"Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill!"

Haven't fallen off the edge of the world.  But things have changed in my work life, and it's not just that I have less time to blog, but also that I'm feeling less impetus to blog.

I'm getting more substitute teaching engagements since the start of the new year.  That's largely because I've been taken off the naughty list of one school I'd formerly subbed for a great deal.  I was put on their naughty list last October when the principal thought I'd said too much about why the teacher I was subbing for was out having surgery.  (No, dear readers, I didn't sign any HIPAA pledges when I took that job, and the way the other teachers were talking about her op, I didn't think it was a secret).  Principal was sure I'd offended the regular teacher, so I was out until further notice.  Further notice came the day after the January teachers' meeting, when the teacher in question asked why she hadn't seen me around for so long.  She hadn't been offended at all!  So I'm back on that school's list, and they're calling me two, three, four times a week.  That on top of the other schools that call me, too.

Then, three or so weeks ago, my friend Frieda* called and said, "I've just gotten a job working the front desk at Dick & Harry's Tax Service*.  They still need people.  Didn't you work for them before?  You should call and see if you can get on, too."

I did call, I was rehired, and currently I'm working every evening, five weeknights a week.  This week I'm on from 4:00 to 9:00.  Really fun (not) coordinating that with the subbing work, where I often don't get off till 3:30, but we manage.

So "it's work all day for the sugar in your tay," and that's about what my earnings will buy me, the pay in both of these jobs being so low.  But I have to take what I can get.

Today I did not get called in to teach.  I caught up on my sleep, and now I have to a) do housecleaning, to get rid of the sanding dust so I can refinish my stairs, and/or b) do architectural continuing ed (blast! my calendar is backed up with that!), and/or c) do my on-line study for my English teacher's certificate, and/or d) finish what I need to do with my email addresses so I can finish dumping my old DSL Internet provider, now that I've been nearly a month with the local cable people.

And am I excited about doing any of these things?  No.  My mind is obsessed with when payday will be and will it bring me enough to cover my looming bills, and damn! I'm supposed to be so educated but here I am working twelve, thirteen hours a day for peanuts, which probably won't cover my looming bills, and sometimes I just want to cry.

There is light and blessing in all this.  Like the teaching gig I had last Friday where the regular teacher wasn't leaving until lunch time and I had all morning to sit-- yes, get off my feet and sit!-- in the teachers' lounge boning up on advanced Algebra so I wouldn't look like an idiot when it came time that afternoon to teach it.  And the local Red Wing Shoe store a couple weeks ago had some nice, comfortable, lace-up black shoes on sale for $10.00 a pair, and aren't those a godsend, especially in this weather!  And yesterday the student teacher did most of the work, so the fact that I had to report to Dick & Harry's without any dinner didn't make as big a difference in my front desk performance.  Imagine if my full energies had gone to teaching and disciplining and organizing first graders all day!

Well, three hours now till I have to change my clothes and get to the tax office.  God grant I use them wisely.  But you don't blame me, do you, when I come home at 9:30 and just want to watch reruns of I Spy or Magnum, P.I. on Hulu.com?

Wig Hats

Put on your high heel sneakers,
Wear your wig hat on your head,
Put on your high heel sneakers,
And your wig hat on your head.
Ya know you're lookin' mighty fine, baby,
I'm pretty sure you're gonna knock 'em dead.




For somebody as improverished and unfashionable as I am, I have acquired an absurd number of wigs.  I've even had to mount a separate shelf to help hold them all.Three from my friend Frieda*, the impossible one from Dorothy* the wigmonger, the two and 2/3 (counting the "halo" I wore for the first time on Sunday) I have from the ACS fashion prosthetics arm, and as of Monday, two from my mom.

One, which I can only describe as Texas Big Hair (sorry, Mom) is a reddish shade that is shockingly like the color of my hair as previously dyed (I know-- I kept a lot of it when I had it cut two weeks ago).  Color looks good on me; the style-- hmm, not sure where I can wear it, definitely dress-up party material.

But the other one is a lot more sensible and looks the best on of the whole lot.  It's a medium brown with blonde highlights styled in a short informal flip.  Kind of a Mariska Hargitay look, and if I want to evoke a celeb, I'd rather it were she than a lot of others.  I've worn that one a lot this week, and I think it looks the most like me; or at least, me when my hair is behaving.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday I figured out why the dark brown "Caitlin" wig looks so puffy and big on me.  It's too big.  I tried it on again and noticed, good grief, my ears are sticking out at a 45 degree angle!  I'd already decided I needed to trade in the "Sabrina," since it's way too blonde.  I called the TLC people and found out I'd measured the ear to ear dimension totally wrong.  Then I looked at the TLC wig from Frieda I successfully wore on Saturday, and discovered it's a Petite.

So today both of those went back.  Can't return them, since they were on sale, but I'm getting the replacements in the smaller size, with the long brown one in a tone with some highlights in.  Don't really fly with that stark '70s rocker look.  And the shorter curly one, I'm going with the same brown with blonde highlights that I like in the one Mom sent me.  I figure that way I won't freak people out so badly-- to the casual observer, it'll just look like I've got my hair curled or not.

I think I'll be a bit relieved when my hair comes out entirely.  Till then I'm wearing a little knit scullcap under the wigs to keep the loose hairs out of them.  And sometimes it's a bit hot and a lot of times it itches.  But I get used to it, I find.  After awhile, I'll be able to wear my wig of choice and forget I have it on, just like I can live my life and take care of my business and forget I'm dealing with cancer and chemo or any of that foolishness.

Just for fun, here's the remainder of the wig parade, mostly taken in my bathroom mirror:

"Caitlin," Take 1

"Sabrina," Take 1.  Not too bad in this light, actually . . .   But still not me.

Curly halo, with hat, of necessity

And I still don't have a picture of the awful one.

Where I'm going to use all these, I have no idea.  Too bad Dorothy* didn't have a René of Paris catalog in her shop.  The ones Mom sent are that brand, and his whole line looks very nice.  If I could have selected one like the short one, we would have solved the problem right away and I wouldn't be squirming under un embarras des richesses.

Hair Conditioning

I know what I said the other day about systematically brushing it all out; nevertheless, this past week I've been treating my hair like each separate strand was a silver penny slipping through my fingers.  At night I've been sleeping in weird positions to avoid rubbing any more out than absolutely necessary.  I dream about how to keep from losing it any faster than I have to, and keep myself semi-awake in the process.  The other night I had myself convinced-- in my dreams-- that if I slept in the guest bedroom, I wouldn't lose so much of my hair.

Maybe if I'd been satisfied about my wig situation, but I wasn't, not yet.  Thursday evening I modelled the new wigs for the neighbors, and they said the blonde one made me look like Marilyn Monroe and the dark one like Joan Jett.  All very well, but neither of those women are me and I don't want to be running around in a costume.

But Friday night I got a call from my friend Ruth* in Kansas City.  Ruth has been through breast cancer, twice, and chemo, twice.  Both times, she lost her hair. 

"Ruth, the first time, you had a wig, didn't you?  I mean, I don't remember any between time when you looked any different, really."

Yes, she'd had her surgery in October, started chemo in November, and started wearing her wig pretty much right away.

"Did you get your head shaved, or what did you do?"

"I just let it fall out whenever it would."

Not sure why, but this was a revelation.  Suddenly I felt I could stop babying my hair; I could let it go.  And whatever remains for however long it remains, I can stick it under my wig and let it be. 

So yesterday morning I got in the shower and washed my hair.  Same routine as always:  shampoo, scalp massage, creme rinse, the whole process.  And big wads of hair came out and had to be kept from going down the drain.  Upstairs before the bathroom mirror, I brushed what was left and more came loose.  And glad I was for that, since for awhile there I looked like the Charles Emerson Winchester III character from M*A*S*H.  It's not totally gone, far from it, though from the back the righthand side of my head is a lot more denuded than the left.  But what's gone is gone and what remains, remains.

And I put on my Laura Ashley flower print dress, pulled on one of the wigs Frieda* passed on to me, donned a straw hat over that, and attended the annual Beaver Library Garden Tour.  And no one who saw me there knew a darned bit of difference.

Some Observations

I'm thinking it might be useful for me to say a few things about my first chemo session this past Monday.

(Note photo of me in back yard afterwards, with bandaged wrist. And with hair, still. Very messy hair, since the photographer had to leave and didn't have time for me to find my brush.)

• In the first place, getting chemo was a full day's work! From the time I arrived in the waiting room to the time my friend Frieda* came to pick me up, it was eight hours or more.
  
• The treatment pods have four recliners in them with four IV stands and two TVs. I was the second patient in mine Monday morning. The lady who was in before me was on her final round for colon cancer.
  
• The nurse who took care of me-- I'll call her Nell*-- was really patient and thorough in telling me exactly what was going to go on in my chemo and what side effects I could expect over the course of it. She answered questions as long as I had them. What I don't get is, why, considering that I heard all that before the drugs began to flow, I seem to have retained so little of it!? I'll be glad for Frieda's notes, when I get them.
  
• On the other hand, Nurse Nell wasn't so proficient at getting the IV started in the back of my hand. Blew up the vein-- ow! and had to go for the wrist. It doesn't look so bad today, and I wonder if they'll be able to try again there the next time.
  
• I was not at all thrilled to learn that my pre-chemo blood counts fall around the 33 percentile of what's considered adequate and healthy. I kept asking her if I could improve that by eating better. No, she kept insisting, my baseline is perfectly healthy and normal for me. It is what it is. Yeah, maybe, but I dislike having so little leeway. They have drugs they can give you to get your counts up so you can go on with treatment, but still. (I've been eating iron-rich food since Monday, anyway. Makes me feel I'm doing something for the cause.)
  
• I got four anti-side effect drugs, fifteen minutes per bag, before the cancer-killing drugs proper begin. I can't quite remember what each of them does, but the most impressive one was the liquid Benadryl. Yikes! They say it puts you to sleep; it made me feel like I'd just come from a residence hall kegger! I brought in a sweater to mend, and was taking the last few stitches when the deck, so to speak, began to roll. "Shall I give into it?" I asked myself. Decided not. So I kept my eyes open and my posture semi-upright and went on to read Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus, even if I had to use the bookmark under the lines to keep from reading the same sentences over and over!
  
• The chemo drugs took longer Monday than they will at subsequent treatments, because Nurse Nell started them slowly to make sure I wouldn't have a bad reaction. Not sure what that would have been. Swelling up? Turning purple? Suddenly sprouting legs on top and walking on my head? Whatever it was, it didn't happen, and things proceeded according to plan.
  
• Three hours and ten minutes of the Taxol gave way to about an hour and fifteen minutes of the Carboplatin. Kept reading Sophocles through it (finished Oedipus at Colonus and went on to Antigone), even though the TV had been turned on long since by a lady who was in with her husband. Medical shows and Dr. Phil most of the day. Did you know they have an operation where they can remove half a person's brain and leave them with fairly normal function? Didn't catch what this is supposed to cure, but it's fascinating what you learn.
  
• I learned also that with all the liquid being pumped into you, if you feel like you gotta go, you gotta go. With the drug-induced unsteadiness and the shopping-cart perversity of the IV stand wheels, I couldn't help but feel I was about to be pulled over and busted for DUI on the way to the unisex can. But it was nice how nurses and other patients' caregivers would step back and let me use the bathroom ahead of them, even if they were there first.
  
• Plowed through my patient's binder, as much as I could. Every damn last possible side effect is in there, it seems, and what to do about them seemed confusing and contradictory. Emphasis on seemed. Clearly (as clear as anything was the other day!) there was no point in memorizing it all. Wait and see what happens, and go from there.
  
• Frieda and I prayed in the car before going in; my request was that God would somehow use me in this to minister to other people at the Cancer Center. Didn't think I had, really, but as I was waiting for Frieda to pick me up I got to talking to the lady there with her lung-cancer-fighting husband. Me, I thought I was just passing time and maybe being a little nosy. But when I was bidding her goodbye, she told me what a great comfort and help my words had been to her, and how much better she felt having talked with me. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at what God can do, but I never cease to be amazed when He does it through me.
  

I've been doing pretty well since Monday. A little queasiness now and again but nothing alarming or eruptive. Some suppression of my sense of taste and appetite, but nothing that keeps me from eating anything sufficiently savory. I've gone to a continuing education session at the Presbytery office and done a decent amount of gardening; I get tired maybe before I would ordinarily, and have to remind myself that this isn't "ordinarily" and stop and do something sedentary.

I know it'll get more challenging as it goes along, but I'll jump off that bridge when I get to it.

Some Nice Straightforward Dithering

Yesterday I had my introductory appointment with my chemo doctor, Dr. L. My friend Frieda*, who'd been to the same practice when she was being treated for breast cancer, went with me and took notes.

There weren't really any major surprises about this part of the deal. I'll be getting my chemo through an IV, not through a port as I'd thought (thanks to the UPMC radio ads/public service announcements that've been running lately)-- my Stage 1 cancer doesn't warrant the big-gun doses that come with a port. Half hour of Carboplatin each time, then three hours of Taxol. I could have sworn the doctor said it was the other way around, but that's what Frieda's notes say and that's why I had her there taking them.

I'll have pills against nausea and Benadryl against some of the chemo side effects. Yep, this will all make me drowsy/spacy, and yep, not a good idea to try to drive myself home afterwards.

They'll check my blood cells and CA-125 levels each time. If the cells counts remain sufficient, the every-three-week schedule will continue; otherwise, I'll have to hold off a bit till they come back up.

I asked about supplements. A regular multi-vitamin might be okay, Dr. L said, but dosing up on one nutrient or another won't do me any good and may do actual harm. Better to do my best to maintain a healthy, balanced diet.

What about hydrocortisone creams? I'd read somewhere you can't apply steroids like that during chemo, but what am I supposed to do, mosquito season is here! No, he said, there's no problem with that, I can use them all I need to.

But speaking of skin care . . . I'd hoped my Sun Protection Factor 15 face cream would do, smeared on the top of my soon-to-be-bald (sob!) head. Nope, he said. SPF 50, at least. Wear it all the time outside, whether I have a hat on or not. "I'll get you some," said Frieda, who's recently started a job at a drugstore. "We have it on sale."

As to post-chemo-session side effects, they may not kick in till two days after. If five days afterward I'm still losing my lunch (or throwing up my immortal soul, as Mark Twain once memorably put it), that's the time to call the Cancer Center or the ER.

As I said, this was pretty much all fine-tuning and logistics. I didn't exactly thrill to the thought when Dr. L tole me what his mentor in med school, who is "an ovarian cancer guru" would have said about the fluid-filled capsule that ruptured in me. Dr. O, he said, would have classified my cancer as a Stage 2 because the sac was stuck to the abdominal lining, the peritoneum. "Hey! I don't need that!" I protested, doing the anti-vampire finger cross at him. "1C is bad enough!"

"No, I'm not saying you're Stage 2. Just emphasizing that you've absolutely made the right decision to go for chemo."

Oh, all right. Besides, no cancer was found in the solid areas of that capsule. Or in the scrapings of the peritoneum (taken from where it was stuck to, I should think???)-- they came up negative, as well. So there.

I mentioned that I'd learned online that my particular form of tumor is very rare as ovarian masses go, and that in 95% of those cases (or some number like that), it's benign. Just my luck to come out on the other side of the odds!

Yes, that's true, but at my stage and grade it will respond well to the chemo-- if there's any cells that escaped at all. Nice to hear, since I'd been on a cancer support chatroom where a couple of patients had said they'd been told that this mucinous kind is resistant to chemotherapy. Bugger that. If-- if!-- there's anything there, we gonna kill it dead.

We scheduled the first treatment for June 14th, after my birthday on the 12th and after school's out on the 9th. I'm doing mine on Mondays, so I'll (God willing!) be recovered enough to preach on any given Sunday this summer. The 7th was the date Dr. L suggested at first, but with my case, he said, another week wouldn't matter.

After I got dressed, it was off to the blood lab to give a sample so my base count could be determined (Frieda didn't have the nerve to stay in the room and watch-- shades of her own treatment), then to the scheduling desk, then to an interview with the financial aid counselor, concerning which I shall maintain a discrete silence.

Still all pretty darn straightforward. The dithering part begins with the brochures and pamphlets and certificates the scheduling nurse gave me about wigs and turbans and other headcoverings.

My hair should start falling out two to three weeks after the first treatment. I'm going to have to have some covering options, because this kid is not going "bold and bald." The world is not ready for the horror, nor am I. And laugh if you like, but I have gut-level religious objections against going around shaven and shorn, even chemically. But last night I'm looking at the wig catalog they gave me, and I'm thinking, these are inexpensive, that's good, a lot of them are cute on these young, high-cheekboned models, but I'm not madly in love with any of these styles for me, and none of the available hair colors really match mine, and do I really want to get something like this mail-order? And don't ask me why, but the fact that this company has given all their wigs girls' names really gets on my nerves. "Oh, golly, the best-looking wig is named 'Esmerelda' and a girl named Esmerelda was my worst enemy in grade school and now I gotta go round with her on the top of my head??!!!"

What I want to do is go to a local shop and have somebody advise me. Actually, the cancer center did give me a reimbursement certificate worth $200 that's good at a couple of area wigmakers. But there's still the question of real vs. synthetic and maybe real is way out of my price range and they say that it's harder to care for anyway, but what if synthetic is plastic and fake-looking and-- and-- and--!!!

OK, kid. Calme-toi, m'amie. Frieda has offered to bring me her wigs to show me what they're like, and I'll take her up on that. And I have the number of the nearest wig shop where I can redeem this certificate, and I can call tomorrow and make an appointment.

It. will. all. be. fine!

It may sound weird, but it's important for me to have this hair/head covering thing worked out before I start chemo. People are sympathetic enough already without me running around looking like "that poor cancer patient." And while I can forget and ignore the hysterectomy scar that's healing very nicely on my belly, every mirror will remind me that something in my body turned zombie traitor on me. I prefer to spend as little time as possible the next few months with my hopefully ex-cancer getting in my face.

In Today's Breaking News . . .

Got a call early this afternoon from the physician's assistant at my gynecological-oncologist's office. The lab results from my surgery were in. And guess what? My surgeon is not God. Turns out the mass he removed from me last Thursday was not, after all, a low malignant-potential tumor. It was bog-standard ovarian cancer. Stage 1A, Grade 1.

Which if you're going to get ovarian cancer is the stage and grade you want it to be. The PA said they took and analyzed "a gazillion" specimens and everything except the right ovary was negative.

So that means they got it, right?

Not so fast. Turns out the mass ruptured during surgery, so Dr. C himself puts it at Stage 1C instead.

Now I thinks to meself, I thinks, How on earth could that have happened . . . ? Did somebody poke a finger in the wrong place and Pop Goes the Weasel?

Yeah, right. That naive bit of dubiety rises from my imagining that my ovaries and other bits were just floating around loose in my abdomen and the tumorous one simply had to be picked up and cut off. No. Things in the body are adhered and attached to other things so they won't rattle around in your insides and get all tangled up. And considering that my right ovary/tumor had a very delicate-looking septation off one end of it (I know-- I saw the picture at my gynecologist's office in February), it's not surprising it should have torn a bit in the removal process.

In a couple of weeks I may well find out if my angle on this is correct, because I'm to come in for a follow-up visit with Dr. C and the PA. Still working out the logistics on getting a ride into town, but it'll be either on the 10th or the 17th.

The way I'm thinking about it is, the mass was a Stage 1C ovarian cancer, and we'll be discussing how to keep it in the past tense.

. . . Yeah, that very well could mean chemo.

Idoanwannadochemoidoanwannadochemoidoanwannadochemo!!!

Yeah, nobody does. But people take it and they get through it and come out fine the other end. And if they have to fumigate my belly, so to speak, to make sure all the cancer bugs are gone, that's what we have to do.

The Lord is good; His Spirit is with us, and I am reminded that the reason ovarian cancer is so scary is that most of the time it's not discovered until it's in a later and much less treatable stage. It's not that ovarian cancer cells are more virulent or potent than the kind that settle in elsewhere.

And even though this has turned out to be what I feared back in early February, it's not the same. Thanks to the providence of God working through my gynecologist, this mass was discovered early. And if the fight needs to continue a bit before total victory is won, so be it.

+++++++++++++++

Otherwise, I'm doing pretty well this first full day home. Swelling and bruising going down, pain well under control even without constant Vicodin. Enough energy that I have to remind myself not to do Forbidden Things. Got up mid-afternoon and came down for some lunch; then early in the evening I got dressed (yay! I can get into my corduroy jeans!) and my friend Frieda* and I went out for a stroll around my garden to see what's in bloom.

After supper she sat down at the piano and played some music she'd brought, then started in on hymns. Unfortunately, the hymnals I had on the piano ledge didn't have some of the hymn/tune combinations we wanted, and I knew better than to run (!) up to the third floor to get the hymnbooks that do. So I set my Welsh hymnal before her and she played "Sanctus" and "Aberystwyth" for me while I stood there and sang them yn Cymraeg.

Oooh, danger! danger! Don't get someone who's even part-Welsh started singing Welsh hymns at 10:30 at night! Especially one who's only five days post-op! I wanted to sing more, more-- and knew I needed to stop before I messed myself up. Not from pain-- I'm trained to do intercostal breathing, so it didn't affect the surgery site. But from pure exhaustion, that I would have ignored from the hwyl of the words and the music.

No. There are times to sing till you drop. Tonight was not one of them.

Attitude

Last night I was at a party, a kickoff for the fall season of a choir I sing in. Sitting farther along the table was a woman who's been a member for a couple or three years, and next to her, a young (or at least, to me, young-looking) man I'd never seen before. I asked him if he were one of our new recruits. He merely grunted something to the effect of "I hope not!" and sat there with his arms crossed over his chest. The woman-- I'll call her Emily*-- said, "He's with me." He himself offered no further comment, so I turned my attention and conversation to other people.

After awhile I got to wondering if the young man was feeling left out. So I turned to that side of the table again and said to Emily, "I'm sorry, I didn't ask who this is." I addressed him, "Are you Emily's son?" I knew she has a young daughter at home, but maybe, I thought, she also has a boy who's been at college.

He was silent, but "Noooooo!" Emily replied.

"Your cousin?" I tried again.

"Nooooo!"

"Your younger brother?"

"Wrong again!" said Emily. "This is my husband. He's got gray in his hair, for goodness sake! You think I'm old enough to have a son with gray hair?"

"Oh! I'm sorry! Mea culpa, mea culpa!"

"Well, I did get carded not long ago," the husband finally put in, with some satisfaction.

"I'm sorry, I didn't notice the gray till just now. And my little sister has dark hair, too, and she started going gray when she was nineteen." I tried to make excuse-- but I couldn't offer an explanation. Because as annoyed as my choir friend is by my miscalculation, telling her what threw me off would make things even worse.

For how could I tell her I was confused by her husband's attitude? By his body language that seemed to reflect his thoughts and feelings? It was not so much young, as adolescent. He'd been sitting there the entire time with those arms crossed over his chest and a look on his face as if to say, "You dragged me to this but you can't make me have any fun here!" Even when the singing started and everyone else was easy and relaxed, his look and stance clearly and petulantly declared, "This is stoopid. Dumb grownups! I don't want to be here! I'm booorrrrrred!!"

Maybe after teaching junior high kids this past Wednesday I was on the alert for that attitude. But I didn't expect to find it in a man in his forties.

I had to repeat my mea culpa on Facebook when Emily recounted my faux pas at mistaking her husband for her son. Hopefully she is not terminally offended at me and I shall escape with being known as one who could make such a silly social error. Let the jokes rain down upon me, for I could never tell Emily what actually caused it. It's not my business to be bringing issues about other women's husbands up to them and fomenting trouble between couples.

But oh! how thrown off I was by his physical attitude! And how thrown off others may be by mine! I say I want to be respected and honored as an accomplished adult, that it's annoying when people half my age patronize me and call me "Hon" and treat me like an incompetent child. But does my stance, my physical attitude, reflect competency? Or am I slouching around like an adolescent? Am I sitting like a confident woman, or like a little girl? Do I keep my head down like I don't want to be noticed?

'Fraid so. The photographs don't lie. In fact, that's why I use the pictures I do on this blog and on my Facebook wall. They're two of the rare depictions of me when I'm carrying myself like an adult.

It's blinking hard after a lifetime of bad attitude, but I need to learn to do that all the time. Maybe I'll get it down before I qualify for Social Security . . .

Or is that more bad attitude?

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour, Day Thirty-two: Epilogue

Friday, 6 January, 1989 (concluded)
Back in Oxford

I was set down on the Banbury Road a bit before 6:00. Thought I was going to be balked at the last minute, when I stood at the bus stop across from Coverdale*and could not find a break in the traffic. Once across, though, I had no trouble getting in . . .

Yes, yours truly hadn’t even considered that she was supposed to turn in her keys when she left.

My room was used over break; the furniture was rearranged just enough to make the place look uncanny when I walked in. It was too clean, too.

I soon solved that. Mrs. Smythe* [the housekeeper] was in for who knows what reason this evening and let me have the key to the storeroom. I liberated my possessions and by 3:00 AM had put them all back in order. That work included sorting out papers from last term, so the lateness of that hour isn’t as bad as it looks.

I’d intended to do the wash this evening; had it all bagged up and ready, but found I didn’t have enough 20p pieces for the dryer. Which perhaps was a good excuse to go find something to eat and get change at the same time.

I knew Lukas* was coming back today, too, and so when I saw the light under his door I had the temerity to knock.

Well, I don’t know what his problem had been in Switzerland, but he seemed all right again. He invited me in, gave me some tea, and we talked for a half hour or more.

And just as it had in Olten at the train station, his appearance affected me in a most troublesome way. His hair has gotten longer and it looks quite well on him. I shan’t tell him that; else when he gets it cut I’ll be thinking he’s done it to spite me. Tonight, despite the extreme casualness of his dress (he had on some old slacks and a magenta T-shirt), I found him more attractive than he has any business to be, especially considering our differences on liturgical matters.

Though maybe those needn’t have anything to do with one another.

He’d already eaten and around 8:00 I went out. Tried the Lamb & Flag and the Eagle & Child, but the former was too crowded and the latter had stopped serving. Pity. The food people were eating looked quite good.

Ended up at the Fasta Pasta on Little Clarendon and spent entirely too much for a plate of tortellini. Took the half I couldn’t eat home with me and put it in the fridge in the little kitchen. I’ll finish it off sometime this weekend.

____________________________________
And that really is the end. Due to my indolence I don't have any more complete trip diaries, but may have a vignette to share here or there, of Oxford life or various short excursions. We'll see!

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour, Day Thirty

Wednesday, 4 January, 1989
Karlsfelden* to Saßenberg*, Bebenhausen, and Tübingen;
to Stuttgart and on to Frankfurt

Friedl* and Anni* did us the honors of the region this morning. First stop, Friedl’s church in Saßenberg. The others were ahead of us and by the time Friedl, Theo*, Phoebe*, and I got to the church, Anni, Chrissie*, and Pete* were already waiting there.

The church building, which I think is dedicated to St. Michael, is a small stucco structure with stone facings and a half-timbered cupola. They’ve recently redone the interior and renewed the Scripture passages inscribed around the edges of the wooden balcony. They had a big Christmas tree, with electric candles, set up by the elevated pulpit, with a smaller tree and a creche arranged at the pulpit’s base.

Friedl’s vicar was there and took pictures of us all with our own cameras.

After that, we drove over to the old Cistercian monastery at Bebenhausen. It struck me how different German Medieval architecture is from English or French. Much more blocky, less intricate or decorated or pointed.

Though I guess you couldn’t say that of the great tall roof of the monastery. It seemed to reach two or three storeys high, all pierced with little windows. Friedl said that’s where the monks slept.

The other thing that hit me was how different it was visiting the church here from how it was when I visited all those cathedrals and abbeys in France and Italy. In those churches, by myself, they were churches first and foremost. I was impelled first to offer an act of worship, to pray, before I did the architectural tourist thing.

But here, in a group of my friends, it was sightseeing and rubbernecking all the way. It made no difference that Chrissie, Friedl, and Theo are all theological students, or that Pete, Anni, and Phoebe are or might soon be theological students’ spouses. The dynamic was totally different, and I couldn’t influence it in the least. Losing the sense of holiness was the price I had to give for having good company.

For lunch Friedl took us all to his theological college at the University of Tübingen. We ate in the Mensa with the other students who were still hanging around in the vacation, and I had a cabbage dish (Kohl) which for the first time in my life I found appetizing and good.

I had to be getting on, since I’m pretty sure my train pass expires Friday and I’ve got a thing or two yet to see before then. So Friedl left the others at the Uni while he drove me and my luggage (already stowed in his trunk-- the bags, I mean!) back to Stuttgart. I insisted he didn’t have to park the car to carry my things into the Bahnhof for me, so I thanked him and we said our farewells at the curb.

Having stashed the bags in a locker, I got out my Stadtplan and found my way on foot to James Stirling’s Neue Staatsgalerie.

Something funny on the walk over. I was standing at a corner, waiting to cross, when the driver of the approaching car saw me and stopped to let me go ahead. If he’s a typical German driver, they’re the most polite I’ve encountered so far. In Paris it seemed like a challenge game-- if you could get the Parisian driver to meet your eye, he’d concede and you, the pedestrian, could pass. While in Oxford--!? They’re vicious. They won’t meet your eye if their lives depended on it. They won’t even stop if you’re in the crosswalk. I’ve had to jump back on the curb more than once at that corner at Parks Road. This here is much better!

The Staatsgalerie turned out to be a double delight, both for the art and even more for the architecture. I didn’t like the look of the building all that much when I saw it published in Architectural Record a few years ago. Seemed like Stirling was being gimmicky for the sake of being gimmicky. But now that I’ve seen it in person, I can see how its curves and dips, its ramps and its terraces and its striped stonework echo, reflect, and bow to the great vineyard-girdled Weinberg outside the city. The sun was out this afternoon, gelobt sei Gott! shining full on the mellow stonework. Duty became pleasure as I spent more time exploring and photographing the building as a building than I did actually looking at the exhibits.

I had to cut my visit shorter than I would have liked because I still had to catch the train for Frankfurt late this afternoon. Didn’t want to arrive too terribly late.

Returned to the Hauptbahnhof, retrieved my luggage, and checked the Departures board. Hurray! A train to Frankfurt-am-Main on Gleis 8 a little after 4:00 PM, ten minutes from now! Got out to the platform where the train was waiting, got on, and deposited myself and my luggage in a compartment otherwise occupied by three businessmen.

The train got on its way and after a little time, the conductor appeared to check our tickets. The businessmen presented theirs and I showed my EurailPass.

At once the conductor seemed to be asking me where I was going! I say "seemed" because of course he said it in German and it didn’t make sense-- after all, the EurailPass is good anywhere in continental Europe, why did he care where I was going?

He repeated the question and I guess I was looking pretty daft, because one of the businessmen said in English, "He wants to know where you are going."

"To Frankfurt," I told the conductor.

To which he replied something like, "Nein, nein, meine Fraulein! Das ist nichts die Zug zu Frankfurt, es ist die Zug zu Nürnberg!"

Between him and the English-speaking businessman I was given to know that not only was this the train for Nuremberg, Nuremberg was also about two and a half hours east of Frankfurt. Nein, nein, Fraulein, you do not want this train.

I was a little nonplussed-- I mean, how did he know I wasn’t a history student going to Nuremberg to study the famous Nazi war crimes trials right on the site? Besides, I hear they’ve got a very fine castle there, very worth seeing!

I suppose, though, that the conductor’s conviction that no tourist in her right mind would go to Nuremberg of her own volition served me well. I think day after tomorrow’s the last day on my rail pass, but I could be wrong, I haven’t counted lately. So I couldn’t exactly say, Hey, long as I’m on this train, I think I’ll go see Nürnberg anyway! I could return to Oxford on Saturday or Sunday if I liked, true, but it’d mean buying extra train tickets for the last legs. And more food and lodging. No. Can’t afford that.

The conductor saw that I was put down at the next stop, the first one out of Stuttgart, and pointed to the Gleis that would return me to the Hauptbahnhof where I could start over. It was a commuter rail station, starting to fill up with workers returning from their jobs in the city. I liked being there this sunny late winter afternoon. It was another view of the city and everyday German life, and as I waited for my train I could pretend I lived there and went through there every day, myself. Fun, like trying on someone else’s clothes for dress up.

Once I got back to the Hauptbahnhof, I again checked the Departures board. Oh, golly. There was my mistake. I’d read a 5 for an 8!

This time I made it to the correct Gleis and onto the correct train. The one I caught got me to Frankfurt after dark, sometime after 8:00 PM.

Picked up my bags and walked out the front entrance of the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof to get my bearings. Standing there on the sidewalk looking into the darkness, it came over me how tired I was. No, I was not up to walking off into town (lugging the luggage) trying to find an interesting hotel from the Frommer guide. I turned around, went back in, and found the Tourist Information Desk.

Turns out Frankfurt is very full tonight. There’s some convention in town. But look, here is the Hotel Tourist just a few metres away from the Hauptbahnhof, for the equivalent of $40 US per night! Would I allow the Information clerk to book me in there?

Well, you know me. Confront me anything with the word "Tourist" in it and I run like hell the other way.

On the other hand, it was dark, it was late, it was trying to rain, I was in a strange city dark and late and in the rain, and I was tired. So I conceded and let him call.

Then having been shown on the Stadtplan where the Hotel Tourist was, I shouldered my load, went down the street, presented myself at the check-in desk, and was shown to my room.

It could have been worse . . . I guess . . . the really annoying and awkward thing was that the heating was going full blast and there was no way to turn it down, and my room gave directly out onto the fire escape. How safe in case of fire! but I opened the window and looked out and saw that anybody could climb right up it. No ventilation stop on the window, either. So I had a choice between suffocating or burning up with the window closed and locked, or opening the window for relieving air and risk being invaded.

In the end I went to bed in my underpants and a sleeveless undershirt, cracked the window about four inches, and prayed.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour, Day Twenty-nine

Tuesday, 3 January, 1989
Wien to Stuttgart to Karlsfelden*

WIEN-- Came down around 7:20 and asked the clerk at the desk if he could call me a cab. But it doesn’t work that way here. What you do, you leave your luggage in the lobby then walk up the street to the cabstand. You bring a cab back with you, or it brings you, rather, you pack in the luggage, and you’re off.

I checked the route to the West Bahnhof on the map last night and it seems to me that the cabbie took the scenic route today . . . He didn’t take a single major street until the very last. It wasn’t only the money I was worried about, it was the time.

But maybe he was trying to avoid rush-hour congestion. Made it with fifteen minutes to spare, which with a EurailPass is plenty. I suppose if I’d missed the 8:00 AM train I could’ve got the next one, that left at 10:00 or so, and stopped in Munich after all. But I’d pretty much decided not to do that and to go straight through to Stuttgart.

ON THE TRAIN-- It’s a long ride; but happily the sun was out and it was a nice day to gape out the window at the Austrian and German countryside.

Listened to my music on the headphones . . . while I was listening to my tape of Bach’s Wachet auf it came to me that it’s rather odd, that here I am, what you’d call a visual artist, but visual art doesn’t move me the way music does.

STUTTGART-- I probably shouldn’t’ve been, but I was surprised to see how Stuttgart is all bulwarked with great high hills, almost mountains, all terraced for vineyards.

It’s also surprising to find how bloody tired you can get, just sitting on your can for eight hours or so. Having disembarked, I lugged the bags downstairs from where the trains come into the Hauptbahnhof to a kind of subterranean shopping mall. Got to where the info place was supposed to be, and it turned out to be only a bulletin board. The place with informative people and maps and things was farther on down.

Oh.

Stood in line and got my Stadtplan. But the Wechsel, the money changing place, was back up at the track level.

Oh.

Hauled myself and my bags back up there, cashed in the rest of the Schillings and got some Marks in exchange for a traveller’s cheque. Made it known I wanted some loose change for the phone but the man said, No, you get that up on a mezzanine, at the post office branch.

Oh, God.

I picked up my luggage again, found the stairs, and arrived at the Bahnhof post office. Up there I stood and waited my turn in a nice long line. When I got to the guichet I encountered a clerk who, between his deficient English and my next-to-nonexistent German, only managed to communicate to me that you have to buy a card to use the payphones.

Oh, God damn!!

I just about lost it. I couldn’t help it, I started crying. Happily, the postal worker recognised the problem and sent me over to speak with a man with a bit more English.

He clarified that it was the long distance service phones, there in the room, that required the cards. The local call phones were out in the hall, and here was the change I required.

Finally!

I called the number Friedhelm* gave me for his home and got his mother.

"Friedl is not here," she said in her charming accented English. "He is in town, at the Bahnhof. He will be back around 10:00. You call back then."

That seemed a little late to me, so I said, "Well, please tell him that Blogwen X--* called and that I am here in Stuttgart. He knows me from Coverdale*."

"Oh, Coverdale!" Friedl’s mother exclaimed. "He’s at the Bahnhof to pick up some people from Coverdale! They are from Canada, I think."

"Oh, Chrissie* and Pete*!"

"Yes, Chrissie and Pete. They are coming from Köln at 5:30 or 6:30, I don’t remember. They will come back here. You call in the evening."

I tried to make her understand that I was at the Bahnhof, too, but decided at last that it wasn’t important. For now I had a clear idea of what I could do. Signed off with Frau Schneider*, trotted the bags down to the lockers, stashed them, and headed for the nearest Arrivals chart to check for trains from Köln.

Ah, yes, here was one at 5:35. It was about 5:20 by now, so I remarked the Gleis number and went back to the trains.

I’d recognise that aqua and navy blue anorak anywhere. His back was turned to me and I came up behind and said brightly, "Guten Tag, Herr Schneider*!"

This is one of the smarter things I’ve done in awhile. He turned around, said, "Hello, Blogwen!" and gave me a hug. It was like a little homecoming.

Said Friedl, "Do you have a hotel yet?"

"Well, I was going to ask you if you know of any nice cheap ones."

"You come to us."

There it was, simple as that.

And guess what, not only were Chrissie and Pete expected any minute, but Theo Smyth* [a Coverdale student from South Africa] and his fianceé Phoebe* would be flying in from London this evening! Talk about Providence!

Chrissie and Pete were duly debouched from the Köln train and greetings exchanged all round. I collected my bags from the locker-- Friedl insisted on carrying the blue one-- and we went back down through the shopping mall thing and through to a parking garage, where Friedl packed us all into his car and we headed off to Karlsfelden*, where he lives.

KARLSFELDEN-- It was dark by now, if a very starry night, so I couldn’t tell you what the route looks like. But he lives with his parents in a garden-type apartment, very nice with a living room, kitchen and dinette, three bedrooms, and a bath.

His mother didn’t seem at all disconcerted to find she had an additional guest. She speaks much more English than his father, who basically just smiled and nodded and went back to his paper.

Their Christmas tree, standing in the living room, had both candles and electric lights on it. Kind of a compromise.

The plan was that Chrissie and Pete would stay over at Anni Breitbart’s*, Friedl’s girlfriend, and Theo and Phoebe, and now I, would sleep over at Friedl’s. So now we got back in the car and drove over to Anni’s, to talk and have supper until 9:00 PM and time for Friedl to fetch the South African contingent.

Anni’s mother had laid out the German version of charcuterie and once again, it was much better than in France. Anni, at my request, was helping me conjugate the German version of "to be" and pretty soon her father came and joined the festivities.

After supper we all sat in the living room and had a rather odd, but very effective conversation. Both Anni and Friedl have pretty good English, and her mother also. But Herr Breitbart’s English is next to nil. I have a smattering of literary German and Pete knows Dutch as well as English. So the talk was a kind of round robin of translating, with somehow or other everyone eventually coming to know what was being said.

Found out that Germans are as conscious of regional differences as Americans are (maybe more so!), and to humorous effect. Stuttgart, et al. is in Swabia, and you should have heard Friedl and Anni go after the Bavarians (Bayreusche [sp?] [Bayrische]) and the Hessians! I got the feeling that Bavarians are considered the hicks of the German people, and at any rate they have execrable accents. The controversy between the Hessians and the Swabians seems more to be over which of these groups, alone, speaks proper German.

Herr Breitbart is interested in music and showed me some sheet music pieces he’s working on (I’m not sure for what instrument). I told him I’m a Berlioz lover and that I’d visited the town where Hector was born. Somehow I knew the word for that was "geboren" and was very pleased when I discovered I was right and had got my idea across.

We stayed for awhile after Friedl left for the airport, then Anni took all of us back to Friedl’s place. To our surprise he was already there with Theo and Phoebe, sitting at the kitchen table eating a pizza. Their plane came in early.

I was too excited to do more than pick at a piece. We all sat up talking till nearly midnight.

Phoebe, I learned, flew up to England from the RSA just a week or so ago. Theo spent Christmas Day at Dunstan Oak’s* [one of the college tutors], where he and his family had assembled the Coverdale "orphans." Theo said the weather had been nice and sunny in England the past couple weeks. Very unlike France.

Anni, to whom Friedl is not engaged (at least not yet) took Chrissie and Pete away with her and we all eventually turned in. I shared a room with Phoebe but we didn’t really talk because it was so late and so much was planned for the morning.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour, Day Twenty-six

Saturday, 31 December, 1988
New Year’s Eve/Silvesterabend
Wien

HOTEL DREI KÖNIGE-- Didn’t get up as early as I perhaps should’ve, but the body refused.

Had the included breakfast in the hotel Speisezimmer. Kaiser rolls with butter and jam. This is odd. I never would have thought of Kaiser rolls for breakfast.

Lost a good half hour at the hotel desk waiting for the clerk to get off the phone. I needed to recover my passport and ask a question or two. For my patience he gave me a piece of the chocolate New Year’s gelt he was playing with.

Up the street and bought a bottle of sparkling wine for tonight’s party, as Rollo* had requested. Had to be done now since the stores would be closing early today. Also got a little jar of my traditional pickled herring.

Dropped that back off at the room then went to the Opernpassage to see about music tickets. Came away with one for Beethoven’s Ninth at the Konzert Haus tomorrow (not cheap. Close to $30 maybe) and one to Mozart’s Don Giovanni for Monday. Got about the last tickets.

Even so, I’m sorry these necessary errands kept me from seeing the Lippizaner rehearsal this morning. It was the last one for the season.

It was funny dealing with the girl at the counter, though. She wanted to work on her English and I on my German, so she'd speak to me in English and I'd reply in German and somehow, it worked!

I didn’t like the exchange rate at the info office nor the fee so since I was going over there anyway for Otto Wagner’s sake, I rode to Schwedensplatz and walked to the main post office, which was the only one open today. Stood in a nice long line then had it turn out that their rate wasn’t much better. Too late now. Bought some stamps, too.

Not as fine a day as yesterday but the sun was trying to come out. Made a decent effort to shine a little as I photographed the Postsparkasse exterior.

Blundered my way over to the Stephensplatz. The area around the cathedral was pretty well populated. I was starting to get hungry but the Konditorei were so crowded you could hardly squeeze in. Anyway, I’d noticed a sign pointing the way to the house where Mozart wrote Marriage of Figaro and I thought I’d better check its opening hours, before I took the time to feed my face.

Good thing I checked. It was 3:15 by now and the house was only open till 4:30, and it wouldn’t be open tomorrow or Monday.

I suppose it can’t be helped, but the place is kept as a museum, alone. There isn’t even as much furniture as there is at Berlioz’s birth house, just display cases with artifacts and things hanging on the walls. Many of the latter were silhouettes, drawings, or paintings of people who I must assume had some influence on Mozart’s life and work. But not knowing that many details thereof I wasn’t particularly edified by these exhibits. There was one room that I really think must’ve been the kitchen . . . that came closest to helping me get a feeling of Mozart actually having lived there.

All the Vienna-based composers’ residences are administered by one authority, and I saw from a poster that Beethoven’s most frequent domicile, the Pasqualati House on the Mölker Bastei, was also open only today, till 4:30. So I bade Wolfgang farewell and hurried over there.

There’s more of Beethoven himself there, more of his furniture and possessions, and more paintings and sculptures of the man done in his lifetime. And I could see the good views he had to the west, though thankfully he never had to look at the modern monstrousity now standing across the street. But still, it was merely an intellectual exercise remembering that he wrote Fidelio and the Violin Concerto there.

It wasn’t till I was heading back down the stairs from the 4th floor† apartment that it hit me with a shock that he, Ludwig von Beethoven, actually had lived here, he had walked in this narrow space, on these winding steps, had seen and probably touched these plastered walls-- Gott in Himmel!

Retraced my steps to the Stephensdom, trying to find something to eat. On der Graben I bought a cone of roasted chestnuts, the first I’ve had, to shut my stomach up. They’re really more like a vegetable than a nut in taste, but I liked them well enough. And they were good and warm.

Finding dinner tonight was a bit difficult. Seemed as if all the places that looked appetizing or inexpensive enough (and also the ones that didn’t) were getting ready for the Silvester parties and not serving walk-ins. I finally settled for a wurst on a roll off a stand in the Kärtnerstrasse and then went and sat down in the Konditorei next door and had me a piece of Sachertorte mit Schlag.

You know what? It wasn’t as marvellous as I’d expected. It was rather dry, not tremendously flavorful, and left me yearning for another piece of that wonderful chocolate torte I had in Paris.

The Kärtnerstrasse and indeed the whole area south of the Stephensplatz was teeming with people. There were even some street evangelists. And down by the Staatsoper a couple of guys had a drag race off the stoplight. Some things know no boundaries . . .

Back at the hotel I read a bit of the Beethoven booklet I’d bought and ate pickled herring til time to dress and catch the U-Bahn to Rollo’s mother’s. Heading for the Karlsplatz I wondered what it’d be like coming back after midnight. The streets between there and the Schleifmühlgasse aren’t as lively as I’d like after dark; tonight would they be too lively?

When I got to Rollo’s mother’s place, I could’ve shot her elder son! He hadn’t told me what to wear and there I was in my gray flannels, silk blouse, green Shetland sweater, and red and black suede hiking boots, while everyone else, including Rollo, was in semi-formal party clothes. It was really a sight to see him in a smoking jacket. I didn’t mind so much what I had on; it’s just that I get so few chances to dress up and had a perfectly good dress with me.‡

Besides Rollo and Connie* [Rollo's wife] and his mother, there was Rollo’s brother, Marko* (who seems to have some slight mental or other functional handicap), and several of Frau Schipfner’s* middle aged to elderly friends. All or most of them spoke at least a little English, which made me feel better about trying out my German.

We started out with aperatifs; I had Rollo pour me a Campari and soda because I was curious to taste what it was like. But it’s rather bitter and I didn’t drink much of it.

When I saw the dining room table I realized it had been silly of me to go looking for something to eat earlier. As seems customary in this part of the world, the fare was sliced meats and various sorts of pasta salad, and a great deal of it.

On each plate was a little good luck token. I was informed by the woman on my left that I must immediately take and put it in my purse and thus assure I’d have plenty of money all year. Can’t hurt, I guess . . .

On the table were little figures of chimney sweeps and pigs, and the napkins were printed with these and with four-leafed clovers, all symbols of luck and prosperity. I’d wondered what all those stalls were, downtown, but now I saw the Viennese wouldn’t consider a Silvesterabendtafel complete without these favors.

A toast was drunk before the meal, the woman on my left looking at me and pledging, "To your honeymoon." Does she know something I don’t? I thought for a moment she was really addressing Rollo, on my right, but that’s impossible: he and Connie have been married three years.

In the table talk I learned that the obnoxious newspaper vendor is probably Egyptian, since most are and the Turks aren’t advanced enough socially to take such jobs. And that Sachertorte generally is dry, which is why you need the whipped cream.

Unlike in Switzerland, I could at least tell what the German conversation was about, even if I couldn’t discern the tenor of the comments. I commented on this to the lady on my left, she laughed, and that started a general raillery against what these Hoch Deutsch speakers called "Sweetzer Dootsh," or some such teasing appellation. Still being angry at Lukas’s* uncalled-for extension of his performance in that dialect last week, I took a rather unChristian pleasure in hearing it mocked.

When it came time for dessert everyone got up from the table and adjourned back to the living room. Rollo and Connie and Marko shut themselves into the kitchen for a smoke and to get things ready, while Frau Schipfner cleared away. When dessert was put on, she started herding people back into the dining room, and I said, "Ja, wir kommen! Wir kommen augenblicklich!"

"Oh, you speak German very well!" she exclaimed.

(Thank you, Ludwig von Beethoven.††)

By the time dessert was finished, it was about fifteen till midnight. Back in the living room, the champagne (or rather, Austrian Halb-süß) was broken open and glasses filled. They turned the TV on; it was an ice show being broadcast from here in Vienna, but when the skaters did a routine to the song "One" from A Chorus Line, it was sung in English. I thought of Nigel*-- it was inevitable.

Then the time came and the great dial on the screen ticked off the seconds: "Zehn, neun, acht, sieben, sechs, fünf, vier, drei, zwei, eins-- Prosit Neue Jahr!"

At least, that’s what was being shouted by all and sundry as the wine glasses clinked and the sparkling drunk down. As for me, I was praying blessings on a certain Englishman, who despite his very taken (if not engaged) state, still can make any new year worth entering.

Meanwhile, on the screen was a little animation number of champagne corks dancing to a Strauss waltz. Cute.

Rollo and Marko got out the fireworks and went out on the balcony to shoot them off. The skies had cleared and all over this suburb of Vienna the heavens were blazing with the trails of rockets and shooting stars making merry war with their repeated noise. The neighbors downstairs came out to shoot theirs and shouted up, "Prosit Neue Jahr!"

We came back in and drank some more ersazt champagne (I’m glad I tasted the real thing on Christmas. It is better) and conversed. I asked Connie if women in the Midwest were wearing big shawls, as they do in England. She said yes, they were.

Around 2:00 AM we ate again, going back to the dining room for soup. I think I ate more tonight than I have in entire weeks on this trip.

About 3:00 everyone decided it was time to shove off home. Rollo’s mother earlier had said it was best I go home in a taxi and not risk the Viennese lager louts at the Karlsplatz U-Bahn station. But one of the ladies said they could cram me into her car, despite the fact they already had six full-grown adults booked to ride in it-- "We’ll pretend you’re a baby. It’s not legal to have more than six adults, but a baby is all right."

So everyone said their goodbyes and final New Year’s wishes to Frau Schipfner. But before I went I asked Rollo to please tell me, quickly, about the office. . . .

[Here ensued some architectural shop talk interesting to me at the time but not relevant to the occasion.]
It was jolly crowded in that car, which was only a mid-sized VW. Never mind me, I think one of the old men had regressed in age. I can see that he might be more comfortable with his arm stretched across the back of the seat, but squeezing my shoulder while he was at it really was not required. Nothing threatening, but I was glad when we dropped him and his wife (yes!) off at their flat near the Schönbrunn Palace.

It was nearly 4:00 AM when I was dropped off at the hotel. I didn’t go to sleep immediately. I’ve decided to revive my Song for the Year custom; for 1989 it’s to be "An die Müsik"; and while I was running my Schubert tape back to listen to it, I thought about the Waldstein Sonata and how I couldn’t recall the Rondo theme at the Beethoven house, getting it mixed up with that of that Opus Posthumous piano trio movement. I listened to the Waldstein Rondo, too, therefore, and see that recall is all in the opening intervals-- the OP starts in an ascending minor second, the Waldstein on a melodic unison. I tried it a few times and it works like a charm.

Anyway, that’s only more or less relevant to what I’ve chosen for 1989, and no unattainable men are in it:

Du holde Kunst, in wieviel grauen Studen,
wo mich des Lebens wilder Kreis umstrickt,
hast du mein Herz zu warmer Lieb entzunden,
hast mich in eine beßre Welt entrückt,
in eine beßre Welt entrückt!

Oft hat ein Seufzer, deiner Harpf entflossen,
ein süßer, heiliger Akkord von dir,
den Himmel beßre Zeiten mir erschlossen,
du holde Kunst, ich danke dir dafür,
du holde Kunst, ich danke dir!

________________________________
†By European reckoning; 5th floor by American.
‡As I'd known him in the States, Rollo did the European casual look straight down the line. I'd never seen him in anything other than a long ponytail, an open-necked shirt, and Birkenstock sandals with heavy socks. He wouldn't condescend to wear a suit and tie, not even for a client meeting at our architecture office. So I'd figured it'd be the same here in Vienna!
††"We're coming! Yes, we're coming in the blink of an eye!"-- a handy phrase I'd memorized from the spoken dialogue of Beethoven's opera Fidelio.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour, Day Twenty-five

Reinspired (and shamed) by Whisker's accounts of her recent trip to Paris, and having decided that this evening is shot for patching holes in woodwork anyway, I've typed up another day's worth of my Europe '88-'89 journal and now post it here.

When we last saw our heroine, she was dozing late at night in a First Class compartment of the Venice-Vienna train and had just crossed over into Austria . . .

Friday, 30 December, 1988
Wien

Sleeping sitting up is fun. But doing so in the 2nd class car would’ve been even more entertaining.

To Wien by 7:00 AM. Usual activities at the station-- get some Austrian coins, change for the remaining Italian bills, a public transportation pass, and a map of the city at the information office; find a locker and stash my stuff in; find a john and decide in this case I had to swallow my pride and pay the money, though I’m customarily against that sort of thing. Then I consulted the map and headed for the city to find a hotel.

Going out the door of the station I had my perfect record broken. A Turk or some other Middle Eastern type at the door offered to sell me a newspaper and, when he noticed my German wasn’t up to par, said, in English, "Oh, you are a visitor! American?"

What did I do wrong?

But the day promised to be clear and beautiful, so I wasn’t too devastated. Walked up Prinz Eugenstrasse towards the inner city ring, then over to the west a bit, to around Margaretenstrasse, to find the Pensionen [rooms to let] described in the Frommer.

Well. Of the three in that general area, one was booked up and I couldn’t find the other two. Around 8:30 I had some tea and rolls in a nearby Konditorei [pastry shop] and endeavored to recruit my strength. Walked around some more after that looking for a place to stay but couldn’t locate anything that looked like I could afford it. I was too tired to mess with it so I decided to go to the reservation bureau at the Opernpassage.

On the way there I came across one of the reasons I came to Wien-- J. M. Olbrich’s Seccession building. The sun was shining on the closed coppery-bronze doors and the gilding on the facade and the dome and it looked just lovely.

Out of the confusion and crush at the reservation office and despite my limited German I emerged with a room at the Hotel Drei Könige (appropriate for this time of year, I think!) on Schleifmühlgasse (near where I’d been looking before) for ÖS 440, with shower. A job for the Visa card again.

Back to the Südbahnhof (this time by U-Bahn) for my bags, but I couldn’t recall where my locker was. Another Middle Eastern type, this one more middle class looking in a suit and tie, asked me what I was looking for. I told him, he directed me to the right spot, but then thought this entitled him to invite me out for a drink. Nein, nein, danke. Had to tell him two or three times before he got the point.

Busses to the hotel. (Wien’s Underground isn’t as extensive as Paris’s.) The entrance is nice enough, leaded glass in the door and a clerk on duty at the desk, but the room is the usual monastery cell. It has an outside window, though.

The desk clerk said they had to keep my passport at the desk. That’s a first.

I did a little better than I did in Paris. Changed my clothes and did not sit staring catatonically at the walls. Instead, took my camera and blundered my way back to the Secession building, where for the first time I was able to use my International Student ID to get a discount on the admission.

I was amused to see Rollo’s*† model of the building put together and stuck up on the wall in the entrance lobby.

The current exhibits are all new work except for Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze downstairs. There were some colossally-sized mezzotints upstairs that are abstract in format but which can’t help but be interpreted as having cosmotological implications. There were some things about them that made me consider what needs to be done for my Quid Sum Miser painting-- which needs to be executed, along with the rest of the Requiem series,‡ no way around it.

There was some deconstructivist work, arranged piles of broken concrete blocks and such, in another room. I think it was supposed to be a commentary on the destruction of WWII.

I have to confess I had never heard of Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, now restored and remounted in the room downstairs. And at first I couldn’t figure out what it had to do with Beethoven, though when I saw it I remembered seeing some of the figures. But I found out it was done for the exhibition of Max Klinger’s Beethoven statue and is Klimt’s interpretation of the music and text of the Ninth Symphony.

The sketches were displayed in a case in the center of the room and I really think that in some cases the sketches are better than the finished paintings.

Especially the one for "Dieses Küss für ganzen Welt" ["This kiss for the whole world]. Klimt’s interpretation of that phrase is not at all what I would have chosen, as I don’t see Schiller talking about that sort of privatized man-woman love, but something much broader and all-encompassing. But since Klimt chose to express the idea with the former image, I do say that in the painting his lovers are rather stiff and uncomfortable-looking. The embrace in the sketch is much more fluid and free and poetic.

My favorite part of the frieze is the one entitled "Die Sehnsucht nach Glücklich findet Stillung im Poesie" ["The yearning for happiness finds surcease in poetry"]. Do you think so? I hope it. At least I have to try . . .

Back in the entry foyer I purchased the usual lot of postcards and a book, in English, that tells where all the Secessionist/Jungenstil works are located in Vienna. I asked the girl at the cash desk how sales were going on Rollo’s model. She said, not so great, actually . . . Me, I think he needs better color on the thing. It’s rather washed out and boring as it is.

Hungry, so after I left there I went across to a booth in the Nasch Markt and had two open-faced sandwiches, herring and black caviar. Isn’t that a kill? A 90¢ caviar sandwich.

While I was eating there I read in my new book that Otto Wagner’s Majolica House was not too far away, down the Linke Wienzeile, so I went down to look before the light faded. The buildings have been nicely kept up and it was a wonderful thing to find them there in the middle of everything, as a real apartment residences, and not just as illustrations in an art book.

Back down through the Nasch Markt but didn’t buy anything. Went on to Karlsplatz and took the U-Bahn over to Schwedensplatz, to find Wagner’s Postal Savings Bank (Postsparkasse), which is in that neighborhood. By the time I did it was getting pretty dark so I’ll have to come back to really get a look at it.

Wandered over and looked at the Donau Kanal with the city lights reflected in it, then caught the subway back to Karlsplatz.

Stopped at a grocery store in the Wiedner Hauptstrasse for some shampoo and also picked up some crackers that turn out to be like Carr’s wheatmeal biscuits and some positively decadent chocolate meringue things, that I must stop inhaling.

Crossing the street after leaving the store, I noticed a couple of Middle Eastern newsvendors standing on the corner. And one of them-- I'm thinking the same one who spoke to me this morning at the train station-- saw me and called out, "Eh, Americana!"

Rats! When it comes it comes with a vengeance, doesn’t it?

At the hotel in the lobby, the desk clerk asked what my plans were for New Year’s Eve (Silvesterabend), because the hotel had a package tour to Grinzing for ÖS 650, all inclusive. But if I wanted to be in on it I had to reserve a place within the next half hour.

Oh. That meant this was a good time to pay my respects to Rollo Schipfner’s mother. Maybe she might have some suggestions. So using the phone at the desk, I dialled her number.

Well. This is a surprise. Rollo and Connie†† are here, in Wien, even as we speak. Frau Schipfner put Rollo on and as we were trying to figure out when we might be able to get together, his mother suggested I come to her house tomorrow night for the New Year's Eve get together she was having with Rollo and Connie and a few of her friends. This sounded better than going drinking with a bunch of total strangers so I accepted the kind invitation and got directions about the U-Bahn and tram from Rollo.

Just before we rang off, he suggested I go over to the Staatsoper tonight and try to get a standing room ticket to Lucia di Lammermoor. But there was no way. Nervous energy lasts only so long. I was falling asleep on top of my Vienna 1900 guidebook. I roused myself long enough to redo my fingernails but that was it. I’m gone.

_______________________
†The man I'm calling Rollo Schipfner was a twenty-something Vienna native and architect then living in the States. Up to the time I'd left Kansas City for my Oxford sabbatical year, we'd worked at the same architecture firm. Before he'd left Austria he'd designed a model kit of the Secession Building (der Goldener Kohl) and they had it for sale there.
‡A projected series of ten oil paintings I had since college planned to do on the movements of the Berlioz Requiem. Alas, in all these years I've only finished the first one.
††Rollo's American wife.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Twenty-Two

Tuesday, 27 December, 1988
Löhenthal* to Firenze [Florence]

10:36 train from Olten. Frau Renzberger* packed me a nice lunch and Lukas* took me to the station. He was gracious enough to wait with me till the train came but it seemed a real strain for both of us. I’ve been trying to figure out what I could’ve done to make him act like this and can come up with zip. But something’s happened to make him act like a вопреки and it’s really too bad. I need to make some good friends at Coverdale* this next term and I’d thought he’d be one. But apparently not. I’d thought we’d get to know one another better on this visit, but now he seems like a permanent stranger.

This was so frustrating and depressing I could’ve cried right there in the compartment. But instead I wrote a long letter to Janie*. Had cause in the course of it to think about Nigel* and that made me feel a lot better.

The Alps were quite lovely. Sun came out and showed them up beautifully. And I enjoyed looking at the little Tuscan churches in the Italian part of Switzerland.

Funny thing at the border crossing. Italian customs man came in and asked the guy opposite me a question in Italian. He answered, and then the official addressed me. Out of habit I said, "Pardon?" in French. At which the customs man rolled his eyes, lifted his hands towards heaven, and departed, without asking for passports or anything.

Train change in Milan. Found a first class compartment this time. Second is supposed to be so much more atmospheric and authentic; I just found it tiring. Seats are too shallow.

Hit the closest Frommer selection for places to stay in Florence. Unfortunately the city was pretty thick with students on holiday, like me, and I ended up renting a double room for around $24 a night. Couldn’t deal with schlepping bags any farther. So the Locanda Marcella it was.

In the Frommer book I’d read of a nightly lecture on Renaissance art given by a American art historian in Florence. It’s being on for this evening was confirmed by a poster in the railroad station, so as soon as I’d dropped my bags in the room on the Via Faenza, I headed over to the Borgo San Lorenzo.

Paid my respects to the Duomo first-- what I could see of it in the fog.

Streets of Florence are frequently narrow, darkish (yet people are on them anyway), and have very narrow sidewalks. The pavement is blocks of stone, cut rectangular maybe 12" x 15", and laid diagonally. Sidewalks usually have cars parked halfway on them, making it quite a game to walk along, what with the cars coming, and especially with the motorscooters whizzing by.

Quite a few people around the cathedral (at 8:00 PM) but still I didn’t feel comfortable going around back of the chevet. Too dark.

The Borgo San Lorenzo was lined with black men, apparently North African, selling belts, jewelry, and other souvenirs off mats and blankets spread out on the pavement. I wondered that they don’t worry about the motorcyclists coming along and destroying their goods.

There were also a lot of different languages to be heard there, including American English. Seemed quite odd, after France.

Waited for 8:30 and time for the lecture. It’s at the top of the house at No. 20 and given by a Kirk von Durer, who also runs a gallery at that address.

It was worthwhile going, more from a social than from an art historical standpoint. There was Chianti on the deck (view of Duomo) beforehand and I talked with a couple from Toronto, also students on Christmas break, about travels in France (she’s a student in Grenoble) and other things . . .

They mentioned it and I’ve become conscious of it, too, that my accent (English) has changed and become less "American." I honestly think that has intensified since last weekend with Lukas’s family. I knew they'd learned British English so I felt I should modify my speech with them so I could be understood (Lukas told me that at Coverdale he could understand me almost all the time and ditto Sam* [another compatriot in our year abroad program], despite his broad Oklahoma accent, because he speaks so slowly. It’s Darla* he could never make out. This surprised me as she seemed the most cosmopolitan of any of us. And now I can’t listen to her and discover what he means, because she’s returned to America).

In style the lecture, which was on the late Gothic/early Renaissance Florentine and Siennese painters, such as Massaccio and Giotto, was kin to Ed Eglinski’s Art History for Non-Art Majors at KU, but with even more of the stand-up comedy. I felt von Durer could have done with rather more content but I’m coming from an art historian’s viewpoint.

Not that I didn’t appreciate the humor; I did. When showing Giotto’s painting of the Stigmatization of St. Francis, he quipped, "For living such a holy life, St. Francis received the same wound marks that Christ had on the cross. Wouldn’t you rather have a Ferrari!?" "Well," think I, "only if Tom Selleck is driving it!"

The greatest thing I got out of it substantially was a realization first of how Italy was ripe for the Renaissance style, its Gothic being largely held-over Byzantine, and then of where many of the trademarks of the "Pre-Raphaelite" movement style came from. For here were the original preRaphaelites whose work inspired it.

The lecture got out at about 10:45 and I thought, I’ve heard this town is not too big on nightlife and no telling what the streets are like this time of night. So let us get back to the hotel presto.

So I set off walking very fast in what I thought was the right direction. But after awhile I realized that I’d walked for much longer than I had coming over and was nowhere that I recognised. I was using the map torn out of the Frommer book and couldn’t find the street I was on listed. And up ahead was a group of young guys who may’ve been perfectly innocent but I wasn’t taking any chances.

So I cut over to the right (after backtracking at a run) and came to a street called after St. Catherine d’Alessandria. Started heading up it, trying to get to the Via Nazionale, but decided maybe I should ask the desk clerk in a nearby hotel for his advice.

I ducked into the lobby and inquired where I was in my limited Italian: "Dove io sono?" He said something obviously contemptuous about the map I had and pulled out a better one. Turns out I hadn’t taken the radial layout of Florentine streets into consideration and was an appreciable distance away from where I wanted to be. He gave me to know I could keep the map-- grazie-- and I hoofed it back to the hotel, allowing the effect of two glasses of wine on no dinner to deceive me into thinking I could do that much running. Made it back safely but the experience was a little surreal.