Fast times in the Eastern Kingdom, Part 2

Late on Friday evening Andrea, a couple of her friends and I packed into a car and drove about an hour north to Wörgl for a “Weisswurscht is” concert. I didn’t have any idea what the music was going to be like beforehand, and there’s no way I could have ever imagined what it would be like. The bad is a self-described “hippie polka reggae” group. Yeah. It’s just about as strange as it sounds.

Words could never give a genre like that any justice; it was one of those uniquely bizarre forms of European music that you’d never see in the United States. And the crowd absolutely loved it—everybody was jumping back and forth and waving their arms and generally just having a great time. After a few Austrian beers I shrugged off the strangeness and got into the proverbial swing of things. Hopping and bouncing around to the strange, strange combination of syncopated reggae guitar and accordion was fun in itself, but the best part came at the end of the show. The band came back on for an encore, and the last song they performed was entitled “Unterhosen Party,” which means “underwear party” in English. At the beginning of the song everybody in the club, band included, took off their pants, flung them all over the place, and started to dance and spin around with even more energy than before. Not expecting this in the slightest, I had no idea what to make of it. It came off as such a normal, everyday thing, like holding up your lighter during a ballad or clapping for an encore. Since everybody was doing it I thought it was some Austrian custom that you take your pants off at the end of a really awesome concert as a sign of approval. Later it was explained to me that this only happens at Weiswurscht is concerts. I was a little disappointed.

Unterhosen Party.

The next day we all piled into the car and took off for Linz, which is three hours on the Autobahn from Innsbruck. Andrea and company had tried to explain the reason for the trip the previous night, but the music was loud and the accents were thick, so I was under the impression we were just going for a day trip. We loaded into the car at the ripe hour of 9:00 and headed out. Only when we actually arrived in Linz did I realize that we weren’t just sightseeing, but were actually attending a planning meeting for an organization called Uni Brennt (“University Burns,” sounds a bit dumb in English), which is an Austrian student protest group that Andrea is pretty heavily involved in. There were about 15 other people from all over the country who showed up to organize events and protests at their own universities. As if the Weisswurscht is concert wasn’t strange enough, the very next day I found myself sitting in at a far-left student protest meeting. The situations I find myself in sometimes…

Autobahning.

As I understand it, for the past ten years there have been some big problems in the Austrian university system—enormous class sizes, few professors, budget cuts, etc. The situation culminated last year with hundreds of students occupying Vienna University, which spread to the rest of the country, and now the organization is planning this year’s protests. On one hand I can agree with smaller lectures and bigger budgets for universities (someone told me that in some Austrian college lectures there can be 800+ students), but it was a little funny as a former American college student listening everyone passionately arguing about 400 Euro tuition fees and the introduction of admission exams into the system (currently the Austrian university system is totally open to anyone who wants to enroll). I didn’t have anything productive to add to the discussion, but it was a good vocab opportunity: Forderungen (demands), Aufnahmeprüfung (admission test), die Bewegung (the movement), Studiengebühr (tuition), etc.

That took up most of the day, so we drove back late and went to bed. The next day was just gorgeous, and I had wanted to head up and hike around in the mountains around Innsbruck ever since I arrived, so the next morning Markus and I headed up to the Nordkette mountain range to hike around a little. I’ve never been out in nature in Europe, but the feel of everything is very different from the USA. In Utah you can walk out your back door and be more or less totally in the wilderness within 15 minutes, but the mountains in Innsbruck were much more…cultivated is the word I’ll use. There was a really high-tech tram/gondola thing that went right to the uppermost peak of the Nordkette, at the halfway-station there’s a whole cluster of restaurants and houses, and at the end of the hike that Markus and I did there was a big restaurant with a huge paved pavilion full of picnic benches. It was actually kind of nice to sit down to a hot meal at the end of the hike, but I think I prefer the comparative rawness of the American wilderness. Nevertheless, it was really quite beautiful, and we got a great view of the city and the surrounding towns from the top.

Markus and me at the half-way station.

Innsbruck from above.

The day after the hike I packed up my things, said goodbye and headed back up to Hamburg. It was really fantastic visiting Markus and Andrea again, and just talking with a bunch of Austrians was actually really good for my language abilities. I’d compare German German to British English (very well pronounced and articulated) and Austrian German to American English (a little slurred and mashed together). Having to pay super close attention when talking with Austrians gave my ear a great workout, and I could understand the accent much better by the end of my trip. All in all a fantastic little mini-vacation; friends, adventure, new cities, good times.