it was my first day of high school. tanzenberg, an old monastery, sits on a hill about 15 kilometers from klagenfurt so basically you have to take the bus there. it was my grandfather’s duty to get me to the bus stop which is pretty close to where i work nowadays. when we arrived there wasn’t a single soul but only a deserted bus stop. i remember the look on my grandfather’s face, he was a always a person of respect to me. he looked lost and vincible, he had failed, it was him who had looked up the departure time in the wrong timetable. minutes later i was sitting in the comfortable backseat of a taxi that drove me to school that day. i arrived just as the other kids squeezed themselves out of the packed bus. yesterday while driving home a taxi stopped next to me at a red light a little boy not older than 10 or 11 on the backseat. i must have looked just like him and my grandfather - at least for me - became a hero that day.
i spent two hours today looking at different kitchens. i looked at panels, refrigerators, stoves, microwave-ovens, dishwashers, i was sitting there choosing colors, surfaces. i took me really 1 1/2 hours to decide on everything considering the budget astrid and i have for our kitchen. i took me a good 15 minutes to realize what i was doing there. i was literally choosing something that will stay with me for some time to come. we are buying this apartment, because we do believe in the beauty of our dreams. yes, sometimes it is scary - to think of a time of 25 years. i am 27 now, so multiply my life by the factor of two. am i really ready to commit myself like this? right now, i do believe i am. whatever i did - Sweden, Finland, Belgium - there was always a risk, something i could not calculate. sometimes it was love, then it was life, then it was money. but then there almost always was a big picture i considered and my judgment hardly ever proved me wrong. life has led me to some of the most real and unreal places i could imagine but this time i am bit scared, i openly admit it. but it’s a good feeling of being scared.
i’m right back to normal working life, getting there around 11 and leaving at 8. go through some stories, try to get pictures from a German agency who apparently only consists of one person. talking to michael hennessey about his cause (ironmanforkids.com). we ended up at the sunset bar with a friend of mine, talking about the new appartment we’re buying with astrid, what it means to us. he’s got two amazing little girls, he’s happy. and i guess i am slowly starting to understand that our view of happiness constantly changes. there’s no way to pursue happiness by setting out a path and then just trying to follow it. the dog? it’s waiting for me back home in our bed helping me to dream.
me: so what have you been doing lately?
you: studying, going out - yesterday i had barbecue with my friends.
me: wow, why didn’t you call, i would have loved to be there.
you: stefan, it was just people my age.
me: what ?!?
you: you’re nearly 30, you’re too old.
me: …
i sometimes wonder why i am so easy to hurt. the past four or five weeks at work were hard and still i felt good about what we did, because we were a great group working together, spirit and weird songs on youtube included. but that was in graz. not that i feel bad back here in klagenfurt. it’s just a different general feeling - like i have to stand on guard all the time. there’s those little things that irritate me: people (actually one person) not even saying hello when i drop by the office, pretending to not notice i am there. i know you can’t always choose on whom you work with. but neither can i ignore it. funny enough i am good at managing complex scenarios, private and professional. but if someone just behaves boldly unfriendly or stupid towards me, it simply blows me off my feet. darn, i would be a bad interrogator.
amazingly enough this group of around 20 people has worked nearly four weeks without doing major harm to one another. we laughed, cried, sang, ate, slept, played, joked and fought throughout the euro 2008. the late nights and long days took its toll and still it’s been a truly unique experience. oh and don’t forget: the print run starts at 10.30 pm today.
on buying an apartment, old people do that. they buy apartments to settle, grow even older, see their children being born, raised, leave and come back with grandchildren. we decided to buy an apartment in klagenfurt. a huge step. our very own place. ties that bind. for now i trust in my inner voice. the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
the news came in late, a local football player had committed suicide without an obvious reason. i worked late and we started shifting things around at the newspaper making room for the sad story. it kicked in and like robots we took the story through its paces: police, biography. we made it just in time. only after things were done, i realized that i only met him some days ago. a little boy on his lap he was sitting in a café where astrid and i had breakfast. he looked happy.
sweden-greece. salzburg. 30.100 people. national anthems. no catcalls. first “du gamla, du fria” then “hymn to liberty”, silence, applause. shivers down the spine, the swedish colleague next to me tears in her eyes. beauty. peace.
the euro has arrived at klagenfurt. germany and poland kicked off yesterday putting an end to months of preparations in and around klagenfurt. so far it has been a peaceful come-together of people simply wanting to enjoy football. as always there are a few exceptions. and sometimes they seem to ruin it for everyone around them. 140 hooligans were arrested yesterday after they started marching through the old town of klagenfurt singing “polish people should wear a yellow star” referring to nazi germany’s rule of jewish people having to wear a yellow star on their clothes identifying them. it makes me sick down to the stomach and though police surrounded and arrested each and all of them there’s a bad taste to be left back. it even goes as far as me doubting sometimes the world is as good sincere and beautiful as i still believe it is. in the movie matrix, one of characters states something i was boldly reminded when i heard about what happened downtown:
I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we are the cure.
Silence, why won’t you listen
Maybe it’s just me
but sometimes it’s impossible to breathe
A violent whisper
Maybe this time it won’t heal
Maybe this time it will bleed until I’m free
the passion never dies. and as in hockey (or any other sports for that matter) once you have reached your goal, the road there suddenly seems like the easiest one you have ever walked.
sometimes the hardest things is to realize that you don’t belong to something anymore. or that you never did. and those things you really feel you belong to are thousands of miles away.
Und wird manchmal das Herz zu schwer
Und wird ihr Atem ruhig und leer
Dann denkt sie sich zu ihm.
today we all got an email from our editor-in-chief. i love it so much, i’ll keep it in my inbox.
In accordance to what I answered to one of our readers, I ask all of you who are responsible for putting the weather forecast on page one to make sure it’s written in a neutral way. Rain doesn’t always mean the end of the world (if however it has rained for ten straight days you may choose the underlying tone accordingly). Otherwise please remember that nature and loads of gardeners can almost always make good use of rain. Your may let got of neutrality if we are talking about a hurricane.
I love our boss not only for his great sense of humor, but also for the small little things he does to make (at least) me feel that sometimes it’s the little things that count.
i was standing down at the waterfront. one of our friends had recently opened a new bar there. it stretches out in the lake and if you stand really close at the edge, it feels like the lake is all around you. it’s the place i have always come to when i was home and nowhere does carinthia or austria feel more like home to me.
to me being a journalist is more a calling than a job. i never wanted to become one, but once i started i instantly felt it was the right thnig to do, to believe in. i suppose that’s why the setbacks hurt even more. especially if you figure at some point that the energy and the passion you have been putting into things, the days off that you still spend at work because things have to get done - they get you into nothing but trouble. they get you half-whispered comments behind your back of doing too much, wanting too much. do i want too much? i don’t think so, i just want to work on something i am happy with.
The songs are in your eyes
I see them when you smile
I’ve had enough of romantic love
I’d give it up, yeah, I’d give it up
For a miracle, a miracle drug, a miracle drug
God I need your help tonight
Sometimes I wonder about those small things I consider being problems in my life. Being so insignificant and small as David Gray would put it. Not always does it take a miracle drug.
sometimes it’s all about pushing things through, about making decisions, about falling and rising again. or as winston churchill put it: we shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. i last saw it on a poster in a window in canterbury, kent. his message never lost its power.
never have the nations of the world had so much to lose or so much to gain. together we shall save our planet, or together we shall perish in its flames. save it we can - and save it we must - and then shall we earn the eternal thanks of mankind and, as peacemakers, the eternal blessing of God
miteinander werden wir unsere erde retten oder miteinander in den flammen ihres brandes umkommen. aber retten können und retten müssen wir sie und damit werden wir uns den ewigen dank der menschheit verdienen und als friedensstifter den ewigen segen gottes.
it’s been nearly seven years since i first moved out from home. off to sweden i went and after a short break in between onwards to finland. i just looked up what i wrote about leaving the place i called home for 20 years, it was more a question than an answer: would you trade your memories for freedom? mom asked me if i wanted to move back to the yellow house together with atsrid. she would take an apartment on her own as she feels the house is too big for her. and it all came back. the memories, the stories. my great-grandfather had bought and re-built it over 100 years ago. my family was by no means rich by then, but we owned some big pieces of land. he gambled most of it away. so when his father died my grandfather took over, the first one in our family to graduate from high school. he was so talented and working towards a career in academics when the war came. high school would be the last school he went to because when he returned from four years as a prisoner of war in russia there was a family to take care of. but there was also the big yellow house, which miraculously had survived the war and the bombs. as austria rose from the rubble, so did the house which gained a floor to accomodate an even bigger family: mom, her sister and her brother - my aunt and my uncle. including great-grandmother and another relative there was seven of them. and even if times were sometimes hard, my mom had a happy childhood. years later there was grandfather, mom and i. my aunt and uncle left for vienna to become a doctor and a diplomat respectively. the first memories i have of this planet are all about the yellow house, about grandfather, our garden and the summer days when we would take the bike and ride it only a couple of hundred meters down to the horse racetrack. i would get my ice cream and call it quite a day. i would walk to school and walk home because there was always someone around the big yellow house and it felt like the best place in the world - home. i could bring whomever i wanted because i was trusted. and even if grandfather was strict sometimes (oh yes, there were fights!) i probably had the happiest childhood i could imagine - being the spoiled single child i was. and now a circle closes. i am back in klagenfurt, sitting in apartment i like. i like it but its white walls bare no memories, the could barely tell you any stories. the walls back in the big yellow house could, for hours or even days. i do understand astrid. i do understand what her motives are for not wanting to move back there. but things are not always easy, because what for her is just some house, some pile of bricks in probably not the greatest neighborhood to me is home and always will be. and i could never imagine anybody else than myself, my children or grandchildren to make up for the stories its walls will go on to tell for the years to come.
another case of doping in austria, one more round of endless discussions. and it made me think of paavo nurmi. my grandfather told me about him when i was a kid. i didn’t know where he was from or what he actually had done, but my grandfather told me he was someone he looked up to. it must have been more than ten years later when i finally got to meet paavo nurmi. his statue stood and stands up to this day in front of the school of physical education at the university of jyväskylä. between 1920 and 1928 he won nine olympic gold medals, broke world records and won the 1500 and 5000 meter races in the 1924 paris olympics. a feat that took 80 years to be re-done in the 2004 athens olympics. nurmi died nearly blind and partly paralyzed in finland in 1973. he died a broken man who thought that he “didn’t leave anything of value behind”. what however he did leave behind is the memories that in some time long gone champions were made out of will, dedication and love for their sports.
i’m slowly starting to get sick of the International Olympic Comittee. while the olympics games still claim to be a peaceful come-together of nations it has long gone astray from its original cause. so it seems like bitter irony when IOC-spokesperson Kevan Gosper condemns the protesters all over the world and especially those who stepped in the way of the olympic flame yesterday for being “full of hate” and asking them to “give way to the peaceful olympic flame”. mr. gosper seems to be - as the rest of the IOC - ignoring the fact that giving the Olympics to China inevitably would draw those protests on every which level. it’s a sad story that the olympic movement, being the force that it is today even business-wise, hides behind empty words or - even more likely - looks the other way. i do hope, deep inside, that us, the world, the people on the streets, writers and journalists, every single voice that raises, will force the IOC to turn its head back around. I do belive it was a good idea to give the Olympics to China. I just doubt mine are the same reasons than the IOC’s but I have this feeling down inside, that this time they won’t get away with it.
whenever i needed comfort and solace as a kid, it would be waiting only a flight of stairs away. i’d sneak into my granddad’s room and within a couple of minutes i would sip away on a mug of hot ovomaltine sitting in one of his chairs. grandad died 12 years ago and the only ovomaltine i get today is from a coffee-dispenser down in the hall. it rattles and hums but it doesn’t give comfort and advice to a 27-year-old that doesn’t know what to do with his life.
the call came in when the day, another sunday at work, slowly started leaning towards its end. it was one of those calls you neither expect not wait for to happen. it was a colleague of mine, asking for advice. very specific advice, advice on one of my dreams: working or attending colleage or at least a summer school in the US (god, astrid and o.s. know it). he asked me to review a letter of motivation he drafted. a letter of motivation that with the consent of our newspaper will most likely get him to do a 2-month-trip to the US courtesy of the austrian academy for journalism. now that astrid and me spent three weeks in the in the states and i have been mostly talking of making this one dream come true one day - it felt like life took a cruel hit-and-run on me. don’t get me wrong, it was only a second but that small second i saw somebody else make this one - my - dream come true. i will gladly help him. not only because i respect him as a person and friend but because i do believe that he truly has earned his chance to be nominated by our newspaper. did it sadden me? yes, a little. but i also believe that one day god will help me make my dream, or at least what i will regard then as my dream, come true. why? for one simple reason: dreams prevail.
it’s those little moments when you doubt if the path you have walked so far is the one you want to walk up to its very end. and then there’s moments that re-assure you that will it might take some detours, some one -ways and dead ends to ultimately understand that while the path is the right one, it doesn’t come easy. ted (via axel, sofastar) seems to be the place for people who doubt but still believe. i never planned to become a journalist, it happened to me. and now i know it was no coincidence, even if i might appear childish still thinking i can make the world a better place. at least i can try. like james nachtwey.
if i’d ever have the choice the newspaper i’d love to work for would be the new york times. not for the name, the reputation or its history but because it has resisted - please call upon on me if i am wrong - giving up common sense and sensibility. not only did i enjoy the scoop on new york governor eliot spitzer who after all had to step down from office after the times reported spitzer as the well-pazing consumer of a prostitution ring but also the way reporting was done. it was facts and opinions with a sharp line drawn between them. there was class, there was style and there was after all a subtle but noticable undertone that, while spitzer’s decision to leave office was the only to be taken at that time, failing is inherent to human beings as well as is getting up. that there were two spelling mistakes at one point and a sentence apparantly missing its second part only added up to my impression - that we all fail in small and large things at some points in our life. it’s that bit of human touch.
we walked for half an hour and even though if i knew where we were map-wise, we were lost. it was classic, we got off the ship at nassau and just tried to get away from the thousands of other tourists. it’s something i’ve always stuck to: get away from the crowds, the groups - go single, go by yourself, try to see. we walked, well off the beaten paths: houses started to get more and more shabby, backstreets darker, roads grimmer. to quote form wikitravel: the “Over-the-Hill” area south of downtown is the poorest part of Nassau, and tourists might want to be wary. It is, however, much nicer than “slums” in the Third World, and indeed, parts of the United States. And we ended up in front of the church were two old ladies were about to attend service. We asked them for a safe way out, our white faces sticking out in Nassau like a sore thumb. They didn’t show us the way out, they didn’t contemplate - they acted or better the nice young gentleman who overheard our conversation acted. He put us in his car, gave us a tourist tour of Nassau, drove us to a shopping mall were we had coffee and a more great and enlightening conversation with astrid and him. After that he even showed us were would take the bus. I didn’t know how to express my gratitude for the way her acted, I just know that he ressured me believing that people by far and great are good. It was all topped-off by a more than cool bus driver who played rasta-music at full force on the way back dropping us off right in front of our ship. Some angels don’t need wings.
i knew it was there. i was in the words of the cab driver, it was in the smile and chat with the waitress, it was there in the love of the russian immigrant and it was in the gentle optimism of the jewish ex-army-girl. i took me some time to warm up to it again, but this is my america. all those people i met today somehow mastered their life up to the point of ending up in key west. will they stay to last or go to pursue new dreams - i don’t know. put my america is compromised of all these characters, faces and different backgrounds. there was the cab driver who had seen pink floyd 23 times in his life. “money” was on the radio and i mentioned it and he just started talking, how he had followed them from city to city “seein’ em four time in five days until i ran out of money” - the times they might be a-changin’ but this day, the ride home and knowing that there is dreams to pursue for all of us made me feel comfortably numb. cheers roger.
america was always a dream to me. i can’t really tell why but most likely - and as for so many people who came - it felt like the promised land, where everything was possible, where you could achieve if you only try hard enough. now being 27, it’s my fourth time here (having seen most of the east coast, ohio, new orleans and the little places in between) - i wanted to show astrid why i though i should try my luck here one day. i wanted to show her the differences, the little moments of life here - and for now ended up seeing a different america, a somehow disappointing america. it might come with age or profession, but some of the experiences we have made up until now just do not fit with my picture of this country. ok, down here in florida, people are probably sick of the tourists, theme parks and all the stuff that comes with it. but where is the genuine friendliness about americans, not the fake smiles that you see everywhere? i went down to the starbucks that is located in the hotel lobby - i ordered and received “enjoy your coffee and have a lovely day” the waitress said, when i took off. but the color of her voice - as caspar would say in peter hoegs “the quiet girl” - the color of her voice spoke differently. it’s something someone told her to say to enrich the customer experience. it’s something she has to say a million times a day, because the staff training manual tells her to. it might have been 9/11 but this country has changed, changed for the worse. i found hope though in the most unlikely place. one of the staffers who showed us our seats in the panther’s hockey game - well he must have been well above 70, but his smile, his voice spoke different. born to imigrants in brooklyn he had worked his way up from poor kid to a senior residence in florida. he was proud of what he had accomplished and assured that “everyone could make it” - it migh be an illusion or a dream all long gone but i’d rather believe in an old man’s words then in the starbucks training manual.
Today we buried my Nan. She was an amazing woman and I doubt that these words can do her justice. She could cook anything and make it taste good, sew anything and make it look good and say anything and make it sound good. She was an optimist and refused to believe that anything was impossible. She was old in age, but I think she was one of the most open minded women of her generation. Most of all, she loved her family unconditionally. We saw that love, we felt that love and did our best to return that love, as unconditionally as it came. To me, she was the best Nan in the world.
Today marks an historic day in Australia. You can’t turn back the clock and right past wrongs, but when you do something wrong, or know that a wrong has been done, you can say sorry. See the full text of Kevin Rudd’s speech below:
“Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history. We reflect on their past mistreatment.
We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations – this blemished chapter in our nation’s history. The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.
We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians. We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country. For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.
To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry. And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.
We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation. For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.
We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians. A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again. A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.
A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed. A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility. A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.”
i looked up to the stands. few people come and see us. i had given up on seeing her there but there she was by herself in the cold. i don’t know when we will have kids on our own and what and how they will grow up to be. what i do know however is that i will try to give them the same feeling as astrid gave me yesterday, holding out in the cold at a meaningless hockey game. to me it meant the world.
