Home and Identity

Week 12 - Easter Week

This week I actually had something pretty BIG to look forward to: a trip to Styria (a bordering state to Vienna) with a friend of mine, Manuela, who lives there. So after somehow enduring a rather hectic week of classes and finding a decently priced suitcase [the one from Spring Break has surely seen better days], I hopped on the train to Graz.
It's only a two-hour train ride, but what is a train ride without a delay? So we got there in two hours AND thirty minutes - but it didn't matter because a wonderful experience awaited me.
Manuela's grandparents live about 10 to 15 minutes outside of the city in a lovely townhouse. A soon as I was inside, the food began to flow from the kitchen, along with the gorgeous and very interesting "steierisch" German.
On Friday, Manuela and I practically hiked around Graz. All that yummy Easter bread that we had eaten that morning served us well. We saw numerous museums - including the architecturally-intriguing Kunsthaus - and exhibitions, intricate fassades, an outdoor crafts market, ate carmalized nuts, and climbed up the mountain to the Schlossberg. The weather was amazing, and I can already tell that Austria is going to be backing come June and July. When we got back back at around 21.oo that evening, more food awaited us - fried fish and Austrian potato salad and the lovely Easter bread! My German always improves as the day goes on - in the morning my English is lovely, but by 21.oo my English decided to go on vacation and left me understanding Steierisch and speaking Hochdeutsch. Now that's a cool German class!
Saturday, we woke up and repeated our ritual - only in a more relaxing fashion. Manuela's grandpa had taken the meat down to the church to receive the priest's Easter blessing, so by the time we stumbled downstairs it was ready. Easter eggs and other goodies were there too. They stuffed me to the point that I was thankful I could loosen my belt, and we started off our day satisfied. We peeked into a few stores that were open, got ice cream cones to bring back the "good ol' days," and of course, dabbled in Denglish about this and that and school and changing the world, so to speak. We had a BLAST! We mostly took the public transportion around the city because we were wiped out from the previous day's activities. I was sad to leave; their hospitality and generosity was unwavering, genuine, and wholesome.

During the course of the weekend, I heard quite a few references to "home," and being the Easter weekend that it was, to "family." These ideas really made me think, made me feel the weight of not having a "home" - whether that is a building or a place or a group, "home" retains its emotional nature. What is it like to work your whole life and then, after retirement, tend to your house and make crafts and hold gatherings? What kind of pride do you feel when someone says, "Wow you've got a great city!" or asks, "Can we have it at your place? That's a good-looking yard back there!"?

Moreover, what is it like to work your whole life, then lose everything and have nothing to show for the fruit of your labor, the work of your hands?

What does the pain and humiliation of living in this part of town or this area of the city and having people whisper, "Gosh, that place sure is bad; you couldn't pay me to live in that neighborhood" feel like?

What is it like to remember seeing bums sleeping under the bridge as a kid and thinking to yourself, "I'm gonna grow up and get a good job and maybe I can help some of those folks" - only to realize that life cut you short and you'll be making your bed under the same damned bridge tonight?

I can't imagine that - but I've seen it enough times with my own eyes, in my own neighborhood, and encourage you to think about it every now and then. About both the pride and the humiliation. Times like these, when our world is rapidly being molded and shaped anew, blaming soandso for this-and-that problem is not the answer, but neither is showing an indifference. We cannot underestimate the power of thinking about the world around us. Too often do we believe "thinking about it won't do any good; it just makes me depressed." We can think about something without changing it, but we can't change something without thinking about it. Why? Thinking about it and trying to figure out "What's all this fuss about?" produces the change within first, and that's the most passionate way to make something a reality.


[Photos: 1. Manuela & I at a fountain in Graz; 2. view of Graz from Schlossberg, with Kunsthaus dominating the sea of red roofs; 3. a compass, artist's exhibition - Wolfgang Buchner]