austrian adventure: ankunft / arribada / llegada / arrival

December 6-8 was a holiday through all of Spain, so I naturally took that opportunity, combined with my usual 3-day weekends, to take off. Also naturally, the airport people went on strike—luckily my flight left before the entire transportation system in Spain went under.

I went to Austria to visit two friends, Andi and Heidi, who are both living in Innsbruck at the moment. I had a layover in Köln (Cologne)—a beautiful airport. If you can manage it, try to get a layover in Köln—and then flew into Munich.

It was oddly familiar as I ran through the Munich train station to catch a train to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where I was going to change trains to Innsbruck…last summer, I was in Munich visiting Rebekah Shraeder, and I went with a group of her friends up to Garmisch-Partenkirchen for a day. We waited and waited in the Munich train station for her friend and his brother to show up, and when they did, we had to run to catch the next train. It turned out that they’d been caught Schwarzfahr-ing on the U-Bahn (riding without a ticket on the subway) and they had to wait for the controller to write them a ticket and charge them the €200 (or whatever the fine happened to be—I don’t remember now). That was a bad day for those brothers. That night, after getting back from Garmisch-Partenkirchen, we all hung out in Rebekah’s apartment for a long time. The brothers left extremely late, and it turned out that the night bus had already stopped running. They got into some sort of argument, and one brother decided to walk back to Rebekah’s apartment, and the other slept in a U-Bahn station, waiting for the first subway to start running. Of course, he got arrested and ticketed for something, being a bum, I guess, and he had to pay another fine, if I remember right. As I said, not a good day. We had an excellent day in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, though! But that’s another story.

As I got into Innsbruck a couple hours later, it started to snow. Big, fat, juicy snowflakes—YES!! I started humming “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas…” I was definitely in the right town (make that, in the right country) for being in the Christmas spirit: Christmas markets, Glühwein, Krampus… read on, Macduff!

Andi Schwab (last year’s language assistant in Linfield’s German department) met me at the train station, showed me his apartment, and from there, we set off with a group of his friends to a Glühwein stand. Glühwein is, in essence, pretty nasty mulled wine, but it sure warms your innards on a cold winter evening. It was -10º! (Ok, Celcius. Still, it was in the teens in Fahrenheit, and that’s pretty darn cold, especially when yours truly brought no winter clothes to Europe…) After a couple of mugs of Glühwein, we went into a pub to thaw noses and toes, and to have a beer. I had some really good conversations with Andi’s friends and Andi’s girlfriend (who came to Linfield in May—such a nice person! I joked that I only ever saw her in pubs. She was at Linfield for the seniors’ bar crawl, and we spent many hours in McMenamin’s; now, we were meeting again, in one of Innsbruck’s pubs.) I got lots of good German practice in!

It was a bit déjà vu hanging out with Andi’s friends, because they’re all from the Austrian region of Vorarlberg, which has such a strong dialect that it’s almost a separate language from German. They all talked to each other in “Vorarlbergish” and all remarks directed at me were in High German (Standard German). It was almost exactly like being on Mallorca, where all life around me happens in Mallorquí, and my involvement is in Castilian (“regular” Spanish). Sorry about the digression into languages—I seem to be a bit like my friend Lily Niland, who is in Perú right now. In all her blogs, she writes about language and baseball. In all my blogs, I write about language and touristy things—it’s what interests me! (Lily, I love reading your blog with your nihoñol and béisbol stories!)

Anyway, back to the flow of events: I crashed at Andi’s apartment that night. The next day, Andi went skiing (next time I go to Innsbruck, I’m bringing my ski gear and a wad of cash ready to blow on the slopes) and I explored around Innsbruck. I went into a couple of fascinating museums—I love museums!—and bought myself a pair of gloves to combat the onset of frostbite. Best €17 I’ve ever spent. In the afternoon, I caught a short train to Hall in Tirol, a nearby town where Heidi Herzog (the language assistant in the Linfield German department before Andi) is currently helping out in a small store. It was really nice to chat and catch up with Heidi—when we were at Linfield, I hardly ever saw her outside of class and I didn't really know her. These few days were a great time for me to actually talk to Heidi and get to know her as a person, and not just a language instructor. I keep wondering about my students here—do they actually see me as a teacher? Or just as an American who really doesn't know what she's doing, but is having a good time trying? I guess my students that I've met at the bar in town might have a different outlook than the rest...but that's a WHOLE nother story.

In the evening, I went back to Andi’s apartment, where a “small gathering of a couple people” was in full swing. I met lots more of Andi’s friends, and we ended up having a lot more Glühwein and playing a game called Activity, which combines Taboo, Pictionary, and charades. I, as the lone, stuttering American, was given easy cards—or, at least, cards where I could actually understand the German word that I was supposed to act out, explain, or draw—and I’m happy to say that our team won.

The next day, Heidi and I went to her parents’ house just outside Saalfelden, about two hours away from Innsbruck. Almost as soon as I walked in the door, Heidi’s mom offered me gingerbread cookies and apple schnapps. Aaah, I felt right at home! I immediately settled down on one of their amazingly cushy couches and fell asleep.

I woke up for an amazing lunch—bratwurst, käsekrainer (another kind of sausage), and a knödel (a lovely kind of dumpling) in a creamy chanterelle sauce. Home-cooked food at its finest. And, that came with homemade apple juice! They have an apple tree on their property, and in the fall they picked the apples, pressed them, and made the freshest, most delicious juice imaginable. Ashley Bennett, another former Linfield student, actually helped pick the apples when she visited Heidi earlier this year—thanks, Ashley, for all your hard work! I sure enjoyed it.

Actually, it was thanks to Ashley that I went to Austria during this break—December 6^th is a big day in German-speaking countries, because that is the day that St. Nicholas visits the kids. (On December 24^th, the Christ Child, das Christkind, is the one who comes with all the presents.) In central Austria, specifically around Saalfelden where Heidi grew up, there is another tradition that happens on December 5^th or 6^th: the Krampuslauf. Krampus is a devil-figure that used to have some sort of pagan significance, but was taken up by the church as a symbol of evil. So, during a Krampuslauf (“Krampuslauf” could almost be translated as a “Krampus Parade,” but it’s more like a mad running in front of and around the various Krampus figures… “Running of the Krampuses”?) both the figures of Krampus and St. Nicholas are present—St. Nick, to remind people of good, and Krampus, to remind them of evil. I actually have no real explanation to present—it is one of the creepiest Christmas traditions I’ve ever seen. When Heidi was teaching at Linfield a couple of years ago, she showed a video showing lots of devil-figures running around holding flaming torches and beating people with chains. (This is a beloved tradition.) And then Heidi explained to us that there were jails in the town squares. We were very confused, and Heidi asked, “Who do you think they put in the jails?” The answer? The women and children. Duh. The Krampuses run around and drag people, kicking and screaming, into these large cages… I’m making it sound terrible, but the Austrians around where Heidi live seem to love it. I was more bewildered than anything, so of course, when Ashley reminded me of our captivated confusion about Krampus, I wanted to come to Austria during this magical time of the year to see the crazy event!

Here’s a Colbert Report video that sort-of explains the Krampuslauf (thanks again, Ashley, for the link) http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/258162/december-09-2009/the-blitzkrieg-on-grinchitude---hallmark---krampus

And below is my rather silly video of the evening: we started off at Zell am See, but the Krampuslauf was actually contained behind ropes and there were security people guiding the Krampus figures around (no chain-beatings this year) and Heidi declared that it was like a “sleeping pill,” so we went to the town of Almdorf to try and find a wilder Krampuslauf. All in all, it was a good introduction to the mysterious tradition of the Krampus, but I was still left bemusedly clueless.

Stay tuned for photos and the end of my short stay in Austria.