe they are putting those animals’ manure to good use. They shovel it up, throw it into a big vat, and let it collect with rain water. What they have is free fertilizer.

I call the tractor and tank the Jauche-Mobile (like the Batmobile). Nikolas prefers calling it the Poop-Mobile.

Believe it or not, whenever I smell it now, it reminds me of home. I don’t think it’s gross any more. Frau Ballwein would be proud.

Südtirol/Alto Adige

Things you don’t learn in high school…at least I didn’t: the northern part of Italy not only belonged to Austria until 1918, but it has remained German-speaking 90 years later.

Italians call the northern part of their country Alto Adige (The High Adige River) but the German-speaking inhabitants, whose parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were Austrian, call it Südtirol, or South Tyrol.

The Austrian state of Tyrol (capital: Innsbruck) is one of Austria’s nine states. It makes sense that the state under it would be called South Something (South Dakota, South Carolina). But usually that South Something still belongs to the same country. Not any more.

Austria, which is the size of Maine, used to be HUGE. In fact, it was called Austria-Hungary and it encompassed what is today the Czech Republic, Slovakia, bits of Poland, Hungary (of course), bits of Rumania, Slovenia, and much of Croatia and Bosnia. You can find old maps on the Internet that have the German place names for cities that today are really only known by their “new” name (Bratislava was Pressburg, Belgrade was Weissenburg, Ljubljana was Laibach).

However, in Südtirol, German place names are still very much alive. In fact, the Italian names are shunned by the German speakers and only reluctantly included on traffic signs. Whereas Slovakian is the language of Bratislava, Serbo-Croatian the language of Belgrade, and Slovenian the language of Ljubljana, German is still the language of the entire northern region of Italy. For this reason, they know their cities and towns as Brixen, Bozen, Sterzing, and Lüsen and NOT Bressanone, Bolzano, Vipetino, and Luson.

People from South Tyrol still have to learn Italian, if only to do well in school, although many schools in South Tyrol are primarily German. To hold any government job, people have to pass a civil service exam that is written in Italian. One man told me that they have the right to demand that the police speak to them in German if they ever get stopped. However, if you make pretend that you don’t understand anything they’re saying in Italian, you’re only asking for trouble!

Taking land away from countries as a punishment is something you don’t see any more. It’s actually kind of sadistic really. Why did people living in South Tyrol deserve being forced to change their nationality. It’s different than in WWII when much of what today is Poland was taken away from Germany. German-speakers from that region were all put on trains and transported to what we know today as Germany. Imagine you’re living in Maine and we go to war with Canada. We lose and as a result, Maine is ceded to Canada. Bordering Quebec, Maine now must become French-speaking? It wouldn’t happen.

In fact, there have existed since 1918 movements to make South Tyrol part of Austria again. In more recent times, though, because of the passage of time, separatists think less of becoming part of Austria and more about just being separate, similar to what exists in Quebec.

Random thought 1: like Austria, Südtirol has their own dialects. But interestingly enough, people here are more willing (and able?) than their Austrian counterparts to speak standard German to tourists.


Random thought 2: the fact that street and traffic signs, shop windows, posters, grocery flyers, government documents, etc. have to be presented in both German and Italian boggles my mind. There are other countries that have to do this, too, like Switzerland and Belgium. The cost must be enormous—I’m sure someone has calculated this. Maybe something for another blog.

Improvisierung

When Nikolas accidentally ran his new tractor into a chair leg yesterday, it broke into several pieces. After he'd brought me five different sized screwdrivers, it was clear that the tractor had carried its last load.

But the tractor came with motorized back wheels like the old Evel Knievel motorcycle that I had as a kid. I thought it would be a shame to chuck the whole thing away. Inspired my Mister Maker, a show we'd recently seen in England and then here in Austria, I thought that maybe we could salvage some play value out a heap of plastic and metal.

So I had Nikolas fetch some tin foil, construction paper, scissors, glue stick and tape, and we started cutting and taping like crazy. He really had no idea into which I direction I was going. Soon he had all kinds of his own pieces taped together, and he was enjoying it.

Nikolas loves the movie Wall-E, a DVD his cousin Roosevelt gave him for Christmas. When I rolled the thing on the floor behind him, Nikolas turned to look to see what was making the same noise has his "old" tractor. He smiled but was a little puzzled. I'd also made an Eva using a capsule from Kinder Egg.

His said, "Papa, Wall-E is too tall and Eva is too little." Okay, fair enough. I didn't realize that he'd become such a discriminating consumer of toys. By today, though, he'd forgotten about the fact that they weren't made to scale. Or if he hadn't forgotten, he did a good job at hiding it because he seemed to be having fun creating his own Wall-E and Eva adventures!

Die Alpen

Not much to say about them, other than you have to see them to believe them. The Alps are quite a thing. I know, not very poignant.

Ein Semester ist vorbei und ein Semester steht uns bevor

Could it be? One semester down, one to go. Yes, winter days in particular can crawl by. But where did the first semester go? I don't know how my students feel about it, but it seems like they had just arrived.

Students come for all kinds of reasons, including ones they don't even know about yet. I walked into a German Club meeting in the fall of 1987 and looked at photos from students who had just come back from Salzburg. I knew I was going to have to go someday, but that wasn't the reason why I was meant to go. I went to Salzburg in June of 1989 to visit friends who'd spent the school year there and knew that I was going to have to go to spend my own year here. But that visit wasn't the reason I was meant to go, either.

As you may have read in my post about Frau Ballwein, I really loved my year 1990-1991 as a student in Salzburg. But it was also so HARD at times. I owned a bike produced during WWII and in one school year had about a dozen flat tires. The Moos-Strasse is a great place to live, but it's not close to anything. So on days when I had no bike, life wasn't good. It meant walking a looong way to the Universität in either the cold, the snow, or most likely: the rain. Historically, Salzburg gets a lot of rain, but that year was particularly bad. They call it "Schnürlregen" in dialect which means "raining in ropes." I destroyed shoes by leaving the house in that rain--it was merciless.

Then, of course, there are relationship issues with people before you meet the person you marry. I mean if every woman was the right one, you'd marry them all, right? That's not allowed in Austria or Maine. Enough said about that.

Then there was the financial side of life. Historically, the kids who take part in this program aren't rolling in dough. They come from families that work hard to make ends meet and do what they can to help their kids out. Whereas students many times work a job or two while they go to school, that option isn't as readily available here. Working officially is, well, illegal and working under the table is, well, illegal. Babysitting and tutoring, things like that, are no big deal. Some of the kids in my group worked many hours at a paper warehouse outside the city packing boxes for shipment. That was probably more on the illegal side of things.

I didn't work at all so I was on a tight budget (ok, I worked one night--I tended a bar at a friend's nightclub in Regensburg on New Year's Eve--I made so much money on tips, I considered quitting school...until someone reminded me that every night is NOT New Year's Eve). I worked at my dining commons at home, but I didn't have that income here. So here I was with no meal plan (they don't do that here), buying my own food (stress), cooking which I'd never really done before (stress), trying to make money last until the end of the month until I got my next installment (stress). I was smart enough to have my family send money in installments because I would've spent like a nut like the rest of my group.

I watched friends have a much harder transition than I did. Three went home within the first three weeks of the semester. Another went home in April. For many different reasons, being here was not what they were meant to be doing. When someone left early, the people left behind went through a period of mourning. We wondered who's going to be next. This despite the wonderful directorship and friendship of Herr and Frau Roggenbauer who were the best Resident Directors a kid could have.

I think I must've been carrying on about my friend who had just gone home in April due to a nervous breakdown when an Austrian woman I'd met in the spring named Klaudia let me have it. I think I was saying, "Why are we here? Why did any of us come?" She told me to get real, that I had chosen a fork in the road that was called Salzburg and there was a reason for it. So what if I didn't know what that reason was in that moment? I might find out the following day or the next year or even further down the road. At the time, that was much too philosophical for my 23-year-old brain. What reason could there possibly be why I was in this city, one that was tough enough to make four of my group go home before they were supposed to?

But I told you in Frau Ballwein's post what my ride was like the day I left. I didn't want to get on the bus that took me to the train, I didn't want to get on the train that took me to the airport. And I didn't want to get on the plane. I didn't want to go home as much as I loved my family and friends. The moment I stopped off the plane, I wished I could rewind my year and start over. I had to go back. But how?

My following year at UMaine was spent much like Christopher Reeve's character at the end of that cheesy movie "Somewhere in Time." Somehow Reeve had propelled himself into the past where he falls in love with Jane Seymour. But when he finds a modern coin in his pocket, he flies through some portal back to present day. Separated from his love, he's absolutely useless until...well, rent the movie!

Anyway, all I could think of was Salzburg and how I had to get back. I was even willing to take a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship in Gmunden, a town an hour-and-a-half away just so I could sometimes travel to Salzburg. Luckily, through a connection with Herr Roggenbauer, a man named Bob O'Donnell, who had in 1985-1986 been a student in the same program also under Roggenbauer, took a chance on me without interviewing me in person. He hired me to be a dorm parent at a boarding school right down the street from where Frau Ballwein lived.

I told the Fulbright people "no thank you" and packed my bags for Salzburg! I was going back! This time to work (legally).

I found myself at my Oma's in Regensburg before heading to Salzburg that first fall. I hadn't seen my new place of work and I was feeling anxious about it. In a way, I felt like I wasn't doing the "grown-up" thing and getting a "real" job. I mean my job description read like a summer camp: play sports with the students, take them on trips.

But I didn't run away. I got on the train a week later to the city I'd been obsessing about for over a year. In Salzburg, I made quickly very good friends with the people I worked with, a couple in fact are life-long friends, the kind you email and talk on the phone with.

It wasn't until my second year at the school in 1993 when I met Jenny. As Forest Gump says in the movie Forest Gump, "My Jenny." Suddenly, all the angst (German word!) about relationships disappeared. I'd had no idea that question my friends and I had always asked, "How do you know if she's the right one?" was answered just by meeting a person. Klaudia, wherever she is now, was right--I'd chosen the fork "Salzburg" for a reason. I had no way of knowing that the reason was waiting for me two years and three months down the road. And we had no way of knowing that little Nikolas would walk (ok, although he's amazing, he couldn't walk when he was born) into our lives close to 12 years later.

Incidentally, in two weeks, Nikolas will have spent his first and his fourth birthdays in Salzburg. How will Salzburg play into his life someday? Hard to say, but it will.

The second semester has begun, and I have four new students to join the other nine students who are part of the 2008-2009 school year. Only time will tell as to why they came. Any fan of the ABC series Lost knows that...everything happens for a reason....

A Schloss is not a Schloss is not a Schloss

On Tuesday, I met the mother of one of Nikolas' classmates, Christopher, a six-year-old. Christopher who is very nice and talkative joined the Kindergarten this past November. Among all the things he told me after I'd met his mother was how much he loved Salzburg's Schloss or castle. Now technically, Salzburg has several castles and the building in the city center is NOT a castle, but instead a fortification, a "Festung." But come on, to a kid and to most adults, it's a bloody castle.

One thing he shared with me that his mother probably didn't want him to dwell on was that "It's expensive to get into the castle." It is true that there's an entrance to the fortress grounds which offer great views. The actual inside of the fortress is interesting, too, but if you're able to walk around up there, it's as good as being inside. But what is also true, which I then shared with Christopher's mother, is that residents of Salzburg are allowed in for free! All you have to say is that you LIVE in Salzburg, and the man behind the counter hands you receipts that say you paid €0.00 to get in. She and her son were very happy to hear this as you might imagine.

Conversely, there's Windsor Castle in Windsor, where, yes, the Queen lives. When we lived in England in the 1990s, we often went to Windsor but NEVER went into the Castle. It was just too expensive, although I don't remember what it cost at the time. Now we're here again, this time with Nikolas, who also likes castles (and what he calls "castle fighters), fortresses, etcetera, etcetera. But we won't be going to Windsor Castle. A "Family Pass" costs no less than €41 ($52). After researching several palaces and fortresses this year in thinking of places to take my students, I'm so used to seeing entrance prices in the range of €7 ($9) to think that it's a good idea to pay that kind of money. By comparison, the Festung's Family Pass is €17 ($21).

We'll probably go to Windsor this week and, like in the 1990s, we'll probably see lines to get into the Castle, but we won't be among the masses. Sorry, Your Majesty, but I don't get it.

Der Bankomat

European ATMs know where it's at. Or at least the people who program them do.

First off, they acknowledge that no one in the world withdraws cents from an ATM, so you never have to type in the two zeros after the decimal point. If you want 50 euros, you simply type in 5 and then 0. Done.

Also, a European ATM gives you your money only AFTER it has spat out your bank card. This is great! That means the only way you'd ever walk away from a machine without your card is if you also walked away without getting your money. Not likely to happen. So it spits out your card, then comes your money. In the U.S., my bank always asks me (after my money's come out) if I want to do something else while my card is still in the ATM. What else would I want to do? Put the money I just got out back in?

Antalya

In the 1st century BC, King Attalus II of Pergamon ordered his men to find the most beautiful piece of land on earth -- “Heaven on Earth”. After a long search, they discovered a place with sea and mountains and palm trees and considered it to be heavenly. It was there that King Attalus founded the city of Antayla (then called Attaleia). Today Antalya is a modern city of over a million people with a well-preserved old city, still surrounded by an ancient wall.

Today we went on an outing to Antalya. We hopped on the hotel shuttle that dropped us on the side of a street, seemingly nowhere, but once we got our bearings turned out to be just down the street from Hadrian’s Gate. The gate was built into the city wall after Hadrian’s visit to the city in 130 AD (the same Hadrian who has the wall in Northern England). Next to the gate is a small park, filled with benches and men sipping tea. There is even a park tea waiter to bring them their tea!

Walking through the gate you enter the old city with its narrow alleyways and ancient buildings. There are many souvenir shops, and almost everyone has “a special price for you, my friend”. The salesmen aren’t pushy, however, and take no for an answer easily. We were only suckered in once by a man at a spice stand who asked Peter if he was going for the Turkish look with his unshaven stubbly chin. It was a good laugh, as most of the men had the same unshaven stubble. From there, glasses of tea were made – one pomegranate and one apple – scoops of drink mix being taken from among the trays of spices. Nikolas gave it the thumbs up, and so we felt compelled to buy some.

We continued our walk down to the harbor past souvenir stands, pottery shops (with little old ladies inside painting pots), rug shops and little restaurants. The harbor is nestled in a cove surrounded by a cliff, and you can imagine ancient ships coming and going. There were plenty of people offering boat rides for a great price, but we didn’t have the time. It was a great mix of tourist site and real life, with fishermen working on their nets, a motorcycle being washed, and people working on their boats.

During a mediocre lunch at a restaurant sitting on spectacular site overlooking the sea and the mountains, the call to prayer came echoing from somewhere in the distance. Ninety-nine percent of the people in Turkey are Muslim, although the government has a secular constitution, providing for freedom of religion. Still, there are mosques everywhere and the call to prayer comes over loudspeakers on the pointed towers of every mosque five times a day.

Before too long, it was time to head back to the shuttle, a great outing coming to an end too soon. Antalya is a beautiful city, with much more to explore than we did. More pictures will be posted on the blog once we’re back in Salzburg, and you will be able to see them here.

Spending money the old fashioned way--actually having it!

We recently booked our February trip (vacations from school for all of us) at the travel agency--7 days in Antalya, Turkey. When Frau Fiebrisch was finally finished typing in all of our details, she gave me the final price. I took out our Visa card and handed it to her. She looked at the card, then looked up at me, and I just knew there was an issue.

"We don't accept credit cards, only cash."

When booking a family weekend for March, the answer was the same. Luckily, we've saved for vacations this year, so it's not much of an issue.

I think if an established business in the U.S. tells us that they can't take credit cards, we wonder right away if they're legit. At least in Germany and Europe, taking cash only is still quite common.

Now when people say "only cash," they're not assuming that you're willing to carry hundreds or thousands of Euros on your person. Debit cards are the rage here. Regardless, one thing is for certain: you need to actually have the money in order to buy many things. Not really a bad way to go when you think about it.

I've seen a couple of articles in the paper in Salzburg about people getting into credit card debt troubles, but compared to what we read about in the States, it's almost laughable. In Austria, if you're carrying $2,500 in debt, you're considered to be on the brink of financial collapse.

Salzburg is actually not the norm when it comes to credit card acceptance. Most restaurants here do take cards but it's mostly because of the number of tourists that come through the city. In a city like Regensburg in Southern Germany, for example, you can really be hard pressed to use plastic.

Perhaps they have something here, though. It's not a bad idea to save up for something like a vacation. I used to read Mutual Funds Magazine. They always published financial advice, and when they'd run out of things to say, it seems like they always returned to the axiom, "Never borrow to take a vacation, save up for it instead."

Companies here who don't take cards will tell you why they don't take cards. It's not because they want us to be better with our money. It's because they don't want to pay the credit card companies up to 6% in fees for allowing you to use a card.

When you think about it, not using credit cards can only mean more money for us, the consumer. First, we don't have to pay finance charges for carrying a balance on the card. Second, business may not feel the need to raise prices to compensate for the 6% in credit card charges. Third, if it's a vacation you're talking about, what better feeling is there than coming back from a vacation not worrying about how you're going to now pay for it. At what point, in the USA, did we lose sight of that concept?

Frau Ballwein

In 1990, I moved to Salzburg to study for the year as a participant in the same program I'm leading for the year. Back in the day, we showed up without a place to stay and simply starting knocking on the doors of houses with private rooms where former participants had lived before us. Today, this is almost unheard of. Students live in dorms and thanks to the Internet, they can apply and be accepted months before they even start to think about packing their bags.

Anyway, I spent my first day in Salzburg calling places on my list only to be told that I was out of luck. I'd plotted the streets out on my Salzburg city map and was calling all the centrally-located places first. After a number of calls and visits, I was now looking at Frau Ballwein's telephone number. She lived out on the Moosstrasse, a five-kilometer-long street. I wasn't sure where number 63 was, but it probably wasn't at the start of Moosstrasse, which is very close to the city center, and it probably wasn't out in Glanegg, the very next town outside Salzburg.

As it turns out, it's about three kilometers down the street, and I ended up walking the entire thing that day. I mistakenly got out of the bus at the start of the street because the busstop announced was "Moosstrasse." As soon as I got of bus, what did it do? It turned down Moosstrasse and kept on going.

I'd called Frau Ballwein on the phone and she told me to come by at 5 p.m. So at about 5:20 I showed up hot and sweaty, hoping I wasn't late. She was in the driveway ironing some clothes, electrical cord strung out of her kitchen window. We spoke for awhile about the room she had but I couldn't see it because someone was living in there until the end of the month. It was the equivalent of $250 (2,500 Austrian Schillings). I said "Yes!" because I didn't want to go back to the hostel that night worried that I had no place to stay for the year. Two other American guys were already living in the house. So I was already breaking one of my pre-Salzburg rules--that I'd live alone or with Austrians only. Again, I just wanted a place to live.

Frau Ballwein was 67 years old but she was tough! She could carry wood, mow grass with a sickle (if you've every tried, it's HARD!), milk cows, cook like a madwoman, tow a wagon full of hay, and build things with wood, hammer, and nails. "Old school" doesn't describe Frau Ballwein. She built the school.

The three guys lived in one part of the house with our own entrance. There was a door to her part of the house in our kitchen, but it was understood that she could use it to get through our part to go to go behind the house. But we weren't to go into her part of the house.

But after a short time there, Frau Ballwein started inviting us in for a meal here or there. The first time it was to make us American french toast. Some girls who'd lived with her before us had taught her how to make it. Frau Ballwein was blunt, though, and as we sat down to our perfectly made french toast, she told us that her cat had been squashed the night before by a truck. Flat as a pancake, it was.

Then the first Gulf War began. Frau Ballwein invited us in nightly to watch the news and we welcomed it. There was no central heat in that house. We each had a space heater in our rooms, but it was common for us to pop fuses because we were all trying to stay warm. Her living room was nice and toasty though because the kitchen and living room shared a Kachelofen. Unlucky for us, American involvement in the first Gulf War only lasted about a month or so, so we thought we'd been relegated back to the our much cooler rooms. Nope, Frau Ballwein told us that if we wanted to watch TV with her, we could just knock on her door.

Frau Ballwein told us one day in passing that in her 67 year on the planet, she'd never taken a vacation. We practically fell out of our chairs. As a farmer, she saw herself on duty seven days a week. She said, "Cows don't take a break from eating and milking and going to the bathroom." We pleaded with her to consider taking a vacation--she certainly deserved one! After several weeks of planning, Frau Ballwein went with two of her cousins on a four-week Kur, basically a rest and relaxation spa that is covered by insurance. Technically, it wasn't a vacation in the strictest sense, but good enough. We missed Frau Ballwein and we missed watching TV in her part of the house. However, in exchange for feeding her chickens our leftover scraps from our meals, we were allowed to go into the hen house and keep the eggs. One night we were starving, so we took our flashlights into the hen house to see if any hens had laid some late-night eggs. No luck, and the hens were furious that we'd even try this.

The day I left Salzburg that year, I was a nervous wreck. I knew I was leaving a place I didn't want to leave. And I had to say "good-bye" to Frau Ballwein. My other two housemates were gone. Geoff had left a week early and Jim was in the hospital over an hour away with serious tetanus (the last I saw of Jim was at a Sting concert in Linz--he told me he had to go sit down and I never saw him again...that year--I've seen him since). Frau Ballwein made me a cup of coffee and set out some bread and jam. She knew that my place was cleaned out including the refrigerator. I couldn't control my hands--I was shaking like a clown. She noticed and just said, "It's not like you're never coming back."

When the bus came, I gave her a hug and she reciprocated with one of those, ok-get-on-the-bus hugs. My ride down the Moosstrasse was embarrassing. I sat among a group of senior citizens who were also riding into town. I was crying like child, and soon the old ladies around me were all teary-eyed.

But Frau Ballwein was right. I did go back. I went back for two more years and worked right down the street from where Frau Ballwein lived. Without Frau Ballwein, there wouldn't be the OTHER cat story which I'll save for another blog, even though this one is short. I saw Frau Ballwein years later well into the 2000s. Even two of my Pennington School groups got to meet her when we stayed at her son's bed & breakfast.

The last time I saw her was in March of 2006 and like every year, I sent her a Christmas card at the end of the year. Her youngest son wrote me back at the beginning of 2007 with a nice note and Frau Ballwein's death notice. I'd known she'd been battling cancer for close to three years, but she was tough. But at 82, the cancer was tougher and she died peacefully with her family around her: sons and their wives, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Today, I visited Frau Ballwein for probably the last time. She's located in the small cemetery behind the church on the Moosstrasse. Her son's farmhouse and bed & breakfast is a short distance across the field. She's lying with her husband who she survived by almost 20 years! To be honest, I didn't get choked up--she wouldn't have wanted that anyway.