shantih shantih shantih

Happy belated Easter!

So in my American Literature class we are reading The Wasteland, which begins "April is the cruelest month." NO WAY. I love April! (Aside from the little important detail of it being tax month...but I don't believe that that's what Eliot meant anyway.)

I just returned from a trip to Vienna and Salzburg with Lauren. Tra-la-la--What can I say? (In the words of our exuberant hostess, Monica Byers...)

The first day we departed from the Trnava train station directly after class, and got a connecting flight to Wein Sudbonhof through Bratislava. On board, we met a fellow American--this guy was studying medicine in Martin, Slovakia and took the weekend off to party in Vienna. He gave us a lot of advice about what sort of things to look for while we were in Vienna, and then two other American guys heard us talking and came over. I cannot describe how great it was to be able to communicate freely in American English. We arrived in Sudbonhof and Lauren's friend (an elderly patient of her father's who insisted we call her Monica) picked us up and took us to her apartment, where we unpacked and then took off for the metro. We spent the evening wandering around Stephensplatz...looking at all the mimes and street performers, window shopping, and picking up some bratwurst for a euro in a sidestreet. Bed in a real homey environment was indescribably delicious.

The next morning we both felt so rested! Monica fixed me a whole pot of real drip coffee, with fresh bread from the market and yogurt and granola for breakfast. We got ready, and then took the train back into Vienna again. There, we explored the Belvedere--I got to see a lot of Klimt (not my favorite, to be honest), Kokoshka, and some other famous (and by now over-familiar) painters' works. After that, we went to visit the Schonnbrun gardens, and got sidetracked into checking out the Easter markets. There were so many gorgeous things for sale, and delectable dishes--it was great to just sniff and ogle everything. The gardens were gorgeous, and offered a marvelous view of the city as the sun set.

The following day, Monica took us on a personal tour of some of the quieter, more scenic Austrian cities: Baden (the place that Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, and others all went to rest and rejuvenate when they were fed up with Vienna), Gumpensdorf (which had a lovely church), and Modlin (where she treated us to lunch on a panoramic hilltop outdoors). We returned to Vienna in time to catch Verdi's Simone Boccanegra at the Opera house--standing room tickets, which cost only two euros.

At seven am the next morning, Lauren and I were standing in Westbanhof waiting for the train that would take us to Salzburg for Easter, clutching our prepurchased tickets. I have never missed Sunday morning Easter service so much in my life. There seriously is no place to celebrate Easter in a non-Catholic fashion in Vienna...so on the train there Lauren and I read the Easter story and prayed for awhile. It was okay, but I was seriously homesick for Cornerstone, and coffee with the family afterward.

Arriving in Salzburg was a bit rocky at first, because we realized that we hadn't planned anything for once we actually arrived! But we scrounged up a tourist map, hopped on a bus to the center of the city, and found ourselves smack-dab in the middle of the Sound of Music Tour (and, I might add, a large number of elderly American couples). We traipsed through the gardens, picked a street, and started walking down it. It took us across the Danube, to the oldest part of the city, where we wandered through beautiful shopping streets and cafes, bobbing in and out of ancient cathedrals, and checking out stunning view after stunning view of the city as we climbed higher and higher in the foothills of the Alps. We took a trail that led to a castle, and took pictures of the view. Then we went back down to the Danube and just sat on the banks for about an hour, before heading back to the old city and finding a Franciscan cemetery. Just as we got there, the bells started tolling for Easter, and the air was full of them for about a half an hour! Transporting. Finally, we got dinner in an Italian restaurant and caught our train back to Vienna. Several train-switches and metro-rides and a ten-minute walk later, we were back at Monica's apartment--dead tired, and o so happy.

We left the next day, after visiting St. Stephen's cathedral (my favorite church so far!) and Starbucks.

It wasn't all spectacular, though. We were waiting in the Sudbonhof station for our train to come in, and the only open seats were across from these four men (probably late twenties), and next to a girl about our age. She had a half-empty bottle of Vodka in one hand, and she was so drunk. Her teeth were horrible, and her eyes were bloodshot, and she was wearing a very short skirt and boots and kept knocking these off her seat and muttering under her breath. The men started pointing and laughing at her, and she looked at them and started talking to them, asking if they could tell that she was "on drugs", saying she was waiting for "her man", that she had a little daughter but her mother was taking care of her because she was on drugs...all in broken English. Then she talked to us, asked us where we were from, and said she wanted to go to America because she heard they had great "disco-techs" there. She told us not to talk to the men because they "just want to fuck"...that they had propositioned her before we arrived.

I don't know--she was so kind and sweet and friendly to us, but so incredibly messed up! I was so upset that the minute we got on the train back to Bratislava I just completely lost it and started crying. After the "high" of being in Vienna and visiting all these marvelous places and experiencing Easter in a foreign country...to be reminded so graphically of the evil in this world... I just kept wondering if there was anything I should've said, any way I could've offered her hope, instead of just chatting sweetly and abstractly about "America." Just reliving the memory makes me sick to my stomach. In that sense, Eliot's poem makes more sense...I'm sure that girl would agree that April is the cruellest month. Without a risen Christ, this world is a horrible, horrible wasteland. Praise God that He is powerful enough to overcome death, and bring "shantih shantih shantih" (peace that passes all understanding...the last words of the Wasteland).

I think I want to teach English here once I graduate--and work with the Building in their ministry to the Roma here. I know I could get a job, and I really am beginning to wonder if God gave me this opportunity to point me in that direction. And there's such a need for people to work here and spread the Gospel! Slovakia is dark in so many ways, and most of the time I'm oblivious because I'm being a tourist, or sticking with my safe little group of Covenant friends. But that incident (along with a few others on a lesser scale) have made a really strong impression on me, and I'm wondering if God wants to use me here.

We return in two weeks, and every time I think about it, I get a sinking feeling because I LOVE IT HERE. I definitely want to come back someday.