Ten Pieces of Advice for the New Democratic Presidential Candidate and His Sidekick

I watched the final evening of the Democratic National Convention last night, and by and large, I had a good time.  Of course, I have a good time whenever the Heinz boys are on T.V.

Anyway, I had a few...suggestions, I guess, for John and John. I will share them after I get a cookie.

Mmm, cookie. Okay, here we go.

1. John Edwards, you have to stop doing whatever it is you're doing with your tongue when you talk. M2 observed that it makes you look like a hungry frog about to snap up a fly. I thought it looked like your tongue was sentient and rebelling against its toothy masters, trying to climb over your lips and escape. Either way, get that thing under control or learn ventriloquism.
2. Kerry, you need to smile more. It broadens your face, which makes you look less like a horse. This can only be a good thing.
3. Keep saying the word "nuclear." It reminds us who can pronounce stuff and who can't. In fact, if you wanted to just stop every once in a while in front of the cameras and say that word over and over for thirty seconds, I think it might be a good idea.
4. Somebody needs to tell Teresa Heinz-Kerry to stop wearing red. Unless you want Jon Stewart and the rest of America to keep it up with the ketchup jokes.
5. More Heinz boys. Because damn.
6. More Alex Kerry. She's a good storyteller. And evidently the boys think she looks okay, too.
7. This one is for John Edwards: You can't use the word "myself" like that. There are only two ways you can use it: reflexively or emphatically. You cannot use it as the subject of a sentence. No, you can't. Knock it off. John and yourself aren't doing anything.
8. Put a leash on Teresa. I'm all for powerful women (have you met me?), but do you really want another Hillary on your hands? Give her something important to talk about (because Laura Bush isn't really cutting it as far as role models go), but keep her from alienating the more easily intimidated swing voters. You can turn her loose after you win.
9. Ditch the slogan "Hope is on the way." Because if you think about it, that's not actually all that promising. It just means we're going to be in a better mood about our problems, not that they're actually going be fixed. Stick with "help is on the way." 
10. Blue shirts. M! made a point last night: he could never be a politician because he hates white dress shirts. (Well, that and because his chief rebuttal in debates would be "Eat a dick.") Is there any reason we can't have some less serious shirts? Perhaps a nice light blue? Still dignified, but not quite so boring. Would look super snazzy with a blue blazer. Try it, see what you think.

So there are my ten bits of advice for the new nominees. If you see any of them go into practice, you know who to thank.

I also can't recite the Pledge of Allegiance or cut paper in a straight line 

I have a confession: I'm 23 years old and I don't know right from left.

I mean, I know conceptually what is right and what is left. I realize that if I hold up both my hands flat with the thumbs sticking out, one of them will make an L, and that's the left one. But functionally...it doesn't work out that smoothly.

Today at work I've been paginating, which involves a lot of telling the computer if a page is a right-hand page or a left-hand page, so the footer and tab can go on the correct side and not get sucked into the gutter of the book. It should be relatively easy to remember: even-numbered pages are left, odd are right. Page 467? Click on "SoloArtRight." Cake.

Yeah, no.

EVERY TIME I change a page, I have to mentally refer to my hands to remember which way is left and which is right. When I tried to make an example of page 467 above, I had to correct what I'd orignally typed: "SoloArtLeft." That's what I get for not referring to my fingers.

This whole phenomenon gets even worse when I have to give or take directions. I finally told my friends that they had to pay attention to the gestures I make with my hands while giving directions, because it's a damn good bet that if I say, "Turn left here," I'll actually jerk my thumb to the right and give you a confused look when you get into the left turn lane. I use the phrase "Your other left" frequently. I've nearly wrecked my own car more than a few times making abrupt lane changes after somebody says, "No, I said right, dumbass."

I'm not sure if there's some disconnect between my brain and my mouth that is impeding the comprehension process, or if I didn't watch enough Sesame Street as a toddler, or what.  I think it might be a function of my larger problems with spatial thinking—the problem being that I can't do it. I know a half-mile is the distance from my house to my mailbox, but if you asked me to look down a random street in Houston and estimate what half a mile is, I'm likely to give you a location that's 500 feet away, if I don't offer one that's three miles down the road. I can't tell you how much water a container holds, I can't figure out my route on a map without turning the map so it is going in the same direction I am, i.e., if I am going west, I have to turn the map so west is at the top. And even then, I'm likely to make a right left right turn when I want to go south.  

Yes, I'm dumb. I know.

I don't think that's really how this is supposed to work

My grandfather does not have a computer, which is unfortunate, because I have a sneaking suspicion that, should he ever learn to use a computer, he would love it. Denizens of eBay: fear the day my grandfather figures out Windows.

Anyway, my grandfather has no computer, but he enjoys reading what I've written. My mother prints out any particularly good blog entries—the lastest being the tooth drama—and mails them to him, and then sometimes they talk about them on the phone. The last time I called him, he told me that my "stories were real cute." That was the same conversation in which he demanded that I write a story about one of the dates I was presumably going to go on. I informed him that nobody had asked me on a date in the last aeon, to which he replied, "Well, you've got a voice, same as them boys." So, anybody want to go on a date with me for blog purposes?

Anyway, my mother called on Tuesday and said, "Your grandfather liked your tooth story. He took it down to the store and showed Rob." I don't know who Rob is or what he sells in his store (probably coins—Grandpa has 10 rolls of each of the state quarters that have come out so far, and he's trying to get 10 rolls from each mint of each quarter), but evidently Rob also enjoyed my tooth story, and will probably be a regular reader of my (abridged) blog from now on.

The thing is, Rob is not the only random friend my grandfather has. For a man with no legs, he gets around. He makes trips to see his friends at the car dealerships down the street, at Bi-Mart up on the hill, at the granary downtown, and more than a few other places that I can't think of off the top of my head. He lives in a town of 16,000 people in Eastern Orgeon, and I'm pretty sure he knows most of those 16,000 on a first-name basis.

By the end of the year I could have a solid senior-citizen readership. Is this blog suited for senior
citizens? I have to wonder. If nothing else, my mother has become the de facto editor of my collected blog works, so I guess I'll leave that decision up to her.

Stupid things I have done this week:
In the spirit of "Thank God this week is almost over."
 
1. Melted five Gladware containers to a burner on my stove.
2. Burned left forefinger getting melted plastic off burner with butter knife.
3. Burned left forearm draining hamburger for dinner fifteen minutes thereafter.
4. Lost mail key immediately after my roommate gave it to me.
5. Announced (loudly) "There is no good reason to be in college for six years," forgetting that kid who took 6+ sits on the other side of the (open) wall from me. 
6. Stayed up until after midnight for no good reason the day I got my tooth pulled.
7. Decided to take the GRE literature subject test after all.
8. Accidentally dumped drawer full of cosmetics into toilet.

Items of interest

My jaw is still sore as all get out. I can open my mouth this wide: ------, which is one to two hyphens wider than yesterday.

My brother set a date for his wedding: May 27, 2005. Not the date I was hoping for, frankly, but it is Memorial Day Weekend, so you can bet that after the wedding, I'm going to go back to Wayne and sit on the porch drinking wine and exchanging gossip with my parents.

Astros manager Jimy Williams got fired yesterday, and it's about damn time. Not that every problem they're having is his fault (they've got a fair number of geezers, and geezers get hurt, Jeff Kent), but they certainly have the talent to be better than .500. However, I'm not holding out a lot of hope for Phil Garner, Jimy's replacement. The man got fired by the Tigers. Yeah, those Tigers.

Finally, I cannot stop watching T.V. It's bad news bears (WM), seriously, but I love T.V. I only have about six channels, but it's more than enough. I watch That 70s Show and Dharma & Greg or Everybody Loves Raymond in the evening, and Good Morning America in the morning. Please note, Diane Sawyer is clearly superior to Katie Couric in every aspect.

Street Value, One Molar: $154

I love my dentist, but she is a little bit of the crazy. I went in today because I had been having some pain in my upper left molar. She decided she couldn't be bothered to fill the cavity in that tooth; instead she wanted to pull the one next to it.

Of course, you can't really argue with your dentist and be like, I'd really rather not, you crazy weirdo. Cheerio!

So she snapped on her gloves and I leaned back in the chair with my eyes closed and my mouth open. Actually, the scariest part of the whole extraction was reading the release form they make you sign beforehand. Basically it says, "The dentist is going to rip your tooth out of your head and you can't ever sue her, even if the following things happen:
1. You get dry socket.
2. Other teeth are crushed in the process.
3. She takes the wrong tooth. (She's evidently entitled to one tooth per
form, and she gets to pick.)
4. She breaks your jaw, accidentally or deliberately.
5. Your sinuses are opened and dripping into your mouth.
6. The nerves in your mouth are severed and your face is numb forever.
7. You are beheaded."

I literally wanted to look at my dentist and beg, "Please don't break my jaw. I'll floss from now on, I promise!" The words were on the tip of my tongue, but instead I asked if I was going to be able to drive myself home. This was a complete bullshit question, because regardless of what happened, I fully intended to drive myself back to work.

So she lays out her sadistic little instruments on the tray: four of Satan's screwdrivers (heavy, metal, and pointed or slightly hooked on the end; actually called "elevators"), a silver syringe big enough to take down Koko and her kitten, and a gleaming set of forceps. She gave me two shots of Novocaine (bless) and set to work.

She started off using Satan's screwdrivers, and for about the first five minutes, it felt like she was actually trying to push the tooth up through my jaw in order to pierce my brain. The unnumbed side of my face was pushed up against her breast, her eyes are looming over my forehead as if she's a monkey being held up by the tail, and she's prying with all her might against this tooth. Meanwhile, I'm gripping the arms of the chair so hard that my fingers are still tired two hours later.

It took a full fifteen minutes to pry the tooth out. Evidently God hates me, because he gave my wisdom teeth curvy roots. Think about how hard it is to pry a screw straight out of wood. Same principle applies. There was crunching and grunting, and she finally had to STAND UP and YANK BACK AND FORTH with the forceps.

Of course, the first thing she says when she gets the tooth out is, "Wanna see your tooth?" I just looked at her and said, "No," in a tone of voice that implied she was 1) sadistic and 2) high on laughing gas. She said, "Oh, come on. God worked hard to make that tooth," which pretty much confirmed my opinion that God does, in fact, dislike me immensely.

Anyway, I had to look at the tooth, which was bloody and amazingly intact for the amount of crunching I heard. Now I'm worried that the crunching was something that's still in my mouth and is going to start to hurt as soon as the Novocaine wears off, a fear that is aided by the fact that I keep spitting out white shards. Fortunately, I won't have to deal with the pain for, oh, about six or eight hours, because the tip of my nose is still numb.

I escaped from the dental office after paying $154 for a tooth I no longer had and making an appointment for four weeks hence to do what I'd actually come in for in the first place. And when you think about it, that's actually about as good as a dental visit can get. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go spit out this bloody gauze because as fun as talking like the Godfather is...gross.

Get an accurate read on the situation

There was an article in the Globe and Mail yesterday that I found particuarly interesting.

Evidently only 57 percent of Americans read any sort of book in 2002.

Frankly, I have to say that I'm surprised that the number was that high. But that's actually not what I'm interested in. What I'm interested in is what the article doesn't say: how National Endowment for the Arts did the counting, and more specifically, what qualified as a "book."

Did they count eBooks? It's not in book form, but it has the same content. Does that count? Did they think to ask about electronic reading material? And what about magazine content? The New Yorker publishes dozens of short fiction pieces every year. Do they only count once they've been bound in a trade paperback and sold for $15.95 at the local Borders? What about the internet? I'm not saying that blogs, conspiracy sites, and porn should count toward the reading quotient (especially not porn), but I know there is valid reading going on out there. Some of it is even literary. Should spending an hour a day reading the newspaper be less valid than reading a bound collection of Far Side comics?

I'm absolutely unshocked that 43 percent of Americans aren't Barnes & Noble Advantage Card holders, but I have to guess that these people aren't illiterate, functionally or otherwise. They're reading. They're reading box scores and stock reports, news feeds and film critiques and a thousand other things that the NEA has deemed beneath its notice. And while I'm the first one to advocate for the importance of literature, it's really the most important that people read anything they can, whenever they can. These stats are too simple for the NEA to cry "read 'em and weep."

Well, I don't know why I don't have a boyfriend. You tell me.

My brother is getting engaged this week. Or at least, that's the buzz—he has the ring, the reservations, and the (borrowed) Mustang. He's been dating his girlfriend for at least a year and half, and he told my dad that he feels like this is the right thing to do.

My brother is 21.

I suppose that's not a totally unreasonable age; he'll be 22 by the time he gets married, which is a solid year older than my parents were. And it's not like he should wait until he gets out of school—he's got a good six or seven years of school still left (pharmacology, thanks for asking). He's a fairly mature kid, and I suppose he's as ready to be a husband as anybody really can be.

Actually, he's probably readier than the average guy for two reasons. First, he's got three sisters. Three. And we're all extremely different, so he's seen the female psyche in various states of disarray. Second, the kid's had a girlfriend almost constantly since he was 15. I don't mean he's been dating since then, I mean he's had a girlfriend. Most of his relationships lasted well over a year (against the better judgment of the rest of his family). He's just a dateable guy, I guess.

My youngest sister is the exact same way, although she seems to be a little less willing to be tied to one guy for any length of time. On the other hand, Elysia and I are more...sporadic daters (to put it euphamistically).

I'm 23 and chronically single. My brother is 21 and getting married in a year. I'm not really jealous, except in a general sort of "I want a boyfriend" way. It comes and goes. I don't wish it was me instead of him. I just think it's weird. That's all.

One of us is clearly adopted, that's all I can figure.

Dear Lawyers of the World:

If you don't stop starting every single sentence you write with "also," "however," or a coordinating conjunction, I am going to sue you for abuse of language.

Kisses,
Erin

So you're not actually supposed to put sugar into the battery jack of the phone. Interesting.

One of the things I forgot to mention on my list of items that are causing my money to disappear was a phone. I was not particularly enthused about the idea of getting a phone, mostly because all my phones seem to come to bad ends.

Today I purchased the fourth cell phone I've had in the past year. I realized that I can't really afford to live without a phone, both for safety reasons and because I'll kill the next person who gives me a sympathetic ook when I say that I don't have a phone number. But I know that somewhere down the line, I'm going to get my heart broken.

My first cell phone was a Nokia 3390. It had a gold face plate—at least, it was mostly gold. The corners and edges were pale grey where the paint had been scraped off by repeated dropping. I accidentally put that phone in a cup holder in my car, which wouldn't have been a problem if my friend I. hadn't spilled a quarter-inch of Sprite in the cupholder the day before. The display was never quite the same after that.

That phone lasted until I went to Austria, where it propmtly became (more) useless, and I got a new, relatively inexpensive prepaid phone. It was shiny and silver and had decent-sized buttons. It's actually still shiny and silver with decent sized buttons, but it doesn't work because I dropped it in a cup of tea. I had just gotten off the phone with my mother and was getting ready to go to sleep. I reached over to put the phone across the top of an empty mug. Too bad that I missed the rim and that the mug was not, in fact, empty. Blutorangentee and electronics evidently don't really mix.

The second phone I had in Austria was great, as well—for three months. Then, when I went to Croatia, it mysteriously turned itself off and refused to allow itself to be turned on again (insert your own sex joke here). I took it in to be fixed ten days before I left. As far as I know, it's still at the repair place, because despite repeated assurances of efficiency, they failed to return it in the allotted time and I left for the U.S. without it.

So now I have this new phone, a Sony Ericsson that's a little clunky and absolutely covered with that little orange Cingular character, but it's got color display and it will be able to call a tow truck if I ever have a blowout on the freeway. Of course, now I have to go through all the new phone rigamarole: pick a ring tone, painstakingly type all my friends' names and numbers in, offend everyone when my phone rings on volume 10 in the middle of a meeting, gum up the display screen with finger prints.

Hm. I think I need a cup of tea.

Yet to be purchased: T.V., Q-tips, carpet cleaner, pots and pans...

I always forget how expensive moving is.

Even in this case, when most of my furniture, books, and household items were already in place, I'm on the verge of bankruptcy. Every time my wallet opens now, it whistles the theme from "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," and a tumbleweed blows across my checkbook.

I've been in town since Friday night, and even before that, the gas to get here nearly equaled the GDP of a mid-Asian country. Okay, let's be honest for just a second. My mother came down with me, and she paid for all the gas on the trip. She's got a Conoco credit card, what can I say.

My mother also paid for the ridiculous two-cart shopping extravaganza at SuperTarget on Friday night. I've never filled up two carts at one time anywhere before, but let me tell you, we had no problem at Target. Part of the issue is that I'm living with a boy who can't correctly identify foodstuffs, so the pantry and the refrigerator were barren like an Antarctic landscape, except for a few lonely cans of lima beans and six bottles of liquor. I also had to get ridiculous items like pillows that I forgot to bring down. Not that they would have fit in my car, anyway.

So yes, I've been giving out money like a Democrat-run congress. I'm telling you this because it means I'm going to be überpoor for the next...rest of my life. Give up on Christmas presents now.

Seriously, though, clowns are freaky

I'm continually amazed by how much crap my Tracker is capable of holding. Spatially it's deceptively small, so I always feel like I'm driving a clown car that's going to explode at the next stop light, spewing clothing and housewares all over the highway.

As you might have guessed, the drive to Houston is commencing here in a few hours. My mom and I are loading up the cat and the crap and descending on my new apartment and Half Price Books for some fun good times.

If you're in Houston and wondering when I'll be available for play, the answer is "Monday night." I'll hit town Friday afternoon, but my mom has priority until Monday morning at 7, then work, and then you can monopolize me to your hearts' content.

See you soon.

You were annoying in high school. Not much has changed, eh?

I just got back from my five-year high school "reunion." I use sarcastic quotation marks because a) five years isn't nearly long enough to require a reunion, and even if it were, b) most of these people still live in Wayne. How reunited do they need to be?

But I went, because hey, free drinks. Also, I thought, what the hell, free opportunity to make fun of many people at once, which was totally what happened.

Of course, the deal at these things is that everybody is happy to see everybody else, but basically falls back into old cliques and is catty about all the other cliques behind their backs (or possibly to their faces, as the night gets older and the drinks get harder). I was no exception; I just sat around with a couple of girls that I actually liked in high school and talked about how much fatter everybody is now. Because damn, Dunklau, you don't just have a spare tire, you've got a spare 18-wheeler goin' there. And you were a jackass in high school.

So this was the conclusions I drew: everybody's fatter but nobody's really changed.

I wasn't nearly as popular then as I was tonight. Or maybe I just felt more popular, because I realized that I truly I don't give a shit now what those people think, so I feel free to speak my mind. That certainly wasn't the case five or six years ago. It was sort of an amazing quiet epiphany. Of course, in high school I didn't have the advantage of alcohol to loosen my tongue, but still, the liberation from worrying about what everybody was saying about me was nice.

However, I'm not mourning the five years that separates me from another night of drunken mockery. I'm not that smug.

However, I still wave my hand in front of my forehead to indicate that I think someone is insane, like this:

So I've been back in the U.S. for just over a week now, and I don't think my brain is any less confused than it was before I left Austria.

I was, in fact, correct. The reverse culture shock is a bitch. Several times a day, I find something that makes me pause in confusion: country radio stations, saying the "Our Father" in English, hearing somebody talk about soccer, constantly getting the z and y keys mixed up when I'm typing (not to mention endless searches for the umlauted letters). The grocery store threw me for a major loop the other day. It's so big. Is it really necessary to have an entire aisle (which, by the way, is a terrible word for ESL speakers to have to learn) of cereal? We could certainly get rid of Waffle Crisp, at the very least.

I want to speak German all the time. I want say "Grüß Gott" when I walk by somebody on the street. I think it's weird when people say "Hi" to me, especially if they're old. I expect a more formal "hello" or "good afternoon."

Actually, walking by somebody on the street hasn't been happening too much. I admit, I'm doing a lot of hiding. I don't want to talk to people and have to sum up my trip in a few neat sentences. I don't know what my favorite thing was, I don't know what I missed the most, and I don't know when I'm going back. In some ways, I want to hold the experience just for me. On the other hand, I can't stop talking about it when I'm hanging out at home. Fortunately, my family doesn't seem to mind too much that every other sentence out of my mouth starts with "In Austria...."

Getting reintegrated is a process of slow degrees, evidently. I'm mostly over the jet lag, and I can control the impulse to speak German. Now I'm working on getting used to the imperial system of measurement and more casual means of address. Maybe next week I'll be ready to hang out with friends who've known me longer than eight months.

You say goodbye, I say hello (hello, hello). I also say: shut up Paul McCartney, nobody believes your poorly thought out heroin excuses.

Anyway.

This will be my last post from Austria, barring me either a) not being lazy and posting from Vienna tomorrow (doubtful), or b) getting stuck here by an airline strike (it's happened before). It will probably be my last post for at least a week or so, because the computer connection at my parents' house is dodgy at best, and I want to take a little time to digest everything before I start full speed again.

So...I don't have any deep words of reflection on what I've learned, or pithy observations on transition and change. All I feel right now is a stab in the gut that I can't take all the people that I've come to love here home with me, and a budding anticipation for seeing all the people I already loved there again. "All I feel." As if that weren't enough.

When I grow up, I want to be an ex-pat

Well, I'm almost packed. I sent a 14.02 kilo box of books to Houston yesterday; this afternoon I crammed the stuff I'm not taking into a box to leave for next year's assistant. (Hi, E.!) Most of what's left I've smushed into my well-travelled black suitcase. I still have some significant cleaning left to do in my room, and I have to figure out how to get my shoes into the one square inch of space that's left in my suitcase, but I could probably be ready to leave in less than an hour.

The idea of leaving Stegersbach gets more dreadful as every hour goes by. Today I abmelded; this is basically the process of dergeistering with the government. I no longer officially live in Stegersbach.

On the way home I stopped one last time in the town's sole bookstore, the one where they always seem to find it strange that I just want to browse. It's a good technique, though, because I'm almost always guilted into buying something. Today was no different, though I kept it small (see 'one square inch of space' comment above).

Tonight I have the last choir outing, a performance of Volkslieder in Bad Tatsmansdof. Tomorrow I will say goodbye to my teachers, and Saturday morning I will get on a bus to Vienna and I won't come back.

I'm not ready.

I just want to pinch its cheeks and ruffle its hair

Sometimes Austria is so cute I can hardly bear it.

Today was a holiday (Pentecost), so of course Gertraud picked me up for the traditional enforced marching.

Today was one of the most beautiful days we've had since I've been here, so Gertraud decided to march me and her boyfriend through the Kellerviertel (cellar quarter) in Heligenbrünn. It's a tiny little town that's filled with these straw-roofed, clay-walled huts that were used (are used?) to store wine barrels. They are adorable in their quaintness. As a result of these huts, the town is also filled with Heuriger, so naturally we stopped to have some Uhudler (a fruity red wine that's a specialty of this region; it tastes kind of like strawberries) and salad. After that we walked bergauf (uphill) along the vineyard and back to the car.

This would have been fine if it wasn't a surprised forced march; I was wearing sandals and capri pants, so I wasn't actually prepared to be tromping through the grass and straw that they lay alongside the grapes. My feet have blisters and my ankles are scratched.

Of course, that wasn't the end of the enforced marching. As we were driving back towards Stegersbach, Gertraud turned around in her seat and said, "Have you ever seen the lake at Rauchwart?" I, stupidly, told the truth and said, "No." So then we had to go march around the lake, which was not a small little pond. We did see a swan, though, and about seventy million tadpoles.

Mostly the day brought home to me how much I'm going to miss Austria. Houston is not big on either lakes or Catholic holidays, so the enforced marches are going to be severely curtailed. Also, nobody in Houston is likely to buy me red wine on a regular basis just because I speak English. I miss my friends and I'm ready to see them, but why can't Texas be as cute as Burgenland?

Well, my cheeks are pink

Most embarrassing German-as-second-language mistake I've ever made:

During a conversation about the division of household chores, I said this sentence:

Wer macht hier das Wichsen?

Which I thought meant, "Who does the polishing here?"

Of course, "to polish" is the archaic form of wichsen, which has fallen completely out of use. What does wichsen mean in today's German?

To masturbate.

Bill Bryson I’m not, but I did try to avoid overdoing the landmine jokes

So here, finally, is the novel-length story of last weekend’s Ausflug, which, as you know, consisted of a trip to Pula, Croatia, by way of Ljubljana, Slovenia. If you make it to the bottom you get a prize.*

I met two other teaching assistants and the friend of one of the aforementioned in Vienna, where we rented a car (a blue Ford station wagon that we named Lorelai) and took for Köflach on Wednesday night to pick up one other assistant.

A short excursion on the subject of our renting a car: this was possibly the most brilliant decision we made all weekend, apart from the one where we actually went to Croatia instead of some other, more banal corner of Europe. About 95% of our suggestions during the trip were concluded with the words, “Hey, we have a car! This will be no problem.” We weren’t constrained to stay in the city center, to depend on public transportation, or to carry our crap with us all the time. Admittedly, parking was sort of hell (I will never, ever, ever own a station wagon if I can do anything short of selling body parts into white slavery), but my word, the freedom was delicious.

The drive itself was relatively smooth, all things considered. The things under consideration are, of course, the fact that 1) I was the only person who could drive a stick, and 2) I am, at best, a marginal driver. Perhaps the best moment of the drive was when we were crawling along in bumper-to-bumper traffic outside of Ljubljana, swearing at the asshole drivers who kept flying by on the shoulder. Our swearing turned to cheers when the semi in front of us, the driver of which was apparently watching the assholes out his rear-view window, pulled suddenly into the shoulder, forcing a tiny purple car to slam on the breaks and slide into a guard rail. Nobody was even close to getting hurt, but their shiny car did get an impressive scratch on it. Served them right. There was much appreciative honking from other cars in the vicinity.

But let me back up a bit and tell you about Ljubljana, which may be the cutest city in the whole entire world. As you (should) know, Slovenia entered the EU on May 1, 2004, and was the richest of the 10 countries that joined. It shows in their capital, which is absolutely charming, with its cobblestone streets, pedestrian-friendly center, and relatively small number of annoying American tourists. Our first encounter with the locals was heartening—we were parking at a spot near the center of town around noon, and a UPS man stopped to welcome us and offer us his extra parking token. Besides being super sweet, it was also fortuitous, since we didn’t have any Slovenian taler at that point. Then we had the largest pizzas ever for lunch, at a cute little café that overlooked the blue-green river running through the center of town, and before we left, we had the best apple ice cream I’ve ever eaten in my life.

We knew Croatia was going to be fantastic when, upon driving out of the longest tunnel I’ve ever seen (cost of use: $3.50), the vista of green mountains and blue, blue water sprawled like a reclining goddess in front of us and stayed that way for the next 60 miles as we made our way down to the tip of the Istrian peninsula, where Pula is located. Not that you would ever be able to figure this out without a map, because the Croatians suck at signs. The Austrians are generally quite good; the Slovenians are acceptably competent, but the Croatians wouldn’t know what to do with a sign if somebody handed them one with explicit directions written on the back using the shortest possible words. It took us an extra half hour to find our hostel, even after we stopped to ask for directions, because we didn’t figure out for fifteen minutes that the street markers were small green posts with the words written on them in twelve-point gold type. Needless to say, they were useless even after we did find them. We forgot this minor annoyance completely when we found the hostel, though. It was right on the water. And by “right on the water,” I mean, “we could open our door and throw things into the Adriatic.”

Thursday night we decided to hit the grocery store for dinner because we were tired and they took credit cards—we had neither patience nor Croatian money. We bought bread, wine, and dried apricots, and proceeded to get drunk and watch the sun sink into the azure.

Friday morning we had our first adventure: parking in the Eastern European style, namely half on and half off the sidewalk. I think this might be the stupidest parking system in the world, because not only does it leave pedestrians no place to walk, but it’s hell on tires. Anyway, we parked in downtown Pula, got cash, bought stamps (you’re welcome, Mom), and then started following the only signs in the entire town of Pula. They pointed toward the first century A.D. Roman amphitheatre, and I’m sure it was probably the Romans’ idea to put them up. Anyway, the amphitheatre in Pula is the second largest in the world. I presume the Colisseum is the largest, but my fact-checker is on vacation, so who knows. Anyway, it was surprisingly complete, considering it was a) old, and b) in Croatia, which doesn’t have the most peaceful history in the world.

After that we bought postcards to go with our stamps and then located a bistro for lunch. Let me insert a word about wine, here. I had wine at every meal in Croatia, except for breakfast where I had either sweet tea or “cocoa” that tasted like it was made by dipping a spoon of Nutella in lukewarm milk. The wine on the Istrian peninsula is very, very good—fruity but not too sweet, and absurdly inexpensive (and I’m speaking as someone who’s lived in Austria the last eight months, where you can’t buy a bottle of wine that costs more than 10 Euros). However, they serve red wine cold. I don’t know why—no other beverage in all of Europe is served properly chilled, but the red wine in Istria was practically shivering.

Friday afternoon we had our first beach adventure. I use the word “beach” lightly, because the shore in Croatia is rocky. There’s no sand whatsoever. Friday’s beach was large rock slabs that actually weren’t too bad for sunbathing, as long as you avoided the parts that were sharp like coral. We lolled about for a good two hours, finishing off the apricots and throwing longing glances at the water. Although the air temperature was a solid 25 or 26 degrees, the water had to be hovering around 17 at the highest. We tried to tough it out—John actually made it into the water because he had to pee—but after I stopped being able to feel my toes as I was inching in, I gave up and went back to my beach mat, which had been purchased the previous evening for 8 kuna (~1 Euro).

Friday night we had dinner at the Hotel Milan, which had been recommended to us by a waiter in downtown Pula as the only decent restaurant in town. It was in the only three-star hotel in town, so that made sense. We spent three hours there, alternately chatting up the cute waiter (who made fun of us for not being able to decide on dessert—we ended up getting one of everything) and complimenting each other on shrimp denuding technique. I adore fish, as you know, and Croatia is the ideal place to eat it. It’s cheap, and John found sand in his calimari—an acceptable level of freshness, I feel.

Saturday morning we decided we had seen all that Pula had to offer and decided to head up the coast a tad to Rovinj, which was purported to have excellent beaches. After another parking adventure (mmm, burned rubber), we found out that Rovinj was celebrating its summer-opening carnival that evening, and that there were 10 km of beaches waiting for us. We headed for the beach.

I don’t know if the sun had fried our brains or what, but somehow we decided that the water was not quite as cold on Saturday as on Friday, even though we were several kilometres north of where we had been. I managed to get in up to my waist, but got back out after I sliced the hell out of my toe on a rock. Mixing my feet and bodies of water is evidently always bad (some of you will remember the famous “Shell Imbedded in Foot While Tubing” Incident of 2000; plus, I cut the arch of my foot while shaving my legs in the shower the other day). The beach on Saturday was composed of small, sharp pebbles which evidently did not bother the two small naked Austrian children that were allowed to run amok until the little boy fell and cut his knee. Austrian parents—so permissive. We, on the other hand, had to either hobble-hop like a rabbit that needed hip replacement, or wear shoes at all times. I chose the latter after the former almost landed me on my ass in the water.

Saturday night was a real adventure. The parade was not kidding around—it started with a baton corps, followed through with a batallion of children, all wearing giant paper flowers on their heads, and finished up with drunken, costumed revelers. I got my hand kissed by a man in a blue hat with giant feathers coming out of it, and some crazy old lady put smears of brown shoe polish on all of our faces. You can imagine how that looked. The best moment, though, was when three Croatian kids, all about seven or eight, rode up to my four loud, somewhat embarassing, beer-drinking friends, and made very distinct “you drunken American bastards” gestures to them. Sometimes the designated driver gets a little bit of karmic reward.

We made it back to Pula Saturday night just in time to hit up our favorite grocery store one more time, picking up stuff for breakfast. We had to be back in Vienna by 5 so I could catch the 7 p.m. bus back to Stegersbach, and since the bus company is evidently run by Nazis, I didn’t want to be late. Therefore we had decided to leave by 7 a.m. in case we hit traffic or weather or something. However, the drive home was nearly ideal (I will admit that my driving companions annoyed me to the point that I was deliberately trying to make them car sick going around curves in the mountains) and we made it back to Vienna by 4:30, in plenty of time for the bus.

All in all, I think this might have been the luckiest vacation I’ve ever been on. I found out after I got home that the weather had been horrendous nearly the whole weekend in Austria. We had no problems with the car, amazingly, and everybody we met was charming or at least amusing, excepting one jerky café waiter who was easily ignored. For plunging half-prepared into a country that’s not renowned for its tourism, the whole thing was ideal. As I said, I’d totally recommend that you go there, if I didn’t want it gunked up by a bunch of annoying American tourists next time I go back, so stay away.

*By “prize,” I meant, of course, “insult.”

You know what's cool? Croatia is cool.

I have lots and lots to tell you about the trip to Croatia, which was practically perfect in every way, but the internet is down in the internat. I'm using the computer in the office, so I don't have time to make a complete report. But rest assured, as soon as TelekomAustria gets off its ass and figures out the problem, you'll know what the what was.