Flying n Things and Flying Things

During and following the wonderful wedding festivities of Z and Linda's daughter Jacci, I was privileged to see lots of loving family and good friends, and on June 30 I flew home again to Wiener World. I especially like one thing about the night flights east over the Atlantic: seeing the sunrise accelerate as the plane approaches Europe, creating bands of orange in the sky as rich and varied as the sausages that sizzle on the roller-bar grill at the Schwedenplatz wurstel stand. When I arrived at the Wiener World airport at 8 a.m., the car service I regularly use provided me with a young Iranian driver, Sammy, a garrulous, gangly 28-year-old, whose closely shaved head shone as brightly as his smile. Despite the fatigue that pressed against my tired eyes and loopy brain, I tried gamely to respond to Sammy's wish to practice his rudimentary English with me, and he in turn agreed that I could practice my rudimentary German with him. And so we sped along by fits and starts, our sentences halting, speeding, slowing, and halting again in the same rhythm as the morning rush-hour traffic. He told me how he loved Americans and America, but not the viele Waffe (many guns), and I plied him with questions about life in Iran and what he thought of the mullahs (evil, he said); each of us repeated the other's phrases in correct English or in correct German and tentatively suggested vocabulary when the other's tongue stalled. Throughout the drive, Sammy had the car radio tuned to Radio Wien, which plays American popular music along with German and Italian songs. As we pulled up to my residence, an old American Gospel song came on: "Turn your radio on...come listen to the Master's radio...get in touch with God...." I was home in Wiener World...with all its cultural incongruities, where the menus offer nine kinds of potato, where an eccentrically modern, green glass office building sits across from the Gothic-Renaissance cathedral Stephensdom, where a staggering drunk pedestrian will wait patiently for the Walk/Don't Walk sign to change even when there is no traffic, where black socks with sandals manifest fashion sophistication in the warm days of July.... Glory be to God for dappled things.

Where Babies Come From

This past gray, rainy Sunday Linda and I drove into Burgenland, once part of Hungary, a low-lying agricultural region known for its asparagus, fruit, and--for Austria--fairly good red wine. Although the region lacks the drama of the alps of adjacent Styria province, its charm is in its gently rolling farm fields, many of them quilted at this time of year with huge-headed sunflowers. This drippy Sunday morning they turned their heads in vain to find the sun and settled instead on a light gray patch of sky. By noon we were in Rust, a village that has sat since the Middle Ages on the edge of the Neusiedlersee and, perhaps for centuries, has served as home to a large population of storks. Although I had briefly visited Rust during my recent trip to Sopron, I had not had the opportunity at that time to walk its streets and parks, and I was happy to be back and to be able to share the town with Linda.

The storks spend April to September in Rust. Their summer homes are large iron rings set on the house roofs that look out over the Neusiedler marshlands and shallow lake. In each ring sits a huge nest, perhaps 4 to 5 feet across, the twisted and interwoven twigs, dried reeds, and brown grasses forming an assemblage that looked like the crown of thorns on the crucifix in the town's medieval church. In many of the nests we could see fledglings poking their heads up while parents tended to their feeding and changed their diapers. On some roof lines adult storks stood vigil, dark silhouettes against the gray sky, as still and timeless as the stone geese and ducks that once decorated the yard of my long-deceased, still beloved Aunt Rose in Hope, Kansas. We strolled the streets as the sky dripped on us, admiring the 17th- and 18th-century homes and gardens and brilliant flower boxes, and made our way to the Elfenhof restaurant. I was dismayed not to find stork on the menu--Linda less so--and, while she opted for a salad, I still thought it best to eat something that once bore feathers, and so settled for chicken, boneless breasts wrapped in prosciutto and stuffed with sheep cheese...far more appetizing than what, I imagined, the baby storks were getting to eat.

After lunch we made our way to a park at the edge of the lake. Next to the water stood a man and two children fishing, and lurking in the adjacent grassy area--which offered much evidence of a recent stork poopfest--a lone stork, perhaps 4 feet tall, white with black wings and long orange legs with backward knees, kept a glassy eye on the fishing lines, pacing excitedly when the man reeled in a small, silvery fish. Seeing the interest of the stork, the man shooed it away, but the stork only looped back, as persistent as a fly at a picnic. We strolled back to the car, stopping to purchase a large plush stork for a souvenir of our visit.

The skies opened on the trip home in the afternoon and then lightened, and, like the sunflowers, we turned our heads to the West, and flew along the Autobahn to home, where our recent avian acquisition now dangles its long legs from a nest on our bookshelf.

Filler

-- At the Schottentur streetcar station, a white-haired, hump-backed woman pulled an aged, scruffy white terrier by its leash across the crowded, bustling stone floor. The dog's legs were stiffened, unmoving, and the woman dragged him some 50 feet over the slick stone surface like a pull toy on wheels. When they reached the escalator, she stooped and picked the dog up. Its tail then wagged rapidly, the old dog happy as a toddler who had wanted all along to be carried.

-- Whenever we drive through the center of Vienna on a stretch next to the Danube, we pass a sausage stand boldly announcing its specialization in Pferd (horse). Horse liver sausage, cheese mixed with ground horse, and several other equine blends along with just your basic horse are all listed on the menu board. Lippizaner, one presumes, brings a premium price.