The end of November brought an extraordinarily lovely time. It was cold in Rome, the holiday season had just begun, and my big brother, Kevin, came to visit. Though I was busy with school and work, Kevin and I had a bit of time to walk around Rome, see the sites and take some pictures. Of course, Rome is extraordinary in itself, but the real fun was Thanksgiving weekend when Kevin and I got on the smallest commercial airplane I'd ever been on to fly to Vienna.
The plane had about ten rows, two seats on the right side and one seat on the left side. We weren't sitting on the plane five minutes before a flight attendant alerted us that Kev and I had to move to the back of the plane to balance out its weight, 'to keep the wings steady' as I understood in Italian. We moved to the back of the plane and two hours later we landed in Vienna. Since Austria was the second German-speaking country I had visited in three months, I had an idea of how helpless I was about to feel speaking no German. Fortunately, Kevin's few years of high school German, helped us survive. Vienna was cold and gray on our arrival and by the time we reached our hotel it was snowing.
We decided not to fall into the trap that most Californians usually do when the whether is not sunshine-y and warm: stay home. It was two o'clock in the afternoon and we set out for food and the Schonbrunn palace. We walked a distance and decided to stop in at an weinerschnitzel house, for our first schnitzel. Kevin's elementary German came in handy as he ordered schnitzel from an Egyptian guy who owned the place. We drank beer, ate schnitzel, and chatted up the proprietor who got a real kick out giving us German lessons. We left the place having learned how to properly ask for the check, in Austrian German.
With our tummies warm and long walk ahead of us, Kev and I went out into the cold in search of the palace. In the snow, this part of Vienna looked like New England, and we stopped to take pictures. Before long we saw the castle in the distance, a giant late Renaissance compound in the queen's favorite color 'springtime-yellow', as it was translated in English. We arrived at the palace to find a large Christmas tree surrounded by Christmas craft market in the courtyard. We trekked around the castle to its backside, where in the spring and summer we imagined great fields of rolling grass and manicured gardens, yet now everywhere we looked was white with snow. By four o'clock the sun had set and the cold night forced us back down the giant hill in the back of the palace and back to the Christmas market in front courtyard. There we drank hot wine and ate potatoes and vegetables, with other tourists and Austrians alike. It was the beginning of a Thanksgiving not to forget.
We spent the following day walking around downtown Vienna, visiting shops, gardens, national monuments, and taking time out for more Christmas Markets, that were set up in many parts of the city: we ate curry wurst! We froze while waiting for a tram; which was our opportunity for a warm dry spot to sit as watched the city go by: city hall, old roman ruins, and the Danube floated by as we took advantage of the heating system in the tram. When we finally returned to our hotel on the other side of the city, we discussed our options for the next day, Saturday. There was still much to see in Vienna, yet with our California attitudes about distance and time, Bratislava, although in another country, seemed the more exciting option.
Saturday. We arrived at the train station around nine am, well in advance of our train, even though I had messed up the directions for getting there. We picked up some 'wasser' for what we thought was going to be an hour long train ride and boarded the train. The train was divided into six person compartments. Our extreme earliness gave us the advantage of choosing where to sit, so we picked two window seats and settled in. By the time the train left the station there was a Spanish woman about my age, clearly back-packing through the area, a Slovakian man about 30, and an older Slovakian couple perhaps returning home after visiting relatives in Vienna. The train started through a woody snowy area as it left Vienna, and the view outside got only more desolate and foreboding the further we got outside of the city. There was no talking in our compartment. Kevin and I with our English paranoia (me, more so than him) kept our wide-eyed touristy comments to ourselves. The Spaniard didn't speak probably because of the question of which language to speak or not to speak. But the old couple, perhaps because they were going home had carte blanche to discuss (between long intervals of silence) the goings of the day, what would be cooked for dinner, and the foreigners with whom they were sharing the compartment.
An hour passed an we reached the last stop in Austria. At the next stop, about fifteen minutes on, Slovakian immigration officials boarded the train. I fear authority. I imagined, in the time it took for the officer to look at my passport and stamp it, a terrible scenario of mistaken identity or cultural offenses unknowingly made by Kevin and I. The officer of course gave us a strange look, but he soon passed to the next compartment and we were safe. I put my passport away immediately, Kevin could not avoid the temptation to look at the Slovakian stamp and brandished it as a trophy.
After forty-five more minutes, the train pulled into the Bratislava train station. It was bitterly cold, there was snow on the ground, and there were train-station types doing the day's business about the station. We first had to change Euro to Kroner. Of course not speaking any Slovenska or having a guidebook to guard us, we got jipped on the exchange rate, but hey we were in bloody Slovakia. Home of the Velvet Divorce and Alexander Dubcek. With Kroner in hand we stepped out of the station still giddy with disbelief and figured out that we had nowhere to go and if we did, we didn't know how to get there, nor could we ask someone for help. Then it happened. Kevin spotted a sign for a Chinese restaurant. Perfect. We giggled. We didn't speak Slovenska but there was always Chinese!
We entered the restaurant and sat down. Chinese pop music played in the background and paintings of the Yangzte River Valley abounded. There had to be a Chinese speaker here to give us a few tips on the city. We wondered where the hell we were. A Slovakian waitress approached us and spoke in broken German. We didn't have enough German for this. Kevin asked in German whether or not she spoke Chinese, or if there was anyone around who did. She appeared confused, gave us menus and walked away. We giggled and contemplated leaving. Between the Italian, Spanish, Chinese, English, and broken German we had between us- we couldn't talk to the waitress. Kevin's next idea was to write a question on a napkin in Chinese and get the waitress to give it to someone in the kitchen.
The waitress returned with tea and Kevin handed her the napkin. In her broken German, we understood, 'I am not Chinese.' We sheepishly grinned, she walked away, and there was yet more giggling. Finally we ordered a dish of kung pao chicken and white rice, although I don't know how we did it. Kevin and I shared the kung pao (one of the best I've ever had) and quickly ran out of rice. Kev went to ask for more rice, and asking for it in Chinese, we thought definitely someone would take notice of us. He came back to the table without having impressed anyone. The giant, red-headed white guy speaking Chinese in a Slovakian-Chinese restaurant didn't impress the proprietor, he had merely answered in the affirmative and our waitress returned with a new bowl of rice. We finished eating, feeling sort of dejected and triumphant at the same time and decided to set out into the cold, eastern european drabness...
I started this blog on Dec 29 2005 and have yet to finish it almost two months later...yes, I'm lazy, pigra, perezosa, whatever you want to call it. I think someday I'll finish it, just not today...You'll just have to imagine Kev and I tromping through the snow in Bratislava drinking hot wine and freezing to death...cheers.
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