Maybe one could become a little critical of my lifestyle in the later days, for being an American living in Vienna with hardly any tourist hours logged.  Why, you may ask, has it come to this?  Answer: my apartment is awesome.  I have poured a lot of time into the acquisition, moving and, in the case of subject of this blog, creating furniture.  I managed to get a 270cm 5-door wardrobe for free (but of course, I had to transport it…)  Earlier this year, I constructed a custom shelf to house some of the various (irregularly-sized) accessories associated with my wonderous projector.  This brought me to acquiring tools, which surprisingly felt like a very significant rite of passage into adulthood.

The design of this shelf is not mine, I took the basic idea from a very nice tutorial I found.  The execution was a little trickier than I thought.  I was obsessed with getting the longest, thickest possible screws.  This was detrimental to the bottom-of-the-line pine i purchased.

This week I finally painted it, a process that took place in my bedroom, next to my bed, with oil-based paints.  I am not sure if I have any brain damage from this, since it seems the subject of brain damage would have trouble knowing his own newfound limitations…but I digress.  I really loved painting it.  Had I known how obsessively I would attend to the edges at which the two colors met, and how much time I would spend on coating, re-coating ant touching up, I might not have started.

But the idea was to accentuate the S-pattern in the front by painting the front trim only orange, and then sort of give a isolated two-tone feel by making each surface hide the other colors from a single glance.  Call it gaudy, over-the-top, ugly or whatever you like, I am past the point of knowing how it fits in the scheme of good taste.

(Remember when you made the mistake of telling someone that I was in Venice, and not Vienna?)

I’m in one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen in the world, Venice, sitting in one of the ugliest rooms of the entire city (pictured).  Getting a hostel here is no cake walk, but it could be worse.

Before Ryan Gosling fell in love with McAdams in that insufferable film The Notebook, he was showing promise to be a consistently good actor.  One example of this was The United States of Leland in which he played a misunderstood child murderer, or something of the sort.  Regardless, he said of Venice, “you can hear the footsteps”.  And this is quite true.  That sound is both pleasant and lonely.  I don’t know if the lonely sense comes from the comfort I’ve come to know from industry, or the overbearing buildings tall enough to eliminate visibility flanking streets narrow enough to give claustrophobia to a non-sufferer.

The city is lovely and amazingly quiet.  The mildness seems to evoke a true relic of the spirit of the city, whether the tourists willingly participate or not.  You see, the town usually has more tourists than residents, and the majority of the economy is based around tourism, so it can be seen almost as a large-scale living museum of itself.  Any “mood” or “scene” is the product of willing participation among these transient visitors and the locals that sustain them.

I arrived to discover that you get around with a “water bus”, which costs 6.50 a ride or 28 for 48 hours (which I purchased).  I found a place near St. Mark’s square where I could sit by the big canal and watch people and eat my sandwich that I packed.  In a really great “me” moment, a Hasid stopped and asked, “Excuse me, but are you by any chance Jewish?”  I was dumbstruck.  I was extremely flattered and very tempted to say “yes” to see where I would be led to, but my respect for the guy kept me from lying.  “Sorry, no,” I said.  “You don’t have to be sorry.  Have a good day.”  I would later become incredibly curious as to why he asked, since he wouldn’t be asking for a handout or trying to lure me into the world of not accepting Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior, but I was too stunned at the time to act.

Speaking of Jews, Venice has the first ghetto ever, the Jewish Ghetto.  In fact, “ghetto” comes from the word for iron foundry in italian, which happened to be in the area of where the Jews were living in Venice.  The name stuck, and it came to mean any sort of racially homogenous area of a city.  The Jewish Ghetto is hardly run down, there are just a lot of jews there.  (Now doesn’t that make YOUR use of the word ghetto pretty damn racist?)

I saw two people from the course at St. Mark’s square, probably the most overstuffed area of Venice.  SOMEHOW, I ran in to some people I knew, from the course I was attending before I came to Venice.  (This course, was, by the way, my reason for being in Italy in the first place.)   They decided they would just spend the 9€ on a ticket, walk across the main island, and go back to the train station.  That sounded to me like a much better idea than I had.

Anyway, if you’re ever in Italy, you should check this place out, if only for a day.  It’s hard to pick the pictures to put here, so I’ll once again redirect you to my flickr page on the link on the right.

Apologies for the short, pictureless post, but I think this is best written in the moment.

So I’m at this ICGEB workshop on RNA structure and function.  The organization is sort of a goodwill to science/research institute sort of thing (I don’t really get it), having many “Member States”.  As they informed me in the beginning of today’s talks, they cover most of the world’s landmass (they’ve got Russia) and most of the world’s population (they’ve got China and India).  But I suppose the United States was sleeping when the application process took place.  Thus I am not one of the privileged members.

Today my friend/co-worker received her vouchers for breakfast and some cash.  In the presence of my co-worker and two friends I asked the secretary why I did not get said vouchers and cash.   She said that it was because I wasn’t supposed to.  “Because I’m an American, right?”

“Yes,” and in some sort of twisted idea of consolation, she added, “but you have many other privileges for being an American.”

I was in the midst of coming up with how I should tell her exactly how ridiculous it is to make such a comment, when she interrupted me, and I simply let it go.  I will avoid a rant about the truthiness of that comment, but I hope you can see some of the ridiculousness yourself.

Sorry again that it’s been so long since I posted.  Between work, an unfortunate and frustrating money situation and finishing the apartment (it’s still not done), I’ve had a bit of a dull time.  Besides that, post-Christmas winter is a rather dull time in Vienna, as it finds most going through the motions as they await the sweet relief of spring.  Oh and will it ever be sweet this year.

SO!
I went to Milan this weekend with the intention of seeing Animal Collective.  Travelling with my South Tyrolean roommate afforded me the opportunity to visit South Tyrol, the region of the Austro-Hungarian empire displaced to Italy after WWI.  After several years of Ital-ification, it received some reparations, and a re-integration of German-speaking and (gasp) Austrian culture.  The region is mixed now in a very lovely way.  Signs now read both languages, Italian mostly on top, and people seem to co-exist without much begrudging.

You’re welcome for the history lesson.  We traveled to Merano through a series of changes between intercity and regional trains, the most interesting of which was at the Italian border.  There, one must purchase a ticket first with a touch-screen machine which spits out a card, which is subsequently validated with a screen-less yellow box containing eleven colored buttons, the numbers 0-9 and a +.  After receiving the card, one inserts the card into the top of the yellow machine, and is commandeered pending the successful entry of the button combination corrisponding to your travel plans.  In none of these steps did I see any instructions as to what you should do, let alone how what you were doing related to your intention of purchase, leaving any tourist completely confused.  I’d like to say that I we handled it flawlessly (although my roommate is quite good at it), or that I gained some intuition for how the system works, but, alas, I cannot.

Our arrival in Merano was greeted with warm weather and a warm family.  We were treated to some lovely Italian pasta, followed by a chat with the grand-folks, culminating in probably the most refreshing night’s sleep of the year.  The next day’s sun revealed the breathtaking view of a mountain seen through the apartmen’s window.  I was again treated to coffee and cake by the Uncle, and birthday joy from the adorable cousin, who offered her cute German and English.

We then drove to Bolzano (or Bolzen, depending on which part of the sign you read), where we missed our first connection to Milan.  This was not a bad thing, as we got to spend some time in the lovely capitol of South Tyrol.  I had my first real Italian cappuccino, and strolled through a lovely town which made me ask, why would anyone leave South Tyrol?

We got to Milan and plopped our stuff down and b-lined to the show.  We met a couple Americans there, some of the types I miss: the aimless opportunist and the self-aware hipster.  It goes without saying that the show was in-fucking-credible if you’ve ever heard this band.

Eschewing another what-I-think-about-a-band scree, let’s move on to our day in Milan.  We began with the Duomo (cathedral), which in these European cities are commonly impressive, however this one was VERY impressive.  The American was right, it looked better in the night, but I failed to take pictures then.  Google it.
We strolled through a super-upscale shopping arcade, then headed for a park, where we saw more than four Asian couples getting married, or just honeymooning it up western style, to show some pictures back home.  Either way, the confetti was enough to wade through and lament, as it was even getting into the ponds.

Before attempting to catch a glimpse of the original da Vinci’s Last Supper (and thus completely my quest to come to a full grasp of the Dan Brown’s wondrous, enchanting epic tale), we stopped in at a real local Italian pizza place.  Let me tell you, I have had a lot of American pizza, and even at its most Italian, it does not compare to this shit.  If you’re ever in Italy you have to try this, man, it’s voll lecker.  You won’t believe your mouth.

Our attempts at the Last Supper were thwarted by the presence of other tourists who (gasp) had the SAME IDEA.  But it was cool: the system works where you make an appointment to come in, and you will only come with 25 other people.  So you avoid the Louvre effect by eliminating the lineup situation, and the dumb museum effect of peering over other impatient shoulders.  Still this means we saw shit except the front of the church, which is, relative to Europe standards, not really much more than shit.

We took a stroll into yet another park and I found a place to perch myself onto a rock and read as my roommate took a nap on a bench.  That was great.  We finally visited the impressive cemetery before missing our next connection to the airport.  We made it back safe, but at least our mishaps made the traveling less boring.

You know the routine, more shit on flickr.

I must admit, I only heard about The Fall because Stephen Malkmus said that Slanted and Enchanted was basically a rip off of The Fall.  Even then, I didn’t hear them until their 2005 record Fall Heads Roll came to KWUR, and I really dug the not-so-fall-esque “Pacifying Joint” song.  Then I was a bit disenchanted to find out that the guy was really old, and his rambling then began to seem a bit more like that of an old, confused man.

And maybe Mark E. Smith has always been an old, confused man, beyond his years.  He’s had over 60 members in his band; he’s simply in the habit of firing the entire group and starting it over again.  Three of them have been wives (his current plays keyboards).  He’s 51.

I saw his current lineup tonight at Arena in Vienna, and it was quite an experience.  The “opener” was some sort of dude that did some sound collageage with really unwittingly ironic icons, such as Annie Lennox, Sinead O’Connor, Elvis and Bette Middler, freezing moments of the song, altering the sound and adding beats.  I really thought it was interesting, because it gave these artists a Big Brother feeling to them, but in the end it was extremely boring, and the audience also hated it.

The hosts of the show, Faq magazine, came on after this artist, and said hello, very obviously embarrassed that they had pissed the audience off so much.

Finally The Fall made a celebrated entrance, and we all rejoiced.  Soon Mark would be rambling senselessly at us with a really pissed off look on his face, trying his hardest to clash with the backing music.  He might be 51, but he doesn’t look a day younger than 70.  I don’t think he’s a drunk or using drugs, I think he’s just that grumpy.  When he wasn’t singing, he would twirl his tongue and suck in his lips in a very geriatric manner.  I kept looking to see if he had any teeth, and I never saw any.

The Fall has an unfathomable back catalog, and there is no need to really buy it all, kind of like Guided by Voices.  So it’s expected not to know most of what’s played.  And the songs were topical, to the point that it almost sounded like he was making them up.  One contained several repititions of “We are the fall”, another “I’m a 50-year-old man”.  The latter song stopped and started again.  It was almost as if they changed songs but Mark didn’t notice.  He just hadn’t told us enough times that he was 50 years old.

He wandered around the stage a lot, occasonally removing a drum microphone, turning the knobs on the band members’ amps to make them unbalanced and loud, stopping to look at scraps of paper and cardboard which at first looked like lyrics he was reading, but he continued to sing while turning them over and puzzling over what was on either side.

At the first encore they played the only song I recognized, a rambling jam over a bassline, which was hardly composed.  At the end Mark messed up everyone’s instruments, and finally proved to us that really any of us could have been him if we came up with the idea….by giving the microphone to the audience and walking off.  It was passed around, different people rambled, other people screamed or made awkward thank-yous in broken english.  But the last guy did an impeccable and hilarious immitation of Mark, repeating: “The Fa-all cayn not stop naayyyyoowww-uh/We paiied-uh 32 Euros to see-uh thayymm-uh/The Fa-ll cayn not stop nayyyoowww-uh”

And it worked.  They came back for one more song.

Going to shows alone is really worth it.

The paper is progressing slowly, my friends, and I really love it to death.  Let me count the smiles it brings me.

We had a house party.  It fucking rocked.  My roommate is a university student, and so we had about a half-and-half thing of people each of us knew.  My boss even came (she lives around the corner from me now.  The cats totally freaked, and I couldn’t do anything to pacify Melvyn, really.  I think Ethyl took it OK.  We’ll have to do it again.  Just not, next week.

Now they’re getting along quite well (left).  The cleanup left us with this really cool installation (right).
So last week I went to see Kaizer’s Orchestra, this Norwegian band that’s, you know, one of those bands you really would like live and think to yourself, I should go buy the record, but then you realize that they write their songs to play them live and sound cool, but they’re just really boring on the record.  Same tricks over and over.  (I’m older and wiser now, I didn’t buy the CD.)  But the cool thing was that they sung in Norwegian only.
Then the next night was Mogwai.  So I went to the Arena, to the same place you usually go for shows.  They take my ticket, looked through my shit, and finally I go through.  I text my friend to tell him I’m there and try to find him.  He says he has his cell phone light on, and I see nothing.  Finally I tell him to look for me.  I wait and finally the band comes on.  I had never seen Mogwai before, so I didn’t know what they looked like.  I took some pictures.

It wasn’t until about halfway through the first song that I realized that this was not Mogwai.  I don’t know why it didn’t immediately register with the cheesy pop-punk riff and chords in the intro, then the German singing, and finally realizing that there was absolutely no value to the song.  It was this band:Kettcar.  (I’m pretty sure they opened with the song I linked.)  I had gone to the wrong fucking venue.  It was even a sold out show!  They took my ticket, which i guess could have been any perforated piece of cardboard, and let me in.

And what felt the strangest, was this realization that everyone around me was not there to see the great Mogwai, but instead to see this band.  It was like realizing you were at a republican rally all of a sudden or something.

So Mogwai was playing on the other side of the Gürtel, and I don’t know what analogy to give to an american city, but imagine there’s an inner ring and an outer ring.  I had to go all the way across the outer ring to get to the right venue.  When I arrived, my friend called me to tell me the show was over.  Felt great.

Had a couple beers at the institute party, grabbed my bag and went home.  Another Vienna weekend.

Hey folks, it has been a really, really long time since I wrote in this blog.  This is no indicator that nothing has happened.  No, it originates from the fact that I simply can’t take pictures anymore.  It’s one of those things where you think you’re going to fail doing it, and you fail.  And what does that have to do with a blog?  Well, it just seems like a really boring thing to ask everyone to read my flagging prose style in order to be entertained and update.  You deserve visuals!

But in light of the fact that I have written nothing, and I still have no pictures, I’ll give you a written update.  Let’s see…I moved to the first district.  “Oh, yeah, the first…district, right, Bob.”  Well the way it works here (and in a lot of cities out here) is that there is a district in the middle, called the first, and then it spirals outward from there.  So you would say that I live in the Manhattan of Vienna, except not in the Upper East Side.  Maybe something more like…well the analogy doesn’t really go that far.  Anyway, it’s damn cool.

Not only that but the apartment rocks.  It’s fairly rare that one finds a decent kitchen *and* living room in a Vienna apartment.  Most of the flats here are originally one-person or one-family flats turned into shared flats, and have that awkward feeling of trying to wear pants over your torso.  What’s more, there’s construction here, and the rent is currently reduced to 250 €!

What else.  Let’s see I ran in the Graz marathon.  Not that much faster than the last one.  We’re working on a paper.  I guess I shouldn’t say much more than that about that.  I saw Nada Surf and my love affair with that band effectively ended then.  The substance I perceived in them really isn’t there.  I joined a band.  I’m playing bass and we’re also singing at least one of my songs.  I’m going to Burg Kranichberg for a recess and I have to give a talk and a poster.

I fasted.  This was one of those fasts where you drink that syrup-lemon juice concoction, so in essence it’s not really a fast, because you get quite a few calories from that.  But no food.  It was unfortunately a bit short.  Probably the most informative thing I learned is that you should be in decent shape *before* you begin to fast.  I’ll probably do this again in the spring.

We had an election here that really ended somewhat badly.  It’s a little complicated here, because there are 6 parties which get a decent amount of the votes, instead of our two.  The combined votes of the two very right-leaning parties, the FPÖ and the BZÖ, were over 30%, enough for them to form a coalition and be the ruling party.  These parties have alleged nazi sympathies and do not hide their anti-immigration, and sometimes anti-EU views.  The viennese and other left people (the only people I actually would have contact with anyway), explain this with one of two scenarios: 1) it was a protest vote against an eventual 2 party system, or 2) that the new law allowing one to vote starting at the age of 16 gave the charismatic HC Strache the ability to sway an impressionable demographic.

Either way, the current presidential election managed to distract me from this somewhat depressing result. And really, that’s my life outside of work at the moment.

In an effort to inch my way toward the “I can run a Marathon” mark, but also, maybe mostly, to sieze the opportunity to see Carinthia for the first time, I signed up for the Carintha Half Marathon.  It was quite a trip.

I was a bit ill-prepared.  I had run what I believed to be 15km the week before in 90 minutes, but since then I had run perhaps 30 minutes once, and also drank a lot of beer.  In the countryside of Austria, beer consumption does not cease or diminish.

I was spoiled, once again, to an astonishingly great room to sleep in, and a warm, loving family, who gracefully forgave my shyness to speak German.  The dialect was something similar to what I’ve heard before, but when they really got going, I was completely lost.  It was OK, because I consumed a lot of good food and had a lot of good things to look at while this was taking place.

After the first night, we ventured out into the family’s cabin, where lots and lots of meat was “gegrillt”.  On the way, we were shown a stunning grave yard outside a small churge.  Apparently, on All Saint’s Day, all the candles are lit on every stone, and the place is, perceivably, breathtaking.

I have to admit that lately I cannot be called a vegetarian.  My friend had warned her parents that I was a vegetarian without knowing this, but by the time her mom arrived with a hunk of the wonderful grillable, salty, squeaky Halloumi cheese, I had already partaken, and it was immediately announced: “Bob isst schon Fleisch!”

There were five runners in the family (if I’m counting right), and apparently this is a major occasion for gathering, and this happens this year at least 3 times.  This, and many other cute, but unitelligible things were the topic of discussion.   No sooner were we back from the grill was large portions of spaghetti being prepared (carbohydrates are really great before running).
Up at 6 the next day, eating only toast, drinking loads of water and electrolytic-mineral chemicals, finally to make the long drive to Klagenfurt.  We enjoyed relatively nice café before hand, and as we sat their in our messy clothes drinking fruit tea and crossing our legs (or stretching), I thought to myself, this is really Europe.

We passed by some high school jazz band, a kid’s  hockey club, many cheerers on, shop owners staring in disbelief smoking cigarettes, traditional Austrian bands, and of course, the lovely Wörthersee.  I quite enjoyed the little ones who reached out their hands to give me five. During part of the marathon there was a stretch with a bike path and a road.  Since the road was not level, many chose the bike path.  Amazingly, some grumpy local bikers were yelling at the marathon runners for running on the bike path.  I kind of understand this in any other cirucumstance except that where once a year, the villages all celebrate athleticism and achievement in a good will, locale-promoting event.  Bua.
Every long run has a really lame stretch, but this one had very few. In fact, I was waiting a long time for the scenery to get ugly.  Finally it did, in the 19th kilometer, where, to the right you had some really weedy bushy pointless vegetation, and to the left an ugly train track.  Probably the least good of times, because this is really when you’re nearly there, but not really within grasp.  Besides that it was often entertaining.

At the end, we swam in the Wörthersee, showered, and headed to yet another very very nice restaurant.  Again, the family sponsored us.  How supportive!  Three beers, a whole fish, and a coffee later, I was done.  The conversation really only waned at the end, when really, everyone was dead.  But oh what a lovely time.  (Sorry not any pictures of me in outfit–but you know, I was in a t-shirt and shorts, with a number on, and standing, then running.  Real exciting.)
I might follow them along to the next couple….we’ll see how I feel about that tomorrow.  For now I fight my immobility by stretching my pained legs as much as sensible.

I took this photo when I was interviewing for my position here in Vienna, and lo and behold, it really is true.  There are a smattering of these here and there in different places in Vienna, but maybe I’m just forgetting that I’m passing the same one in the same place.  And it’s true: when something is really shitty in your life, smile at the things that are nice.  You’ll find out that they really are very nice.

I finally made it out to Berlin on the RNA Society Conference.  I saw a couple mildly inspiring talks, I presented a poster, no one really gave me any constructive comments, I didn’t really meet anyone incredibly inspiring, and so on.  Nuff said.

Berlin is quite nice and interesting in many ways.  It’s in a bit of disrepair, being a city that is so unwieldy and having so many hard times come upon it.  The Marco Polo City Atlas of Berlin states a 20% unemployment rate, very high for anywhere, very, very high for Europe.  The poverty is not so heartbreaking as you might see in inner city America, though, since so many welfare systems are in place.

The city, just like the others I’ve been to, has its own post-historic-heyday character.  Bikes are everywhwere, and notable are the cyclists wearing half my month’s salary carrying their shoes in their backpacks.  It’s a more cheerful town than Vienna.  At an organic Curry Wurst stand, I encountered a friendly conversation among strangers about what is going on in their lives, their visitors, their families, nevertheless using the formal “Sie” form to converse.  In Vienna, one would be lucky to hang with overweight mustachioed alcoholics complaining about how the world is broken at a Wurstl stand in Vienna.

There are no fewer Turks in Berlin than in Vienna.  In fact, you can buy trading cards for the various Doenner and Kebab stands, detailing the place, number of stools, years in service and even the number of brothers the owner has, among other things.  One guidebook says that you could eat only Turkish food for two months and never have to eat at the same place twice.

There’s a lot less pretention about Berlin’s past in the air.  Perhaps it has to do both with a greater acceptance of Hitler’s presence, or also the mess still left by the former divide between the East and West.  It’s quite interesting to see the disheveled buildings among the great ones, even in the touristy areas.

The tourists get cute walk/don’t walk “ampels”.  This becomes the subject of many postcards and paraphernalia, much like the London Tube.  The DDR (East Germany) museum somehow made it seem decent and even a little kitschy to live in a communist state.  There’s a great museum I can’t recommend enough called Pergamon.  Nuff said.  For a good time, though, check out the East Side.  Way hip.

Overall, not bad.  A little crowded with things at a poorly organized conference, and a little tiring, but good.  A good run in there too.

And so ended another trip to the US.  The first week was spent warding off the throes of hard times in Vienna, and, in doing so, a near descent into complete alcoholism.  It was good to see everyone, nonetheless.

Jean is yet again making a calendar of Chicago, this time featuring the graves of famous people buried there.  I chose Ignaz Schwinn, bicycle baron, famous for the Schwinn Bicycle, and incidentally, a German immigrant.  (How fitting, huh?)  We thrifted and found a few articles vaguely resembling something he would wear, and brought Jean’s (modern) Schwinn in tow.  It was really the Sherlock Holmes hat acquired from a friend of hers that put the whole thing together.

She had recently been kicked out of another graveyard, and so we were both a little nervous.  We weighed our options to optimize the opportunity of getting a photo before getting caught: first, just taking the front tire of her bike, we ran stealthily to the grave stone, snapped a few, then as the coast was clear, retrieved the rest of the bike.  I really felt like I was on Jackass or something.

(You can see a little more documentation of this in her own web log: http://jeanfitz.wordpress.com/)

I spent a very pleasant week with the family.  It was relaxing, and had no less of the excitement of previous visits.  It’s good to know that we still have it.

I noticed a few things that really remind me of how silly the US is.  The over commercialized music equipment store, geared to fool customers into thinking their purchases were setting them onto a course to rock stardom, had a sign with useless umlauts on it (this phenomenon is actually documented in Wikipedia).  In Myrtle beach, there was a sign on the corner in front of one of the hundreds of tasteless T-shirt stores advertizing “SHARK TOOTH NECKLACES 1$”.  I really should have bought one.

On the way back, I had a one night layover in NYC, and I found out that day that there would be no where for me to sleep.  I stood at the airport gate, about to board a plane that would take me to a city with no bed for me, and looked across the hall to see a later flight to Las Vegas.  I pondered a bit.  Here I was, about to re-enter my not so great life in Vienna.  I have a choice: I could go visit my friend, spend all my savings and my credit at casinos, get married, annulled, and perhaps end up waking up lost in a drainage ditch the next morning, having no idea what happened, or go back to Vienna.  Very tough question.

I am, by the way, in Europe again.