Chapter 36: Hurricane Katrina

I experienced different emotions about moving to Austria.

First was elation. I was excited, giddy to visit another continent.

But then I was sad. Depressed to leave South Beach, where I’d loved the beach, the weather, had friends and had experienced many of the best moments of my life. It was the definitive end of my Miami music business dream. The end of my South Beach dream. The opportunities just weren’t there for me. I could have persisted, I guess, but I began to shift to other ideas and dreams. I’d changed. And I’d become excited again and fascinated with the world beyond America’s borders.

Sure, South Beach, Miami, are more like Latin America than America, but it still was America. I’ve always been curious about other countries, people, cultures and languages. America, to me, is like a bubble, in a way. We’re so closed off from the rest of the world.

Our media never talks about other countries unless it’s about an adversary, a war, or a natural disaster. One might think that’s all the rest of the world is, a big festering shithole, replete with war and terrorism and misery. And sure, that is tragically the case, for many, but not for all. In fact, I was shocked to learn of the high quality of life in Europe.

Hearing of how they had free health care, dental care, income assistance, little to no violent crime was startling to learn about. Many of the far right-wing assholes and Fox News Channel people would have you believe Europe is suffering under “socialism” and how terrible it is there.

In talking with my wife and through my own research into relocating to Austria, I discovered that to not be the truth. I discovered they had cleaner air, cleaner water, safer roads, and far happier people. They all had health insurance. That was free. They had up to two months of vacation. Paid. Not the two weeks most Americans are lucky to get. Most of their citizens weren’t drowning in debt. Quite the contrary, Europeans traveled the world, spoke multiple languages, read more books than us. Book discussion shows were popular on TV, and their news programs actually had news instead of partisan shit-tossing, yelling, and flashy graphics.

It was saddening to discover how much I’d been lied to, as an American. How our media is so dishonest. How much they’d brainwashed us into thinking we were the greatest country on Earth and how shitty Europe is when nothing could be farther from the truth, in so many ways.

And there are problems in Europe, sure, and advantages in America, especially with starting businesses, investing, but the equality and overall quality of life, the better opportunities for free education, health care, and public transportation and how much less violent crime there was because of the better social services and safety nets, it was astonishing. Simply learning what I did invalidated nearly everything every right-winger Fox News person had said about social welfare and free education...

(I was seeing why it was, too, they didn’t want better education. In that otherwise a better-educated populace wouldn’t vote for most Democrats and Republicans... )

((I came to realize, too that both sides, Left and Right, Red and Blue, are filled with crooked politicians that are simply pawns, puppets for corporate interests, and neither side really cares and they both exploit racism, religion, and greed to keep the masses below them. The same corporate interests spew partisan bullshit on MSNBC and Fox News to divide Americans, pit us against each other, make us easier to control. It’s quite tragic how they manipulate us, dumb us down. And it’s being done, by both parties, I believe, for reasons greater than we know... ))

Back to planning the move to Europe, the problem in going over to Austria, as we prepared for our arrival, was that while the immigration procedures were an improvement from Miami’s, they were still stringent.

Annoyingly, if we’d been married a year or two earlier, I could have had an Austrian passport with little hassle. However, I’m not the only foreigner who was impressed by the quality of life in Austria, and there’d been such a surge in sham marriages in Austria, involving immigrants seeking Austrian passports, so many sham marriages, in fact, that the government enacted draconian measures to eradicate the practice.

Laws were established that granted foreign spouses of Austrians only 1-year visas, though these could be used as work permits, and could be renewed. However, before the visa was granted, much paperwork had to be filled out and income, bank statements provided.

There was also a requirement that all new immigrants had to wait up to 7 years before they could apply for citizenship. In order to receive citizenship, too, they’d need to pass a battery of German language tests.

While it was daunting, and disappointing, it was doable, and it didn’t dissuade us from making the move...

The days before we moved were some of the best of my life. I sold my car, providing us enough cash to start up in Austria, buy plane tickets, and spend a couple months relaxing more on the beach. During this time, I studied German, which I’d been enjoying the intellectual challenge of, and my wife and me both worked part-time, her still at the hotel and me working freelance jobs, doing online marketing.

That time, those couple months, over the summer, were magical. Since we weren’t working full-time, we had plenty of time to chill. And smoke weed. And drink. And lie out on the beach, swim in the wonderfully warm Atlantic waters. When the water is around 90 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s like you’re a lobster in there, moving, floating and swimming around in that thick hot and salty ocean. Oh, it was so glorious.