Reunited and It Feels So Good

Entry #17.  January 23, 2013, 10:12 pm.  Bedroom, Apartment, District 5, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.  Another two months slip by, uncontrollably but now expectedly.  Packed with travels, revelries, stories and Swiss chocolate, the recent weeks have been nothing less than exciting.  I am bursting at the seams to write about my family’s European Christmas Vacation (film rights still available), but I can’t neglect an entire month and a half of living in Vietnam.  I am left reeling back the Rolodex of memories, finding the ones that are most worthy of the screen.

In my last post, I focused on our new apartment.  After our first week of soaking into the place and swimming in all its perks (all pool puns to remind you that we do literally soak and swim), we threw a raging, hyped pool party that became the talk of the English teachers’ inner circles of districts 1, 3, and 5 of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.  Nearly 50 people came and graced our neighbors with loud conversations and cannonballs.  It was so fun that someone got hurt.  A few, actually.  One roommate fell down the stairs twice, someone fell in the pool and out of it, another threatened to jump off the awning into the deep end, and I found at least one band-aid in the pool.  But after the last roisterers left at sunrise, I could tell myself that at least it was just a band-aid.  It was a great time and appeased my nostalgia for college-type parties, and as far as we know, no complaints were filed from the other 23 floors.

This same teacher that is publicizing his debaucheries also wants to note a recent success.  The English school I work for, VUS, celebrates Teachers’ Day every November.  At a large banquet hall, the twelve school campuses come together to drink and eat their way through speeches, award presentations, painful emcee jokes, and dance performances.  Note: Positively correlated to the length of the speeches was the drunkenness of the teachers.  By the awards time, though, I was happy to be called on stage to win one of the ‘Teacher of the Year’ awards.  I was excited because I knew I had greatly improved as a teacher, and my classroom games are ever evolving.  Along with many other winners from different campuses, we were given a plaque, an invitation to an away trip to the beach, and a fake rose.  And a blown up picture of my face popped onto the screen for a few seconds, to the onlookers’ delight.

Nothing else accelerated time like the wait for my anticipated trip to Europe to meet my family, though.  Because my brother, Jeremy, now lives in Zurich, Switzerland with my sister-in-law, my parents decided that we should all meet up in wintry Europe for the holidays.  Tropical Christmas in Saigon didn’t sell as well as the Alpine option, but I was more than content to meet my family across the Pond (although that phrase has no meaning coming from Asia).  We met at the luggage carousels in the Vienna airport a few days before Christmas.  As it had been the longest time I had ever gone without seeing my family, I could not wait to see them.  This reunion could have been in any city in the world, but the place of it would still be completely overshadowed by the excitement I had to see my parents, brother, and sisters for the first time in 10 months.  After the sappy rejoining of the clan of Martin, we began our first family adventure through Europe, and my first time on the continent in winter. 

The drive-through version: I loved every snow-peaked mountain, soaring steeple, piquant bakery, and even all the obviously posed family pictures.  The longer version: You can download as a .pdf file from link below.  Kidding, I’ll restrain my phalanges and keep it short...ish. 

We begin in Vienna, Austria.  This city was my recommendation, as I’d imagined it to be the exemplar of old World Christmas charm.  The city did not fail.  It began to snow on our cab ride from the airport, and the quaint opulence of Vienna looked even more stunning in white.  We immediately fell in love with the traditional Viennese coffee houses: My mom on a quest to find the perfect hot chocolate, my brother to find the most efficient caffeine product, my sister to find the most fashionable way to drink whipped cream, my father to find Splenda sweetener, Laura to find a way to practice her German, and I to find the best piece of Sacher Torte.  Beyond the coffee houses were beautiful Christmas markets, which were always piping with hot gluhwein, the effective warmer of choice.  The most beautiful Weihnachtsmarkt existed in the front courtyard of Schoenbrunn Palace, Marie Antoinette’s birthplace.  We saw Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker at the Vienna State Opera House, which boasts of itself.  After an orchestral Christmas Eve concert and singing the Austrian classic, “Silent Night” at Midnight Mass in St. Stephen’s Cathedral, we were all pleasantly satiated with Vienna’s generous dose of Christmas panache.

On Christmas day we flew to Jeremy and Laura’s leg of the trip- Innsbruck, Austria.  I can see why the old Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, decided to pimp out a famous balcony and set up base camp here.  Massive Austrian Alps make the 360° backdrop for multi-colored Baroque buildings.  Lauremy chose to ski (or to fine-tune their yodeling) while the rest settled for some altitude drinking on the mountain.  But perhaps the most magical moment of the trip happened when we stumbled into the city center on Christmas night.  On three separate balconies (including the famed Golden Roof balcony) surrounding the central, massive Christmas tree were three string quartets, all harmonizing or playing verses of traditional carols.  With a nearby gluhwein stand, I think we were all in Christmas bliss.

The next stop of the vacation was pretty bland and uneventful, with little history and not much to see.  Paris was just, eh.  …said no one, ever.  Quite possibly my favorite city in the world, again I loved experiencing a European city in the winter, with chilly winds, mysterious fog, and bright afternoons.  We stayed in an apartment on the coveted Île Saint-Louis, along with my aunt and cousin, who both joined us in Paris.  Our days included the Louvre, Versailles, more gluhwein, bistros, exploring, red wine, black coffee, and many trips to the bakeries.  My mom was a regular at the nearest bakery, going three separate times one morning because she kept “forgetting” things.  Not that I’m complaining.  I also tried to utilize French as much as possible, as I made a cheat sheet of useful phrases and greetings.  I would spend the whole cab ride trying to memorize the correct way to order tap water or to see the menu, but, typically, my mom would spit out some overly assertive English immediately upon sitting down.  This allowed me to use the phrase je suis désolé (I’m sorry) quite frequently.  All was well, though, and we were all proclaiming bonjour and au revoir in due time.

The Martin itinerary led us next to Strasbourg, France and finally to Zurich, Switzerland.  Strasbourg has always appealed to me, because it sits in the contentious Alsace-Lorraine region in eastern France, on the border with Germany.   Its tumultuous history of continuous annexation by Germany and then France, and then Germany again and back to France, has providentially left a town with incredible architecture, delicious food, and a hybrid Franco-Germanic culture.  Undoubtedly it was a worthy two-night stay, but quickly after tootling around the city we found ourselves on a train destined for our last stop, Zurich.  The most recent stomping ground of my brother Jeremy and his wife Laura, Zurich was highly anticipated because we all wanted to see their new home.  How amusing it is that my family now spans three continents, nearly equidistant away from each other.  Zurich therefore had a sense of comfort because Jeremy and Laura could host our reunion, and we could all have dinner in their apartment, see their daily routes, and experience their favorite spots of the city.  Firstly, though, in Switzerland I was able to remedy a rather deep craving that has plagued my appetite since I moved to Asia-- we're talking cheese. I wanted nothing less than to bathe in cheese, and had the fondue pot been wider, it would have happened.  Two lost lovers came back together in a passionate night of palatable bliss.  Beyond my intimate dinner with cheese, Zurich offered a beautiful end to an epic holiday in Europe.  On one of our final nights together, we paid tribute to my end of the world and ate at a Vietnamese restaurant ironically near to my brother’s apartment.  I was thrilled to show my kinsmen how to properly eat noodle soups with chopsticks and cut meat with spoons.  Upon entering the restaurant, I was inclined to take charge and order for everyone.  The young Vietnamese girl who worked the register was appreciatively surprised when I choked out some Vietnamese, peppered with tolerable German.  But after having slugged down a few tall beers beforehand with my brother and father, the exchange between the cashier and I was more of a comical slur of hybrid words.  I am conversational in German, at best, yet barely passable in Swiss German, and remarkably unremarkable (after 11 months in Vietnam) in Vietnamese.  However with a belly and mind full of good beer, I am perfectly fluent in all three.  In the end, I ordered the table some damn good food, including phở, bún chả, and Vietnamese curry.  The meal was completed with the (in)famous Saigon Red beer, which I was shocked the restaurant had.  Until they come to visit, my family was able to have a literal taste of Vietnam, and I was overjoyed to finally be at the same table.

Back to ‘Nam I went, unbearably sad to leave the family and angered at time for being so unruly again.  But I had the comfort of continuing my journey in Vietnam, and I was revitalized to maximize every moment of it.  However, I really shouldn’t grumble… I am going to Bali next week for the Vietnamese New Year, as I have 10 days off, and I’ll have another pinnacle world site to discover.  I’m learning that the world is both large and small, with time propelling it, and that now is when I should see as much of it as I can.