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 – ”
“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.”
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 20th 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.
