ZOOOOOMBAH!

So some of you may know that I have just started taking Zumba classes at the Y near my house.

Something that I didn't realize about Zumba is that no prior instruction is given - you are just expected to pick it up as you go.  As it turns out, there are DVDs you can get and it would seem most of my classmates have bought them and been practicing at home so they do not look like an ass in class.  I find this concept absurd.  If I am going to buy Zumba DVDs to do at home, why the hell would I pay $35/month to go and do them again in a class at the Y?  At least no one would see me flailing about like a carp in my living room.  Apparently, there is Zumba Gear one can buy.  It consists of tank tops with ZUMBA scrawled across it and brightly-colored cargo pants with tassels hanging off the tushie and at the knees.  What purpose these things serve is beyond me.  As I have an ample backside, I hardly think I need tassels calling attention to it further.

Last Thursday and Monday when I went, the teacher was a nice lady named Susan who is maybe a size 2 on days where she's bloated.  She was toned and willowy and moved like a dancer.  She was very good at giving directions (as in which way we would be spinning or turning).

Tonight's teacher was like a tiny woodland creature jacked up on Red Bull and Sour Patch Kids.  She did completely new routines that I did not know, which was fine.  Then she had to go get water and allowed a woman (I use the term loosely - she is maybe 22 and insists on wearing her clothing 2 sizes too small, exposing pudge, something today's youth insists on doing) to teach a few routines to us.  This not-a-girl-not-yet-a-woman led the class in a few routines which, mercifully, I was able to pick up.  She is a certified Zumba instructor (I have overheard her say this to another lady in the class).  She needs to lead with more confidence and she might be a good teacher.  She needs to raise her arms above her head when she's in the tanning booth, though.  She has major armpit lines from where they were at her sides.
The woman in front of me tonight was older.  Her ample bosom was about at her waist and she sported a t-shirt that said, "ZUMBATHON" in hot pink letters.  She could've tucked her boobs into her exercise pants.  (This reminds me:  Is there a polite way to tell someone they need a better supporting bra?)  She had White Lady Ass (WLA).  This means she had no ass, though she had butt sweat.  As I was unfortunately positioned behind her, I saw every time I looked up.  I'm sure she's a very nice lady and makes awesome zucchini bread from the zucchinis she grows in her garden every summer.
There seems to be a Latin pre-op transvestite in the class as well.  She is like an inverted triangle as far as body shapes go, though she has large boobs and a potbelly.  She also loves to slather herself in as much Zumba wear as possible and screeches at random intervals.
It sounds like there are no normal people, but there are.  I do not include myself in the normal crew because, let's face it, I'm not normal.  I prefer interesting people.  And I have hit a goldmine.  Who knew that in suburban IL next to a soybean-corn field there would be a Y with interesting folk?  Not I!

I had homemade pizza for dinner tonight.  I ate it 75 minutes before class started.  At the 45 minute mark in class, I was ready to barf it up.  That's when I decided I had had enough of flailing about and didn't want to try to figure out the moves anymore.  When we did stuff I couldn't figure out quickly, I made up my own steps.  I actually skipped for 5 minutes.  I did the Butt.  I nearly did the Hammer at one point.  I was amazed at how relaxing it was to just not give a rat's ass about figuring out steps and being in sync with everyone else.  At one point, a tween girl looked at me and then looked at her mom quizzically.  Her mother just shrugged.
I feel that I could get the actual dance steps down if shown how to do them.  The ones I figured out, I totally got into and caught myself thinking, "I could take Latin dance classes and be like those crazy people on 'So You Think You Can Dance' and be a pro!"  And then I realized I was going left when everyone was going right.

Tonight I sported my "The Onion:  America's Finest News Source" t-shirt to show I have a sense of humor.  I actually met a few classmates who have a sense of humor.  Stacie and April are very nice and told me they expected to see me next Thursday.  So I guess I have to show up again.

Chapter 2

I got up the next morning and Manfred was there to pick me up.  We piled luggage back into the car that I swear he stole from a circus – it was one of those European cars that after you add more than two pieces of luggage to it, it looks like about ten clowns will come out any minute.  As we drove through the town towards my apartment, I noticed the buildings were looking older and older.  We turned onto Kaiserfeldgasse and stopped at number 27.  My heart leapt as I saw the building.  It was just as I had thought it would be:  18^th or perhaps 19^th century façade painted a lovely shade of cream with a wonderful green trim.  It even had window boxes with petunias!  I was certain the inside probably had beautiful parquet floors, lots of large windows for maximum light, and if we were on the top floor, maybe even a skylight.  It even had an archway you could drive through to get to the center courtyard that was for the whole block of buildings.  In my mind, I heard the “clop-clop” of horse hooves pulling a carriage that had perhaps some wealthy lady inside.  I paused to go in one of the doors on either side of the driveway, but Herbert chuckled.  “I am sorry, but this is not your building,” he said.  I was taken a bit back but followed him, my suitcase wheels clattering on the wooden blocks that made the drive.  I was wondering what my lovely room would look like when I smelled something foul.  I realized we were walking by several trashcans, each in a different color, but all stinking like old fruit and stale beer.  I breathed out of my mouth so as not to inhale the noxious fumes.  We stopped across the courtyard in front of an ochre building with paint peeling off the brown doors.  The building had the potential for being quite nice, but failed.  We walked inside and I noticed that my suitcase wheels did not make too much noise on the granite floors.  The walls were stark white.  “Not bad,” I thought.        

   Manfred helped me haul my luggage up the six flights of stairs.  I quickly changed my opinion of the place.  After the first story, we walked past peeling paint and walls that had been re-spackled a few decades ago, but had not yet been repainted.  The place seemed like it had been built a while back.  There were two apartments on each floor, one at either end of the landing that led to the next flight of stairs.  The floorboards and the stairs were very well worn, to be polite.  A nice feature of each floor, though, was the four huge windows on each landing that allowed for daylight to come in, just like I had hoped for.  We arrived at the door of my apartment.  Manfred got out the key and opened the door to what was to be my home for the next twelve months.

   It was what my Aunt Ellen calls “neo-attic” and Cosmo would call it “shabby-chic” but without the chic.  The first thing you saw when you walked in was a robin’s egg blue door.  This led to the bathroom.  On the left was another door in the same shade of blue.  It led to what I assumed was a bedroom.  The kitchen was on the right and rather small.  There was a table against the wall that seated three, two small refrigerators, a counter, a sink (no dishwasher in sight), and a small stove.  The counter looked like it had been someone’s project in shop class back in 1987 with a typical Euro-print curtain across the bottom.  The ceilings were at least twelve feet, a very appealing feature.  All in all, not terribly impressive, but for college students who don’t have a lot of money, not that bad.

   I walked through the kitchen into the hall.  It was dark and spooky.  Then I realized it was because there were no windows.  There were lots of doors, all of which I assumed again went to different bedrooms.  “I seem to have a lot of roommates,” I thought.  I followed Manfred down the hall and around a corner.  The second door on the right was mine.

   It had been white at one point, but was now the color of grunge.  It had a single bed, a desk with a chair, and a moldy-looking papasan.  There was a set of shelves in what had once been a doorway with double doors.  The doorway had since been closed off, but due to the indentation, someone had the bright idea to put a set of shelves in.  They, and the trim around the doorframe, were painted a lovely shade of doo-doo brown.  A dusty, white paper globe further enhanced the 15-watt bulb handing from the ceiling.  I had a set of windows with two sets of panes, the standard in most Germanic homes until a few decades ago.  They are two sets of panes that can be opened or closed and insulate quite nicely.  They are great at noise insulation and keeping the place warm when both sets are closed.  On days where it was cool outside, I could open the interior set and the room would cool down without my having to open the second set.  I also had a lovely view of Radetzkystrasse, which was a main thoroughfare.  I knew I’d learn the bus schedule fairly quickly the amount of noise they make.  Before the year was over, I had decided that if I ever won the lottery, I’d buy new brake pads for the entire Graz bus system.  Their squeaking at all hours greatly annoyed me.

   The floors at one point had been parqueted, but time and neglect had worn the finish off completely.  I thought it was an odd-shaped apartment.  It was like a backwards upside-down L – not very typical of a Germanic layout, but I shrugged it off.

   As I surveyed my new digs, Manfred placed my suitcase in the room.  “Your landlady’s name is Frau Steckrübe.  She said that none of the other roommates would be here until the end of September – classes at the University do not begin until October.”  So I was going to be there almost a month before anyone showed up.  Wow.

   “The rent is due at the first of the month and her business card is on the corkboard out front.  It has her phone number and address should you need anything.”  Corkboard?  I must have been too busy taking in the sights of the pink bathroom to see that.

   Manfred left soon after giving me my key and making sure I had his and Dietlende’s telephone numbers in case I needed anything.  I had already planned not to call them for anything short of dismemberment or house fire because they had a new baby; the last thing they needed was some American kid calling twice a day asking for grocery store recommendations and U.S.-metric conversions.

   As soon as Manfred left, I decided to explore and see how things were around the apartment.  The rooms on either side of mine were unlocked, but the rest were tightly secured.  The last one at the end other end of the hall next to the two toilets was unlocked as well.  One of the rooms next to mine was huge and what I had imagined mine to look like originally.  Since it was unlocked and obviously not taken, I thought about moving in.  But then I started waffling.  Were we actually assigned rooms, or was it more of a first-come-first-served?  I decided not to risk it and planned to stay put.  At the other end of the hallway was a huge cabinet with sliding doors.  It was painted the same shade of brown as my shelves.  “Must’ve been a big sale at the local hardware store on Düdü Brown,” I said to the dust bunnies that were piled in a corner.  I slid open the cabinet doors and peeked inside.  There were four shelves and as the doors slid open at either end, it made enough space for eight people to store things.  Eight seemed a large number of people in one little apartment.  After counting the bedrooms, it dawned on me that the only communal spaces were the toilets, bathroom, and the kitchen.  The apartment was large enough to house eight people and the only communal space was a ten by fifteen area.

   In the kitchen there was a window with frosted glass.  It was very tall, but as it opened to the stairs, it had a metal grate on the inside.  In the giant windowsill/counter was the phone.  It had a couple of buttons with symbols that I didn’t understand.  There was also a small screen-thing plugged into it.  Next to the window on the wall (and above the small kitchen table) was the corkboard that Manfred had mentioned.  There were a LOT of things on that corkboard. 

The stove was small, about half the size of a stove in the U.S.  There was no dishwasher other than what was at the end of my arms.  The counter was actually a table, I discovered, with a Formica-themed contact paper top and a curtain covering its underneath.  The material of said curtain was a seizure-inducing geometric pattern with colors of fuchsia, turquoise, yellow-orange, purple, black, and white.  It looked like an 80s home ec project from hell.  I pulled back the curtain expecting the great and powerful Oz, but found several recycling bins instead.  It dawned on me that the stinky bins I passed in the courtyard were for the recycling.  In Austria you are charged for the Restmüll, or “everything else trash can.”  Anything that cannot be recycled went into the Restmüll.  The trash men would weigh it and you were charged for over a certain weight.  I think it’s definitely something the U.S. can and should implement – local governments could make excellent money that could go to education or homeless shelters or something else useful.

   I wasn’t sure what to do with myself.  I knew no one in town and was a bit scared of getting lost.  The sun went down relatively early compared to the U.S., so I didn’t want to be out too long and get lost in the dark.  I decided a small walk around the neighborhood would be nice.  After dumping open my suitcases, I dug out a short-sleeved t-shirt, a long-sleeved t-shirt, my sweatshirt, and grabbed my raincoat.  I wasn’t expecting rain, but I figured another layer couldn’t hurt in keeping out the cold.  I made sure I had my key and walked down the stairs.  I tried putting my house key in the lock for the mailbox, but it wouldn’t fit.  I shuffled past the stinky recycling bins and trashcans and turned right onto Kaiserfeldgasse.  There was a Gösser pub on the corner.  It looked warm and inviting.  Then I realized I had very little money.  Today was Saturday and the banks were all closed.  I had the equivalent of $50 and knew I needed to save at least half for emergency reserves.  (I had American dollars, but they wouldn’t spend as well as Austrian schilling.  And my account back home was not going to have money until Monday.)  Knowing that things were more expensive here, I decided to spend the next few days very frugally.  I walked up the street and passed a restaurant.  “Note to self,” I thought, “must try restaurant once schillings are procured.”  I got two blocks up and to the main stretch of the Altstadt or old town.  The streets weren’t paved, but cobbled.  I walked down the street looking in the windows.  It was like the States, but not.  Things were just cooler, especially at the glasses shop.  They had some very funky and neat specs.  I bought a cheese sandwich (Käsebrot) at a food cart and nibbled it as I walked along the other side of the street.  There was an ice cream shop that was actually doing a brisk business.  It was September and summer, as far as my calendar was concerned.  In the South, summer doesn’t end until November.  However, the high that day was in the low-60s and I was cold.  On my way back, I passed Kaiserfeldgasse and kept going to where the strassenbahn tracks came together.  The area was called Jakominiplatz (“yahko- mini-platz”) and was the main hub for the streetcars.  In the mornings and afternoons, there were vendors selling their wares out of very nice stands.  There were also pay phones.  I had already called my parents to let them know I had arrived in Vienna safe and sound, but I figured I should let them know I was all right in Graz.  I took out the little AT&T international calling instruction card and dialed.  For some reason, I was not able to make a free phone call the way it said I should.

   An interesting thing about collect calls from Austria:  In order to use the AT&T collect number, I had to pay for a call to Vienna.  Back then, a trans-Atlantic phone call was quite pricey; nowadays they are about as expensive as calling someone across town.  It took me about four tries to figure all this out, though, and by the time I was able to talk to my mother, I was practically in tears.  My brother answered the phone; he was eating something.  
   “Hi Turner, it’s Mac.”

   “Ooooh, well hey there, big sister.  It’s my big, elite sister calling me all the way from Europe!”  He was going through his smartass stage.  It was an ongoing phase.  It’s been over ten years and he still hasn’t grown out of it.  “How’s The Continent treating you?”  He sounded like he was eating peanut butter.

   “Oh, not too shabby.  How are the parentals?”
   “Well, aside from Mom’s sudden bursts of tears and Pop looking off into the distance and weeping, not bad.”

   I sighed.  “Sounds like they’re doing splendidly.  Is Mom around?”
   “Yeah, sure.  They’re swell.  Hold on, I’ll get her.”

   He made no attempt to cover the phone as he yelled, “Mom!  Hey MOM!  It’s your world-traveling daughter taking time out of her busy schedule to call you!”  I made a mental note to send him something nasty in the mail.  As soon as my mother picked up the phone, all I wanted to do was burst into tears and tell her how much I wanted to come home.  I wanted to sob and tell her how miserable and cold and hungry I was.  But I knew if I did, she would worry, and that was not something I really wanted, nor would it solve anything.  This was the biggest step I had ever taken and I needed to prove it to everyone – including myself – that I could do this.  I took a deep breath and told her I was doing great, but I was a little cold.

   “Are your roommates nice?”
   “Well, I haven’t met them or anyone yet.  School doesn’t start til next month, so they’re all still away for the summer.”
   “So you’re in that apartment all by yourself?”  Her voice went up.  She was getting concerned.

   “Yeah, but I made some friends at the youth hostel.”  Oh dear.

   “Youth hostel?!  What on earth were you doing at a youth hostel?”

   I told her the story of the apartment not being ready and going out with Claudia (though I was minimal on the details of the excursion).

   “Good God, MacEachin!  Well, at least you can spend tonight in your own place and settle in before everyone gets there.”  Oh yes, I had failed to mention the state of said apartment to my mother.  I did tell her it had hardwood floors, I had my own room, and the kitchen was cozy, but that was it.

   After I hung up the phone, I realized it was getting late.  I decided to go back to the youth hostel; I needed to see a friendly face and that was the only place in town where I knew anyone.  I bought a slice of pizza on the way, and I somehow made my way across the river and back to the place that I had arrived in a blur.  Andro was still there and he and I spent a good portion of the evening playing card games with some of the other kids.

   After several rounds of Spades, I looked at my watch.  It was after midnight and the front doors locked at midnight.  Personally, I thought that was a silly time to lock doors on a place young people would be staying; 1 AM would be better.  My next thought was, “What if there’s a fire?  This seems quite unsafe.  Perhaps I should write the American embassy to let them know about this.” 

   Then it hit me:  I was locked in the youth hostel.  I had nowhere to sleep, I didn’t even have a toothbrush.  How was I to get out?  I tried not to freak out and calmly asked my fellow card players what their take on the situation was.  Veronika, a girl from Slovenia, suggested the windows in the laundry room downstairs. 

   “While I was waiting on my laundry, I noticed that they are actually at the street level.  We could lift you up and then you could crawl out of the window.”  It was certainly a better option than what Bernie from Germany’s idea was – he offered to let me stay in his room with him.  Silently I thanked my stars for Veronika.  Bernie appeared to be the sort, who after his bi-monthly bath, would put on the same underwear he’d been wearing for a week.

   Then we heard knocking.  I looked up to see two girls and boy outside the hostel, tapping on the door.  They were from Sweden – I remembered that from the previous evening.  Andro went over to the door and asked them through the glass if they had a key.  They didn’t, they were hoping we would be able to open the door.  Finally someone decided to suck it up and get the landlady/matron on duty.  She was a blonde woman in her late 30s who was not at all thrilled about being awakened close to 1 AM, and she made sure everyone knew it.  She pulled a set of keys from her bathrobe pocket and unlocked the door.  While three of the members of ABBA raced in and were getting a good lecture on following house rules, Andro and I slipped out unnoticed.  He had agreed to walk me home.

   The walk home was very quiet.  For a European town in the summer, I thought there would be more people out on the street, going from club to club.  We saw two people on the two-mile walk back to my apartment.  I had no idea how to get there, but after I gave Andro the specs and included the Gösser pub, he knew where we were going. 
   He asked me about my family and I gave the general description – parents, younger brother who was an utter and complete smartass.  I was hesitant to ask him about his family since he had mentioned he’d lost some members in the Balkan War. 

   He asked about my apartment and I gladly told him what a shithole it was.  After listening to me talk about how the kitchen was so tiny for eight people, he said, “Mac, you know I just rented a place and it’s big enough for, say, two or three people.”

   “Really?  That’s great!”
   “Yes, but my roommate decided to not go to university this semester….”  I waited for him to finish, but he didn’t. 

   “And?” I finally asked.
   “I need a roommate and you would like a better place to live.  You can live at my apartment.   With me.”  I must have given him an incredulous look, because he started to try to explain further.  “I …Well, I…I am sorry.  I’m having a difficult time finding the word in English.  I believe you?” he said hopefully.
   “You believe me?”  I was confused.
   He sighed.  “That’s not the right word.  Um, okay.  I tell you a secret and I believe you will keep it because I believe you.”
   “You’re going to tell me a secret?  I don’t know if that’s a good idea – I don’t know you that well.”
   “NO.  I’m not really going to tell you a secret,” he growled exasperatedly.   
   Suddenly, I felt quite stupid.  “Oh,” I said in a small voice.

   “The word I’m looking for is like ‘believe’ but it’s not that word.”

   “OH.  You need a synonym!  Okay, well, let’s see, there’s confidence, faith….”

   “No, no, neither of those is it….”

   “…trust, reliance….”

   “That’s it!  That’s the word:  Trust.”

   “Great!  What were we talking about though?”

   He chuckled.  “I was saying that I trust you to live with me in my apartment.  It’s got new appliances and you’d get your own room.”

   I am normally really awful at reading people, but on this my shit detector went off.  Here was a guy I hardly knew, offering to let me live with him.  For all either of us knew, the other could be the world’s largest cokehead or a pimp.  A long list of unsavory activities ran through my brain at high speed.

   “Wow, that’s really nice of you, Andro,” I said, not wanting to hurt his feelings or piss him off.  I wasn’t entirely sure where I was, and had no idea where the police station was in case he decided to go attack me.  “But I think I’m kind of locked in to this place.  You know, like with a lease?”

   “Oh, I see.”

   “I mean, I think I could get out of it, but I’d need to find someone to take over my room and I don’t really know anyone, so it would be kind of difficult,” I added, trying to sound like I wished I could, but it wasn’t my fault I couldn’t.  “Plus, Graz students don’t come back for several weeks, so even if I did know someone it would be hard to get in touch with them.”

   He shrugged.  “Oh well.  Maybe later in the year.”

   I smiled with what I hoped looked like an honest smile.  “Maybe then.”

   We had finally arrived at Kaiserfeldgasse 27.  Praise baby Jesus!

   “Well, this is me.”  I gestured to the dark archway that led to the dark courtyard.

He glanced at it skeptically. 

   “Please don’t think me rude, but I think I should at least walk you to your door.  It doesn’t look quite safe.”
   I was a bit offended.  “Hey now, I know I look cute and all, but I’m a badass.  I hand out fat lips like they’re Halloween candy.”  I was joking, but then realized by the confused look on his face, he had no idea what I was talking about.

   “Huh?” he asked.

   “Never mind.” I sighed.
   “So you’re not scared to walk through here?  Alone?  At night?” he asked me.

   “No.  Why should I be?”

   “Someone could be waiting in the shadows, ready to attack you.”

   I snorted and dug in my pockets for my key.  It was at this moment that Andro decided to prove that I should be more wary and pay attention to my surroundings.  He grabbed my shoulders and shouted, “RAAAH!”  He was not trying to hurt me, just to scare me in a stupid boy way.  This was the evening that reaffirmed that when given a fight or flight situation, I tend to fight.  Without even being conscious of what I was doing, I punched him in the face.  He recoiled, clutching at his face with both hands.

   “WHAT THE HELL, ANDRO?!” I shrieked at the top of my lungs.

   “You hit me!  You hit me in the face!” he whined in disbelief.

   “What were you thinking?!  You don’t try to spook people like that, Goddammit!”  I was pissed.  High pissed.  I suppose a nicer person would’ve felt guilty immediately, but I was mad at him for doing something so stupid.  I unlocked the door and stepped into the lobby, with a whining Andro following me.  I found the light switch glowing and punched it.  The fluorescent light came on and both blinked like stunned possums.

   “Let me see your face,” I said, walking over to him.  His lip was bleeding and a good chunk of it was torn.  I pulled a wadded up – but clean – Kleenex out of my pocket and dabbed at it.  “That’s what you get when you try to scare people.”  I tried to be calmer and took deep breaths as I mopped up his face.

   “I yust tought you kreem a rittuh.  I wuh tryeena pwove a poin to you – tha you shuh be more carefuh.”

   “Thank you.  Message received.”  I sighed.  “Come on up.  You can wash up in the bathroom.”

   We trudged up the nine flights of stairs and walked into my apartment.  Andro took in his new surroundings without comment, though I saw him raise an eyebrow raise when I showed him the bathroom.  “Don’t mind the shower curtain, it was like that when I got here,” I said as I walked into the kitchen and got a paper towel.  I handed it to him as he was examining his lip in the mirror.  He washed it off and tended to it.  I got two glasses and poured us some water from the tap.  I handed it to him when he came out of the bathroom.

   We sat at the kitchen table and I watched him as he tried to drink the water.  About half of it dribbled out of his mouth.  I tried not to laugh or snicker even, as I handed him another paper towel.  Even though he was pitiful, I kept my guard up.  I had no desire to show him my room.  I said a silent prayer, thanking my stars that the toilets were at the other end of the hall from my room.  I had left my door open and it would’ve been fairly obvious which was mine, as the streetlights would’ve been shining through only one that was open.

   Andro and I made small talk for the better part of an hour.  I just wanted him to leave, but was unsure how he would react now that he knew I was the type of person who would go down swinging when threatened. 

   He told me that I was lucky he hadn’t fallen back on his military training.  He actually told me that he had a black belt in karate, a statement I found laughable.  However, I tried to act like I believed him, as I didn’t know what he was capable of.

   After several fake yawns, Andro finally got the hint and decided it was time to leave.  I ushered him out and made sure he knew how to get back before locking the door behind him and breathing a sigh of relief.

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

   It was no surprise, then, that I decided to spend my junior year of college abroad.  I had actually decided on this years before when I was in elementary school.  We had received a letter from Portia and Astrid.  After reading it, my mother turned to me and said, “When you are older, you can go study overseas in Austria.”  After that, it was a no-brainer that I would spend my junior year in college overseas.  Nothing short of The Plague – Bubonic, Pneumonic, or other – would stop me from going over.  

   The day finally arrived for me to make my return trip to Austria.  I hate packing, so naturally I left it until the last minute, thus invoking my parents’ wrath.  I had shipped all of my winter clothes ahead of time and was stuffing as many T-shirts, shorts, jeans, socks, underwear, bras, and toiletries as I could into the four suitcases I was allowed.  As I was schlepping the third suitcase down the stairs and enlisting my brother’s help to sit on it so I could get it shut, my father bellowed from the living room, “For Christ’s sake, MacEachin!  Cuban boat people don’t take this much crap!”  The doorbell rang.  “God, now what?!  Tell them to go away!” my father bellowed, rattling the newspaper.  I peered into the living room to see that he was wedged in a chair with a fat wiener dog on either side.

   “Somebody get that.  It’ll be Adam, I’m sure,” my mother called from the kitchen, ignoring my father.  She was busy putting together a snack package for me so I’d have something to eat while I waited on a train, plane, or whatever mode of transportation I happened to be on when I would be hungry.  “Your internal clock will be all mixed up,” she’d explained earlier. 

   “Mom, I’ve done this before, remember?  I visited the Feuersteins two years ago and everything turned out fine.”

   “Yes, but they won’t be there to greet you at the airport – you’re doing this all on your this time.” 

That was something I hadn’t really thought of.  I went back to packing.

   My boyfriend of eight months, Adam, was going to go with us to the airport to say goodbye.  Adam had been one of my best friends since our freshman year.  We started dating just after Christmas our sophomore year.  The reasons he was my friend were the reasons I dated him.  He was the first to show me how to embrace my sexuality.  He helped me get over my self-consciousness and showed me I had no reason to hide my figure under oversized clothing.  Adam helped me realize that what I saw as imperfections, others considered assets.  He wore his long, dark hair back in a ponytail most of the time.  He wasn’t very tall – around 5’5, two inches taller than me – but very athletic, as he was on the men’s soccer team.  It’s how we met – I was on the women’s, he was on the men’s.  After practice one fall day of my sophomore year, he was complaining about how hungry he was and how he was ready to go to dinner and meet up with mutual friends. 

   “Mac, I wanna go NOOOOWWWW!” he whined. 

   I gave him a nasty look.  I was trying to make sure I had done the requirements for a paper, and was discussing them with a teammate who had the same class.  “Just a minute!  I’m making sure I have this paper the way Professor Tenley wants it.”  I turned back to my discussion.

   “Mac, I’m hungryyyyyyyy.”  He walked over to me like it was almost impossible.  “I’m getting weaker by the minute due to low blood sugar….”  He leaned on my shoulder, putting all his weight on it.  I stumbled, not ready to support the 156 pounds of Adam that suddenly leaned on me.  This ticked me off. 

   “You know what?!  Why don’t you go ahead and go to dinner?!  Since you’re so damn hungry, don’t let me keep you another minute!”

   Adam looked really pissed off for a second and then threw me over his shoulder with one arm, like I was a kicking and swearing sack of potatoes, and stalked off to dinner.  Later on he told me the moment he decided to grab me and go to dinner was the moment he realized he only wanted to be with me. 

   He had a great sense of humor.  He was really athletic with a body to match – I never complained again about his picking me up.  And he was totally devoted to me.  He always put me first in every decision he made – what to do that evening, what movie to see, whatever I wanted to do was okay with him.  He would shirk off schoolwork to make me laugh and quiz me on my history to help me prep for a test.  When I was sick with a cold, he brought over “Army of Darkness,” ramen soup, and hot tea.  

   But after a while, his total kowtowing to me came across as indecisiveness and slacking.  One night we were studying in the library.  He was trying to conjugate French verbs.  I also studied French in college and was going over his French homework to make sure he had done it properly.  His last few test scores hadn’t been so great.  While I was translating the sentence, “Mr. Crouteau read his newspaper and then used it to wrap a dead fish,” Adam started playing with my hair.

   “Adam, cut it out,” I said, swatting his hand away like a fly.

   “Aw, come on Mac,” he grinned, curling a lock of my red hair around his finger.  “Who cares about French?  When am I ever going to use it?”

   I looked at him with disbelief.  His own mother was a French teacher.  “Well, I think your mom might be a little insulted to hear you say something like that.”

  “Would it make you happier if I talked to you in French while we’re fooling around?” he said, raising an eyebrow and grinning.

   “For starters you can use the proper pronoun.  Here you say ‘your’ but it should be ‘his.’”  I gestured to his paper.  I was trying to ignore his flippantness and was getting irritated.

   “Your eyes are so brown, they look like honey.”

   “What?”

   “Yeah, well, I went to the grocery store yesterday and saw a honey bear and thought, ‘That’s the color of Mac’s eyes,’ and it is.  You have honey-colored eyes.”

   “Adam, I’m trying to help you with your French homework and you’re talking about honey bears.  Unless you start talking about them in French, I’m out of here.”

   “Don’t be so dramatic.  I was just trying to compliment you and say your eyes were beautiful.”

   “I don’t want to hear about my eyes right now, Adam, I want you to understand what the difference between ‘your’ and ‘his’ is.”  We’d been speaking in whispers but my whisper was quickly becoming shrill.  “This is your education and you should take it seriously.  Your parents are paying good money for you to go here.  Don’t you care that you’re pissing it away?”

   He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment and then said, “I guess this isn’t the best time to tell you that I got an interim report?”

   “Interim report?  I thought those went the way of high school?”
   “Oh no, you can get them in college, too.  I got one because of my grade in French and one in history – ”

   That did it.  I slammed my backpack on the table so loudly everyone around me looked up.  “Adam, I have tried to help you but you don’t want to take this seriously.  You don’t want to take ANYTHING seriously – your grades, your responsibilities, even us.  You don’t seem to get it that I’m leaving soon.  So if you do get it together before I leave, give me a call.  Don’t bother calling or coming by tonight.  I won’t be home.”  I knocked over a chair in my wake but I didn’t care and didn’t put it back up.  I went to my friend Josh’s room.  He wasn’t a romantic interest, just a friend and I knew Adam wouldn’t find me there.  Josh was writing a paper, so most of our evening passed in silence.  We took a break and ordered takeout.  Around eleven I went back to my room.

   A little while later there was a light knock at my window.  My room was on the first floor and a lot of times people would knock on it if they were locked out.  I was a night owl and my light was usually on until around 1, so I didn’t mind too much.  It also helped that my roommate had moved in with her boyfriend, but failed to mention this to her parents, giving me a room to myself.  I looked out the window but there was no one there.  Then I saw it.  A honey bear was sitting on the windowsill with a bow tied around its neck and a note.  I looked around but there was no sign of Adam.

   “Dear Mac,

     I’m sorry I upset you in the library.  You know I would never intentionally hurt you.  These last few months have been the best of my life.  I never have had so much fun with someone.  But then I start to get worried.  What will happen to us?  Will you forget me?  I hope not.  I’m never going to forget you.  I’m having a hard time in classes because I can’t concentrate because I’m so upset that you’re leaving.  I’m going to miss playing with your hair and looking at your freckle-covered face.  That’s why I said your eyes were the same color as this honey bear – so that when you’re gone I can look at it and remember the exact shade of brown of your eyes.  I’m going to remember the way it feels when you kiss me, and what it’s like to hold you while you sleep.

   I just want to be with you.  Always.

            ~ A”

   After reading it, I sighed.  I figured this would be happening, just not so soon.  It was only the beginning of May.  We had another four months before I left.  If he was getting this maudlin now, it was only going to get worse as the summer progressed.  I went to my door to go see if he was outside still and nearly fell over him.  He was sitting by the door with tears in his eyes.  Seriously?  He was crying?

   “Adam – ”

  “Mac,” he said, getting to his feet.  He hugged me tightly.  “I’m so sorry I upset you.  Did you read the note?”

   “Yes, sweetie, I read your note.”  I tried to wipe the tears off his cheeks.  “Look, why don’t we go inside?  It’s Quiet Hours and I don’t want to get written up for being loud in the hallway again.”  He followed me back to my room.

   “Mac,” he said.

   “Yes?” I answered sitting on my bed.

   “There’s something else I need to tell you.  Something I didn’t put in the note.”  He sat down beside me and took my hand in his.

   “What is it?” I asked, my internal alarm going off.

   He looked at me and very simply said, “I love you.  I’m so in love with you, I can’t think of anything but you.”

   I said nothing because my jaw had hit the floor.

   “I’m having a hard time eating and sleeping.  I only had two sloppy Joes at dinner tonight, not my usual four.  And forget school – it’s not happening.  I can’t concentrate long enough to even read a page of McAinsh’s books.”

   I gaped like a codfish.

   “I can’t imagine life without you, I am so in love with you.”  He touched my face while I sat, frozen like an ice sculpture.  I had always dreamed of this moment, but it was all wrong.  I really cared for him, but my feelings were nowhere near love.  I had my mind set to go to Austria, and no boy was going to get in my way.  I wouldn’t want for someone to lie to me, and I didn’t want to lie to Adam.  I had hoped to avoid this whole issue if possible.  I wasn’t sure how to deal with it, so I ran. 

   A few weeks before I left, we’d been riding in his car when he said that he wanted to marry me.  As the words, “I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” came out of his mouth, panic set in.  I tried to open the door to jump out of the car, but then realized the door was locked; and besides, we were going about 45 miles an hour – I couldn’t delay my trip with a broken arm or worse, even though I felt like I could handle rolling out of the car.  In hindsight, I realize this view could be seen as a lack of compassion, but that is not the case I assure you, gentle reader.  I saw Adam as a Mr. Right Now.  Our personalities did not mesh for a long-term relationship.  He wasn’t my lobster and I knew it.

   My mother wavered between tears and yelling at me to get done packing – my plane was leaving in three hours, for God’s sake, with or without me. 

   To add to the anxiety, about six weeks before I left SwissAir Flight 800 had gone into the Atlantic in a ball of fire.  I mentioned to my mother that I wouldn’t mind taking a boat instead, trying to keep all images of the Titanic out of my head.

   “MacEachin Josephine Munro!  How much crap are you taking?!” my father hollered from the living room.  I ignored him and plunked down an overstuffed duffel bag.

   “Oh boy!  Another bag to squish!” my brother Turner said with more glee than I felt necessary.  “Adam, my good man, help a brother with the luggage,” he said in a highbrow British accent.  He and Adam hauled my luggage to the car where they probably did more damage to my stuff than the airline baggage people could ever hope to.

   Finally, I was ready.  I said goodbye to each of our three dogs, and we all piled into the Lincoln Town Car and rolled out to the airport, the back end of the car suspiciously lower than it normally was.  Had we been in Jersey instead of the South, there would’ve been a lot of suspicion as to not if, but how many bodies we had in the trunk.  I was doing fine until I got to the gate and saw my dad with tears in his eyes.  Adam had been sniffling since I checked in.  Now he had full-on tears streaming down his face, as did the members of my family minus Turner.  I could still tell he was sad – he was making his shoes squeak on the linoleum floor and leaving streaks. 

   As I hugged Adam goodbye, he whispered, “Don’t leave me, Mac.”

   “Adam, we’ve talked about this.  You know this is something I’ve got to do.”

   “Can’t you just go over for a semester?”  He looked at me imploringly.  He was adorable, no doubt about it, and the tears in his eyes really tugged on my heartstrings.

  “No.  I need to do this for a year.  You know that.  I don’t want to resent you for persuading me to cut short my year.  Do you want that?”
   He sniffled.  “No.  I just want you to be with me.” 

   I was growing weary of his new mantra and didn’t know what to say, so I hugged him.

   I kissed my parents goodbye and was mad at myself for crying:  This meant I would have terrible sinus headaches across the Atlantic.  I was trying not to sob, but doing a poor job of it. 

   Once on the plane, dread set in.  I always sit next to the old person who smells funny and complains the entire trip, or the screaming baby/toddler who sneezes on me with Fudgesicle juice.  At this point, I was too teary-eyed to care. 

   As I was getting settled, I heard, “Hey Mac!”  I looked up and was relieved to see a familiar face from the seat in front of me.  It was my friend Carole Jenkins.  I knew her from a summer program we had both done the prior summer.  The heavens seemed to open up and angels sang.  It was such a relief to see a friendly face and someone who would provide entertainment.  Carole was hilarious.  She was going with a group of students to Atlanta.  I would be going on from Atlanta to Frankfurt and then to Vienna.  Carole had never flown before and we provided good distractions for one another.

   I arrived in Atlanta in a fog.  Thankfully I had flown through the airport enough I knew it fairly well and was at my gate long before I left, wondering just what the hell was I getting myself into?

   When the plane arrived and we all got on I had a feeling I was getting a glimpse of what my ancestors felt like on the ships upon which they had arrived.  Granted, we had more than a chamber pot to pass around and had actual seats and there was air moving, but it was still like a cattle car.  This was also during the days when Delta would show you your flight path throughout the whole damn flight (save the seventy-five minutes they played a crappy movie that had all the interesting parts edited out so you were left with Mel Gibson sitting behind a desk with a briefcase of money sitting on it, talking to Matthew McConaughey).  The little airplane would move ¼ inch every half hour.  I tried reading but finally gave up and felt sorry for myself instead.  I was seated in the second seat of a row of five.  The large Argentine man on my right not only took my pillow but also had the audacity to take my armrest.  He’s laid up like the Sultan of Brunei with his two pillows and two armrests on a trans-Atlantic flight in coach, and I’m in my little seat, crying my eyes out as quietly as possible and wiping them with my Sally Beagle plush toy that looked like my sweet-yet-stupid beagle back home.  The kid on my left was high school-aged and (what I guessed was) a Hungarian version of my brother.  He kept getting up and jostling the whole row each time to check on the family member I assumed was his father sitting directly behind him.  His English was limited and his father’s was practically nonexistent.  I think I may have slept.  I felt like I was in the throes of a fever.

   When we got to Vienna, I didn’t know if I could get off the plane.  Even though I was sluggish, I could tell my heart rate increased and I began to sweat.  I was breathing faster and felt the need to put my head between my knees.  Due to my sitting in Economy Class, though, there wasn’t enough room.  I doubled over in a vain attempt anyway.  I stayed in my seat as people filed by me.  “I’ll just stay on and fly back home,” I thought to myself.  “I don’t think I can do this.”  

   The Hungarian father and his son also waited until the deluge of passengers hightailing it off the plane had passed.  He could see the apprehension in my face and smiled at me.  I have never had a good poker face.  He opened a tiny wooden box that had a little wooden ladybug in it that danced around and pointed to my t-shirt.  It had ladybugs making a heart with one running away.  Suddenly, I knew everything would work out.  I didn’t know how or when, but I knew it would all be just fine.  I smiled and thanked him, and tried not to cry out of gratitude and exhaustion.

   After I picked up my luggage, I walked through the frosted sliding glass doors into the open waiting area.  People were running around like ants.  Women in full sleeves and headscarves chased after small children.  Old couples pushed luggage trolleys as though they were in slow motion.  Dozens of middle-aged people with briefcases and in suits ran hither and yon.  There were small groups of people with balloons and flowers, waiting to greet family members and friends from long journeys.  Beyond the crowds, I could see various bars and cafes where people were having beer, coffees, snacks.  I was saddened to not see the smiling faces holding a sign with the Austrian flag that read, “Welcome to Austria, MacEachin!” like there had been two years prior when I was on my Maiden Voyage to Austria.

   Fatigued and disoriented, I schlepped my luggage to the shuttle bus to the Südbahnhof, or Southern Train Station where I would pick up the train to take me to Graz.  It was like being on an ant farm – people scuttling everywhere with luggage rolling this way and that, occasionally knocking over a small child here and there, old people knocking others about with their canes.  I had also forgotten that I would hear other languages than German and English.  This made the simple task of asking which bus was going where that much more fun.  The fact that the only people who speak the German taught in schools (Hochdeutsch, or high German) to non-native German speakers were tourists was frustrating at best.  Trying to understand someone who speaks any foreign language with the local accent can be daunting, but you add fatigue and nervousness to the situation and it’s anyone’s guess if you will understand what is being said.  It’s like a non-native English speaker learning British English and then going to the American South.  It’s not quite the way you’ve gotten accustomed to hearing it.   Picking up the local accent would be a skill I knew I would eventually get, I just had to be patient.  In the meantime I had to find the bus that took me to the correct train station.

   “Does this bus go to the Südbahnhof?” I asked the person I can only assume was the bus driver.

   “Südbahnhof?  Yes, yes, we go to the Südbahnhof!”  I breathed a sigh of relief.  At least it was the right bus.  The man I took to be the bus driver was stout, red-faced, and had fingers the size of Vienna sausages.  He could’ve been a Bulgarian shot-putter.  He was not in any sort of uniform that I could tell, but instead wore regular clothes.  It was as though he’d been tooling around Vienna on his bike and had suddenly had the notion, “Hey!  I think I’ll drive a bus today!” so he did.  He yanked my suitcase out of my hands and threw it into the cargo hold of the bus along with 400 other suitcases.  I climbed aboard with 100 geriatrics, six other exchangees, twelve animals marching two-by-two, some dwarves, and a bowling team.  I collapsed into one of the seats and stared blankly out of the window.  Then the driver started to take us on our way.  I watched the billboards go zooming by.  There was music playing.     

   “Cool,” I thought to myself.  “Life is better with a little background music.”  Then, to my horror, I realized that we were careening down narrow cobblestone streets with cars parked on both sides.  Right about this time is when our driver decided to jazz things up even more, as if it weren’t possible, by playing, “Mama Likes To Mambo.”  The song so great, we had to hear it twice.  Then we went back to the Austrian Volkslieder, or native music.  With zippy polka music blaring from all speakers, the bus careened around corners.  By the time we got to the train station, I was more than ready to get off the crazy bus.  Still exhausted and not thinking clearly, I spent twenty minutes duking it out with one of the luggage carts.  I finally watched how the locals did it and realized that had I just put in a coin, I would’ve gotten the bloody cart much more easily and with much more of my pride in tact.  As I had no Austrian coinage on me, I had to result to petty theft.  I stole one that someone had left alone while running into the tobacco shop for two minutes.  Apparently cigarettes cause cancer AND losing your luggage cart.

   After securing my vast amounts of luggage on the cart, I called Dietlende, the program director, to let her know when I would be arriving and then set off on my train.  I must have looked so fatigued after having gone through so much, because a sweet little old lady helped me with my luggage.  I later realized she looked like she weighed about 100 pounds soaking wet and my bag weighed the airline maximum seventy-five pounds.  Strong people they have in Austria.

   I managed to get all my crap in a compartment and dissolved into a pile of mush into the seat.  At this point I had been up for twenty-four hours on four hours of sleep.  I tried to stay awake like you’re supposed to when you take the train from Vienna to Graz.  It takes about three hours and you got through part of the Wienerwald (Viennese Forest) and the Alps.  I tried, but didn’t succeed in staying awake.  At one point I did look out the window and saw sheep.  They were on a slope that was practically vertical.  It baffled me – how could those sheep stay on the side of the hill and not fall off??  I passed out again soon after and when I woke up there was a cute old couple in the seats across from me.  They smiled at me with an expression I read as, “Poor little thing, just look at her Jürgen, she’s lost in that mess of luggage,” but for all I know could’ve really meant, “Clearly she won’t be waking up for a while.  I’ll bet she has nice Levi jeans and other American sundries on her.  Let us rob her blind while she sleeps.”

   I woke up while we were chugging through the Alps.  Seeing the snow-capped behemoths that were a foreboding shade of steel grey filled me with a sense of awe.  These mountains were ages older than anything we have back in the States.  They are totally amazing.  They look huge, but then you realize that you’re looking at something several miles away and it’s really about ten times larger.  It is unreal.

   When I got to Graz, Dietlende was able to find me.  I stuck out like a drag queen at an Amish barn-raising.  The fact that I had over 100 pounds of luggage with me didn’t help camouflage me either. 

   “MacEachin, I’m Dietlende,” she said.  I knew she had just had a baby – she had dark circles under her eyes, bless her.  Not just regular circles; we’re talking a matching six-piece set of Louis Vuitton luggage under each eye.  She was also very European-looking:  Tall and slim with cool funky glasses.  The Europeans always have better glasses than we do.  She picked up my biggest suitcase much to my protests.  I was thankful it had wheels.  I tried to fight her for it but lost.  “How was your trip?”  I filled her in with the Cliff’s Notes version.  “I’m going to have to apologize to you.  Since I’ve just had a baby a month ago and she has to eat every two hours, I won’t be able to take you to your apartment.  But my husband, Manfred is with me and he will be able to take you.  There was a problem getting in touch with your landlady and unfortunately your apartment wasn’t ready.”

   So that’s how I ended up staying at the youth hostel for my first night in Graz.  I was assigned to a room with three other girls.  I took a lower bunk and tried not to spread my bags too much.  I conked out for a nap for several hours.  Around 5:30 I woke up and took a shower.  What I really wanted and needed was a good cup of coffee.  Back in the room I befriended Claudia, a woman from Germany.  She was a bit older than I was, as it turned out – around thirty.  She spoke very good English like most Europeans, but had a lateral lisp so that on some words it was a bit difficult to understand her.  She invited me to grab some dinner with her.  She’d been in Graz a few days and was more familiar with the town than I was.  We rode to the city center with the strassenbahn, or streetcar, which I enjoyed very much.

   Graz is a town of about 250,000 people.  It has two universities:  The Karl-Franzens where I would be attending, and a Teknik, or technical university.  Graz is also considered a retiree capital – kind of like Boca Raton or Miami or pretty much any other place in Florida.  It has about as many students as it does retirees, if that gives you a better picture.  The school year starts in October; I had just arrived the first week of September.  There was no one in the town under the age of thirty unless you counted the babies and kids of families.  The only student-aged people in town were the ones staying at the hostel:  Tourists. 

   Claudia and I wandered around the center of town.  We saw the Rathaus (town hall) and the armory that houses the world’s largest collection of armor.  These two buildings are the only ones left in Graz that were built during the Renaissance.  The we wandered into the Bermuda Dreiecke (Bermuda Triangle) section of town, so-called because once you’ve had a few beers, you won’t find your way back out.  It has winding pedestrian streets that are cluttered with shops and pubs.  We ended up at an outdoor café at a movie theater.  I had only brought over $100 in Austrian Schilling.  Normally this wouldn’t even be an issue, but after having to pay for a bus ticket, a train ticket, and now a night in a hostel, I was left with very little money.  Claudia ordered something that sounded delicious and cost more than I had on me, and several glasses of wine.  My funding being seriously limited, I ordered the cheapest thing on the menu besides a packet of ketchup:  I had a cheese sandwich and some chilled mineral water and shivered.

   Did I fail to mention that Austria was having the coldest summer in eighty-six years?  The first time I visited Austria, it was the hottest summer in 157 years.  Now, two years later, I am at the other extreme with highs in the low 60s.  Normally, this would not be a problem, but I had only brought one sweatshirt and a few long-sleeved t-shirts.  All my warm stuff had been mailed before I left, but hadn’t yet arrived.  I was in the warmest outfit I had which consisted of jeans, a short-sleeved t-shirt, a long-sleeved t-shirt, and a hooded sweatshirt emblazoned with “Morrison State.” 

   So Claudia imbibed and imbibed, and talked on and on, and her lisp got worse and worse while I shivered and my fingernails turned a lovely shade of lavender.  Then I heard a beeping.  “Oh, it’s just my insulin monitor,” she explained.

   Insulin monitor?

   Turns out, Claudia was holding out on me.  She was a diabetic and probably shouldn’t have had that fifth glass of wine, but when you’re in Austria with all these lovely new wines to try, hey, what’s a girl to do?  I decided if she went into insulin shock, I would grab the waiter and make him deal with the situation.  I knew nothing about her other than her name was Claudia and she was from Germany and a diabetic, so I felt we would be on the same page.  Plus he could communicate with the EMTs better than I could.  I didn’t know the word for “sugar-induced coma.”

   When I couldn’t feel my hands or anything from my knees down, we finally started trudging back to the youth hostel.  Or rather, Claudia stumbled and I shivered and walked.  Once back at the hostel, I wasn’t quite ready for bed, so I went to the lobby where there were tons of people.  One group was playing cards, while another was playing foosball.  People everywhere were chatting it up, and one guy was playing the Fugees on a crappy little CD player.  He seemed especially fond of “Killing Me Softly” as he played it thirty-five times.  I took it all in.  Since I was wearing my Morrison State sweatshirt, I inadvertently made myself an easy target.  An Austrian fellow sat down on the couch across from me.  He looked to be in his mid-thirties and appeared to bathe on a weekly basis whether he needed it or not.  He was balding and in need of a good shave.  Naturally he decided to strike up a conversation with me.  He asked me if I was from the states. 

   “Yes, I am.”

   “Really?  Which one?”

   “Louisiana,” I told him and immediately wished I hadn’t.

   “Do you know President Jefferson?”  He pronounced it “Chefferson.”

   “Well, yeah, most people from Louisiana actually do know him.”

   He then proceeded to talk and talk and talk about how much he liked our president and what a great guy he was.  It’s not that I wasn’t a fan of President Jefferson – quite the contrary.  My family and I were huge fans.  However, at this point I made a conscious decision to tell people I was from Canada, as no one seemed to know anything about our northern neighbor other than winter, hockey, maple syrup, and moose.

   I was mercifully rescued by a nerdy-looking guy who joined in the conversation and then basically ran the other guy off.  Andro was his name.  He had dark curly hair and glasses.  He was of slight build and stood maybe 5’9 on a good day.  I couldn’t place his accent, but it wasn’t Germanic.  Due to his olive complexion, I figured he was from somewhere near the Mediterranean.  He and I talked for a while about lots of things.  He was from Serbia as it turned out, and had fought in the civil war a few years prior.  He’d been forced into the army like so many of his peers.  Over the course of our conversation, I found out he’d lost about half his family in the war.  I couldn’t believe it.  He was the type of person I’d read about in articles in Newsweek and Time; I thought I’d never meet someone who had been a civil war in the 20^th century.  It was like talking to a living piece of history, which I guess he was.  I was fascinated, but didn’t want to pry.  We spent a good deal of the rest of the evening talking before I crashed, exhausted.