Lydia’s Blog

I spent the first seven hours of spring in Germany…an uninspiring town called Essen, to be exact.

Seven hours and five minutes into spring, my plane left Duesseldorf for Zurich, where my luggage would remain for several hours more. Me, however, I went straight on to Graz, Austria.

Eight minutes after registering the lost bags, and twenty-five after exiting the plane, I received a phone call from my boss back in Berlin.

And that’s how I quit my job.

Actually, I supppose I was technically headhunted. I had received an offer (better more in context than content, to be honest) from Stuttgart that I’d been mulling over for weeks. Prompted by a series of noteworthy disappointments in Berlin (of many literarily uninteresting sorts), I decided (after much nausea and sleepnessness) to take the plunge.

I am equal parts resolved and heartbroken. I feel like that stereotypical southern wife who won’t leave her drunkard, battering husband. I was prepared to forgive and forget every tiny indignity both Berlin and the Komische Oper presented…thinking that one day, things would change and that big things would happen for me there.

Who knows. They just might’ve. No use thinking about that now, though. I’m going.

In the meantime, I’m in Graz, remounting the Komische Oper production of Gyorgi Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre.

Graz is very beautiful. It looks even more like a birthday cake than Vienna. I can see not one, but four crosses perched on steeples from my apartment window.

Whenever I come to Austria, I in some ways expect to see a race of people who look like my family…even though it’s long since been proven that I look far more like my mother’s Ukrainian/Russian side of the family (as reinforced by the numerous people who approach me on the street and subway in Berlin, gesticulating excitedly and dribbling out rapid Russian.)

I’m never prepared for how wierd Austrians look. Austria is immediately north of Italy, and south of Germany. They tend to be a swarthier race that the hairless, "ol’ squinty with the cheekbones" northern Germans…who tend to look like Scandinavians, only way uglier (although to their credit, prettier than the Dutch). Austrian swarthiness isn’t the dirty-hot kind you get in Spain or Italy, all olive skin and smoldering coal eyes. No, it’s mixed in with a petite, rosy pudginess that would be rather sweet, were it not paired with an accent that brings to mind a down’s syndrome child reciting Gertrude Stein.

I spent yesterday poodling around Graz (I bought a shitbag bike with which to facilitate the poodling). Apparently, the two things you can do really well in Graz are:

A: Get your hair done

and

B: Die

I have never seen a more thriving funereal industry than right here in Graz. Gravestones, mausoleums, services, flowers, catering, multi-media tributes. At least three "Bestattung" stores on every street. Shit. Why bother going to the opera when laying someone to rest is obviously more entertaining? And apparently much more profitable.

My apartment here is quite nice. Right on a busy corner where I can hear street noise all night (which I love…no hint of sarcasm, where are you, sweet helipad right across from my Pittsburgh flat?) The opera is fucking gorgeous. The people seem very nice…also quite willing, despite the fact they’d seem to rather leave half of my opera unstaged rather than impinge upon their daily six-hour siesta.

Springtime in Graz. I’m so lucky. I’m so fucking lucky. Sometimes I look at my life and think: who else gets to have adventures like these? Other times, it kind of just makes me want to vomit.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 21st, 2006 at 9:41 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.