Chapter 37: Austria

Aside from the storm, which, like a hot potato, had been passed, and had devastated somewhere else on the map. (Not to mention watching Katrina’s miserable aftermath.) Aside from that calamity, the rest of the summer, at least for us, was bliss.

We spent our days in a leisurely slow tropical rhythm, typically chilling on the beach, soaking up sun and swimming in the ocean that was then almost hot as a jacuzzi. Otherwise we’d be home, cooking pancakes, drinking/smoking, watching movies and gameshows, lying in bed.

(From a lucrative, late summer, short online gig, I’d clocked enough cash to take it easy our last couple weeks there... )

((My wife quit her job at the hotel, too, about a month prior to us leaving after she’d seen, through a gap in the hotel manager’s office door, the hotel manager, and a couple goons, rough up a guy, badly, beating him halfway to death and then dragging him out a backdoor, throwing him into the trunk of a car and driving off. My wife, being from Austria, had never seen much of any violence and was so freaked out that she quit the next day... ))

The night before we had to leave, I was bummed, having to go, split South Beach. My wife was bummed out too. We didn’t say much that final night, spent most of it in reflective, mournful silence. It was difficult for us both to conclude that chapter of our lives. Despite the storms and occasional craziness, we’d been quite happy, loved the warm weather and South Beach lifestyle.

The morning we left, I had a surplus of weed, a fat bag, and decided to eat it all in an omelet.

As we headed to the airport, another hurricane was on the way, but fortunately we were scheduled to beat it, get out before it made landfall.

When we arrived at the airport, although I’d not felt much from the weed after eating it, when I stepped up to the Al-Italia front counter, to check in for the flight, the weed suddenly crept up and hit me like a ton of bricks. For a second, I completely forgot what I was doing. I was just standing there, awkwardly, not knowing what to say, with this gorgeous Italian stewardess tilting her head, raising an eyebrow, and looking at me funny. Though, after a few strange, wordless seconds, I remembered, that, oh yeah, I’m heading to Europe. It was a Hunter S. Thompson type of moment.

Looking back on it, I’m amazed they even let me on the plane.

My wife hadn’t wanted any of the omelet. So she was stone cold sober, and while tolerant of my drugged-out state, she didn’t bother to speak to me as we waited for the plane to leave.

And fuck, I was feeling the THC surge, more and more, that body buzz of edibles, and mildly hallucinating too. There were circumambient colors of everything in the airport, flashing and bursting, so bold and bright, so magnificent and beautiful. But it was also scary watching the hurricane on TV. I shuddered upon seeing video footage of it trashing a Caribbean island. I was feeling like it was a dastardly villain, the storm, the evil purple green blob on the radar; it was again an angel of gusty death, a waterborne killer creeping, thundering and charging our way, stalking us.

The Al-Italia plane called out their boarding all in Italian. But fortunately, knowing enough Spanish, I understood the boarding call and was somehow cognizant enough to rise to my feet, step us over to the queue. Once we boarded, it had to be the quickest take-off I’d ever experienced. In trying to beat that hurricane, like seconds after we sat down and buckled up, we were rolling down the runway, engines roaring, and mere minutes later, we were up in the clouds, soaring, heading off to the opposite side of the world.

I usually don’t sleep well, or at all, on flights, but I was so blasted and relieved to be out of there, having escaped the windy weather beast, that I slipped away, peacefully and deeply, soon after lift-off and sank into a superb slumber, the best I’ve ever had on a flight.

And when I woke up, I saw out my window to one of the most astonishing sights I’d ever laid eyes upon. The spirals and snowy white serrated tips of the French Alps...

It was incredible, arriving in Europe, seeing such a radically different landscape, the vertiginously steep Alps and verdant hills of the Austrian countryside. It was exactly how it looked in movies. In fact, even more pulchritudinous.

It struck me too, that while it was magnificently picturesque, everything seemed ... somehow to be smaller. The people, the portion sizes of food, the houses, the cars, everything was smaller than in America.

Except the beer. When we arrived in Vienna, picked up by my father-in-law and brother-in-law, we stopped for schnitzel, which was scrumptious, and I gawked at how big the beer steins were. I’d asked my wife about it, and she’d shrugged, said how it was “just a beer” and that it was normal-sized.

It was amazing how much beer the Austrians drank. Seemed like everywhere people were drinking beers, walking down the street, drinking beers, on buses, drinking beers, at parks, drinking beers. There obviously were no lame public drinking laws like in the States. But what was odd, was that aside from stout people and some beer bellies here and there, there weren’t the same amount of obese people as there were in the States.

My FIL included. A stout guy, with a belly, scruffy white beard and full head of scraggly salt and pepper hair, he was by no means obese and would down beers all day, from morning to night. My BIL too, drank beer day and night but wasn’t fat.

(In Austria, beer was the golden fluid of life, commerce, and social events. It was also incredible, the beer. This was before the craft beer boom in America, so I’d never experienced just what beer could be. It was nothing like Budweiser, the beer in Austria. It was so rich, the Austrian beer. Its complicated flavors exploding on your tongue ... And there were several small breweries in Austria that didn’t export their products, you had to be there to get it. And, if you’re a beer lover, like me, you were lucky to be there and to drink such immaculate brews... )

((Not only were they big drinkers of beer, the Austrians were also passionate about their schnapps. Religiously so. Believing it to have divine powers, that it was an elixir for any ailment. Have a cold? Drink a shot of schnapps. Headache, stomachache, sore throat? Drink a shot of schnapps. Back ache? Shot of schnapps. Insomnia? Schnapps. Bleeding wound? Douse it with schnapps. Break your leg? Pour schnapps on it; let it seep in, heal the fracture ... Schnapps, the Austrian cure for anything!))

Back to my in-laws. They were pleasant, simple folks.

My mother-in-law was a lively, boisterous busybody, a workaholic, her body perpetually in motion. If she wasn’t tending to the plants, she was cooking or cleaning or always doing something. I don’t think I ever saw her sit for more than a couple minutes.

Having grown up in the aftermath of WW2, being dirt poor for many years as a youth, she’d had an intense work ethic instilled in her from a young age. Her family had been sustenance farmers. If they didn’t produce crops, output they wouldn’t eat. It was mostly because of her drive, smarts, and entrepreneurship that their family business had been successful, and although they’d done alright financially, her drive, passion for work burned as intensely as ever...

I had a hard time communicating with my in-laws, as they didn’t speak English, and my German was minimal. But they were easygoing, and we got along well, especially my FIL and me, since we both enjoyed beer and watching whatever sport was on TV.

My BIL was a bit more of a problem. He was about the same age as me. Had a business doing electrical wiring or something. Sort of like my FIL, he was stout with a big belly and scraggly hair (though his unruly mop was sandy brown). But unlike my FIL, who was a laidback guy, my BIL was extremely aggressive, outgoing, arrogant, chauvinistic, and was constantly making snide and sexist comments about women, expecting me to laugh or join his banter. But I didn’t. I didn’t share those views or appreciate those remarks and would often just shake my head and walk away from him.