The Danube

Swimming in the Danube - I'm the one
on the right.

I spent the last weekend in the Wachau wine valley town of Krems an der Donau, which as the name suggests, is an der Donau - on the Danube.  During my stay and at the suggestion of my impulsive and lightly-unhinged friend Luke, I even went swimming in the river, which was about as warm as the frosty Wiener Eiskaffee I had the day before.  In honor of this foolish undertaking, I recount here a brief history of the Danube River:

The Danube is Europe's second-longest river, behind its pompous and overbearing competitor - the Volga in Russia.  It flows through ten countries along its course from the Black Forest in Germany to the Black Sea in Romania.  It has been an important trading route for centuries and often provided the northern border for the Roman Empire, before they gave in to the excessive drinking and overt laziness that has since characterized that part of the world.       



Earlier in the day I enjoyed a poppy-seed
ice cream cone, another activity for
which the weather was not appropriate.

Culturally, the Danube has featured strongly in Austrian, and more generally, Central European works for centuries.  It figures prominently in the Bulgarian national anthem and lent its name to Johann Strauss's The Blue Danube waltz (German: An der schönen blauen Donau), which is arguably the unofficial national anthem of Austria.  The waltz, incidentally, is played ad nauseum in all major tourist traps, especially the Prater amusement park, where it is played in a maddening loop that park employees must really hate. 

After the Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated in 1918, Austria's control of the river was reduced from 2,840 km to just over 300.  Austria, now a landlocked country, shed its navy save the intrepid, if silly, Danube Flotilla, which continued to sail up and down the river protecting nothing until it became too comically irrelevent to maintain, in 2006. 

The Danube has since become a major destination for international tourists as well as Austrian bathers allured by both its beauty and the utter lack of bathing alternatives.  I'm told that, in the summertime, the oddly California-sounding Vienna City Beach Club is extremely popular with Austrians both clothed and nude.  The Donauradweg bike path runs more or less the entire length of the the river and Austrian portion of the route is supposed to offer a fabulous ride, especially when done downhill, from west to east.  I have ambitions to one day bike the 340km portion from Passau to Vienna, although I may not get to it this year, as my bike is about half the size it needs to be for me to use comfortably. 

Overall, the Danube offers a number of enticing activities, although these do not include March skinny-dipping, which remains ill-advised...

Balls

I have had the pleasure last weekend to attend the ball of the business academy where I teach in Waidhofen.  Austrian balls are similar to American proms, but with the following differences:

 Everybody waltzes.  To be more clear, the students waltz exactly once, during a sort of ceremonial display of choreographed Austrianness, then take off their white gloves and move on to a less ritualistic, but more overtly amorous type of dancing in the smokey club-type area.  Teachers and other hangers-on continue to waltz to the live band, regardless of the style or time signature of the music being played.  Being, in age, not quite a teacher and not quite a student, I engaged in both types of activities.


Kicking the evening off with
a waltz

Dinner is not served.  Students appear to enjoy a liquid dinner instead.

That alcohol is served is perhaps the biggest difference, especially considering the extremely draconian methods American principals have come up with to keep alcohol out of proms (breathlyzers, diploma-related threats, armed chaperones, etc.).  As a result of alcohol being served Austrian balls last until 3 or 4 am, while their American counterparts tend to fizzle out by 11, when students choose to stop dancing with whatever brave teachers are out on the dance floor and go to either the school-sponsored, snack-fueled bowling alley afterparty or someplace more conducive to drinking and embarrassing themselves. 

The Mittersnachteinlage,
which my students would
most likely not want on my blog,
but hopefully they don't read it
and thus won't find out.



Another notably difference is that the graduating class gets together at midnight to perform a lipsyncing/dancing extravaganza known as the Mitternachtseinlage.  Everybody gets together to watch the show and the students dance with considerably less shame than would American eighteen year-olds put in a similar position.  The midnight medley at another ball I attended included, to my delight, a recreation of the climactic scene from Dirty Dancing, which Austrians have a total thing for.



The ball was hosted in a very classy hotel and convention center type place overlooking the Ybbs River.  It hosted not one, not two, but four floors of balling, two dance floors, tables for people too shy or old to dance, and a lounge area called "New York, New York" that had remarkably little to do with New York.  Despite the overwhelming smokiness of the venue, it was, overall, a totally prima evening. 

---

Also today is the beginning of another vacation for me, semester break, so I'm headed to Athens this afternoon to meet a friend from Brown.  I may also check out Croatia, Slovenia, and other Balkan locations, but more on that later.  In any case, I will probably not blog anything for about a week and a half.  Bis dann!



Very Austrian Things That I've Done So Far

Since arriving in September, I've...

-Waltzed to a live performance of the Baywatch Theme Song.  (The blatant lack of appropriate time signature does not deter Austrians from waltzing.)

Alpenhütte party atop nearby Prochenberg

-Enjoyed three-hour lunch breaks.

-Screamed at a stranger for failing to stand right, walk left on an U-Bahn escalator in Vienna.  I'm not normally this unfriendly, but I could not miss that train. 

-Hiked up a mountain, discovered an Alpenhütte (mountain hut) party, drank a beer, hiked back.
-Hiked a different mountain with Maggie, discovered a Gasthaus (guesthouse/inn), drank a beer, hiked back.  We also played a wooden glockenspiel on said mountain.
-Judged people for mentioning The Sound of Music.
-Demanded, with near immediate success, that a DJ play the #1 International Superhit Barbara Streisand.
-Bagged my own groceries every time.
-AND stayed in one cafe for a period of time so lengthy that I would have almost certainly been suspected of homelessness in the US.