Visions of Wien and Bratislava (Day 138)

Wien and Bratislava (Pressburg) are only an hour and a half apart by train. In fact they are the closest two capital cities in the world!* Recently several inquisitive Americans decided to take advantage of this fact, parts of their story are below.

*(the Vatican doesn't count)

Hard at Work
Bratislava

Someone Turned the Fountains On
Neue Markt 1st Bezirk
Wien

Communist Modernism!
The Bridge (that looks like a UFO) over the Danude
Bratislava

Some Americans are amused by trains
The Tourist Trolly
Bratislava

No Tourists
The old City
Bratislava

The Triumphant Soviet Liberator
WW2 Memorial
Bratislava

Seizing the Moment
Somewhere (I hope)
Wien

A Particularly Inviting Set of Stairs
By The University
Wien

The "Riesenrad" (Giant Wheel)
2nd Bezirk
Wien

The Heart of Vienna
Stephansdom
Wien

Being Vanquished by George
Dragons
Bratislava

After the Long Pause (Day 123)

Proud Ambassador of the United States
Made with my Guestmother

I'm beginning to suspect that I'm not numbering these things correctly any more. Eh.

I wanted to talk to you today about one of the most curious of things. That is to say, what it means to be an American in Europe. I suppose you could say that is what I've been talking about this whole time, and I would have to agree that you were right. But I would agree in one of those way that was more along the lines of, "ok," "maybe," "you're probably right," and both of us would be unsatisfied with the direction the conversation had taken. So let us avoid that and both roll up our sleeves and get down to the serious business of telling stories.

Story Number One: The Church by Westbahnhof

Said Church
By Westbahnhof

Somewhere along the Gurtle, the road that runs around the inner districts of Vienna in a way that Robert Moses would certainly disapprove of, there is a rather large church next to (as is surprisingly seldom the case) a very large train station. It is also of course next to a very large proprietor of adult matierials, a fact that at least one observer has found amusing in a most depressing way. All in all it is a suprising place to have one's first experience with true Anti-americanism.

Now walking into European churches has its own kind of ritual associated with it, one that I would guess is frought with a great deal more angst than that faced by the actual religious observer . The laity has a purpose, they know why they are there, while the tourist has no such security. He walks around, classifying everything in sight ("my isn't that a wonderful set of ribbed Gothic vaulting?" he may say to his friend, who knowing that his companion is probably showing off and most likely has no idea what he is talking about, mumbles something along the lines of "I was just about to say that myself!" because he of course does not want to look stupid himself), and making a general slow walk around the ambulatory, attempting, however futily to take enough pictures that he can thereby put the whole somber establishment into his coat pocket and bring it home with him. Of course, somehow, when he shakes out the contents of his camera into his computer it never comes out quite right. Despite this he is still careful to point out the ribbed vaulting to his friends, who for reasons he can never quite understand, always seem about to mention it themselves.

[The trick that I have found is to look at churches as performative spaces, to go when the organ is playing, or the choir is singing, and observe the hall of worship as a living space, but that is neither here nor there].

Darkness Falls

Fence by the National Library

Having made my rounds, seen all of the various chapels, gazed at the Neo-something-or-other ceiling and feeling rather full of culture, thank you very much, I made my exit from the building, only to be accosted by a foreign looking man attempting to offer me literature about the church. After a remarkably linguistically ambiguous conversation, in which he began by adressing me in English and continued to do so despite my use of only German, he eventually came down very serious business of where I was from. Upon hearing that I was American, and after some thought deciding that indicated that I could speak English, he looked at me very seriously and told me that he would tell me something that I would never forget.

Which, considering he proceeded to describe to me that because America spends too much of its time mucking around in the world's business trying to make everyone do its bidding, one day all of the nations of the world would gather together and crush it, I doubt I shall. It was an odd message to receive in the entrance way to a church, an odder one still to receive from someone who was trying to sell me historical information about said church moments before.

This needless to say put me in an odd sort of spot.

My first reaction, the obvious American one of, "well if it weren't for us you'd all be speaking German now" I figured wouldn't pack so much of a punch for obvious reasons. Nor did I feel that the time was ripe for explaining that, perhaps almost two hundred and fifty years of American foreign policy amounted to something slightly more subtle than "pushing people around," or the fact that every other Great Power in history had acted in a similar manner, or even admitting that even if he was right in some cases that our foreign policy hadn't been the best that still wouldn't seem to justify the annihilation of a nation of 300 million people. But still he demanded a response.

The answer that I realized that I should have given later was this. Stop thinking of America as some faceless machine bent on bringing the world to its ends and start thinking of it as people. When a parents gets up in the morning, he doesn't wonder how best he can best bring death upon the various peoples of the world over a bowl of genetically modified cereal made from tears of third world children. He gets up and wonders how he's going to make enough money to send his kid to school when the economy is tightening. He wonders how much longer he's going to be able to keep his job in this sort of world, how well is daughter's sports team is doing, whether that new boy she is spending time with is trouble. He wonders, he works, he eats, he walks the dog, and he tries to provide for those around him. You might be able to confuse him for anyone else in the world, it just happens that his passport says that he is American.

But I did not have time to give this response, I was too busy listening to him talk about Europe was an ideal peaceful place. So I looked him in the eyes, doffed my cap at what I deemed to be an appropriately rakish angle, and remarked, "you're right, there's never been a war in Europe before."

And I walked out.

Lingering Memories
An Antiaircraft Tower Converted into an Aquarium
The 7th Bezirk

Fish Sauce and Freud (Day 106)

Scenes from around the city:

These are the Things that Freudian Dreams are Made of
(I went with the Squid)
Asian Supermarket by Kettenbrückegasse

Anger in the 7th Bezirk

The Silent Part of Town
Minoriten Kirche 1st Bezirk

Tram Stop
Beyond Westbahnhof

Facelift
Presumably the 1st

Germans? Yes! Germany? Maybe….. : The Bayerisch (Day 103)

Contrary to Earlier Experience, Spring Does Come to Germany
Botanical Gardens (München)

As I sat in a darkened theater in Josephstadt to watch the story of the (lengthy) downfall of a merchant family in Lübeck, I was surprised to see a good-natured lampooning of those friendly Germans from the south, the Bayerisch. As I watched the pointed references to lederhosen, alpenhorns, and beer, I though back to how I spent part of my Spring break there and wondered, how accurate can this be? The answer I’m proud to say, is quite.

Now there are doubtlessly those among you that would wonder, do four days spent in München [Munich] qualify me to adequately describe the true nature of Bavarian culture? Probably no, but does it qualify me to make stereotypical over-generalizations about it? Yes indeed! That said, let the poorly qualified analysis begin.

I've Seen This Building ergo I Know München
The Frauenkirche

The best way to think about Bayern (Bavaria to the English speaking world) is to take into account the fact that it was an independent kingdom for the better part of a thousand years. Folks, Texas was independent for about ten and look what happened to it. Now magnify that by a lot (namely 100), give it a royal family, a separate religion (Catholicism) from most of the rest of Germany, a different dialect, and remove any sort of ethnic diversity from the picture. You’ve now got a pretty good idea of Germany’s largest province.

An American Enjoys a Traditional Beverage Responsibly
Beergarden

The best part is, you probably never even had to do that, chances are that your idea of Germany (if you are American) is probably actually Munich. Blond folks, large pretzels, oom-pa-pa music, lederhosen, yodeling, beer, Wurst, the Alps, BMWs, you name it, it is probably either a Bayerisch specialty, or in the case of particular reactionary political movements from the middle of the twentieth century, just originated there. Remember, this was “our sector” which means we, of course, tend to confuse it with all of Germany. All of these things are in fact there. There is of course also an incredible economic machine as well as a vibrant cultural scene (groups like The Blue Rider emerged here) but tourists tend to forget this as they order another liter (because anything less is just an embarrassment, unless, of course, you are a woman) of beer.

It's good to be Max
The Maximilianeum

But this just leads the rest of the country to look at the province as being debatably part of Germany. This is apparent in part because over time it took most of artistic cues from Italy (as can be seen by its Southern Gothic and Baroque architecture), remained staunchly Catholic during such traumatic moments as the Thirty Years War, and even got promoted to a kingship by Napoleon. More relevant to the present, the stereotype of the overweight (and incredibly wealthy) pretzel-wielding Bayerisch man along with his 2+ blond children and physically perfect wife, still seems to persist both domestically and abroad (If you want a good characterization of this go see “Go Trabi Go”) despite the fact that fitness appears to be the religion of choice in the region. This is of course in contrast to the stereotypical portrait of the perfectly punctual, normally black clad, eternally solemn, protestant northerner.

Surfing
The English Garden

Although neither picture is actually true, the latter unfortuntately taking cues from British wartime views of “the Prussian menace,” northerners do look vaguely crestfallen when tourists seem to think that Hamburg will be filled with Tuba players in Tyrolean hats. All of this means, it has an independent streak that would make any Texan jealous, and most of the rest of the country is ok with that. It even has its own branch of the conservative party!

The Chinese Tower

If You've Been To München You Know What This Is

Munich itself is what you’d expect for a city that took the brunt of World War Two (Note: being called the “Birthplace of the Movement” by previously alluded to reactionary parties did not help long term historical preservation). But like most of the country it rebuilt itself in surprising speed, retooled its image, hosted the Olympics, made the leap to high technology, and hosts one heck of a soccer team. All the while it remained small in feel (natives refer to it as “a town with a million people” or the millionendorf) and a tourist hot-spot for its ability to stay close to its traditional culture [note: most Americans pronounce this as: Beer]. That said, whether they speak real German or not however, remains debatable.

Spacey Architecture
The Olympic Stadium

Heimweh? (Day 97)

Coming Home

Subway in the 13th

Things I miss about America:

24-hour stores
Things being open on Sunday
English
J-walking
People knowing where New Jersey is
The Ocean
The fact that diversity means more than Eastern Europeans
Cheap and greasy Burrito Joints
“Sup”
ATMs that give out twenty-dollar bills rather than hundred euro notes
Decent Pizza
SVO word order
An unshakable belief in the transformative power of creative destruction, that somehow despite all of the hardships before us progress, even when we succeed.
Tall buildings
Driving around in cars at odd hours of the night
The way people say good-morning even if they don’t know you
The way no one does that in New York
The ability to refer to a girl as a friend without making it seem like she is your girlfriend (can’t do it in German)
Level floors
Sensible opening hours
Delis
Drying Machines (but only sometimes).
Green Money
A healthy appreciation for sarcasm
Art-Deco buildings
Small Colleges
NPR
Having more than one big city in your country
Having more than three TV stations
The fact that there never were dukes, kings, or knights.
The man who stood in front of the UPenn stadium last summer and preached to the commuters every day last Summer.
Making fun of Canadians

You

Riding Trains
Munich to Vienna