Fortune and Glory, Kid

Step two of the voyage was a three-day stop in Vienna to visit an old friend. Arriving on my third straight day of four hours’ broken sleep, I was beginning to wonder if I would survive to Turkey, much less all the way to Damascus.

It turns out I didn’t have much to worry about–I couldn’t have dreamed up  a better host. Carolyn first came to Austria as a student and has been living there off and on for years since. She’s one of those few people who become fluent in a language through hard work rather than privileged upbringing; since I was dazed, incommunicado, and skirting the edge of some form of exotic sleeping illness, she was the perfect guide for an Austrian New Year’s Eve.

We took an S-Bahn train across town. The Viennese S-Bahns are a confusing web designed for long-distance municipal travel; they all terminate outside the city limits, so unless you know the village twenty minutes outside of town that lines up with your intended destination, you’re lost. Our destination was literally across the entire city–it was a forty-five minute trip to her old student residence where some friends were hosting a party in the basement bar.

Beer and chocolate fondue is a healthy start to any evening. After we couldn’t eat any more, Carolyn’s Austrian boyfriend Stefan brought out a collection of round metal spoons and a handful of silver figurines. Even some of the Austrian guests were clueless, so he explained: on New Year’s Eve, it’s a tradition to pick a figure, place it in the spoon, and melt it down over a flame. Once it’s melted away, you throw the glistening liquid into a bowl of cold water. There’s a hiss and a spit and you’re left with a wild tangle of re-hardened metal.

And what’s all this about? By interpreting the shapes of the cooled silver, our futures for the next year could be divined.

“This is an Austrian tradition?” one of the party guests asked. An obscure one, apparently.

After the giggling during the instructions, a somber silence fell over the lot of us as we selected our symbols to transform and set to work. I watched a miniature bag of riches melt away over the blue flame of the paraffin wax we had used to heat the fondue pot. While I watched it collapse into a surprisingly small shimmering pool, I wondered why I had chosen to make a representation of money disappear. Apt, considering I’m both traveling and returning to student life. When the last traces were gone, I tossed it into the pool with the others’.

Among the twisted, glittering forms, we found seashells, pirates, sailing ships and fishhooks. I fished a swirling plume with a shiney smooth head from the water and held it up for the others to see. We started shouting suggestions.

“Fireworks?”

“Dolphins?”

“Looks like sperm to me,” said someone else. I got pale and we all prayed there would be nothing unexpected in 2011. Try as we might, we couldn’t find a similarly accurate but politically correct image in the steel and that was the fortune that stuck. Austrian fortunes are weird.

Half drunk and still fretting about strange futures, we hopped a streetcar to ride downtown. It was a long sweaty ride; I learned about Austrian liquor laws, the habits of Viennese postgraduate students, and that Austrians really, really like their firecrackers. When an overzealous group of kids tossed one of the infamous “widowmakers” under the tram, the driver took the time to stop and scream at them. Though I tried to look stern, I couldn’t help but share a wink with the little punks.

Later on, we stood waiting in front of the sandstone monolith of city hall to see the state fireworks display. The private show carpeting the city was going to be hard to beat, and even though we were tired, cold, sick, and half-drunk, none of us could resist catching the feeling of anticipation.

It was a show that couldn’t be beat. In the end, after the last rocket had gone up and faded away, Carolyn and Stefan waltzed through the crowd as the rest of us traded kisses on the cheek. I accepted the offer of a New Years waltz myself, and my new Austrian friend very politely overlooked my stepping on her toes.

As I watched Carolyn spin through the gangs of youths (and not-so-youngs), the flashes firecrackers tossing stilted shadows in every direction, I felt another tinfoil zing of jealously and anticipation. The feeling had become familiar over the last few days as I’d observed her connection with Austrian culture, language, and people. She had built a home for herself here–one that she was obviously proud of and made her happy in rich ways that Canada failed to. A firecracker snapped behind her feet and she shrieked and laughed.

Carolyn and I talked privately later about connections to foreign places. When you take the time to consider falling in love with a distant country the same questions come up wherever you are: what right do I have to be here? How can expect a life in a place were some people with more entitlement have less? How do I reconcile my privilege with the primitive feeling of “home” that I get from a place I have no right to?

But watching Carolyn, I realized that maybe we expect too much of ourselves. The work–the honest, terrifying, endless hard work–required to turn an unfamiliar culture and language into a familiar one is worth something. So is love and respect and admiration. To see a person learn a place well enough to integrate there isn’t an abomination, it’s a testament to the beauty of the place–and the respect that Carolyn received from the Austrians we met marked that.

And, as the interconnected world develops into a “global village,” we earn some degree of right to every place–just like the Lebanese guys back home that made my lunchtime shwarma had a right to Canada. I would never dream of questioning their acceptance in my country the way in which I question my own right to explore the world.

So maybe it’s not taking something that doesn’t belong. Maybe it’s sharing a feeling. As Carolyn and Stefan laughed and wandered down the cobblestone streets of a faded empire, hand in hand with a bottle of champagne, I began to truly trust in the task I’ve put myself to. You couldn’t be further from the dusty pious streets of Damascus, but the feeling–the love–was the same.