Want to see something interesting and truly innovate in fine dining?
Austrian chef Jörg Wörther has come up with gourmet “fast food” served
in a cone. Google “Jörg Wörther” + “carpe diem” and then select IMAGES.
(Or you can go to the website www.finestfingerfood.com instead, but it’s
pretty minimal and only gives you one or two pics.)

Want to fantasize about vintage wine? There’s a place in Vienna that has a
great selection, and it’s not enormously expensive. Though more than the
$13 a box I spend. (That’s right, I said BOX, Snob Boy.) Buy a bottle
from the year you were born. Check it out here:
https://www.grams-wein.at/index3.htm

ON THE ROAD: Went on a bicycle trip. In the car on the way home a red
Ferarri pulled up next to us. The things you’ve heard about the sound of
the motor are true; it has a nice growl to it. I think there are two
Ferarri dealerships in Vienna. On a previous trip I happened to be
walking around and came upon a dealership. I pressed my face against the
glass, Jethro, I sure did, though I have mixed feelings about Cars As
Suitable Dick Substitutes. On this trip, the same day as the Ferarri
sighting, we also happened to get behind a Lambourghini Countach. It
wasn’t too long before we were WAY behind it.
   And a weird trend I’ve noticed here is the use of the 4-wheel ATVs as
street transportation. They aren’t street legal in the states. It’s not a
bad compromise between a motorcycle and a car, in that it’s more stable
than a motorcycle. However, I’ve not yet seen one on the highways.
Probably won’t go fast enough.

GEBROCHENER-RÜCKEN-BERG: Went to the movies last night with Brigitte and
her friend Vivian. The film? BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. Really had no interest
in seeing it when it was (among some people) the rage in the States, but
on the other hand, the girls wanted to have a night out. So no problem–I
thought. We got our tickets and as the usher was letting everyone in he
heard us talking in English and said: “This film is dubbed into German.
You know that, right?” No, we’d understood it was in the original
English, with German subtitles. But no, that was LAST week. THIS week,
dubbed in German. No English. But I figured I’d give it a try anyhow.
Somehow nothing seems to concern me on this trip. If gay cowboys want to
talk German on the range, OK with me. Yippee-yi-yo-guy-gay.
   I sat there about three hours trying to figure things out, which I more
or less did, despite my horrible German. Most of the conversations were
beyond me but it’s surprising what you can figure out just by watching.
(I know what you’re thinking: What is there to figure out? Two guys pork
each other! Subplot and backstory, Shakespeare, THAT’S what I was trying
to get: the part about the pork-fest was easy enough.)
   Cultural difference note: The Austrian authorities decided this film
was OK for anyone over 12. In the states, if you took a 13-year-old kid
to this flick, you’d be executed. Not only was there the gay thing to
think about, but you also saw female breasteses (!) I’ve written before
about the nonchalance Europeans exhibit about nudity and sexual matters.
They tend to put their foots down when it comes to excess violence,
however, which seems saner to me. Showing sex is OK, showing gratuitous
violence is less OK. Attention, America: People like to fuck. ‘Twas ever
thus. Get used to it.
   I paid particular attention to the camera work in this film. As a
former “filmmaker” these things still interest me. The DP did a great job
executing his shots. Watch the film with that in mind, if you haven’t seen
it. Nicely done. Also brillianty done was the dubbing. It’s a real art to
closely match mouth movement, length of the sentences, etc. AND voice-act
at the same time. It was the same when I saw DAS BOOT–the dubbing was
first class. Get DAS BOOT on DVD with the English dubbing and see how
good dubbing can be. (I still prefer subtitles, though…)

DO NOT CRY. OK, CRY. I hear a lot of whining about the price of gas in the
US. I have no sympathy whatsoever, zero, none, nada. Quit crying about it
and demand a few less cruise missiles and B-2 bombers and a lot more
public transportation. Lockheed can build locomotives, busses, and
streetcars as easily or easier as they build military aircraft. The
Europeans pay around $5 a gallon, ballpark. And they may cry about it,
but tough shit. The Arabs are laughing at them just like they laugh at
us, and we have no one to blame but ourselves.
   But if you want to cry, here’s a reason: Despite the high price of gas
here, and the wide and ready availability of public transportation,
there’s no shortage of chuckleheads who still insist on driving SUVs
(yeah, and Ferarris) instead of taking the fucking streetcar. So if
Europe is any indication, when gas hits $5 or $6 a gallon in the states,
we’ll be burning it as fast or faster than ever. Just gotta, gotta, gotta
have that big car or truck. Gotta. How else will the neighbors know how
big our dicks are supposed to be, if we don’t show ‘em by the big shiny
cars we drive?

I was sentenced to 50 years of boredom

for trying to change the system from within.

I’m ready to reward them:

First we take Manhatten, next we take Berlin.

My favorite John X entry so far

Non-chronological Vienna notes:

Walking along and came to a shop selling Segways, the peculiar
two-wheeled, gyroscopically controlled personal transport vehicle. I’ve
actually seen one of these in action, one night in front of the Noble
Museum in OKC. Anyhow, it seems they now have an off-road version of this
thing, with knobby tires and perhaps a beefed up suspension. I dunno.
They’re kinda neat and I can grok the tech that went into their design,
but they cost more than my ’94 Tercel, and more than a new Vespa, and
lots more than a new bicycle, which is what I’d rely on in Vienna if I
lived here. However, if what you want to do is take a Segway tour of
Vienna, you can do so for 69 Euro, refundable if you end up buying one of
the things. It’s a 3-hour tour. (Sing along: “A three hour tour / A three
hour tour”)  More here: www.segway.at

Had lunch at an interesting resaurant across the Vienna River (a different
creek from the Danube) called Steireck, actually three restaurants in one.
The one we ate at (the cheapest) is called Meierei, and their big claim to
fame: CHEESE! They have every kind. I’d like to thank my cow, sheep, and
goat friends for the milk (and then cheese) they so kindly provide. I had
a sampler plate featuring eight of what they described as Austria’s best
cheese, along with a glass of inexpensive white wine. All the cheeses
were delicious. I’m no gourmet, so I’ll take their word for it being
Austria’s best. Another interesting thing: at the entrance they have
large posters of what looks like different slabs of marble. But you then
see that it’s really a close up of a slice of cheese, with different
blues, greens, etc. and the different textures. We ate with Brigitte’s
friends Mischi and Greta, who stopped by on their way home from work.
Their English was perfect and they were kind enough to help me with my
German when I tried. People don’t mind you being ignorant, and if you ask
for help they’re usually happy to do so. I get the feeling most Americans
won’t ask, so it’s probably refreshing for them to find an Ami who wants
to learn. Everyone kept telling me to check out the men’s room. WTF? But
nature eventually called, and it was worth the trip: the fixtures were of
colored fiberglass, in interesting shapes. For instance, the urinals
looked like the tips of huge hypodermic needles standing on end. They
were about 6 feet tall and made of green fiberglass. The sink and
adjoining trashcan were orange and yellow and shaped like flowers. I even
took pictures, the first time I was ever tempted to do so in a men’s room.
(Ladies rooms, with my hidden camera, sure. Plenty of times.) The
Stadtpark across from the restaurant is beautiful, and you can check out
their webcam here: http://www.wien.gv.at/ma42/webcam.htm

Brigitte’s sister is a union official, representing Vienna’s municipal
workers. There’s a big mess right now involving a stupid investment on
the part of a bank owned by the union, which had to cover the bad
investment with what? It’s STRIKE FUND, which had been of unknown
quantity. But now that 1) the enemy knows how much they had, and 2) a lot
of it has vanished to cover the bad deal, the union has had it’s balls
kicked hard. Unions in Europe have been a lot stronger than in America.
Their membership is starting to slide somewhat, just as it did in the
States, and this is too bad. Workers in Europe have enjoyed a greater
than living wage, generous benefits, and plenty of vacation. Of course,
businesses scream like motherfuckers with their nuts caught in a car door
that the unions are killing them, and thus are killing society, etc. but
if you come to Western Europe, it sure doesn’t look like they’re some
backwater shithole incapable of competing on the world market. Just the
opposite–they look healthy and happy. The Scandanavian countries, for
instance, have a 80 – 90% union membership and offer extraordinary social
services / benefits / safety nets, and it doesn’t look like business is
drying up there IN THE SLIGHTEST. Maybe their CEOs have to settle for
somewhat lower compensation, like, say, 200X the earnings of an average
employee instead of 2000 X, like some firms in America pay their thieves
(I mean, CEOs.) Anyhow, we went to Renate’s union offices Friday night to
watch election results, as everyone was on edge as to what those results
might be, given the investment blunder. Brigitte has patiently tried to
explain the ins and outs of union rules, politics, etc. to me but
honestly, quantum physics is easier and I’d have a better chance of
building a time machine than figuring union shit out. But it was fun
being there among a bunch of jabbering municipal workers, with a full
buffet (and I mean really delicious food — pork roast, cheese cake,
beer, wine, etc.) while everyone heard each election result and either
cheered loudly or moaned and took a swig from their beers. I kind of
regretted ordering the cheese sampler earlier in the evening, because I
could have saved about 15 Euro and pigged out at the union offices,
courtesy of the Vienna Municipal Workers Union. Ah, well. Maybe next
election.

I wouldn’t want to drive in Vienna. It’s something of a cluster fuck, what
with their different rules and lack of parking and crowded streets. Oddly
enough, though, you hardly ever see any traffic accidents. HOWEVER: on
the way to the union hall, Brigitte pulled next to a car park along the
curb. She was going to parallel park into the space behind this car. The
coast was clear. But as she back up, all of a sudden BANG! I barely had
time to shout WATCH OUT! Two guys in an identical VW Golf had come up
behind her but stopped right behind her, and she plowed into them,
breaking the parking light lens. They pulled to the corner and started to
hash things out. I sized up the two guys to see if they’d be a problem if
push came to fist-fight. Answer: No. The passenger said nothing, and I
said nothing, but B and the driver started jabbering in German and it
began to get heated. The guy blamed B, and B said it should have been
plain to him she was backing in, as she’d stopped parallel to the car in
front of the space, had her signal on, and was obviously about to back
in. (He really did come out of nowhere, but these streets can be narrow
and you can’t seem more than a few feet behind you, what with all the
parked cars, etc.) The guy waved his broken lens and suggested B remove
hers and give it to him as a replacement. (Same make and model car,
remember?) No way. So then the guy suggested they call the cops to sort
it out. Fine, says B. It was then the guy said, “Fuck it,” got back in
his car, and drove away. B later told me the driver was a Pole, and
refused to exchange insurance info. She figured he didn’t have insurance,
might have been driving a friend’s car, or perhaps was uninterested in
talking closely with the cops. In any case, he bugged out when she called
his bluff. Damage to her car: nothing. We went to the union offices and
drank our beers. No worries. I presume the Pole drove to the nearest
junkyard, looking for a turn signal lens. International relations can be
tricky.

I forgot to mention in my previous Trier blab-fest the fact that I saw in
that town (birthplace of Marx, remember): a McDonald’s, a Burger King, a
Pizza Hut, and though I didn’t see the actual store, I saw a sign for a
fucking WalMart SuperCenter! Certainly Vienna has at least 3 out of four
of these (no WalMart. Yet.) but it’s a city of almost 2 million people.
Trier is much smaller. I’ve eaten my share of fast food, and in fact do
essentially the same when I patronize one of the Turk pizza or kabob
restaurants, but Jesus Fucking Christ, does every American fast food
place have to infect every town in Europe? (Don’t get me started on
Starbucks, of which they have a few here in the town that INVENTED the
goddamned coffee house!)

They have this condiment here called Maggi, which is a liquid rather like
soy sauce in taste, but made of an herb. Unlike soy sauce, salt is the
last ingredient on the list of stuff it’s made of, which means there’s a
lot less of it. It’s considered kind of like ketchup in that it isn’t on
the table in any but average eateries, and even there is usually used
mostly in soup. But I had the obligitory wiener schnitzel today, there
was Maggi on the table, so I dropped it on each bite. DEE.LICIOUS.
Brigitte and her dad looked at me like I’d poured shit on a filet (even
though schnitzel is thought of kind of like hamburger is in the US.) I
said, “OK, I’m a barbarian, but the stuff tastes great!” If you can find
a bottle in the US, buy and give it a try. I think you’ll find it tasty.

the next chapter of John X in Europe:

Crab larva migrate, did you know that? Evidently the adult crabs eat
anything, including their young ‘uns, so the larva get the hell out of
Dodge, sometimes migrating hundreds of kilometers away only to return
later when they’re old enough to fight back. (When I say crabs, I mean
crustaceans, not the “Quick, sell me every drop of blue shampoo you have
and make it snappy, I’m dying over here!” kind of crabs.)

This is what I learned from Katarina at breakfast on my last morning in
Luxembourg. K and I were enjoying some different cheeses on bread, orange
juice, and coffee while the maid cleaned up nearby. It’s not known how the
crabs know how to get back home after they grow up, but somehow they
sussed it out. I salute their sense of direction, their survival
instinct, and their tasty flesh.

A river runs through Luxembourg City, and I followed it to the city
center, walking a mile or so until I met Brigitte at a little bar. She
was finished with work and we’d decided to walk around town a bit before
flying home. The bar was right on the river and had a deck, so we sat
outside and watched the ducks swim and quack and sometimes take flight
from the river. We were surrounded by very old buildings—and a hell of
a lot of construction cranes. I bet every crane in Europe is in
Luxembourg City. I took a lot of pictures and there’s a fucking crane in
every one of them. Praise Allah, may his digitally manipulated
mever-depicted image be praised, for Photoshop, because I’m cutting those
cranes out of my pics.

Luxembourg used to be a country of poor farmers, but now it’s the country
with the highest per capita income in Europe, thanks to a booming banking
industry and the presense of EU agencies. Even the farmers are rich now.
It’s a long story of how they managed to hit the jackpot in this way, but
it’s somewhat analagous to the way a bunch of desert nomads found
themselves sitting on huge pools of sticky black liquid every wants and
needs these days. In other words, they lucked out. And hence the building
/ renovation boom in Luxembourg City.

The highlight of our walkabout was a visit to the casements, a wall/tunnel
system overlooking the river and the picturesque city center. The thing
started with construction of a castle in 963 and through the centuries it
was built up and extended and modified. It’s pretty impressive to look at
old structures in Europe like these casements, the cathedrals, etc. and
remember that they did it all with no power tools, no heavy equipment,
and they did it so well that hundreds of years later the structures are
still sound. Wonder if my house will still be around 500 years from now?
If I don’t get around to painting the fucker, I doubt it.

Here’s a good place to check out Luxembourg on the Web:
http://www.lcto.lu/

Had a great lunch, dining outside in the city square. A salad with crisp
green beans, lettuce, tomato, tuna, eggs, and anchovies.
—
Back at the house we sat outside conversing awhile with Claudia and
Katarina. They generally spoke English as a courtesy to me, but easily
slipped into German when chatting with each other, or French when
chattering with the maid, earlier in the day. I don’t want to make too
much of this bi- or tri- or quad-lingual thing, but there’s something to
be said for learning to speak other languages. It’s great excercise for
the mind, for one thing, and a great way to explore new ideological /
intellectual paths. There’s a joke: What do you call someone who speaks
many languages? A polyglot. What do you call someone who only speaks one
language? American.

Then it was time to leave. They’d been gracious and generous hosts, and I
appreciated the chance to actually live with a foreign family in their
home for a few days. Mind expanding.
—
We got back to Vienna about 11 PM. By the time we got home, had a couple
of beers, watched some late night television, and were ready for bed it
was about 1 AM. This sort of schedule–flying somewhere, working a couple
of days, flying home late in the evening—isn’t unusual for Brigitte. I
went with her once to Strasbourg, where the travel is a bit more daunting
(fly to Stuttgart, take the train to Kehl, take the bus to Strasbourg, and
do the opposite on the way home.) It gets complicated if a plane, train,
or bus is running late or if a meeting runs late and you fear you’ll miss
your plane. Try doing it for 25 years. B’s family seems to think she has
it easy, but the travel alone can be a cluster fuck, not to mention the
actual work of simultaneous interpreting. Try listening to an official
talk a hundred miles an hour in a thick Scottish or Irish brogue, and
spit it back out in German nearly simultaneously. It ain’t easy. But it’s
all part of keeping the world from becoming another Tower of Babble. Not
sure if they’re succeeding or not, but believe me, a lot of people are
trying.

from Sheldon VanAuken’s book A Severe Mercy.

“It is, I think, that we are all so alone in what lies deepest in our souls, so unable to find the words, and perhaps the courage to speak with unlocked hearts, that we don’t know at all that it is the same with others.”

On the distaff side, my friend Lucky recommends this page from The Onion:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/47997

You should look at the Onion weekly and you can find it by hitting the link at right under Humor.  It’s my favorite tickler of the funny bone.

chapter 3 of the journals of John X:
The evening of the May Day parade we flew to Luxembourg. Brigitte had
accepted a few days’ work there.

Instead of a hotel, we were staying with her old friends Johann and
Claudia. Both German, they’ve been living in Luxembourg for many years.
Johann is one of the chief legal advisors at the European Parliment, and
Claudia is a simultaneous interpreter at the EU court of justice.

It was a rainy evening and the town was dead. 100,000 people a day come
into Luxembourg City every day from surrounding towns (and countries) to
work, but this being a holiday, and well after work hours anyhow, no one
was around. We took a bus from the airport to near their home and walked
the rest of the way.

C.and J. have something rare in Europe—a house on a large plot of land.
I figure it was an acre or two. I don’t know Euro real estate prices,
except to say you have to add a lot of digits after the € sign. Even
for a small place.

That first night I met Birte, a lawyer from Germany who is staying with J
and C while doing an internship at the court of justice. Her English was
excellent so we had no problems conversing. J and C and their daughter
Katarina were at a concert, so we talked with Brita and ate the roast
chicken and ratatoulle C had left on the stove for us. And drank good
Luxembourger beer.

When the family returned we sat around the table eating and drinking and
talking. This was a chance to watch the German Euro-government
intellectuals in action. The talk was witty and alive and not at all
snobbish or pretentious, but at the same time it was a different world.
Their children have studied, or are studying, all over the world.
Katarina speaks four languages: German, French, English, and Italian, as
well as the local Luxembourger dialect. The other kids, who were away,
are probably equally capable. Katarina has her master’s in marine
biology, is 26, and jobless. Evidently, no problem. Eventually, work will
come. Eventually. Meantime, there’s mom and dad.

The house was filled with great books and wonderful art. It was not a huge
house by American McMansion standards, but it was a good sized place by
Euro standards. I’d guess maybe 2500 square feet, more if you count the
basement where the wine and beer are kept. That, of course, was perhaps
the most important room in the house, aside from the spacious and
comfortable kitchen with its huge dining table.

Next day, everyone went off to work and I headed for the train station. My
destination: the nearby town of Trier, Germany. Trier was an important
city for the Romans, because of its proximity to the Mosel and the rest
of their far-flung empire, which has now been reduced to producing great
wine and expensive sports cars in a land shaped like a raggedy boot.

I’ve hardly ever travelled by train but I’ve done it a few times with
Brigitte and kind of knew the ropes. I bought a round-trip ticket
(€8.40) which, unlike plane tickets, is good for any train going and
returning…you aren’t limited only to certain times. The trains run
often, about once an hour, long into the night.

The train was kind of empty. Just to be sure I wasn’t on the way to
Albania or some other shithole, I asked a lady sitting nearby if this was
the train to Trier. She said yes, and then moved her suitcase to the seats
across the aisle from me. This began a long and very interesting,
enjoyable conversation—not because of its content, but because the
entire thing was conducted in German, a language I barely know.

Here’s all the shit I found out: she was a retired nurse, who had been in
Luxembourg to attend the  wedding of her daughter’s friend. She was a
retired nurse, 63 years old. She had been born and raised and lived her
entire life in the former East Germany. She’d never learned to drive. She
didn’t drink alcohol. She had a garden. We discussed the Trabant, the
notoriously shitty East German-built car. The lady said it was a crude
car but it was durable. I thought, sure. Anything lasts a long time when
it just sits there, unable to move half the time. A pencil will last a
million years if every time you try to write with it, black smoke bleches
out of the eraser and it vibrates like an epileptic chimpanzee. You’ll put
the pencil down and write with a crayon instead.

I shared some of my beef jerky with the lady, and some cashew nuts. She
was very pleasant and friendly, which surprised me somewhat as the
Europeans aren’t known for their openness or willingness to be chatty,
but Brigitte told me it was different with the East Germans. They’re
rather like Okies in that regard.

Trier. I left the station and passed another 500,000 Turk-operated kabab
stands. Turkey wants to join the EU. Watch out, EU—your wiener
schnitzels are about to be replaced with kababs and falafel, and the
Turks can out-breed you three to one. Open the gates, and you better
learn to speak Turkish.

I walked around awhile, finally coming to the Porta Nigra, which is a
gigantic stone gate built by the Romans. These guys were great builders.
The gate is massive, about three stories high, and you can climb around
in it. There were lots of kids looking out the windows at the top,
yelling at their friends and having their pictures taken by their parents
in the courtyard below.

Trier is also the birthplace of Karl Marx. They’ve turned his house into a
museum. I wouldn’t have minded seeing it, but at the same time I wasn’t
going to make a special effort. I don’t think of Marx as anything other
than a philosopher, and I don’t blame him for what communism eventually
became, any more than I blame Jesus for Pat Robertson or that asshole
preacher from Kansas whose flock likes to walk around with signs saying
GOD HATES FAGS. A fair number of Marx’s predictions about capitalism have
come true, which is a pretty good batting average for a guy who made his
observations more than 150 years ago.

I ended up at the banks of the Mosel. I walked along the path, which I
shared with cyclists, other strollers, and joggers. I found a bench and
sat down to eat some more jerky and nuts, and to write in my notebook. A
barge filled with scrap metal went by. I like watching river traffic
because it’s unusual in Oklahoma. I had a few Mark Twain-like fantasy
images flash into my head, but then figured working on a barge is
probably about as romantic as sorting the fucking mail, once you get used
to it, with the added disadvantage that you can’t sneak away from the
workplace unless you want to get really wet, and maybe drown.

There was another large boot filling up with tourists. Evidently the idea
was, you order dinner and eat it while cruising down the river. I would
have liked that, I think, if there had been more time. Instead I got up
and wandered back into the center of town.

Now began my search for food. I thought I’d find a place to sit outside,
drink a beer, and have a good meal. I wandered past quite a few such
places but each time there was something wrong—no outside dining, or no
tables in the sun, or the prices posted were too high, or the view wasn’t
too good. Eventually I ended up in the city square, which like all Euro
towns has a statue/fountain in the center, which is occupied almost
exclusively by jabbering school kids eating ice cream and drinking coke.
There was a kabab stand (surprise!) so I ordered something like a gyro,
grabbed a beer, and joined the kids at the base of the fountain.

I wandered through the square, which of course was filled to capacity with
stores of various kinds. The street was crowded with every imaginable kind
of person…old people, couples, kids, lots of tourists, etc.
I came across a crowd watching one of these weird ‘statue’ guys. You know,
they pretend to be frozen until you put a coin in their container, then
they move? This guy wore a top hat, a thick jacket, the old fashioned
knee britches with boots, and the whole thing was painted silver,
including his face. He leaned just a bit on a cane, but still, standing
perfectly motionless is tough work. Kids would put a Euro in his
container and then he would begin a jerky robot-like motion, accompanied
by a mechanical whirring sound he triggered somehow. Sometimes he would
shake the hand of a kid, or tip his hat, or make a happy robot face if he
saw a pretty girl.

The spirit of Marx inspired me to explore the capitalism of his gig. I
stood there about five minutes, and in that time saw maybe €15 go into
his container, one Euro at a time. So, figure €180 an hour. More on a
good day, less on a bad day. But quite respectable. Makes me want to try
it. I’m pretty good at standing around, animating myself only if there’s
money involved, so I’m probably a natural. Except in Oklahoma, the cheap
bastards would probably only put pennies in the jar. So fuck it.

I also found a pommes frittes stand. French fries. Somehow the Euro fries
taste different from the American kind. Not neccesarily better (though
often they are.) I was still full from the Turkish grub but I bought a
small order anyhow, and watched the robot statue guy some more while I
munched the fries. If he wanted to be truly authentic, he’d train a
pigeon to land on his hat and take a shit.

After that I wandered around some more, not really with any destination or
purpose in mind. I just wanted to see what I’d see. I came to a small park
where some old people were stolling and sitting on benches. I sat down and
wrote in my notebook.

Suddenly I developed a bad headache, and realized I was dehydrated. It was
a warm day and I’d forgotten to leave Luxembourg with my water bottle, and
had only had a beer. So I got up, kind of stumbling my way through town,
looking for a market. But no. Where these people buy their groceries, I
don’t know. Finally I came to yet another kabab place, went in, grabbed a
bottle of water out of the fridge, and paid. The guy kept trying to sell
me something to eat. ‘Nein, ALLES!’ I said. Just let me buy the fucking
water, Donald Trump!

I swigged it down and bought another bottle at the train station. Evian,
.5 liter, €1.40, which works out to €11.20 a gallon for what? WATER.
The water-sellers’ gig makes the robot-statue man look like an amateur by
comparison. Lesson: Never forget your bottle filled with tap water.

The ride home was fine, except for the constant noise of school kids
jabbering and running back and forth in the upper deck of the train. I
should have switched cars but I was too tired. So I watched the beautiful
countryside roll by, views I’d missed on the way to Trier because of my
conversation with the retired nurse.

Then the bus home at rush hour (Luxembourg was alive and crowded today,
for sure) and another fine meal and good conversation around the table.
More on that next time, and an account of our stroll through Luxembourg
City.

Don’t forget to drink your water.

Chapter 2 of John X’s dispatches from “the continent”.

My first full day in Vienna: May Day, the 1st of May. For much of Europe
this is a holiday, rather like our Labor Day, but different. In Austria
at least there is a political component to May Day, with a big parade in
the middle of town in which different political / labor groups march to
show solidarity / promote their agenda, including the Communists and the
Socialists.

The latter groups, of course, are about as welcome in the States as turds
in a swimming pool, but are seen here as just another couple of political
groups. Kind of. More on that later.

The Ring, a huge boulevard in the middle of Vienna, was closed off for the
parade. Lining the parade route were spectators AND lots of tables, filled
with literature promoting various political and social ideologies. Many of
these tables were manned and womanned by people with dreadlocks,
piercings, and strangly colored hair. The very types, in other words,
that I find kind of interesting, if not exactly the types I would rely on
to pilot a jumbo jet or mow my yard. I looked around for the Black
Panthers, but I guess they’d decided “Fuck this shit.”

Brigitte explained that these various groups marched from wherever in
Vienna they started from to the Ring, and from there are arranged in
parade order with a noticeable gap between them. I don’t know if the gap
is to keep warring groups apart, or to allow pedestrians to cross the 3
lanes of traffic between each group of marchers. But it’s like watching a
multi-act play: you have, for instance, the Social Democrats flying their
flag and carrying their banners, with old people, young people, and even
babies in strollers being pushed along. Then it’s the next group, with
their red balloons, green flags, or whatever.

In some groups there were enough old people they provided small “trains”
pulled by tractors, for those too infirm to easily walk. But these old
folks waved to the crowd and waved their little flags, and I mentally
applauded them. They were marching back in The Day, when things were a
lot tougher and people were tired of being shit upon by the Hapsburgs or
Hitler or whoever the next asshole was, and were STILL marching (or, OK,
riding) because they believed in something besides getting a big house
and a motherfucking Mercedes in the driveway and a million Euro in the
bank.

Bush is coming to Vienna in June for some reason. A kid handed me a
postcard: Ein Massenmörder kommt nach Wien…A mass murderer is coming
to Vienna. So I talked to her and the kids at their table awhile. They
weren’t ranting and raving and foaming at the mouth, and in fact were
pleasant kids. Hard to think of a guy who doesn’t even have the courage
to admit he used to snort flour bags full of cocaine up his nose as a
mass murderer, as mass murder, despicable as it is, requires at least
some guts. But OK. The point is, I could talk to these kids in my broken
German, they to me in their good English, and we didn’t end up in a
slug-fest. Which wouldn’t be the case in the States. Bush lovers and Bush
dislikers would be quick on the trigger back home. Mass murderer, or
Alfred E. Newman’s clone? Or both? Or neither? Who knows? I need another
glass of good Austrian red wine.

It being a holiday (at least until the parade stopped) many places were
closed BUT I happened upon one of the billions of Turk-operated pizza
stands and grabbed a couple of slices of ham and corn (!) pizza. (They
had every kind but I chose this concoction. Perhaps it was May Day fever
that inspired me, who knows?) Anyhow, fucking delicious. The
proliferation of Turks around these here parts is a matter of some
concern on the part of the Austrians, but I have to admit the
motherfuckers can bake a good pizza and make a good kabab. Now if we
could figure out how to pull them from a 13th Century mentality to a 21st
mindset, we’d have it made. More importantly, so would their women.

In front of the massive, and beautiful, city hall, a bunch of VIPs were
gathered on a stage. They took turns spouting their shit. Even though it
was in German, it sounded about the same as it does in English: BLAH,
BLAH, BLAH elect me, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH tighten your belt. Etc. Then back
to their villas for a massage and a bottle of wine. Meet the new boss,
same as the old boss.

Now about the Commies. These guys marched last, and there were two groups
of them. Brigitte explained that these parties often break up into
distinct groups for various reasons. It seemed like one group was Kurds
and the other was Turks. One group carried banners with Mao, Lenin, Marx,
and even that asshole Stalin. They had magaphones and they were chanting
something.

But the most striking thing was this: at the front of each group were five
or six Polizei cars, crawling along. Behind them, ten or twelve riot cops
decked out in protective gear, marching along. Then the Commies. At the
end of each group, more cops. Then the spectacle was repeated for the
second group of Commies. Brigitte asked a cop in the first group: “Oh,
are you marching in solidarity?” knowing full well that the cops would
probably have preferred to march a Vienesse waltz atop the heads of these
Commies, or if not that, at least march to the closest bar for a beer and
from there to the nearest doughnut shop. But Brigitte likes to fuck with
people from time to time. The cop just kind of sheepishly said, nope.

She asked a cop in the next group why they felt it neccesary to march in
front of the Commies but nobody else. She told me that there had never
been a problem or a riot at a May Day march. The cop said it was for the
protection of the Commie marchers.

Well, who knows? After the Commies came the street-cleaning vehicles,
there to pick up the horseshit (literal, not figurative) and other trash.
That signalled the end of the parade.

So we strolled back to the car, parked far away. On the way we stopped for
a coffee in one of the many fine Vienesse coffeehouses, where smoking and
reading and conversation have been honed to a fine art. I don’t smoke but
even I find it kind of refreshing to watch smoke rise from ashtrays,
illuminated in the windows by a Vienesse sun.

And that was May Day in Vienna. Next installment: Luxembourg, and my train
trip to Trier, Germany which includes a long talk with a retired nurse
from the former East Germany, a lovely woman who spoke no English.

Bonus: something we don’t have on English keyboards: ß and Ö and Ä and
Ü. Hope you enjoy the umlauts.

My friend John X is in Europe.  These are dispatches from him about his trip to visit his girlfriend, B, in Vienna, reprinted by permission.

Chapter One:

—
Travelling to Europe is like jumping into a long pipe. You jump in in OKC,
and if everything goes well, you slide out the other end of the pipe in
Vienna. It’s a long slide but worth the time and money.
—

—
I thought I’d reserved a seat in one of the emergency row exits, which
would have meant no seats immediately in front of me and therefore, that
most precious commodity on a long flight: LEG ROOM. But through some sort
of fuckup, I got the row behind that row. I was crammed into the sardine
can with the rest of the fish. Plus I got no sleep, none, zero, even
though I popped a couple of sleeping pills and washed it down with a
couple of shots of brandy.
—

—
My reading for this trip is Eric Hoffer’s THE TRUE BELIEVER. Hoffer was a
sharp guy, and his ideas are sound, but his writing tends toward the
academic, dry side. Interesting ideas, uninteresting writing style. But
I’ll force myself to get through it.
—

—
I thought I was the only SOB on this planet who, instead of putting all
his ID and credit cards in a wallet, bundles them together with a rubber
band and sticks them in his front pocket. But no. A guy on the flight
from Chicago to London bought some wine, and when he whipped his cash out
to pay, I saw he carried his personal ID the same way. However, this guy’s
rubber band broke, so he tied it back together, resulting in an unsightly
knot. Listen, having a motherfucking rubber band instead of wallet is a
trailer park move as it is, but if it breaks, at least have the class to
buy a new rubber band. Or steal one from work, like I do.
—

—
I saw a lot of women travelling with young children. How do they do it,
schlepping these kids through airport after airport? Women must be the
toughest creatures on this planet. They’re miracle workers. All I carry
when I travel is a briefcase and a backpack, and that’s almost more than
my monkey ass can cope with. Just imagine if my briefcase was screaming
at the top of its lungs for a candy bar, and my backpack was shitting
itself every few hours. I’d leap out of the plane at 35,000 feet to end
my suffering. Women of the world, I salute you. Now get in the kitchen
and make my supper.
—

—
Just kidding about that last part—though, as I write this on a rainy
Vienna afternoon, Brigitte is in the kitchen cooking asparagus soup
(fresh asparagus, not that shit from a can.) I wish I could email the
aroma to you.
—

—
In Chicago, I was sitting next to a guy from somewhere in Great Britain. I
say “somewhere,” because I had to ask him three times to repeat a question
he asked me, his accent was so incomprehensible. I finally figured out he
was asking what the ticket agent had announced at the gate. “I can hardly
understand her!” he said (I think.) So we had the strange spectacle of
three native English speakers, none of whom could easily understand both
of the others. WTF!?
—

—
6:30 PM here in Vienna, 11:30 AM Central Time in the US. I bid you a good
day. I’m about to have a good supper. More later.
—

“At the Lake”

When a white crane glides

Over corrugated indigo water,

The flight of a sparrow goes unnoticed.

The sparrow never knows

     it’s less important.

Let me be that sparrow.

Never the crane.

A pair of ducks interrupts the wish

And I go home,

One teardrop in a torrent of traffic.