{"id":23,"date":"2004-09-15T13:06:04","date_gmt":"2004-09-15T17:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/2004\/09\/15\/the-locals\/"},"modified":"2004-09-15T13:06:04","modified_gmt":"2004-09-15T17:06:04","slug":"the-locals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/2004\/09\/15\/the-locals\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Locals”"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

It seems like a no-brainer to say that you haven’t really
\nvisited a place if you don’t have at least 2 or 3 nice, long conversations with
\nsomeone who is from the place you are visiting. 
\n<\/span>But I think it happens fairly often. 
\n<\/span>There was a danger of this in Vienna — traveling alone I get much more introverted
\nthan when I have a companion, and I nearly went a whole day without having a
\nconversation with anyone.  <\/span>But by the end
\nof my visit I ended up having a bunch of interesting ones.  <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

There was the hipster in the subway station who had just
\nbeen to a Johnny Cash tribute concert (which I had attempted to attend but been
\nway too late, and which he said was pretty lame considering that the singers
\ncouldn’t shake their Austrian accents – think “I Valk De Line”).  <\/span>We started to get into some really
\ninteresting stuff – what makes Austrians Austrian and all that – but I had to
\nget off the train. <\/font><\/p>\n

There was Mali, the warm and articulate host of the
\nJudenplatz Museum, who told me all about the Jewish community in Vienna and why
\nshe thought they were worse than the Germans. 
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

Then there is my bunkmate Peter on the sleeper car from
\nVienna to Rome.  <\/span>We talked for a long
\ntime about the Austrian national character, history, and some politics.  <\/span>(I’m telling you, ALL the Europeans dislike
\nBush.  <\/span>They think rationally over here.)  <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

The conversation turned to World War II, as it seems all
\nconversations about history and politics eventually do on this continent.  <\/span>Peter’s father was sent to the Russian
\nfront.  <\/span>Peter’s grandfather was secretly
\na Nazi, had been injured in WWI also fighting the Russians, died in a Russian
\ncamp after he came down from the hills where all the people in their town in
\nAustria were hiding from the occupying Russians.  <\/span>He wanted to see what they had done to his
\nhouse.  <\/span>Peter’s mother, 16 at the time,
\nhad barely escaped being raped by a Russian soldier when her 9-year-old cousin
\nstood in the soldier’s path and would not move.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems like a no-brainer to say that you haven’t really visited a place if you don’t have at least 2 or 3 nice, long conversations with someone who is from the place you are visiting.  But I think it happens fairly often.  There was a danger of this in Vienna — traveling alone I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1453],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jackstriptoeuropestories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}