Augartenfest

The sun shines gently in a pristine blue sky, lending its blessing to a weekend summer festival in a beloved city park.
Crowds browse among flea market stalls and food vendors, enjoying the refreshing sweetness of cold beer. Children frolic and shriek in excitement as they test out the playground equipment, somehow rendered special by the festivities taking place around it. The smell of grilled meat hangs in the air, much to the salivary anticipation of various dogs trotting along with panting grins beside their owners.

Music rings out from several stages dotting the park. One blares contemporary pop as preteen dance troupes strut their stuff on stage before the adoring smiles of their parents.

One stage features the kind of band that is ubiquitous at outdoor summer festivals: a group of local musicians just talented enough to provide danceable covers of favorite hits. They stick mostly to the Schlager genre, German-langauge pop from years gone by, laughable yet popular with young and old alike.
On a makeshift dance platform of wooden decking next to the stage, a lone middle-aged woman in a bright red T-shirt twirls to the music in waltz tempo, her arms around an imaginary partner. The expression on her face, elongated and softly rounded by Down's Syndrome, is one of pure joy. The band plays a faster number and she enthusiastically be-bops from side to side, concentrating raptly on the band and the music.
An occasional couple joins her on the dance platform, sticking out a number or two before retiring back to the wooden tables and benches of the beer garden, but she dauntlessly continues her solo enjoyment of the music.
Her performance instills in me a sense of admiration and envy, a longing to be so free from self-consciousness, to be able to surrender myself so completely to the simple pleasure of a good beat on a beautiful day.

But the band finishes their last number and I slowly wander away, blending yet apart from the crowd as I make my lonely way home.

Twitterpating

Not having been raised in a city
they still give me pause,
a sense of prudish irritation:
A flurry of fluttering feathers
then soft whispery sighs and insistent cooing moans.
Pigeons fornicating on my balcony.

Lisbon, June 1 +2

The day of arrival was about getting bearings, finding the hotel we had booked, etc. Lisbon has an admirable public transport system with an Aerobus, a bus that makes a direct route from the outskirting airport to the center of town, with a few stops at major points along the way. As it turned out, we lucked out on hotel location -- it was right across the street from the Campo Pequeno, the bullfighting arena, and thus easy to find and with easy access to public transport. Hemmingway-induced curiousity battled with my animal rights/vegetarian mindset, but the habit of 13 years won out, and the Campo Pequeno did not get a closer look.



After perusing the hotel, we bussed downtown, intending to go to the Praco de Comercio, a main square on the Tejo River. The bus system quickly presented a major failing, however -- once on a bus, there is no indication of route whatsoever and a passenger has to push a button to indicate a desire to get off at the next stop. That there was an established route I had no doubt, but how to know where we were and where to get off? It turned out the free city map I had picked up at the airport handily showed a map of hte metro system and indicated metro stops on the map itself, but bus routes and stops were not indicated. Deeply embroiled in comparing the streets the bus navigated with those on the map, I was pleasantly surprised when the smartly dressed woman across the way asked in perfect English if she could help. It was the first of many times that the Portuguese proved themselves to be a friendly and helpful people, which came as a slight surprise as some Austrian friends had warned us that the Portuguese were "komisch" (strange).

It turned out we disembarked at the same stop as our good samaritan, who also indicated the direction to the Praca de Comercia before she elegantly clacked away in her pale green suit and heels, showing a blatant disregard for traffic as she crossed the street on her own whim, a trait obviously shared by all residents of Lisbon. Whereas we tourists maneuvered our way to crosswalks and waited patiently for the signal to cross, natives, it seemed, couldn't be bothered, even by the indignant horn-blowing of the traffic forced to brake for them.

The Praca de Comercio was decked out with a special display, a "Tree Parade" of model trees painstakingly and lovingly decorated by school classes to raise awareness of deforestation and global warming and other environmental issues.



The imposing arch of Augustus leads into the Chiado, a carefully laid-out grid of streets that comprise Lisbon's main commercial district. It is an area of bustling activity, and a somewhat chaotic blend of tourist traps and chain stores like H&M frequented by locals. Vendors hawk canvases of painted cityscapes, handbags, scarves, jewellry, and only slightly more subtly, illicit substances. The first time we were approached by an average-seeming guy proferring "ganja" in broad daylight it was somewhat of a shock, but by the fifth time or so, it receded into the backdrop of commercial banter.

In the evening there was a stoll along the Tejo River and dinner at a slightly overpriced cervejaria, where I enjoyed a plate of decent shrimp cocktail and a delicious house-brewed dark beer. The chilly breeze and travel-induced exhaustion made for an early night.

For day two an excursion to the Moorish-influenced Alfama neighborhood and a hike up to the hilltop fortress Castelo de Sao Jorge were planned. The trek up to the Castello wound its way through the quaint narrow alleys of Alfama, characterized by tile-covered buildings and criss-crossed by lines of laundry drying in the sun.





The Castelo itself was a marvel of old stone masonry, offering dizzying views of the city from its terraced gardens and multiple towers, though a disappointing lack of battery charge in my camera limited the photo opportunities. The castle also boasted a seemingly complete lack of busybodies to herd and babysit tourists. Visitors were allowed to clamber all over the Castelo, up and down narrow, crumbling stone stairways without handrails and along lofty passageways whose sidewalls only reached a height of mid-calf. I could only imagine the potential lawsuits were it located in the good-old USA, but apparently Portugal still exists in a state of blissful non-litigiousness.


The relentless beaming of the sun and the apparent discrepencies between my guide book maps and the actual layout of Alfama lead to a late-afernoon fatigue that almost had us packing it in before catching a glimpse of another famous Alsama sight, the Casa dos Bicos, a building with an unusual facade of pointy stones. It looked like jagged teeth of weathered concrete.


On the way home we planned a stop at a festival we had seen in the city's largest downtown park -- a festival whose purpose and contents we were ignorant of until we arrived and I actually read and assimilated the words emblazoned on dozens of bright pink banners: Fiesta de Livre. A book fair. A HUGE book fair, with booths 2 or three deep lining the sidewalk the entire length of the park. We walked the whole circuit, me flitting hopefully from booth to booth of icredibly reasonably priced books, but after an hour or so of dedicated searching, I came to the reluctant conclusion that there was not a single book I wanted. They were, for the most part, in Portuguese, a language of which my knowledge is depressingly low, but I wasn't entirely letting that stop me -- I hoped to find a book that would be the more interesting for being in a language I can't read, for example, a book of knitting patterns. But no such luck. This will go down in history as a very sad day -- surrounded by hundreds of thousands of books, I left empty-handed.


We hungrily searched the neighborhood of our hotel for an eatery, finding a disappointing lack of sustenance. Finally we came across a restaurant that advertised take-out in its window, a compelling draw after a long day afoot, bringing to mind an image of a lazy dinner in bed. Once entered, however, the restaurant's ability to provide take-out seemed diminished as there didn't seem to be anything pre-prepared, like sandwhich ingredients or the like. It turned out to specialize in grilled entrees and was some kind of Portuguese chain. The staff were friendly and laughed a lot as they attempted to explain the all-Portuguese menu in borderline passable English. They convinced us of what we wanted to order and ushered us upstairs where there was a big-screen TV broadcasting the Portugal-Belguim soccer game. We happily watched away over caparinhas, (which, due to the Brazil connection, were fabulous), the staff finding excuses to hang around upstairs and chat with us while eyeing the game. Happily, Portugal won, and the food was delicious -- and the manager of the place insisted on giving us a plate of some kind of grilled beef for free, which T summarily enjoyed.

Lisbon, June 1-6

The city is endowed with an undefinable uniqueness -- not-quite-Spanish, not-quite-Mediterranean -- Old World charm lagging behind the earlier democratized Western European powers. The sun casts an atmosphere of sluggish haziness, lends a golden cast to the cerulean swathes of sky and the Tejo River.


Grand Renaissance architecture glitters with embellishments of hand-painted Moorish tiles. This type of thoughtfully-created beauty often seems thoughtlessly disregarded, a taken-for-granted part of the backdrop, painstakingly designed tiles flaking their enamel and losing themselves behind layers of pasted paper posters. They wait to be discovered by eager, awed tourists exclaiming over the multitude of patterns and colors to be found.






Lisbon is not a place to be in a hurry. Umbrellaed sidewalk cafes offer a refuge for lingering over coffees and pasteis de nata, thick custard pastries. The lethargy-inducing heat dictates a relaxed attitude toward commerce, stores seeming to keep their own hours, opening late in the morning.



With gentle persistence, the atmosphere entwines and ensnares the visitor, beckoning like a sultry, languid seductress, "Come stay awhile..."

You call this a soccer riot?!

The view from my balcony at about 5 p.m. yesterday was somewhat shocking: a van full of police donning riot gear, just outside my front door.

Apparently, the evening's usual local soccer game was to be a bit unusual. I'm still not entirely sure which teams were actually playing, though one was certainly the second-string players for Graz's beloved SK Sturm. They play here pretty frequently, though the real, first-string team plays at a much more grandiose stadium. The opposition wore blue, and they had a very adamant cheering section of about two-dozen young men who, starting an hour before the game, kept up a constant not-so-dull roar of cheering, jeering, chanting, singing and setting off firecrackers in the stands. The riot police took the liberty of front-row seats for the action.


Needless to say, the home team won the game, which left the boys in blue to seek creative ways to vent their frustration... tearing down a metal barricade seperating their section of the stands from that of the home crowd.




I really couldn't believe my eyes as I watched the cops go after the fans with their billy clubs. They even knocked down two guys and later dragged them out of the stands in handcuffs.



On the other side of the stadium. a line of riot cops stood gaurd to prevent the home team fans from rushing the field.

The fans didn't take well to this -- they threw rocks.

They also fgured out how to turn on the sprinklers, but I missed the photo opp because a security guard with a German shepherd in tow was quick to rush over and put a stop to it.

The chaos lasted for an hour or so after the game had ended, with the fans continuously trying to find a way around the cops to go at each other's throats. It's all part of European soccer culture, but to me it is baffling. This is the first time I have seen this type of violence and police brutality in person. Usually it's just the stuff of Fox News reports, not happening in my backyard. I don't understand how otherwise mild-mannered Austrians get so riled up about soccer that they turn to violence, but it is a well-known fact that after every real SK Sturm game there is a fight somewhere in Graz -- the fans arrange a post-game meeting point in advance so they can go at each other without police interference. This event was minor compared to what goes on in conjunction with a real, professional game, but to me it was still shocking and thrilling in a voyeuristic way. I was only too glad that I was viewing it from the safety of my balcony, though, rather than in the thick of things. It didn't seem like any "innocents" were involved in any skirmishes, but i still wouldn't have wanted to be down there.

Backyard Fun

Living on the sixth/seventh floor of an apartment building near the middle of the city of Graz, technically I have no backyard. Instead, I have this.



A public soccer field. It used to be home to the city's team, SK Sturm, but they relocated to a larger stadium a little further from the city center a few years ago. This field is now home to amateur games for both kids and adults. Now that the weather is nice, on any given night we can go out on the balcony and watch a game.



Aside from the fact that I am not really that much of a soccer fan, there is a downside to this: cheering crowds. It can be quite loud. Add to that the PA system on which a playlist of about 3 songs is constantly blared, on repeat mode, and if you don't keep your sense of humor about you, it can be a bit trying.

Just beyond the field is the Grazer Messe, the city fairgrounds. Recently, a traveling performance, "Afrika, Afrika!" has moved in and set up a colorful tent city just visible beyond the trees at the far end of the soccer field.



The show is apparently an African version of Cirque du Soleil, replete with music, drumming, dancing and acrobatics. It is extremely popular, and its tour has therefore been extended so that it will be gracing the neighborhood until July 7. I intend to go at some point, but plan to memorize the songs and lineup before I go, so I can better appreciate seeing the visual accompaniment to the music that I can hear quite clearly from my balcony every night. It is a nice addition to the usual screaming soccer fans and the Scissor Sisters' "I don't feel like dancing."

Last night the neighborhood auditory ambience reached a new level of provocation as the beer garden adjoining the soccer field invited a live musical act, "Sunrise," a duo of middle-aged tone-deaf Austrian men who slaughtered their way through 5 sets of covers.




We were awed by their prowess with a synthesizer, which jauntily continued blaring their background music despite the keyboard stylings of the guy in black. Even more impressive was the karaoke-esque performance of the guy in white, who artlessly blundered through such favorite standards as "Proud Mary," cracking the high notes and missing modulations right and left, knocking aside microphone stands in his ever-increasing level of intoxication. Best of all was when the duo joined forces in gut-wrenching, ear-splitting duets, in which they both seemed content to pick their own key and stick with it to the bitter end.

The crowd cheered, danced and sang along, and consumed copious quantities of alcohol. Alas, I -- stupidly -- did not join in, stubbornly of the belief that no amount of alcohol could ever make it okay, much less enjoyable.

And yet there was something endearing about it all, when the guys cracked corny jokes in heavy dialect between their musical abortions. I suppose it is a case of tolerating something in a foreign culture that one would never tolerate in her own.

Christ's trip to heaven

It's yet another holiday in Austria: Christi HImmelfahrt, Ascension Day. It seems that every day important to the Catholic church is celebrated in this country as a legal, nationwide holiday. And the whole country shuts down -- all businesses except a handful of enterprising restaurants are closed. Since I had the day off, we planned to visit a pub-esque restaurant we've only been to once due to its rather inconvenient location at quite a distance from our apartment with no straightforward public transport linkages. We set out on our journey, and naturally, upon arrival half an hour later or so, found out the place was closed. Lesson learned: we were supposed to be in church, celebrating Christ's trip to heaven, rather than enjoying ourselves in a nice beer pub. We hit up a local pizza chain instead, which, as it caters to the student communtiy, is nearly always open during the uni semesters.

Then we had the bright idea of trying to acquire some alcoholic refreshement to take back home with us, our purpose being to hole up for the rest of the day as it was a particularly rainy and cold one. Considering the day's holiday status, this was easier said than done, as all grocery stores were closed, but we had hope that the branch of the local supermarket chain, Spar, located at the train station would be open. It is the only grocery store in the city that stays open until the ungodly hour of 9 p.m. and the only one that is open on Sundays (yep, all stores are closed on Sundays, too). So we bussed down to the train station and found that this Spar was indeed open, and also, of course, packed. Ridiculously so. It's not a large place to begin with, definitely not constructed to hold hundreds of people doing their desperate holiday shopping. It's also poorly laid out, with the cash registers off of a central aisle that accesses 5 aisles of merchandise, so tyring to wade through the crowds to first find one's purchases and then find a place in a line in the midst of people trying to find their purchases and find a line was nothing short of a disaster. A quick trip to pick up a couple drinks and some milk for next morning's coffee took at least 20 painful minutes of in-store time plus about 45 minutes of public transport travel.

I'm of two minds on this whole store closure business. After a year and a half of life in this country, I am more or less used to it -- you just learn to plan ahead and stock up on whatever you may find yourself needing on Sundays or holidays. Sometimes it is inconvenient, like when you have been too busy to get to the grocery store before a holiday, or somehow weren't aware a holiday was approaching (remarkably easy to do, trust me). What is more interesting to me are the opinions and reactions of the Austrians themselves. Whenever the issue comes up, they staunchly defend store closures on Sundays and holidays, because "everyone needs a day off," including cashiers and shop keepers. (incidentally, the restaurants that are open on Sundays and holidays make up for it by having their "Ruhetag" (day of rest) on some other normal weekday -- usually Monday or Tuesday). This is a political issue, because it is actually illegal for stores to be open on Sundays or holidays unless they somehow have special dispensation, like the train station Spar. Often there are governmental discussions about changing this law, or allowing stores to be open later -- most have to close by 7:30 at the latest -- but people always come back to their argument that it is important to have a day off. When I tell my students or colleagues about 24-hour stores in the U.S. they are often shocked, can't believe that anyone would want to shop late at night, much less work such hours. They express sympathies for such workers, victims of wanton American consumerism. And yet, when the opportunity is there, they are happy to take advantage of it, as evidenced by the crowd at the train station Spar yesterday. It's only a matter of time, really, before capitalism wins out and stores demand ot be able to stay open on Sundays and holidays to take advantage of the opportunity to earn more revenue. I'm sure that Spar did a week's worth of normal business, if not more, by being the only store in town open yesterday.

In a way, it's a shame -- I find the way things are now charming. There's something quaintly nice about the idea of everyone in the family having a holiday on the same random Thursday and being, in a way, forced to spend the day at a leisurely pace, together.