And I enjoy moonlit walks....

You know, for as tired as I get of worrying about the train schedules between Kuchl and Salzburg, living in Kuchl really has its benefits. I mean, how many people do you know who can say they've lived in an Austrian farm willage? I'm going to guess not too many. But the best part, the absolute cake-taker, if cake-taker were a term, is the view of the mountains from Kuchl in the moonlight. Since moonlight seems to be rare here, and since there's not much in Kuchl to entice people to spend their evenings here, I haven't gotten to share that view with anyone. Now, I know I'm no poet and no great literary mind, but I thought I'd take a crack at describing it and share what I could.


A picture, especially one taken with an inadequate night setting, cannot do this scene justice. I'm just providing it as a base to start from. Part of the wonderment surely comes from the realization that I have almost nightly that this is in fact the background against which I am currently living my life. Before this, my background had always been suburbia, full of driveways, short little elms, and never too far from a Target or anything you needed. And now it's this, Alps and castles, with the appropriate cows and mountainside churches mixed in. But at night, in the moonlight, it's not just a background. It's all there is. It's completely enveloping. Somehow the black on black, gray on gray, of mountain after mountain and the slight illumination of those peaks tall enough to be capped with snow is at the same time incredibly overwhelming, deafening, and yet completely silent and peaceful. It's a cold kind of feeling that it creates, but not cold in a negative sense, not at all lonely, though it's abundantly clear you are, in fact, alone. No, it's more the good kind of cold that bed sheets sometimes have when you first crawl in. It's a cold that you want to feel, I guess because warmth is sometimes suffocating. There's also some protection factor there that I haven't quite firgured out, because based on location, the thing the mountains would be protecting me from is Germany. I've never really felt a need to fear the Germans. To be honest, I'm a little more wary of the Austrians. Ha. The thing about all this, though, is that it's no good without the moonlight. I mean, sure, the Alps are always the Alps, but even mountains can get old. Without the illumination at night, they sink back into the sky making no statement, they offer no reassurance. In the daytime, in the sun, they're still there, sure, but they're almost exhibitionists then. There's nothing subtle about it. But in the moonlight, it's that quiet reminder of strength that most of us probably need at the end of the day. I know it's exactly what I need.

Is this just schmalz? Maybe. I recognize the cheese factor here. But head to Kuchl to really see it at night, in the moonlight, and I think I won't be the only convert to natural theology then.

Obama wins as Austria watches

Since my absentee ballot never came in the mail, I sadly couldn't actually be a part of history being made on November 4th. But I thought the next best thing would be to watch it being made. The other American TAs and I finally settled on a plan to camp out all night in the TV room of the dorm one of us lives in. We figured we'd either celebrate or console each other depending on the result, but either way, we should be together. Polls on the East Coast started closing at 1am Austrian time, so we woke up from our 2ish hour nap to break out the American treats and all the patriotism we could muster. See, we even broke out the s'mores to get us in the American mood.


By about 2:15, everyone had shown up. I'm impressed with the Brit we've all adopted as our own. She showed up, too. We'll have her speaking and acting just like an American before the year is out. She eats s'mores and peanutbutter on apples now. It's a good start.


I'm glad I got the phone plan that's just 10 cents/minute to call the US, because it meant I got to briefly connect with a friend who was at the Obama Rally in Grant Park. However, that was long before we knew what the results were. It was around 5 am Austrian time when they closed the polls on the West Coast and announced that Obama was (projected to be) the president elect. AND THE CROWD WENT WILD! That's when I was really jealous of my friend in Grant Park. Ugh, all I could get was a picture of Grant Park on the television. So jealous!


Break out the beer, break out the champagne! We toasted the next American president in the good ol' Austrian way.
We may not have been in Grant Park, but satisfaction and relief felt by the good group of Obama fans we had among us was pleasing enough. I'm pretty sure I saw tears in a couple people's eyes.