Doctor visit gone wrong April 22, 2008

OK so I know I’ve taken a little hiatus from writing lately, my apologies. My good friend Amy came to visit for a week so we went traveling through Italy, Germany, and Austria…and not to mention I’ve been sick for three weeks with an evil cold/cough that doesn’t seem to want to evacuate my body. So during one of my past hacking fits Frank decided that he couldn’t stand it any longer and that he’s bringing me to a doctor. I don’t have insurance here or anything, but Frank does, so we think maybe someone will sympathize and give us a break.

So we look up a doctor for general medicine online and find there is one just in town that has a consultation hour from 5-6 where you don’t need an appointment. We take the bus into town, walk up a few flights of stairs into this tiny little apartment with a private practice. We are greeted by the receptionist with a roll of the eyes and then she firmly says “no” as she peers over her glasses when she finds out I don’t have insurance; but the doctor comes out and starts asking what the problem is. Of course I have little idea of what is being said, so I just sit there trying to look like I need help. They tell us to go sit and wait and they will figure something out in a few minutes.

Cut to an hour and half later, where Frank and I are still sitting in the waiting room, seeing patient after patient walk in the door and be seen. We are just about to call it quits when the lovely secretary comes over to us and gestures to us that the doctor will see us now. So Frank and I walk into the doctor’s office and he starts feeling my lymph nodes and looking down my throat. Pretty standard I think. He doesn’t take my blood pressure, temperature, health history, or anything else which I found strange. He tells me to sit down on a chair and he comes over with what looks like a golden pen. He takes my hand and starts-no joke-STABBING the pen into my thumb, just on my cuticle…which by the way, if you’ve never experienced HURTS LIKE HELL. Then he stabs the other thumb and leaves a throbbing red indentation when he’s finished. Then he tells Frank to tell me to swallow. Uh what? Apparently it was supposed to help my throat.

Then it only gets worse. He proceeds to dig his fingers into my back, my stomach, the underside of my wrist to which I thought my vein was going to burst from the pressure…and then he moved to my ears. At first it felt like he was just doing a pressure point on my ear which wasn’t so bad, but then he started just wiggling my ears like crazy and then it felt like he was going to rip them off!! He told Frank to tell me to breathe, and asked if I could breathe easier. I thought, yeah, breathing doesn’t hurt anymore, but my f-ing cuticles and ears are throbbing with pain!!!

Then he said my sickness was not severe and that I should come back if it gets any worse. Whatever happened to listening to my lungs with a stethoscope?

Frank said it reminded him of the time his friend Jake was visiting him in Graz, Austria and needed to see a doctor. The doctor that time was very helpful, but had some weird practices. The first thing he did was put a plastic bowl over his head that was chained to the wall. The bowl had a bunch of red lights in the inside which basically made him sweat a lot. Frank peeked into the next room and there was a guy just staring at a red light with a fog machine blowing fog into his face. Let’s just say doctor visits here aren’t the same as back home.

It was definitely Poops McGee April 2, 2008

Today Frank got chased by a gas station worker in the street after he unknowingly plugged their toilet. The angry worker ordered him to go and unplug it. When Frank returned to go unplug it he expected a plunger, but this was not the case. There stood a lonely toilet brush. I won’t go into further detail. Then when Frank was finished and was walking out, the man insisted they go look at the toilet together to make sure it passed his final inspection. When the guy went into the bathroom Frank made a break for it and heard the gas station attendant shout after him. He, quite understandably, will never be returning to that gas station again.

Irish pubs and public transportation March 10, 2008

The Claddagh is an Irish pub in Klagenfurt where Frank, I, and the other English teachers frequent. Every other Thursday they host a quiz night consisting of five rounds of trivia on topics like geography and movies (or “filims” according to the über-Irish MC), which brings in a large crowd into the small, smoky place. Our team consists of about 10 people (from the US, England, Wales, and Ireland) and we call ourselves “The Cunning Linguists” which is usually pronounced by the MC as “The Cunning Linguistics”. Nevertheless, we usually dominate. Last week Frank and I were the only ones from our team attending due to a concert that night so we called our duo “I pooped a hammer” (Anchorman, anyone?). We bumped into an Englishman that Frank is acquainted with and over the course of the night he managed to tell us his life story including his thoughts on fatherhood and the birth of his child, the details of his ancestry, and his past relationships and devastating breakup. He also told me about five times how excited Frank was that I was coming to Austria and that he had heard so much about me already from Frank. I wanted to say, “Well I think we’re even now”. Anyways, we went to the Claddagh a few days later and after Frank went missing for about 30 minutes he finally showed up and said he got trapped once again listening to the life story of the Englishman.

All in all, the Claddagh is a fun time; the only thing is we get rushed because the last bus of the night leaves at 11:30, otherwise we have to take a cab. Frank and I each have month-long passes for the bus which run about 35 euro apiece. Our passes had expired a few days earlier but we weren’t really concerned because in his 6 months here in Klagenfurt he hadn’t seen ticket checkers. Not even once. Plus the transportation office was closed and we didn’t feel like buying day passes from the driver so we figured we’d be fine. Not worried whatsoever. Can you tell where I’m going with this?

Well, what do you know, we get on the bus at 11pm and one stop later, two ticket checkers jump on the bus. One in the front door, one in the back, trapping us. I froze. I tried to play it cool while they were checking other tickets but Frank knew from the look in my eyes that inside I was screaming “Oh my god I’m going to get in TROUBLE!!! What if I get deported? Oh my god why didn’t I buy a damn day pass!!!” All the posters I had seen so far plastered on buses and trains throughout Europe prohibiting free rides started flashing through my head…although I couldn’t read them in German, whatever they were implying looked very scary and from what I could decipher, something VERY BAD happens to you.

So as the ticket checkers are checking everyone’s tickets with no problem (because apparently we are the only ones to think we can get away with getting a free ride) the older ticket checker, who resembles Santa’s skinnier brother, from the back finally comes to us. Frank nonchalantly hands him his card which is scanned and the man stops and raises an eyebrow. Frank and the man start speaking in German and all I can do is read body language and give the man puppy dog looks as if I am just a dumb tourist and didn’t know any better and maybe they will take pity on me and not whisk me off into scary Austrian jail. Frank is shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders, while the old man seems like he’s wrestling with the idea of whether to punish us or not. I sense a glimmer of hope. Could we really get out of this?! The younger ticket checker with a Satanesque-goatee stops and comes over to see what the fuss is about and I can see from the sheer evil in his eyes that he does not want his partner to let us off. He’s new to the job and wants to see some action. “Don’t ruin this for us man!!” I want to yell at him and shoo him away. The seconds were like hours. I still had no idea what was going on since I couldn’t understand the conversation. But then…something happened. The old man put his scanner away, walked to the front of the bus, and sat down. The younger man looked irritated and followed, clearly powerless. “Are they letting us go?” I ask Frank. He says, “I guess so.” I sighed. Then I removed the shit from my pants.

Belle of the Ball March 6, 2008

The second week I was here Frank was invited to a ball for one of the schools he teaches at. It is comparable to a prom, but teachers and parents are also invited. So, Frank and I got all gussied up and got a ride from his mentor teacher, Gerda, and her husband, Hugo. Getting into the actual ballroom was no small feat, however. There was nothing resembling a line; it was moreso a giant mass of pushy people testing each other’s patience and balance. It reminded me of the time I waited all night for the doors to open up to the Mall of America to get NSYNC autographs which ended in me still getting smashed against the wall once the doors finally opened and hundreds of hyper teenage girls fought to be the first ones inside. Kinda like that.

Anyways, Frank and I finally got inside the ballroom, and were sipping on some champagne and glad to be able to move again. The night opened up with about a hundred students performing a choreographed first waltz for the audience. The ballroom had multiple areas: the main ballroom used for performances throughout the night, another room where different student bands performed-complete with a bar (yes, students can order drinks at their own prom!), and a dark, smoky, warehouse-like discotheque with booming music and intoxicated adolescents, to which I then turned to Frank and muttered, “I guess they don’t do the chaperone thing here in Austria?”

We spent most of the night listening to the live bands, and talking and taking pictures with Frank’s students, who spoke surprisingly fluent English. At one point in the night, two of his students who are probably around 15 came over with a big beer for me and in a thick accent say, “If you come to Austria, you must get drunk!!” So what could I say but, “Prost!”