Asylum Story

Some friends of ours are "sponsors" for a young man from Afghanistan who fled his homeland and landed in Austria. I'll call him A. Yesterday over brunch, I got an update on A. and his struggle for Austrian personhood.

A doesn't know his age: though his papers say he is 23, he's probably more like 28-29. Back in Afghanistan, someone known to him killed A's brother. As is the custom there, A could have taken what the Austrians call "blut rache" (blood revenge) and rightfully killed his brother's killer. Naturally the killer knew this, and in what may be a logical progression in Afghanistan, the killer therefore swore that he would also murder A before A could kill him.

A left Afghanistan.

Austria may be less violent than Afghanistan, but of course it isn't just peachy for people like A. After eight years here and many meetings with the immigration authorities, A has the legal right to stay in Vienna and even work (!) here. But he'll have to wait another seven years before he can become an Austrian citizen.

And even though he's got a work permit, A still has that refugee head. He doesn't really know that he has some of the same protections that other Austrian workers have. So at his last few jobs, A's bosses have paid him under-the-table, sub-standard wages.

The other day, our friends took A to his local trade union. The man they met with there listened to A's story, looked at his papers, then turned to A and said, "Comrade, why do you let these bosses treat you this way?"

Socialism 1, Assholes 0.

in a waiting room

Okay, alright, after bringing in some documents and shelling out another 110 euros in my semi-annual visit to the immigration office, I'm legal again. I can live in Austria with my family for two more years--hooray!

MA 35--I know the place well. The young clerk with a dozen fotos of Elvis taped up above her desk; the harsh, barely understandable voice on the loudspeaker (' Did they call my name or was that a sneeze?'); the looks of desperation all around me. I'm usually sitting with lots of Turkish people, some Croatians, and one or two Indian or Thai people, all of them hoping for permission to stay in Vienna.

To me, the staff are usually kind. Bemused. I have to hack up the German language for the first few, lower-level employees, then for the first few minutes with one of their bosses. Then she will probably smile--in a strictly non-patronizing way--and start speaking English.

But God knows how they treat Turkish applicants, black applicants or anyone who doesn't speak any German.

I don't know if Austria ever thought of itself as an immigration country, but it needs to start. There is a certain tone that creeps into conversation and media and everyday life here which makes me think some Austrians still think of their country as some sort of imperial powerhouse, drawing people to it like moths to a flame. If I'm perceiving it correctly, some Austrians will continue to believe the country should be selective and elitist and xenophobic about immigration, perhaps in the belief that only the best of the best deserve what Austria has to give.

The New Yorker, and the American, in me thinks this is precisely the wrong approach. I think Austria (and the rest of Europe) is gonna have to get right with immigration. Make it easier. Accept it. That's the only way this fossilized old country will ever get any new ideas. That's the only way Vienna will be able to join the 21st century, to return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Otherwise, Austria is living in the past.

Another Question They Ask

The other thing the hopeful immigrants to the US whom I work with ask me frequently is,

'Will I have to get a gun when we move to America?'

Now after the shooting at this community and immigration center in Binghamton, NY, I expect more questions. 'Will we be safe in our English classes?' 'Can't the US police do anything about these shootings?' Why does this happen so much in America?'

As usual I'll try to be reassuring, but of course, I can't answer these questions.

This morning, a woman told me her children are 9 and 12, and she's worried they won't be safe in American public schools.
Should I tell her that I would be worried about the same thing if we were moving back to the US?

Usually, I point out that the danger in US public schools has been sensationalized and exaggerated. I tell them that they probably won't be in 'bad' neighborhoods too often in the US, and when they are, nothing will happen to them. I tell them, no, do not buy a gun, because you're statistically more likely to shoot someone in your own family with it. All of these things are true.

But when I hear myself saying them, it don't sound so reassuring.

There are too many guns in the US, and they're too easy to get. Everyone knows this. Assault weapons are only good for one thing: killing lots of humans. So why are they still obtainable by madmen with grudges? It's the gun lobby, stoopid. It's about money. Everybody knows.

Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead....

I try not to dabble in schadenfreude, but let's just say I'm not sorry that Jörg Haider is dead.

This motherfu--um, this guy is the guy who has steered Austrian politics into a binary argument about whether foreigners are good or evil. This is the guy who said immigrants seeking asylum in Austria should be rounded up and--yes, he did!--put in camps! Some people say he had already started doing this as governor in his home state of Carinthia.

It's people from this guy's party who say that when you see a black man in Vienna, you can be certain that he is a drug dealer.

Naturally, it's his party that is opposed to Turkey joining the EU, and to Muslim women wearing headscarves here.

Jörg Haider is the guy--and, sadly, not the only guy--who said the Nazis did some good stuff.

He died in a car crash last night.

Don't cry no tears around me.

a new European

(Pat Blashill is currently winging his way home from a mountain holiday of undiverted bliss. As he makes his way, please enjoy this vintage July 2005 brew of self-doubt and hapless hope.....)

I left home this morning, with my new cel phone in my new computer bag, and my new (short short) haircut. I was soon pedaling fast on my new bike, along the Donaukanal, past Schwedenplatz, on my way to pick up my (re)new(ed) passport, feeling almost like a new European. I don't know exactly why, but I thought to myself, 'I'm starting to get the hang of this.' I felt light and graceful. Maybe it was because I had forgotten my bike helmet. But I realized that maybe, just maybe, I will eventually feel like I belong here, that I fit into this place, just another guy on a bicycle, going to work in an uncomplicated fashion, here in Vienna.

I haven't written anything down since the night before we left New York. The next day, when we left the Lower East Side in the car service minivan, all my fantasies about escaping from New York became a punchline. I'd always wanted to look back on Manhattan, through a rearview window as we crossed one of the bridges, and think to myself, "So long, motherfucker. I got more outta you than you cut outta me." When it finally happened, as I actually did look out the rearview window, past Anette and Adinah, who were talking and playing quite comfortably in the backseat, I couldn't even see Manhattan. All of our baggage was blocking my view.

Since that day, Anette and I both taught courses at an American University called Webster; Anette has pretty much accepted a year-long teaching position in Innsbruck (which will mean she commutes to that city--five hours away--and stays there for three days of the week, while I stay back in Wien with the kid); Adinah has started going to Kinderkrippe, a public pre-school, and she loves it, especially the buttered bread, and the two little boys named Vincenz and Alexander; and I have begun looking for a job, which is currently opening up all sorts of middle-age despair, ennui and wee-wee in me. Moving to Vienna is a great opportunity to reinvent myself. But as what, as who?

But the real problem--my night-time friend, my demonic buddy--gnawing away at me, giving me a thousand-yard-stare when I'm supposed to be listening to my wife tell me about her day, is something else: What happened to me, back there, somewhere around age 38, 39? Did I lose it, just fumble my career away out of ineptitude and arrogance? Will I ever get it--or another one--back? Is it all over for me? Why am I not famous yet? I dreamed of so much More for myself.....

and yet, today is a beautiful day in this amazing old city. I am with a beautiful woman--in fact, we were married four years ago to this day. Our daughter is a ray of (almost) pure sunshine. I've got a bitchin' new bike. We've got plenty of food in our refrigerator. The only thing I've lost is what I gave away, and what I've gained is a wonderful family and another day to enjoy them. I'm going to take Lynryd Skynryd's advice. I'm going to try to be a simple kind of man. With an American accent.

semi-Jealous

My wife is back from the USA, and I have been duly briefed. In ten days, she ate sushi in Los Angeles, got snowed-in in Detroit, shopped like some very efficient Queen Bee in New York City, saw friends, and worked and worked and worked a lot. In the cab back from the airport, she was already making plans for us all to go back to New York for a visit, or to LA for a work-study deal. Sounds like fun--even the snow in Detroit part.

Actually, going back to America even for a quick look sounds so great I don't even want to think about it until I've got the tickets in my hand. I would start to salivate thinking of the cheeseburgers, the light on the buildings, the people, and the sound of the English language all around me--I would swim in it.


How long has it been since I've been back? I don't even know.

Anette says everyone over there is excited about Obama, and excited to be excited about politics again. I wish I was there for that.

But underneath her news and gossip about the US, particularly the New York corner of it, I heard darker things. Mean streets. Sometimes it sounds like people in that city are just holding on by their teeth. Heart attacks, looming evictions, outta-sight daycare costs--all of these fabulous adventures await YOU! if you are not rich and/or famous in NYC. This I don't miss. I'll try to remember that the next time I'm feeling blue about living in a musty dusty capital of Olde Europe.

My life has changed. We have a bathtub and we use it almost every night. Our family is too big to fit inside of a New York City life. And I don't think you should have to be rich and/or famous in order to have a bathtub and a family to put into it.


On the other hand, I hear life in Austin, Texas is pretty goddamn great right now....

A Cry for Help

The Ghost

This afternoon, near the end of a bad day which was about to get worse, I saw a ghost waiting for the bus.
He was standing with a crowd of my patients, and he comes from the same part of the world, so at first I couldn't figure out why he looked familiar but somehow torn out of some past chapter of my life.
Then I remembered him. He was in a German class with me last year. Turkish guy, quiet, a keen student. He had been an Islamic teacher in Istanbul, and he'd moved here to Vienna with his family hoping to somehow make a better life for himself. He made Baklava for the class.
I shook his hand and for a few moments he looked like he was also trying to remember who the hell I was. Then he remembered me, too. Sort of.
Within about forty-five seconds, he told me that he was unemployed, seeing a doctor for depression, and had recently split up with his wife. Then, since we seemed to be going the same way, the ghost and I stood together for a tortured fifteen minutes, on the bus and then on the U-bahn, speaking mangled German and trying to make conversation, any conversation.
What do you say when someone you don't know very well tells you his life is falling apart?
I felt so bad for him. Vienna blows for lots of natural born Austrians, but it's got to be a very strange sort of hell for a immigrant who teaches the Koran. I'm sorry, I said. But I couldn't think of anything else to say that didn't sound false or patronizing or stupid or trivial.
So when we got to my subway stop, I just shook his hand and said,"Good Luck."
I should have taken it for an omen. A few minutes later, my day went all to hell.

Proper English

Parents the world over tend to get all warm and fuzzy when they think about raising their children bilingually. Especially in America, where knowing a second language is both rare and romanticized. I was like that too: I thought, 'Yeah, if we live in Austria, the kid will speak German and English, and she'll be soooo sophisticated!'
This fantasy died hard. First came the disappointment when, due to Kindergarten, the child-sponge-brain phenomenon, and various other factors, Adinah began to sling German much faster than I did. Disappointment turned to confusion when she began explaining the cultural stuff, like Austria's evil Santa, Krampus.
Adinah's English has lagged behind, partly because I'm the only one that speaks it with her on a regular basis. But lately, I've been disappointed once again, as I've begun to realize that Adinah doesn't speak proper English at all. She speaks like.....me. Just now, she called me over and pointed out a wall hanging which is no longer hanging straight. She said, "This is bugging me."
She's also started turning my own words against me. When we play Uno, I tend to get competitive. I talk trash. With my four year old daughter, yes. But the other day, she held up her hand and announced, "These two cards will beat you."
Yesterday, we were discussing the significant others of various Walt Disney characters, and she challenged me to name Donald Duck's girlfriend. I told her that's Daisy Duck, of course.
She was still thinking about this when I put her to bed a few hours later. "Papa, who told you the name of that duck who is with Donald?"
"A little bird," I said.
A little pause.
"In really?"
I started laughing, then repeated the lie, and Adinah still didn't believe me. So I told her the truth, which is that I've seen all of Donald Duck's videos, and that's how I know who he's going out with.
Adinah got quiet again, then she said, "Daisy Duck Caca."


See, no matter how much of a language gap there is between us, I know that Adinah and I will always be able share a good poopy joke. Or even a bad one.
When she gets a little older--like say, sometime next week--I'll share all of the ones about Uranus, too.

trouble

My situation has changed.
Or maybe I should say my perspective has changed.
I have put myself into a position in which I can say that if humans are animals, the immigrant is a particular kind of human animal. And leaving one world behind for another is even more dangerous than the most astute and self-aware animal may know. One day you are in your homeland, and everything is fine. Maybe you are a villain, maybe you are well-respected. But the next day and a thousand miles away, you are doing the same things, living as you think right, or doing the best you can, but everything around you has changed. The world has turned beneath your feet. And now you are a criminal. Or a victim.
You don't speak the language and you don't know what you did wrong. What can you do? Who will help you?
Let's say this strange new country you are in sends police to you--eight men with black boots and guns--and they say, 'Tell us what happened and we will help you.' Or these same men come to you and say, 'You have broken our laws, come with us.' Let's say you're a nine-year-old boy and you watch these things happen to your parents. How can you know what is right?
If a violent act is standard in one country but illegal in another, how does the immigrant know that in this new place, here and now, it's okay to ask for help?

There are days when one can see too much and all jokes fail. Today was one of those days.

the 2o Dollar Question

"You're always advertising Texas," said the olive-skinned woman. "You say you love America. So why are you in Vienna?"

It's a good question, asked with a smile.

Suddenly it's the opening scene of Detour (1946), and I'm Tom Neal, the innocent man, wrongly accused. A low-angle spotlight splashes on my face, the background dims and....ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space.

Why am I in Vienna? Who's asking? Sometimes I'm talking to people who have never been over there and don't want to go. Sometimes I'm talking to Americans who wish they could leave the US. Sometimes I'm talking to Americans here who wish, desperately, that they could go back. Sometimes I'm talking to people that are moving there with all the dreams and aspirations that adults can conjure.

My answer--my story--varies. The truth comes out in greater and lesser degrees. The truth is I got sick of only seeing some of my friends twice a year, because we were all so busy. Actually, I was so angry and disgusted with what the Bush Administration has done to the country I do in fact love. The Gods Honest truth is that it was time for a change. Frankly, the "quality of life" (a funny phrase, if you think about it for a second) is higher in Europe. No, wait...we did it for our daughter: everyone knows education and healthcare is better over here. And so forth.

I guess I always try to be honest about the place itself. The US of A, that is. But it's like talking to a kid--you tell them some well-chosen fragment of the truth. For people who are going to America to live happily ever after, or those who go with no illusions, or for those somewhere in the middle, that is, for people who dream, despite themselves, of a better life in the USA, I try to convey the brutality and hilarity and awful poetry of the land. Sometimes I even think they understand me.

Usually the lights come up, I get that grin, and I tell them the real truth. "Why am I in Vienna? Well...I fell in love with an Austrian."

Two or Three Lifetimes Ago

Between this new job, extra freelance work, and 20 Euro do-it-for-a-favor gigs, I'm bizz-zee. I've only had two other full-time jobs in my life, so the organizing of various tasks around the job--that is, the time formerly known as my free-time--also takes some getting used to.

I dimly remember moving to New York City twenty years ago. I lived in a closet for a year, and I worked 9 to 5 at a stock photo agency, selling pictures of sunsets, and couples on the beach, and couples on the beach at sunset. Before and after work, I took pictures like this one (of my nightstand/suitcase, in my closet/bedroom.)

I suppose if you account for inflation, I may actually be making less money at my new job then I was selling photo schlock back then. And I even liked living in that closet. But now I feel useful again. Too busy, sure, but...yeah. Somehow, I've got a spot in the scheme of things. That's a sort of progress.

running some figures

I sometimes tell people that Austria is politically progressive, but socially conservative. I think they call that a sugar-coating.

Last week, the Viennese anti-racism organization Zara released its statistics about racism in Austria in 2006. According to one local newspaper, Zara "documented more than 1,500 incidents of racism in Austria last year, the highest number in the seven years the group has been active." Spokespeople for Zara also said "the increase may reflect a growing awareness of racism, rather than an increase in attacks."

As a white American who grew up with racism all around him, my initial reaction to that statistic was cynical. It seemed kind of cute that someone would actually document each discrete incident of racism. So I dug around a little bit for a corresponding figure for the incidence of racism in the US, and found that, according to one US Department of Justice report, there were 9,035 hate crimes committed in the US in 2004. Of these, "intimidation accounted for 31.3 percent; destruction, damage, or vandalism comprised 31.1 percent; simple assault, 19.4 percent; and aggravated assault, 11.5 percent."

I don't know how Zara defines a racist incident, but I assume it doesn't match the US DOJ's definition of a hate crime, so it's risky to compare the two figures. Nevertheless, let's do a little sloppy math here: the number of racist incidents that Zara recorded is about one sixth that of the number of hate crimes documented in the US two years ago. Assuming that, at most, half of the Austrian incidents could be qualified as hate crimes, let's say that Austria experienced about one twelfth the amount of racist incidents. But here's the thing: Austria is about one hundredth the size of the USA. So proportionally, it's--well, relatively speaking, let's just say Austria's got a real problem.

Running these figures set me back on my heels, once again, about racism and bigotry here. Zara's report isn't news to any of the immigrants living in Austria, nor to any natives who have done much traveling to more racially mixed countries, nor to anyone who has seen the preponderance of racist graffiti all over Vienna (more on this later). But as Zara says, their findings may indicate "a growing awareness" of racism." In my experience, some Austrians think that using the German word "neger" for black people is actually okay. I think a lot of them believe this is a progressive and tolerant country. Oh well.

Gary Floyd Across Time and Space

The immigrant is sometimes taken by an urge, not to fit in, speak German or otherwise be a new sort of man, but to revert to old loyalties and lives. The fog of nostalgia swirls around him and news of home--his first and oldest home, that is--pelts the ground like spiteful oobleck. He parades about the cobblestones of Vienna while wearing his fathers' pointy black cowboy boots. He has his Austrian friends over for tacos and guacamole. He becomes more of a Texan than he ever was when he lived in Texas.

He begins to write a soppy e-mail to an old friend back in Austin. Without even meaning to indulge these sentimental kniptions, he puts on a CD that a Swiss mother burned for him recently. He bobs his head and sings along. He remembers the singer. Gary Floyd. A pink haired gay punk shaped like Divine. Gary Floyd sang about cruising married men in the adult bookstore on Saturday night. About policemen moonlighting in the Ku Klux Klan. Growling, pleading, screaming, accusing and begging you with a voice like blue fire. He sang for the Dicks and he was way, way, WAY more punk rock than you.

Then the immigrant is crying. Seizing up into a grimace and choking on tears that don't want to come out at first. He thinks of his hometown friend, a schoolteacher now but once a punk like him and weren't they both in the audience that night that Gary Floyd and the Dicks played Voltaires Basement? Is this sad? No. Where is Gary Floyd now--is he okay? Don't know. So why the tears?

Because everything is different and everything is also the same. Reaching out to that good old friend across an ocean listening to the same music twenty-five years or five minutes and three lifetimes away from that moment Gary Floyd touched us for the first time.

Because sometimes his brain is so full of names and pictures and feelings that it feels like he's going to burst. Tears come out instead.

* * *

The immigrant promises himself he will Google Gary Floyd. Then he gets back to work.

Double Trouble

In one respect at least, Austria has a close relationship with Ethiopia. It may have started when the actor Karlheinz Bohm, best known by Americans as the cinephilic serial killer in Peeping Tom, began doing NGO work with Ethiopian children in 1981. The upshot of this is that there are two agencies in the country who are licensed to facilitate adoptions from Ethiopia, and the upshot of that is that we know several other adopted Ethiopian kids in Vienna. Lately, Adinah has grown closer to Teresa, who's one of our favorite people.

Teresa goes to the same Kindergarten, and that's great. Mostly. I sometimes suspect that Adinah and Teresa get shunted together there, even if they'd rather play with some of their other friends, because they're both little brown girls. Occasionally, some of the other parents have mistaken them for sisters, not because they look alike, but because...they're both little brown girls.

I know that's some racism right there, but I'm also learning--very slowly--that you have to pick your battles. I think we're so lucky that Adinah has a friend like Teresa in school. She tells me they draw pictures together.

Our kids are old enough to notice skin color, but they're still too young to understand subtler distinctions. In fact, most of the other kids in the Kindergarten are not from Vienna, or even from Austria. They're Serbian, or Croatian, or Turkish. Ibrahim is Egyptian, I think. But Adinah and Teresa look different. And within the Kindergarten, that's important.

Outside school, when they're with us, Adinah and Teresa are great friends. But competitive as hell. They spend a lot of time fighting about who gets the last raisin or the first gummi bear.

We went to the zoo last Sunday with Teresa, her parents and their second adopted Ethiopian daughter, Emily. It was pretty excellent. Adinah and Teresa fought over whose turn it was to ride the scooter, but they mostly had a good time. It was almost impossible to get them out of the bird house once they discovered the flamingos, whom Deanie calls "loud mingos." (Because they scream so.) Myself, I liked the orangutan who looked like Ozzie Osbourne.

Yesterday, they went to their third kids yoga class together, and afterwards, they fought like the dickens. Anette sat down next to them and said, 'Why are you guys fighting? You're best friends!' Suddenly the war was over, and they spent the rest of the afternoon giggling.

Hunting, Gathering

When an American moves to town, he can be cocky. At least, I was. My first job here was a revelation, and not just because I was teaching for the first time, and loving it. After so many years in New York City, I got to Vienna and suddenly realized that life and work can be quite fulfilling even if you're not living in the center of the universe. Maybe it's even better--more human--beyond the outer rim of Manhattan. The cockiness kicked in a short time later, because I thought, `Hey I'm from New York fucking City!' I thought a lot about the scene in Planet of the Apes where the astronauts land, look around at the cavemen, and say, 'Well, if this is the best they got here, we'll be running the place in six months.'

And it takes a little bit longer, but one begins to deflate a little when he realizes he lacks some basic working skills. Like being able to speak the local language.

Still later, the American starts to believe he is scurrying down the same path other expatriates took before him. 'Didja teach English at Language Borse?' 'Yeah, I did that one.' 'Try tending bar at Der Blarney Stone?' 'Yup, did that too.'

You start to think you're just not the imaginative type.

Then one day you wake up and you think, 'Judas Priest, I gotta get a job or they're gonna ship me out here for high loafing and crimes against the welfare state.'

An American friend I know here is seriously thinking about taking a job at McDonalds.

Those words have all the ominous power of an urban myth. And he knows it. He told me, 'I know it's the lowest you can go, I know it's a traitor job.' But he's got to find a way to support his family. 'One of us has got to be the guinea pig, and I guess it's going to be me.'

And I don't know what to tell him. On the one hand, I admire him for being willing to go there, to do that. I know there's lots of people all over the world who would love to have a job at McDonalds. On the other hand, I know he can do better. In America, he earned 60 to 70 grand a year making art. Here he can't find a thing. Maybe his German isn't good enough. Or maybe it's the color of his skin. I don't know.

I just hope he can hang in there a little longer.

Jeez, Mickey D's.

At the AMS

Somewhere in the middle of the dime novels of the great Jim Thompson, the protagonist--always a basically good, although ethically flexible fellow--usually gets a funny feeling. Everything's going swell--some silky babe is draping herself all over him, important men are doing him favors, and he's being ridiculously well-paid for doing nothing. So why does he feel like his neck is on the chopping block? This is the funny feeling I have as I sit, once again, in the waiting room of the ninth district offices of the Arbeits Markt Service, otherwise known as my local unemployment agency.

This fall, the AMS paid for two € 300 German classes for me, plus sent me € 800 for my living expenses. When they agreed to pay for my Deutsch lernen, I thought, 'Wow...that's...nice.' When they started sending me the slouch payments (which I hadn't asked for) I thought, 'Whoa, hang on, I don't want a hand-out. And what are they expecting from me in return?'

Did I take the money? Of course.

Because of my half-baked German skills, Anette had gone with me to the AMS once or twice, and so helped me get my deal. When the state-sponsored largesse started rolling in, she explained, once again, that things are different here. Their immigration and assimilation policies are the reverse of those in the US. That is, in America, it's easy to get into the country, but once you're there, nobody wants to know you. But in Austria, it's difficult to become a citizen, get a work permit or otherwise be welcomed into Austrian society. But once you're in, as I am since I'm married to an Austrian, the social system walks right up to you, gives you a bear hug, and says, 'Can I make you a cappucino and pay you some money for having a kid and going to school and just getting by while you're looking for work?'

Right?

As I said, I took the money. Then what did I do? Did I look for a job? Sorta. Did I miss my next appointment with the AMS? Yes. And the appointment after that? Naturally.

I figured, 'Hey, I got their money--what're they gonna do now? Take back the cappucino?'

Then a couple of friends told me, 'Hey, don't miss your termines with the AMS. They get really pissed off about that.'

So here I am, sitting in a waiting room packed with Turkish families, fifty-something day laborers, thirty-ish Serbian carpenters and other folks who probably need the AMS' help way more than I do.

I just know I'm gonna get spanked.

How old does a man have to be before he forgets what it was like to sit in the principal's office, waiting for a smack?

Kaput.

How's my German? Ill.

Now that I'm not in a German class, I can feel the language slipping further away from me everyday. I've taken five classes since we moved here--two evening courses, three intensive, all immersive. It's a lot of work but when you make an effort, learning how to spreche the Deutsch, or any other language, is a miraculous thing. To be able to make those strange sounds with your own mouth, to be able to shoot the breeze on the street with a stranger, to occasionally even get a joke--it's incredible. In school, when I'm beavering away, studying hard, doing vigorous battle with sentence structure and gendered nouns, I feel like I'm slowly surfacing from a swamp of American Pop talk, and bit by bit, beginning to actually understand what's happening around me.

But when I take a break from classes, that momentum reverses. I degenerate. The store clerk who last week seemed so urbane and helpful is now droning on, "Blah blah, bah, bah blah....." The old lady at the streetcar stop is smiling and chirping "Stoppen blinken stinken." All of Vienna is mystifying, nothing is illuminated.



One thing that has changed is that my wife will finally speak German with me. When I took my first classes, I would sometimes try out a few words or phrases on her, and she would just shudder and turn away. She couldn't handle talking to me as if I was a four-year-old. But now I'm speaking like a slightly odd ten-year-old, and that she can deal with. Sometimes she suggests that we should just speak German all the time.

But I'm not ready for that, either. I'm not ready to leave the American Pop talk swamp. I like this swamp. I love using "crummy," and referring to Mister Toad's wild ride as a "real ring tail tooter."

It's not like I want read Goethe in the original German. I'll be happy if I can sit politely at a dinner party, understand 70% of what's being said, wait my turn to speak, then bust out a good line about a fartknocker.

That would be assimilation.

Domestic Violence

One of the more disquieting aspects of living in Europe has been trying to reconcile my love for America with my loathing for the people currently running it. George W. Bush is a liar and a cheat, and saying that he is not impeachable for his crimes is nearly as fatheaded as saying the situation in Iraq "verges on civil war." We didn't move here because I #!*#@!! hate the man, but his administration's utter disregard for the hearts and minds of the American people certainly made it easier to leave home. After the 2004 election, I felt jilted, as if my country had left me for an asshole who was just gonna break her heart.

Today, as he pushes ahead to needlessly send more Americans and Iraqis to their deaths, despite the wishes of most Americans, it looks like the President's relationship to the USA has become even more abusive. Some of the Republicans in the Senate have blocked debate on Iraq-- they have taken the role of the neighbors who don't report a man who is beating his wife or child.

It's a rainy day here in Vienna, and as I stand at our window, watching fifty-year-old streetcars rumbling past signs I can't read, nothing makes me feel farther from home than my inability to understand why we continue to allow this President and his accomplices to batter and bruise us.

More Personal Questions

A friend back in New York forwarded me a questionaire, and it seemed relevant to those of us here at Euro Like Me headquarters, so I got up at six-thirty a.m. and started answering the section marked "MORE PERSONAL QUESTIONS." This is as far as I got....


- Can you make a list of the different places where you have lived until now?
As a kid I lived in North Dakota, though I was too young to remember much of that. The Dakotas were bound up with all the Norwegian food jokes my father made about lefsa and lutefisk, and all the stories he told about his family. I think I remember falling down on an icy bridge and biting through my lip in Wahpeton, but that could be a "recovered" memory.

I grew up in Austin, Texas. Suburban tract house, cool college town, suffocatingly snug at the end. I was a bookworm, then a stoner, then a drama fag and a stoner, then a new waver, then a journalist.

I moved to San Antonio, Texas (also a very cool town) to live with an experimental, multi-ethnic post-punk band of vegan anarchists. That lasted for a couple of months. After they caught me eating ham sandwiches and listening to Elton John, I slunk back to Austin.

Age 25 I moved to New York City. Stayed there for eighteen years. Nice place.

In May of 2005, my wife and kid and me moved to Vienna, Austria.



- How would you trace your personal background up until the moment you were born? What are the most significant points of your parents and grandparents pathways? Where are they from? And if they moved from place to place, why?
My great grandparents, Ole and Tomine, moved to South Dakota from Norway. It was an arranged marriage, and it was said that she watered her rose garden with her own tears. My father never knew his father. Dad grew up very poor and handicapped--he contracted polio as a kid, and nearly lost an arm to it. He studied social work, met my Mom, worked for a time on an Indian reservation, and then they moved to Texas and had me.

My mom's grandfather, Bennett Kerbow, ran the general store in the tiny west Texas town of Mertzon. He was a very high-ranking Mason, he sometimes carried a gun, and I remember him as a kind old man. My mom's father ran a Coca Cola plant. He was a bit of a grump and more than casually racist, but he was a good father to her: he taught her how to dance to country and western music, and he cried when she got old enough to thank him for that. Ma studied speech therapy in North Dakota, met my father, and then they moved back down to Texas. She had my older brother, then she had a daughter, Katherine, who died. Then she had me.

My parents raised my two brothers and I in Austin. They got divorced, and eventually my father moved to El Paso, Texas. My older brother left to live on the open prairie. I moved out to live with my new wave girlfriend in a beat-up commune called Halcyon. My mom left to marry a man in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. That left my younger brother living all alone in the house we grew up in, and I think that got to be pretty depressing for him.