David Sends Austria into Anaphylactic Shock, Vol. II

From David Sends Austria into Anaphylactic Shock, Vol. I.

Chapter the Seventh

IN WHICH DAVID BREAKS AUSTRIA

And then the whole country just went to shit around me. For the last two weeks, if I have touched something, it has disintegrated in a matter of seconds, sometimes even in mere days. Some countries just ain't made Dave-proof. Austria, welcome to the Danger Zone. 

What products, specifically, can't handle your overwhelming existence, O glorious warrior-poet, you ask? 

MUSTARD CONTAINERS. Although my grocery-shopping history is admittedly a little touch-and-go, I'd thought that in the last couple years I'd started to get the hang of it. So after going grocery shopping for ingredients with which to make a mustard-based barbecue sauce and a few household supplies for my new apartment, I reverted back to my Washingtonian ways and bought a fabric grocery bag. I filled that badboy up, threw it on my bike handles, and pedaled off into the wind. After two blocks of the bag bumping against my wheel spokes, I decide to pull over and readjust, just as a precaution to keep anything from, y'know, breaking. After the readjustment, a gap opens up in traffic, and I floor it onto the street. On my first pedal rotation, however, an explosion of mustard bursts forth from the confines of the bag and garnishes my front tire. 

Here's a visual cue.

I piece together the crime scene, and deduce that I have, it seems, ripped that shopping bag a new one. Specifically, the bag wandered into my spokes, and a mustard tube (it comes packaged in aluminum tubes like toothpaste here) got caught, whereupon the spokes tore off the top of the tube through the grocery bag. After a few choice words, I roll up the mustard tube to keep it from emptying, push all my groceries away from the corner of the bag with the hole, and continue biking. That ought to teach me to take precautions. 

SHOPPING BAGS. Whereupon, about 4 feet later, I notice a massive tear has opened up the entire back of the shopping bag. I throw that bitch out at the next trash can I find, throw everything into the basket I bought to act as a hamper in my apartment, and precariously walked my bike the 20 minutes to my apartment. 

BIKES. This one's pretty simple. I was mounting my bike all pro-like, and in a decidedly un-pro manner, I kicked off my back reflector. Could've happened to anyone, really. 

BIKE LOCKS. Then I broke my bike key whilst trying to take my bike lock off the back of my bike in order to lock the damn thing right before leaving on a train bound for Villach for the weekend, so me and Andy were forced to double-down on his lock until we got back and I could get my spare key.

LEDERHOSEN. In Villach, we had a Trachtenparty, meaning everyone wore dirndls and lederhosen. I also apparently needed lederhosen for my school's ball (the Pitz Ball, as it were), so this was just a good investment. However, after a mere single use, my lederhosen broke right in the scrotal region. Because I bought them on sale, I couldn't even take them back to the store. Since I'm not trying to show up to the Pitz Ball in ballsack-less lederhosen, this was a low point in the life of The Kid.

"Ah, yup, looks like my testes have found their way onto the floor again."

THE WEATHER. After doing my laundry for the first time in Austria, I hung it out to dry because Austrians are too busy worrying about their silly "environment" to dry their clothes with any efficiency. For the next two days, it rained mercilessly upon my freshly-laundered clothing. I cut my losses, bought a drying rack for my room, and took my clothes inside from the elements which the heavens had unleashed upon them. The weather has been nothing short of heavenly since.

LIGHTS. When the lights in my room are off, they flicker on. Not only is this random circuit-completion disconcerting, but it's also a bitch to fall asleep to. In order to do that, I have to unscrew the lightbulbs in my room every night, so the first thing I do every morning when I wake up at 5:30 in the AM (i.e., while it's still dark outside) is stand on my bed and put my lightbulbs back in their sockets. Which is precisely what I want to do as soon as I wake up at 5:30 in the morning. 

BIKE LOCKS REDUX. Not to be outdone, my spare bike key then broke in my bike lock while my bike was locked. Tough titties, Dave.

HOW DID YOU OVERCOME THESE CATASTROPHES? Moxie. Also, I duct taped the reflector back onto my bike. And one of my students at school told me her grandma would sew my lederhosen back together. And I bought a handsaw and went to damn town on my bike lock until I freed my poor bicycle from his terrestrial shackles. So, to recap, that is, in order: moxie, duct tape, one grandmother, and a saw. And my bike is still coated in mustard.

Chapter the Eighth 

IN WHICH AUSTRIA BREAKS DAVID

The planet was collapsing around my ears, and I hadn't even touched 21st century technology yet. But try as I might, I can't go too long without touching 21st century technology, so you'd best to put on a reading helmet, because you're about to take a ridiculous story to the face.

Once I had my new apartment, I needed internet access. One of the other English teaching assistants in Klagenfurt, Veronica, had accidentally bought two internet sticks (USB ports with SIM-cards in them that act as modems), so I bought one off of her for the store price of €30. It worked wonders for 3 days, when the initial amount on the SIM-card expired. I added €20 to the SIM-card, and thought I'd just get right on back to interneting real quick. My computer, sensing that I could now access the internet of my own accord, reacted in the most predictable manner by refusing to read the internet stick. The next day, I take the stick to Andy's, plug it into Bex's computer, and run some tests. It still doesn't work, so I know it's the stick and not my computer, because science. Though, honestly, it's a little foolish of me to just assume that an Austrian product would work in my presence.  

I take the stick back to the store from which it came, called "3," and they tell me I need to have the receipt. I text Veronica to see if she has the receipt, and, impossibly, she actually does. Come Monday, I go get the receipt from her apartment, and I go back to 3. Since that all seemed a little too easy, the guy at 3 informs me that I do not, in fact, have the correct receipt, and so he can't do anything for me. I ask Veronica if she has the right one, and, more in tune with my life, she doesn't. Still, I need the internet, so I go back to 3 the next day to buy a new internet stick. That way, I can at least salvage the €20 I dropped and only take a €30 hit.

Of course, because my happiness angers the gods, 3 has, at some point in the last three weeks, ceased production of internet sticks. 

Pictured: the devil.

The blond lady at the store, who's apparently miffed at the level to which spending €50 for no internet upsets me, tells me that I need to go to the electronics store in the mall to find myself an internet stick. 

I go to the electronics store, Saturn, and for just €45, I buy myself an internet stick that's compatible with 3's SIM-card because I refuse to let that €20 go to waste. Of course, I might as well have just thrown the God-forsaken thing in the trash, since I had already made the fatal error of being in its vicinity. Much like a Native American in slavery, the stick would only work for five minutes at a time before dying. Even worse than a Native American in slavery, however, its death would freeze Windows 7. I run a system recovery to take the programs it downloaded off my computer, and the next morning I try to get it to work again, thinking that maybe I just downloaded everything wrong. This second time it works even less effectively, so I run the system recovery again and head off to school so as not to be late. 

When I get back from school, my computer is just finishing up some diagnostics test that it definitely didn't do for my first system recovery, and caps that off by rebooting itself. On the reboot, however, all I get is a wonderful little message informing me that the "BOOTMGR is missing." Apparently, without a boot manager, my laptop can't even manage your average boot, so a reboot was just entirely out of the question. 

This boot, fortunately, is still in the cards.

For those of you keeping track at home, I've now spent €95 on the internet, and have gotten no internet and killed my computer in the process. At least I had the receipt for this stick, so I brought it back to Saturn and got my €45 back. So, on the bright side, it's only cost me €50 to kill my computer. 

HOW DID YOU OVERCOME THIS CATASTROPHE? This one's still in the process of opening its can of whoop-ass on me, actually. My computer is still dead. I've written this entire blog post on a combination of the computer in the teachers' lounge at Pitzelstätten and Bex's laptop in between her marathon Skyping seshes. Such is my commitment to you, my yearning faithful. Oh, and on Friday I found out that my house already had internet I could've hopped on for the whopping sum of €5 a month.

David Sends Austria into Anaphylactic Shock, Vol. I

Slightly more than one month ago, I, your humble narrator, left my native shores and headed for the wilderness of the Austrian hinterlands, where I had been conscripted to instruct the native savages in my mother tongue. On September 15, my flight touched down in the alpine valleys of the W. A. Mozart Airport in Salzburg, where I had planned to stay until the 24th in order to get my registration and visa situations worked out. Adjusting for the time difference upon landing, it was time to party, and I had a fresh case of ruckus tucked away in my carry-on. I disembarked from the airplane, shot one of the 47 Alps surrounding the place the old double sideways six-shooters, and watched it crumble to the ground.

For a small-scale re-enactment, see what you just did.

Through no fault of its own, Austria was about to get rocked. 

Perhaps sensing its own inevitable shortcomings in handling the extent to which rocking was about to be done unto it, Austria's immune system dialed up to 11, and the emergency D. Wile transplant has been getting rejected like the main character at the beginning of a coming-of-age movie ever since. 

Chapter the First 

IN WHICH DAVID'S LUGGAGE ABSCONDS

This allergic reaction to my mere existence first manifested itself after I had been in Austrian territory for roughly 7 minutes. I do the usual post-flight routine of heading to the baggage claim and waiting for my bag, along with my other co-passengers. Unfortunately, my bag does not do its part in this post-flight routine, namely, showing up on the baggage claim conveyor belt. For about five minutes after everyone had already left, I keep staring at the little curtain where the bags magically appear, expecting my bag to arrive by sheer force of human will. Finally, the conveyor belt stops, and a woman wearing official-enough-for-an-airport-looking clothes tells me that I have, indeed, been boned. Not having a phone number and not knowing the address of my hostel, I give the two women working the Lost and Found the hostel's name, which I only remembered via a miracle of God, and they tell me it will work itself out. At the very least, if it doesn't work itself out, they tell me that once I buy a phone I should give them a ring.

HOW DID I OVERCOME THIS CATASTROPHE? It actually did work itself out. Three days later, I went downstairs to the main desk to buy me some breakfast, and as if by magic, there's my luggage cowering in the corner. We saw the twinkle in each others' eyes, rushed into each others' arms, and then I unzipped his ass and took out my Adidas, because Salzburg is flipping made out of cobblestones, and the boat shoes I had been wearing since I left home aren't called cobblestone shoes for a reason. Although, I guess my Adidas also aren't called cobblestone shoes. I digress.

Chapter the Second
IN WHICH DAVID BECOMES HOMELESS

Coming into Austria, I was under the vague impression that I had housing readily available to me. I was under this impression because I had done the necessary research to find an apartment, and I had not only exchanged e-mails, but had also become Facebook friends, with the person with whom I expected to live. We'll call him Tom, because that's his name. Tom and I got along swimmingly. He appreciated how laid back I was, and I appreciated his commitment to party as documented on the Facebookz. We were going to have a blast, and I didn't even have to pay a security deposit. Every time I asked for the address of the apartment, however, Tom would get a little dodgy. Finally, in the lobby of the hostel in Salzburg, I initiated a Facebook chat sesh with Tom again. This time, I demanded the address, calmly pointing out that I needed it to do all that stuff like live in Austria and what-have-you. At this point, Tom burst my non-homeless bubble, informing me that we could not live together because the hundreds of euros I would be breadwinning every month would cancel his housing subsidy from the Austrian government. America, this is the face of socialism.

Put that hammer and sickle down, pinko.

I now had six days before I had to move to Klagenfurt and no address to stay at once I arrived. Even more exciting, without an address, I couldn't register with the authorities to get my residency permit, open a bank account to receive my extensive subsidy-canceling salary, or even benefit from all the communism floating around these parts and get my government-issued health insurance. The situation was looking, dare I say, dire. 

HOW DID I OVERCOME THIS CATASTROPHE? Shockingly, I made friends. At the orientation seminar in Saalbach-Hinterglemm, I became besties with Andy, Bex, and Amanda, an Englishman and two American girls respectively, the former two of which, in stark contrast to your fabled poet-scribe, actually had a roof over their heads, a television, and a David-sized couch. I just had to find an apartment of my own, and I would be settled. Things were looking up, and just in time for school to start. 

Chapter the Third 

IN WHICH DAVID ANNE FRANKS IT

My first night on the couch was the night of Friday, the 28th of September. My second night on the couch was Saturday, and on Sunday morning around 10 o'clock in the AM, I awake after a what has been an entire week of frighteningly heavy drinking to the quizzical visage of Andy and Bex's landlord, Dietmar, who wants to know just who in tarnation I am. Upon informing the Dietz of my status as honored guest, Dietmar tells me that, whilst guests are allowed, I am not allowed to "live" in the apartment, and I have to GTFO without even the option to tits. Unfortunate, considering the entire conversation took place with yours truly all up in his boxer-briefs.

Apparently, sleeping on someone's couch for two nights constitutes "living" in this country, and also landlords are just allowed to waltz on into your apartment whenever they damn well please. All of this comes as some shock to me, but Dietmar doesn't have time for shock. Nor does he tolerate my continued presence in his apartment. I wake Andy up, gather all of my things into his room, and hit the mean streets of Klagenfurt on a Sunday morning. Absolutely nothing in this town is open on Sunday, so I just walked around for two hours before coming back to Andy's. Arrangements would have to be altered. 

HOW DID I OVERCOME THIS CATASTROPHE? Through stealth and cunning. I would avoid Dietmar at all costs. I would sleep on the floor in Bex's room, with only a blow-up camping mattress and a sleeping bag between me and nature/linoleum. In the mornings, before leaving for school, I would hide any trace of my existence. These were dark times, and they were about to get darker. 

Yea, even darker than this.

Chapter the Fourth

IN WHICH DAVID DOES HIS THANG

Let's face it, adoring millions: We all knew, in our heart of hearts, that this one was coming. I had spent three weeks since my departure from Columbia tempting the gods of transport. I somehow got on all three flights from Charlotte to Salzburg without missing any of them. I even had a baggage-check lady run me through JFK's security just so I could get to my flight on time. She used her badge and everything, shit was nuts. I got on the right bus to my hostel in Salzburg, and I made all the trains from Salzburg to Hinterglemm and from Hinterglemm to Klagenfurt without a problem. Hell, I even got on the right bus at the right time to get from Andy's apartment to my school way out in the farmland on my first day of classes. This little bout of punctuality just wasn't sustainable. I was letting the loyal, yearning fans of this blog down, and I knew it. Luckily for you, loving faithful, there's always a second day of school. 

On that fate-soaked Tuesday, I ran out of Andy's apartment slightly late, left my school bag in Bex's room, tragically hesitated on the elevator/stairs decision, and got to the bus stop right as a bus arrived. I hopped on. The streets didn't look like they did on Monday. I convinced myself it was just because I'd been seated facing the other way the day before. Even the people on the bus didn't seem like the same people that were on it on Monday, but hey, who takes the same bus on Monday and Tuesday? Don't be foolish. Still, once the bus up and turned its ass around, I started to become a little less sure of myself. When it got back to Andy and Bex's stop, I was all but certain that this had, indeed, been the wrong bus. 

I waited at the stop for the right one, and eventually showed up for school 3 periods late. Sorry I'm a champion. 

HOW DID I OVERCOME THIS ENTIRELY PREDICTABLE CATASTROPHE? Everyone at school just kinda got over it, actually. It's a very difficult school to get to. Shit is out in the boonies. 

Look at all them boonies.

Also, everyone at the Höhere Bundeslehranstalt für Land- und Ernährungswirtschaft Pitzelstätten is remarkably friendly and understanding, which bodes well for me.

Chapter the Fifth

IN WHICH DAVID'S HOMELESSNESS INCHES TOWARDS THE TEMPORARY

After four nights of roughing it on Bex's floor, I inked a contract with my future landlord, Berend, agreeing to drop €270/mo. on an unfurnished 12 square-meter room. Of course, I still had to live with Andy and Bex until I had time to move my year's supply of luggage across Klagenfurt, but now I had a definite plan. Also, Berend wanted a €540 security deposit and the €270 rent ASAP, and I still had to buy a bed and various other furnishings to get comfy. For those of you counting at home, you can put your fingers down because that's roughly A MILLION FUCKING EUROS. Also, did I mention that we don't get paid for the first time until mid-November? Because we don't get paid for the first time until mid-goddamn-November. And until I can move my belongings, I'm still in hiding from the wrath of Dietmar on the safe though remarkably uncomfortable haven that is Bex's floor.

HOW DID I OVERCOME THIS CATASTROPHE? Pitzelstätten stepped up big in the clutch. They took a bed and a table from the dorms and delivered it to my house. Then one of the English teachers, Astrid, took me to her place where she stored a bunch of excess crap in the basement, and I got myself a coat rack, a makeshift dresser, and the complete works of Nietzsche in the original German. Mercifully, Berend took pity upon my poverty and told me not to worry about the security deposit until I get paid. Finally, Astrid volunteered her car to move all of my various accoutrements from Andy's to my place. After spending a grand total of €0, my apartment was furnished and I would be moving in on Saturday. Clutch.

Chapter the Sixth

IN WHICH DAVID GETS SMOKED OUT

Friday night was my last night sleeping on Bex's floor. It was emotional for all of us, but this eagle's gotta spread his wings. Unfortunately, right as I got out of the shower and before I could get my sweet-ass feathers all plumed up for freedom, I'm once again met by the grisly visage of Dietmar, Landlord Extraordinaire. And boy, if he isn't just itching to have a word with me in the living room. We're always so quick to forget that the Anne Frank deal wasn't such a feel-good story after all.

You and me against the world, Anne. You and me.

We retire to the living room, where Dietmar asks for my passport. After I fetch it for him, he snaps some pictures of it with his iPhone. I have been documented. The realness level in the building has increased dramatically. He asked me what would happen in America if someone did what I'd done, and rather than saying "nothing," I just implied it by literally saying nothing. I'm a sly fox when it comes down to it, is what that is. He suggested that such a hypothetical person would be arrested. I didn't have the heart to tell him that, not only are people allowed to sleep for a week in their friends' apartments, but that the landlord who just all willy-nilly-like busts into your apartment would be the one in trouble, so I just implied it by literally saying nothing. Sly fox, like I said.

HOW DID I OVERCOME THIS CATASTROPHE? Dietmar may be Austrian and I may be American, but we both speak the same language. We both speak three of the same languages, in fact: English, German, and dolla dolla bills, y'all. I dropped him a 50 spot, told him I was already on my way out that afternoon anyways, and he seemed satisfied. In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.   

Continue to David Sends Austria into Anaphylactic Shock, Vol. II.