The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Music. Bad, Cheesy Music.

Stop #3 on the European Vacation with my mom was Salzburg. For those of you who aren't up on your movie musical trivia, Salzburg is where The Sound of Music was set and filmed. This is a city that's really into that fact--there's a whole tourist industry that's popped up around it.

Our hotel had a whole station devoted to playing The Sound of Music, over and over and over. First, they played it all the way through, and then they did a "Best of" version, that only had the musical numbers. Then they did a little interview with some of the still-alive cast members, and repeated the whole process. This hotel also had The Sound of Music theme rooms--decorated with pictures from the movie and the same furnishings as rooms in the movie.

The keystone of the tourist industry, however, is The Sound of Music bus tour. They drive you around the city, pointing out all the places from the movie. And then you sing. When a random Australian tourist told us about it, I swore up and down we weren't getting anywhere near it. The Sound of Music is cheesy; I do not do cheesy. And I definitely don't do singing in public. Especially if it's going to be cheesy singing. That sounds like hell to me.

And yet, what could be more ridiculous than something called The Sound of Music Bus Tour? I may not like cheesy or singing, but I do like ridiculous. And so we went. And it was, in fact, ridiculous. A greyhound bus filled with The Sound of Music-loving women and the men they had dragged along. A corny joke-filled tour guide named Peter and a bus driver named Markus who sounded like a muppet. 100 tourists trying to re-enact the "dancing in a gazebo" scene from the movie. A song about a marionette goatherd falling in love. Lots of singing.

(Above) The "Do-Re-Mi" song was filmed in the Mirabelle Gardens. The Von Trapp children skip around the Unicorn Fountain you can see in the picture, and then they do some sort of skippy dance to the top of the flight of stairs that this picture was taken from.
(Below) Our tour guide Peter making bad puns as we admire the lake house where The SOund of Music was filmed.

Thankfully, there was also a bar on the bus.

Blood on the walls. . .

Literally. I just checked Janna's blog, and it reminded me that I forgot a kind of key component of last night's experience at Mama Buzz Cafe. There were paintings on the wall that had been created using, among other things, human blood.



Hence all the red and pink tones, I suppose. Now I've heard of artists using wine as paint. And tea. But blood? That's a little creepy, and it leads me to wonder exactly how much blood it takes to paint these paintings (they were rather large) and how one goes about getting that much blood.

World Tour of Bathrooms

So besides making funny faces in Europe, my mom and I also took a lot of pictures of bathrooms. I guess it's one of the places where travel in Europe seems the most different from traveling in the states, and we wanted to capture some of that uniqueness.

Unfortunately, my mom was responsible for taking the bathroom photos, and her digital camera ate most of them. This is the only one that escaped.



My mom actually took this photo squashed inside the world's smallest shower in our hotel room in Vienna, to try to demonstrate just how ridiculously small this bathroom was. If I'd been sitting on the toilet with my feet on the ground, my knees would have been squashed against the underneath of the sink, and when I bent over to wash my face or brush my teeth at the sink, my butt pushed the door open.

This is what happens when demanding American tourists expect a bathroom in every hotel room--you get a full bathroom. . . . for midgets.

Punk Rock. . . in 3/4 Oompa time

On a whim, I met up with my friend Janna tonight at Mama Buzz Cafe, the place where all the grungy hipsters hang out. She was doing work there and noticed on the schedule of events that tonight was the bi-monthly Punk Rock Accordion Workshop, and asked if I wanted to check it out.

How on earth could I pass that up?

In short order, Henri--the teacher--and 4 students showed up, with accordions in hand. And me and Janna, the two accordion "interlopers" and "voyeurs," as we were introduced to the rest of the group.

Henri procededed to teach them the basic tune of a song, which, when played on an accordion, didn't sound the least bit punk rock to me. I will admit to being a bit skeptical about the punk rock-iness of this accordion lesson. But then Henri busted out some teaching points about the composition of punk rock songs and the music theory behind them, and he broke down a Ramones song as an example. That made me feel it was a bit more legit. And then we listened to the CD, and it was indeed angry, angsty--if a little bit instrumental--punk rock.

All in all, it was pretty awesome. We watched as the 5 accordion players gradually drove all of the paying customers out, and Henri even took a moment to refresh my memory on some basic music theory stuff about chord structure, which I appreciated. They had a pretty rockin' harmony going by the time the lesson finished, and I'm starting to seriously think about trying to find myself an accordion, so next time I could join in!

Janna--always prepared, it seems, for absurdity and wonder--had her camera, so pictures are to come!

Magical Thinking

So I've been on a bit of an Augusten Burroughs kick lately. As someone who desperately hopes to wake up one day and be funny, I really enjoy reading other writers that I think already are funny (the hope is that if I read enough of them, it will wear off on me). In the humor writing class I took a few months back, everyone chose David Sedaris and Anne LaMotte as the writers they thought were funny, (I personally think this is because that's who the teacher liked. Suck ups.) but I'm sticking with Augusten.

He's warped, twisted, completely self-centered and horrible. And he totally knows it. And that's what makes him funny--he does and says all the things semi-nice, semi-appropriate people would never do but want to. And while the hip thing to do right now is read Running With Scissors--since the movie's about to come out and all--I actually preferred Magical Thinking, his collection of short memoir pieces about being an adult, working and falling in love. There's something about the fact that he is such a mess, and so flawed, and so human, that makes me really want to root for him.

And then there's the central idea of the book: the magical thinking. It seems that Mr. Burroughs believes he has the power to will things to happen. A horrible boss that he wished would get hit by a bus drops dead. The guy he loves who's had a pattern of dating only big black men suddenly makes an exception for him, a skinny white guy. He becomes a New York Times bestselling author just by deciding that it will happen.

I like this idea of magical thinking. Who hasn't at some point wished for the ability to will things to happen? I've been feeling this desire a lot lately: the ability to will relationships to work out. To will the perfect job for me into existence. (Or perhaps it's to will myself to be perfect for a certain job?) To will people I miss into calling me.

But alas, the ability to exercise magical thinking seems to be limited to Augusten Burroughs and, strangely, his editor. The rest of us are left to work with whatever the Fates see fit to deal out.

If it ain't Baroque. . .

I'm sorry. That title was the lead in to a terrible joke that I just don't have the heart to finish. I'm just not that cheesy.

I am, however, cheesy enough that after discovering the work of Franz Xaver Messershmidt--a Viennese Baroque sculptor who was really into faces of ugly-looking people--I felt the need to try to imitate the faces on my own, with my mom helping out. Here are our best efforts:





























While I couldn't find the translated names of these specific scultpures (which, if you're interested are "Ein Erhangtee" and "Der Schaafkapf"), from the English translations of other works, I'm gonna say that our Mr. Messerschmidt was quite a character, and probably would have embraced the awkward with the best of them. Examples of English names for his work include "Constipated Man" and "Laughing, Goofy Man." That's awesome. Where have you been hiding these 26 years, Franz Xaver Messershmidt?

Juxtaposition

I really like the word 'juxtaposition.' It makes me feel smart. And I found a perfect example of an ironic juxtaposition of cultures in Prague that I wanted to share, in a conscious effort to lighten up the tone of this here blog.

Here goes.

What kind of museum, you ask?

The Museum of Communism, located immediately above the McDonald's, and right next door to a casino. God I hope they did that on purpose.

Better than Coffee

I inadvertantly discovered something even better than Diet Coke--or even coffee--for keeping you wide awake and alert: Non-drowsy cold medication.

It's just too bad that the reason I know this is because I was awake until almost 3 am this morning (despite getting virtually no sleep the night before), after having popped some in a desperate attempt to stop being so stuffed up.

Interestingly, the cold medication did pretty much nothing to keep me from being stuffed up, so I found myself roaming my apartment at 3 in the morning, looking for things to do while breathing out of my mouth. Good times.

Beautiful details

I don't really have a story to go with these pictures: they're a combination of photos from Vienna, Salzburg and Prague. I guess the theme here is that I really love craftsmanship, and I love finding the details that make cities unique.

I saw a bunch of doors like this in old parts of Salzburg.

Salzburg was famous for its hand wrought, ornate over-the-door signs indicating what kind of business resided there.

St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague.

Nearly all of the sidewalks in the older parts of Prague are patterned; this was just one of many different designs I noticed while I was there.

The formal gardens at the Belvedere in Vienna.

The wrought iron over this door in Vienna was beautiful.

If Beverly Hills, 90210 had taken place in Prague. . .

This one is dedicated to Miranda Hansen

So I'm finally ready to start blogging about the adventures my mom and I had in Europe. Sorry for the delay, but work got crazy and I had other stuff that was a bit more pressing.

While in Vienna, my mom and I took the opportunity to visit some Heurigen, Viennese wine gardens. Now, I'd like to start off by saying there is definitely a reason that Viennese wine has not made a big splash on the international wine market: it's not particularly good. It seems to be mostly really sour white wine, and apparently has been likened to the experience of drinking straight vinegar. I didn't personally think it was that bad, but I could see why you would.

(Note: I should make a distinction between Viennese wine and Austrian wine. As a country, I'd say the Austrians have a pretty good handle on wine making, particularly their dry white, Vetliner. That's a really good wine. The knowledge just didn't make the trip into the big city, apparently.)

Anyway, we went to the Heurigen, ate some unidentifiable meat products from the buffet and drank some vinegar wine, where I happily served myself a good solid "two fingers" of wine with dinner.

Argentina: variations on a theme

So here's the difference between Sejal's work friends and my work friends when it comes to planning vacations.

Sejal's work friends are suggesting that we go to the wine country of Argentina and check out some vineyards.

My work friends are suggesting I go to Bolivia (because there are more people organized into unions than anywhere else in the world) and check out one of the factories that's been taken over by workers and made into a collective.

And on a different note, Brianne bought her ticket for Buenos Aires this morning. Anyone else interested?

I'm officially bouncing off walls. . . .

because I'm going to ARGENTINA in November!!! And better yet, I'm going with my very good friend from school, Sejal, who embraces the awkward better than anyone I know, even me. And, on a whim, I jokingly told our friend Brianne (who is currently working on a political campaign and will thus be unemployed come November 7th) that she should come, too. And I think she's going to! Woohoo!

And now that I've used up my 2006 supply of exclamation points, I'll get back to work.

Axtlan Taqueria: where everybody knows your name. . . .

Or in this case, your meat preference.

So I don't eat out that often, certainly much less than most of my co-workers. And I would say of the times that I do go out to eat, I go to the taqueria down the street--Axtlan Taqueria--maybe once every 3 or 4 weeks.

Apparently, however, in the year that I've been working at EBASE, I've gone there enough that I've become a familiar face, and a familiar order.

This became clear yesterday when I walked in and began contemplating my order.

I said, "Hi, I'd like the--"

"Axtlan plate with Carnitas, right?" the guy behind the counter finished for me. He had already begun chopping up the meat as he spoke.

I have to admit: I was a little taken aback. That was, in fact, what I was going to order. I had briefly flirted with ordering something else. Maybe chili verde in a burrito. But their carnitas is just so good, and the Axtlan plate is perfect when you're hungry.

I can't decide if I'm horrified at my own predictability, or happy to have become enough of a rgeular that they know what I want. It's probably a little bit of both.

Priceless

Finally back from vacation in Vienna/Prague/Salzburg, etc--with lots of stories and pictures to share. I am, however, running on more than 24 hours without sleep, and must overcome nasty nasty jetlag before the catch-up blogging can begin. But in the meantime, here's a little something to laugh about:

Traditional Czech dinner in a restaurant on the Old Town Square in Prague: 350 Czech crowns.

Famously strong Turkish coffee after dinner: 30 Czech crowns.

Watching a random tourist suddenly decide to strip down and interpretive dance in the square until the police arrested her: priceless.

(I really tried to take pictures of this, but unfortunately the crowd around her got too thick, and it was way too dark for the pictures to turn out well. So you'll just have to take my word for it--or the word of the hundreds of other locals and tourists who witnessed it as well!)

Yummy

In keeping with the grand old tradition that says that Labor people never actually get Labor Day off, most of my coworkers and I worked yesterday. Part of the day's work involved manning a table at the Central Labor Council's annual Labor Day barbecue. The cooking at the Labor Day barbecue is always done by the Local Firefighter's union, and I have to say: the collective hotness of the firemen was definitely the highlight of my day. This should not come as a surprise to anyone who knew me in college.

Here is a picture of some of the firemen (although it totally does not do their hotness justice). And as a funny side note: the reason the firemen were posing like this is because they were having their picture taken with Phil Angelides, Democratic candidate for governor. Brooke--who took this picture and clearly has her priorities straight--cropped Phil out of the picture so we could just focus on the firemen. Thank you Brooke!

Adventures in Hiking

This post is actually from last weekend, but I couldn't find the cord to download the photos onto my computer and thus it had to wait until now to be posted. Last Saturday, Josh and I, in desperate need of some nature, went for a hike in Tilden Regional Park. I had found a hike I wanted to do and wrote out the directions. However, within 3 minutes of starting out (and that's actually not an exaggeration) we had messed up the directions and got lost.

The upside of getting lost is that we stumbled upon San Pablo Reservoir (after scrambling down a really steep hill that may or may not have been private property. Ooops.), where we had ourselves a fabulous little picnic and rented a kayak for some afternoon paddling. The only downside is that we then had to scramble back up the really steep hill before we treated ourselves with much needed slurpies from the nearest 7-11. Overall, a damn good Saturday in the East Bay. (The rhyming, by the way, is totally intentional.)

Josh and Claire (Disclaimer: Josh wants to point out that everytime he has been photographically represented on my blog, it has been misleading. He does not generally sport the mountain man facial hair seen here. Nor does he usually sport the too-tight purple tank top we saw him in at the beginning of the summer.)

Oh, que mess!

So I mentioned in my blog post from yesterday that I am sad, tired, confused, overwhelmed and furstrated. All of those things are still true. Except for tired. 11 hours of sleep and at least I'm no longer tired. I just wish I could scratch those other adjectives off the list as easily.

My life is a royal mess at the moment. And I don't really know what to do about it. I have so many decisions that I have to make, and I have absolutely no idea where or how to start.

I'm leaving my job on October 20th. That much is certain. But other than that? I need to decide what I'm doing and where I'm doing it after that. Do I want to keep organizing? I love organizing. Should I go back to working at my old job with the union? Should I take them up on this short-term job in Hawaii? I also hate organizing. I love and hate organizing. So that's helpful.

Am I serious about this going to law school business? Where? When? What happens if I don't take the LSAT until December and I fuck it up? Can I even register for the December LSAT since I don't know where the hell I'm going to be? If I'm serious about law school does it really make sense to move now--with the all the expenses of moving and the fact that I'd be giving up my California state residency? And if I am serious about law school then what the hell am I going to do between now and then?

And what if it's not law school and it's not organizing? What do I want to do? And where? I do not do not DO NOT want to be in California any longer. I have no friends here anymore, no relationship, no prospects, no job. I'm tired of the lefter than thous. I'm tired of everything being so expensive. Apparently, I am still tired after all.

FABULOUS!

I just had a drunk coversation with my Dutch friend, Sophie. By which I mean that she was drunk and I was . . . .tired? Sad? Confused and overwhelmed and frustrated? Yes to all of those, but more on that later. Mostly I was just entertained, because it is not often that I get to talk to Sophie when she is drunk (or really at all, given the time difference).

Sophie pointed out that she doesn't feel she has gotten equal representation on my blog. This is mostly because she doesn't have a blog I can link to, and because she's not here to do crazy stuff with (but I know there would be no end to the crazy stuff if she were here), but it's a fair point, nonetheless.

So I decided that I would dedicate the blog entry to talking about why Sophie is fabulous. Here are 5 reasons that Sophie is fabulous and fantastic and many other good things, too:

5) Give her a bottle of windex and she can kill ants with the best of them.
4) She's better at rallying the troops for big, social fun than anyone else I know
3) She's a fantastic wingwoman. But she really should tone down the match-making. :-)
2) She has this great "leg-humping" dance she does when she's excited and trying to embarass me that I find very endearing (and yes, embarassing, too).
1) Her relentless insistence that I move to Holland, get a job as a union organizer, marry a tall Dutch man (because she tells me they're all tall) and eat a lot of bread and cheese. Because even though it's not going to happen, I appreciate that she continues to push for it.

Oh, and one last reason Sophie is fabulous: her opinions on gender roles in professional soccer.

Only at Berkeley

I was out at UC Berkeley's club sign-up day yesterday, trying to recruit potential activtists for a union organizing campaign we're supporting at work. Here's the thing that makes UC Berkeley's club sign-up day different from anywhere else I've ever been or heard of:

There were protesters.

Yup. People with picket signs, protesting club sign-up day. Or more specifically, protesting the amount of paper being wasted by all the flyers clubs were giving out at club sign-up day. And these protesters were serious--they were screaming at people not to take the flyers, and demanding that people recycle them when they were done reading them.

I'm all for recycling, reducing waste, and protests, but seriously kids? If you are concerned about the environment, seems like you could have thought a little harder and dug a little deeper to find an environmental campaign with a bit more impact than what's going to be accomplished by heckling a bunch of freshman out of accepting a flyer about joining the newspaper staff.

I'm just saying.