"...England swings like a pendulum do...." -- Roger Miller

 Roger Miller, like me, was a Fort Worth native. He died too early in 1992 at the age of 56 from throat and lung cancer after a life of cigarette smoking, drinking and a brief encounter with speed. Like Frank Sinatra, he had a tremendous career in music without being able to read much of it. I can read music but that doesn't make me a musician. Talent is a great trump card. Miller's best skill was as a storyteller apart from his legendary songwriting. He sobered up later in life and could tell tremendous stories about his sodden adventures "when we were high enough to hunt ducks with a rake." His list of interview quotes is a freaking goldmine of language and observation.

We arrived in Liverpool Friday evening without incident, our flight from Vienna being uneventful and on-time and our luggage all in place and getting a cab in reasonably short order -- largely not what our arrival in Vienna had been. We found our flat much smaller than the one in Vienna but also clean -- another difference. There is no elevator so we walk up three flights but we figure it's good for us in an old-school way and we're on the top floor of a 109-year-old home in a neighborhood full of similar. This is, like Vienna, not the tourist part of town. The view is a Mary Poppins landscape of even chimneys and peaks at the same level.

I am treating our place in Vienna gently in the Airbnb reviews because harshness can have long-term effects. There were definite positives, such as a responsive owner and a great location and the fact there was enough for us to make it an actual home for three months. But we had to work at it and take a long-term view past the fact the place was filthy when we arrived. It took several days of scrubbing, sweeping and swiffering to get things right, not to mention we spent two nights with a sheet in a window because a window shade had fallen. The owner's reps arrived with a new shade and also began dusting and cleaning but seriously dude? Airbnbs are not hotels, so we did/do not expect Radisson or Hilton room quality on arrival. But it'd be nice to have decent linens and a kitchen without a stinky, dirty and non-functioning 1970s refrigerator. The college-dorm cold box is not a substitute. Enough said. The place had a nice in-line water heater too -- but the pilot light went out a few times. Austrian spring water is clean and clear but also cold shit.

Anyway, we're here in England and the place is nice (and clean) but soooo different. We can read the signs and the wording on the cars. We recognize more brands in the stores. The commercial areas are closer and more varied, though the public transportation is more expensive. There are more cars. The neighborhood is single-family homes/flats instead of multi-story apartments. The kids go to school in uniforms (the boys in ties and sportcoats) instead of designer labels. No more Europop music -- it's basic rock or blues. Our beloved croissants are replaced by, well, other stuff. We're still deciding how to start the days. Denise has her tea (much better tea in Austria, she says. So far. But that's another adventure) and I have some decent coffee from, well, Java. I got some "bacon" from a local butcher (it's what we know as Canadian bacon) and some sausages from a nearby grocery and both are very good. Denise has her egg and toast and my experience with crumpets isn't good so I have what here is called "muffins" but we've only been here a few days so far. A work in progress.

My beer photo is from Sunday morning, when I went out to just stroll the area and get oriented. I am thankful every day I can walk 6-8 miles a day without a problem to just explore. There is so much more here within a tighter area, so my stroll took me past several pubs until I came to The Raven, which was open for breakfast. I walked into your classic British pub with cask beers and sat down at 9:30am to have one. Life can hardly be more sublime. I learned long ago in New Orleans that there is no "proper" time of day to drink and sometimes getting up and going out on Mardi Gras day with bourbon at 6:30am is the best taste of all. So it was on Sunday.

We're still getting things together to make our flat more livable. It's a good place but not equipped for those who cook much in-house. We'll spend on cheap stuff like a plastic colander etc to make it work and then leave it like we did in Vienna for the next tenant. We consider it just the cost of life on the road. We're also paying as we go for our utilities -- so far about $30 to keep gas and electric going for another week. The UK is supposed to come up with a new utility cap on or around October 1st to deal with rising prices so we'll see. But so far our cost is about $3/day so we're entirely in budget.

Being so early into England, there are still so many questions about the rail system, the local buses, where things are and how long it takes to get there. We want to go to Scotland and Ireland and London and other spots and we're rejiggering attitudes and money to do things we didn't do in Austria. The best thing about this entire adventure has been the ongoing adjustment. Both of us are just gliding through some things that would have brought a "hell no" response a scant six months ago. We still have a "hell no" response to a lot of things but, frankly, nearly all have something to do with shit we don't find in the UK or in the EU. Each day away from the US confirms we're doing the right thing for us.

Roger Miller had another quote. "Some people walk in the rain. Others just get wet." We're walking in the rain every day because it's pretty damn sweet. 

  

 

 

 

 

"....God grant me the serenity to just remember who I am...." -- Joe South

 

Joe South was one of those singer/songwriters of the 1960s/70s who did more for others than himself. While he had a few hits like "Games People Play" and "Walk A Mile in My Shoes," he did more by writing "Rose Garden" for Lynn Anderson and other stuff that simply made careers. Jimmy Webb was among those kinda writers. The 14-year-old me was a big fan of lyrics more than the music. The first song I remember getting my attention like that was "Sound Of Silence." I suppose that's why much of my professional career has been words. They set scenes.

Speaking of scenes, I'll miss this one. Pretty much everywhere we've gone in Vienna has started and ended with this walk through the park across the street from the apartment. We've watched families, smelled the food, heard the sirens, watched the traffic and generally been a part of the daily back-and-forth of the neighborhood for three months. We've had issues with the apartment and we've not always meshed with everything going on around us, but we've been a part of it. We've made it a home that we'll miss when we get over to Liverpool starting this weekend.

Vienna is a city of music, museums and Habsburg palaces, in addition to its history with Sigmund Freud and a host of other figures from Hitler to Lenin. We could spend a year here and not see all we'd like, so we've chosen to Just Be. Maybe we could have traveled around Austria a bit more. Or over to Budapest or up to Prague. The trains go to Milan, Geneva and beyond but sometimes just walking to a perfect croissant across the street is more than enough. I feel bad for those who just want to see stuff. Life's more about sitting and watching than going and doing. At least I think so.

All that said, there are things about anyplace you won't miss. One of them here is the food. As mentioned previously, the menu in Austria is short. While they're big on root vegetables of all types, green vegetables are hard to find in a restaurant and in the grocery stores. There is a local salad with lettuce and what seems to be a light vinaigrette of some sort that can work but it's on top of a (very good) light potato salad. While the goulash (basically pot roast without the vegetables) is okay and the schnitzel can be very good, you've pretty much covered the regional palate. We've had a very good Italian meal and some good Greek food here. But for the most part we're eating better at home. 

England also isn't known for its cuisine, so we'll see when we get there. The British sailed the world in search of spices and, in my experience, used none of them. Apparently curry is big. Been a few minutes.

Graffiti. I am not against street art or tagging. It ballooned in New Orleans after Katrina to decorate the damaged so I get it. But that's not the case here. While the really historic buildings and the subway system have been spared, there's just absolute crap everywhere and it's awful. It's the same with litter. I thought the Austrians would be more meticulous about cleaning up stuff. But virtually every day in the park I pick up cans or plastic bottles or some other shit people just drop and walk away. There are plenty of containers for it too. But it's frustrating. Our park is pretty and nice. Don't fuck it up like that.

We've seen virtually no bugs and only a squirrel or two in the park. One cat. A few hedgehogs. Too many people have these little yappyass dogs that should be used for bait. Two have tried to attack me in the past few days but were barely restrained by leashes. While they are restricted on where they can be in the park, they're allowed to shit anywhere outside those areas and the US generally does a much better job of requiring the owners to literally clean that shit up. On the subway they're required to also have a muzzle. Would that be the case with Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis.

Denise mentioned the other day that she feels much freer here than in the US and I certainly agree. There are so many things we simply don't have to be concerned about here -- things like gunfire and generalized violent crime and whatnot. While domestic violence and rape certainly exist everywhere, the number of women jogging alone in our local park or simply strolling in pairs speaks to an overall comfort level. As a guy, I am thankfully unaware of so much about this other than to know it exists. The level just seems to be a lot lower.

The US hasn't been attacked by a foreign power in two centuries, so it's entirely too late to expect or even hope it will begin to learn the lessons of cooperation and (gasp) socialism Europe has adopted since the end of World War Two. We have never been bombed flat, had to rebuild cities or completely depend on financing from outside to resume society. While lucky in that way, it has also made the US arrogant and far too preachy and it is about to pay the price unless some serious adjustments happen in November. The EU (except Hungary, which the EU chastises) and even the UK are better at freedom than the US these days.

We love our nachbarschaft (neighborhood) and our stadt (city). They have taught us some serious lessons. Vielen dank.

    

   

"...I don't know much about women. I've been married for 28 years, you know." -- Wallace Beery in "Grand Hotel (1932)"

 

One of the best things about where we are has been the flowers. It's not hard to find flowers pretty much anywhere but the roses here have been particularly wonderful and only $3.50 for eight of them at the local Spar (grocery). Anywhere else in town they're $10 or more and in the 817 they'd be, well, I dunno. My friend Julie says these are lipstick roses and she'd know because she's an interior designer of some significant note. Denise has turned me into something of a flower noticer (not expert) at least to see when stuff has life in it or not. So far, so good.

Speaking of Where We Are, we have only a little over two weeks left before we vacate Vienna and go over to Liverpool until the first week of January. We're very mixed about this because we love our neighborhood and we've learned to make this apartment work despite issues we'll detail later. We still have a few significant things we want to do and see here, but the list is dwindling. We've found we're more comfortable eating at home than going out, not only for financial reasons but because (as I have mentioned) the local menu is rather short. We will be going over to Belvedere to see the Klimts and Van Goghs plus making another trip up to Stephansplatz for Cuban cigars and excellent tea. But for the most part, it's the neighborhood noises we enjoy most -- the planes landing overhead, the kids in the park, the conversations in the courtyards and the other things we hear while drifting off for a nap or in the evenings with windows open.

The old saying about living "in interesting times" has my attention lately as colder weather approaches and we anticipate a different world in England -- both positive and negative. Our costs have been fixed here -- we pay up front each month and that's it. In Liverpool, we will be responsible for our own electric and gas and, while this gives us some control, we've been reading articles about cost hikes of like 80% due to a series of factors like the war in Ukraine plus others. There is a new prime minister as of today and all sorts of stories about price caps and helping struggling businesses and 200-year-old pubs going under and whatnot. I have talked a couple of times with our landlord and he's got no more idea than anyone else because Brexit and other issues have had the UK without a functioning government for months. We're going over with a flexible attitude -- maybe even more than when we arrived in Austria.

We've been fortunate here that the dollar and the euro have been pretty much on a par for the first time in two decades. We'll also be going to the UK with the dollar the strongest against the pound than in nearly 40 years. From all we can tell, any real changes in England won't be happening until next year and, well, by that point we'll be in the Caribbean and back on the euro. Entirely by accident, we've been so far just ahead of potential issues. But we can't count on that being the case. It's yet another area in which we've been really lucky.

Another change will be the language barrier. While I joke about having to learn yet another new language when I go to the UK, it'll be nice to be able to read signs and understand the local flow of conversation a little better. I've done better with German than I thought I would and I'm pretty confident in most stores having a good idea of what's on labels. I can usually make myself understood in most situations but my issue has been pronunciation. My own last name is a fine example. Most folks pronounce it gee-SECK-kee while it's actually GEE-seh-kee and I've been having similar problems. The Viennese are not known for their patience but they've been nice to me in this struggle. Danke. Once we're done in England, we'll be doing six months of French immersion in Martinique and then France, so I'll enjoy the English break. But I feel better about French because it's at least a Latin root and I do pretty well in Spanish. But hell -- we'll see.

We're also looking forward to a change in neighborhoods. Most folks around here (and Vienna in general) live in multi-story buildings with commercial on the ground floor and apartments sometimes for 20 floors or more above. We're on the third floor of a Cold War-era concrete building with a three-person elevator and our doorbell is one of those ancient things you turn like a key and it rings like an old alarm clock. The move to England will put us in more of a traditional residential area with homes divided into three or four flats and commercial at the end of the street. We assume this will be a bit quieter, but I dunno. Some neighborhoods can be pretty damn loud.

We sent boxes to the US three weeks ago and none have arrived just yet, though tracking shows they got to the US in a week. A first-class letter sent to me here from Hurst TX took ten days. We sent men to the moon OVER FIFTY YEARS AGO yet, well, hell.

I don't know much about a lot of things and our experience here just reinforces it. But I figure with decent wine, a good cigar and conversation I can get along pretty well.

Gimme just one more day. Every day.