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Austria has not gone according to plan. I was supposed to backpack for four days; I was at it for one day (and not even the full day) before I decided my pack, loaded as it was with my laptop and everything I took from Tromsø for my two months’ of absence, was too heavy. Because it was too heavy. I thought about mailing things home, but even with a portion removed the pack was heavy and, also, there was no post office in the town I had walked to, and when I got the bus back to the town with a post office, it was Saturday and any such thing was closed. So.

This is not to say that Austria, not according to plan, went poorly. I rerouted my track to run on public transportation instead of foot transportation, and viewed from bus or train these green hills are still green; and with my luggage stowed in pensions or hotel rooms I can still freely walk. Which I am.

I am also watching dubbed American films on Austrian TV. Austrian TV is pretty universally auf Duetsch, which may be one explanation for this phenomenon. Austria itself is also pretty universally auf Duetsch, which explains the reawakening of my rusty German. Actually, rusty is the generous term for it—if I’m honest, my German is broken, as in not functional for communication, and in these small towns it’s pretty rare to find someone who’s comfortable in English. So we've been using my German, and I’ve been getting by; the dubbed movies are an exercise in German comprehension. Surprisingly, I can understand enough to follow the loose outline of the plot of a film, but only if that is a particularly transparent film. Right now the new version of King Kong is on, and dinosaurs are falling off cliffs (spoiler alert), which need no translation. The first Sex and the City movie was talkier but still easy enough to follow. There are a lot of simple sentences.

A lot of simple sentences describes my own German communication. Mostly it seems to be luck if someone hits upon a word I know—for some reason I remembered the verb sammeln means ‘to collect’ which proved useful when an old man I met at the top of a mountain was telling me about his collection of eighteen U.S. license plates. I didn’t know the word for license plates, but he called them ‘vehicle registrations’ in English. He and his friends also insisted I have a Jägermeister for my health, and because, according to them, it’s Austrian tradition to have one on summiting a mountain. I couldn’t tell you whether this is true, but I know that’s what they told me in our cobbled together communication. Like I said, getting by.

In King Kong, an ape is fighting a dinosaur. Also needs no translation.