How Did We Canadians Get So Puritanical?

Oma drives us to a lake for a swim. Vanessa and Bettina are pleasantly amazed to learn that children are allowed to swim naked, and they gladly take the opportunity. Prepubescent girls swim with just trunks, and some of the women even walk around topless. (We're still talking about lakes here).  And no one seems to care. There is no ogling and no finger pointing. Why can't North Americans learn to be so easygoing, especially in regard to things that matter so little?

Europeans view nakedness from Adam's and Eve's perspective (before the apple): there is nothing shameful or dirty about it. You'll often see parents taking young kids for a tree-pee at the playground. Uncircumcised boys, letting it fly as nature intended. Our own kids take full advantage, and no one looks twice. It is as refreshing as it is relieving.

Alcohol and tobacco are viewed in the same spirit. Beer on the bus?  No problem!  Mixed drinks at the public swimming pool? No problem! And if you forgot to bring your own, there's a cash bar, right between the change rooms and the ice cream stand, where you can order yours. In Europe, beverages are beverages. There's nothing special about alcohol -- it's just another ingredient you put in, like Yellow 5.

The lackadaisical attitude toward smoking is just incredible,

especially for a culture that is otherwise so progressive, well educated, and politically invested in science. In terms of tobacco, Europe is about where America was in the 1970's. Cigarettes are still advertised on billboards and on TV, and they're available in vending machines where any kid can spend his allowance. I think it's their fast-food.
You'll see the occasional McDonald's here, but the #1 retail outlet in Austria is by far Tabak Trafik, a convenience-store chain famous for its wall-to-wall selection of cigarette brands.

Berlin and the 2-Storey Grocery Store

We've been home for three whole days. Well, that's just too long! Time for another road trip. How about Berlin? It's only a day's train away. We've packed 7 hours' worth of kids' entertainment for the train (books, cards, Connect-4, math journal papers), which sounds like a lot unless your trip is 8 hours, or in our case 9, making the last hour of the trip a veritable whine fest. The kids were getting whiney, as well.

We perk up when we reach the Berlin Hauptbahnhof and see Oma waiting for us on the platform. The kids fall upon her like they hadn't seen her in 100 years, though it's only been about 100 hours.

Then it's midnight-grocery-shopping before the stores in Berlin, by law, must close for Sunday.

Ever seen a two-storey grocery store? This one has a stairless magnetic escalator that you and your shopping cart can ride between floors. These Germans have thought of everything.

When the Honeymoon Ends, the Real Sabbatical Begins

Therese is feeling dispirited and overwhelmed today by the administrative tree trunks that keep falling in our path. This time it's the utility company getting our address wrong, requiring yet another call, letter, or e-mail which will be ignored along with all the others Therese has written to banks, real estate agents, internet "providers", contractors (the last tenant left us a water-logged floor), and civil authorities since our arrival. Yesterday it was the Austrian police having no clue where in Salzburg I could get fingerprints taken, which the Canadian police need in order to run a criminal-record check on me, which the Austrian authorities need in order to complete my visa application. Round and round we go.

I'm in a funk today, too. Therese is at the university, and I can't think of anything to do with the kids. The play room -- spotless as of last night -- is a junk heap after just two waking hours. Cornelia has a cold. The dishes are piled high. The kids are still not dressed and generally look like orphans. Living abroad is not just a year-long romantic get-away. It is hard work at times, some days full of thrills, some days are like watching the lawn grow, just like at any other stage of life.

After a tedious morning of moping (and mopping), I finally get out of the house with Bettina and Vanessa on our way to Mt. Gaisberg. I have Bettina to thank for the idea; she saw my screen background and said, "That's Gaisberg! Daddy, can we go there today?" Why, yes we can! Two points for the four-year-old!

The blue sky and jolly moods of my two mini-companions infuse me with new energy. The view from the mountain peak never gets old; it's spectacular every time. The girls take in a gasp when a hang glider suddenly swooshes over us, not 30 feet over our heads.

Looking over the valley, Vanessa realizes out loud that the horizon is not a fixed place; it looks different to each person at each height. I just love these synaptic moments in my children. They make the vagaries of fatherhood all worth it, hair knots and all. And there are more moments to come on this trip! Waiting for our return-bus to push off, the kids are gagging on the smoke of the bus driver who's having one before taking the wheel. Why do people smoke, Daddy? Insert loving, fatherly explanation of nicotine, pleasure synapses and addiction, and the tragic cautionary tale of their grandfather who smoked at 17 already and whose life was cut short as a result. Is that why everyone was crying at the funeral, Daddy? How I love them both.

Former Home Towns Are Former For A Reason

The girls are bouncing like rubber balls with excitement. Opa waves us goodbye from the platform as our train pulls out of Salzburg Hbf (short for Hauptbahnhof = train station, but which the kids jokingly pronounce "hibbbff") towards Passau, Germany, where we lived for much of 2005. The ride through the bright, rolling countryside is smooth like only a German train can be. Seriously, you could perform eye surgery while riding on these trains.

This visit presents a challenge for Therese and me as parents, for there is no real agenda and no dominating attraction; we're here mostly to bring back the memory of having lived here. In practice this means a lot of dragging tired kids through crowded streets and pointing at things.

"Look, Cornelia, there's the statue you used to climb on as a toddler."
"That's really great, dad. Can we move into the shade?"

At the end of one such tour, we climb to the Oberhaus Castle above the Danube river which cuts the city in two. The climb is exhausting for all of us, but the hope of the Oberhaus Café's world-famous Linzertorte (a hazelnut-raspberry cake)

that I remember so fondly drives us on. Miraculously they still have it, and it's just as delicious as I remember. The kids gorge themselves on the raspberry jam filling and buttery crust, forgiving their parents in an instant for the climb we'd just put them through.

We recuperate over a delightful dinner at the home of old friends. While the adults prattle on about the Salzburger public theatre and its funding needs, the girls discover these heavy granite balls in the back yard; meant as ornamentation to go with the garden gnomes, the kids use the balls as grist mills to smash currant berries into pulp. Ostensibly this is to provide the birds with currant jam to spread onto their breakfast worms, but we know what's really involved: this is all about watching red things go splat.

On the train ride out the next day, Cornelia and I discuss the merits and demerits of public pay-toilets, a maddening and ubiquitous feature of Passau and much of Germany.

Passau's city centre has undergone beautiful renovations since we lived there, but by clinging to their 1950's-pay-toilet culture and by actually curtailing their bus service (perhaps as a demented, satirical way of paying for the new bus terminal), the city planners blew their chance to make their new city actually enjoyable as well as just, well, new. I am now even more pleased with our choice to live in Salzburg and have no need to see Passau again.

Escape is in order! To the topaz lakes, wild-flower meadows, and surround-sound mountains of Weißenbach where Therese's parents own a 1/3 share (complicated, story best saved for a fire-side chat over brandy) in a summer lake-side home. Weißenbach provides a refreshing taste of pure enjoyment after our tedious, more-dutiful-than-pleasurable visit in Passau.

We go for a dip in the bone-chilling lake, putting genuine smiles on everyone's faces for the first time in many hours.

Summer tobogganing

Many Austrian mountain parks have a summer toboggan slide, called Rodelbahn in German. The girls just love them! It's a sled on wheels. You control your speed with the stick. Pull back = brake hard, middle = brake just a little, forward = Newtonian free fall.

When we've spent all we can bear without grimacing (it's about $4 per run per person), we give the kids one last run. Vanessa braves her last one alone, a move I regret having allowed when the rest of us reach the bottom, count to 4, realize Vanessa is not among us, and scan up the mountain in vain for signs of a lone 6-year-old rider. Just as we're about to send the officials up the mountain to go search for her, here she comes around the bend. She's inching down the mountain at a speed of about 1 km per five weeks, with a traffic jam of peeved riders stacked up behind her. She'd had her stick in full-brake position the whole time. We haul her out, apologize in multiple languages to the riders behind her and offer to buy them another ticket, which they gracefully decline with empathetic smiles.

Smoke That Somewhere Else

Smoking has a bad rap in Canada and America, and I forgot what a progressive attitude that is until we moved to Austria. In North America, people smoke in the margins, almost apologetically, rightfully embarrassed at the error of their ways and promising themselves they'll quit one day. Now banned from bars, airports and rent cars, Canadian smokers are expected to nurse their habit out of doors, and even then far away from bystanders, especially children.

No such etiquette exists in Austria. People light up right in the bus shelter where the girls and I are sitting. The girls cough and whine, and the smoker takes absolutely no notice. If it bothers you, you're the one who's expected to move away.

I'd grumble less if the smoking rate in Austria were that of a civilized country, but these people are everywhere! I looked up the stats, and my guess was close: nearly half of Austrian adults smoke.

My annoyance level at any given man-made irritant is given by the general formula

The rudeness and frequency of Austrian smokers are both double what they are in Canada. Worse still, my tolerance for smoking is close to 0, which, as the divisor of the fraction, makes the final product enormous indeed.

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