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.