I woke up today, groggy and grouchy after weeks of illness and deadening mommy-brain activities, to realize it had been two weeks since I posted. I apologize for the delay — I can only snatch at a week of ill me and ill baby as excuses, followed by a week of being a frantic good little locavore learning to can tomatoes and peaches. Though I’ve missed the keyboard, I probably won’t regret the lost time when we pop open those peach jars in midwinter.
During another tomato session this morning, I heard a BBC report about a little film making waves at the Venice Film Festival. Machan takes the producer of The Full Monty in a different direction, although in the report I heard he said that his interests in both were with low-income people, often desperate or out of work, and the choices they make.
Machan retells the bizarre 2004 story of a group of Sri Lankans who had been denied visas but still wanted to start new lives in Europe. So, as one does, they banded together and posed as the Sri Lankan National Handball Team and traveled to compete in Bavaria, knowing nothing of the actual sport. The movie is by turns serious and humorous (the reviews say); in real life this “team” disappeared while on tour, and are, it is to be hoped, living happily somewhere in Europe.
I hate to throw a cliche at you at this time of year, but I admit that the phrase “be grateful for what you have” floated through my mind after hearing this story. In the travel and travel writing world we argue a great deal about why we travel, why we write about traveling, and what makes a traveler as opposed to a tourist. But we rarely address the issue of those who travel out of desperation, or hopelessness. We, free to move about as we please and choose any level of risk that suits our fancy, often forget how lucky we are.
It reminded me of a woman I know in Russia, who actually was a member of the Soviet Handball Team, who was left stranded in the Ukraine without her papers or passport at the breakup of the Soviet Union, and who used her brains and hands to retrain as the best massage therapist I’ve ever met. She is now often paid to travel for others’ health, but has never lost the caution she built during the years she was unwillingly traveling.
And it reminded me of a nonfiction story in a textbook I edited a couple years ago, about three refugee brothers from a war-torn region of Africa, who found themselves housed and fed and living in the dead of a Minnesota winter.
Talk about culture shock.
When I was growing up in Montana, there was never any question that I would one day meet the Russian family in Leningrad, the people we spoke to once a year or less. They never got our letters. We never got theirs. I assumed I would never see my grandmother, or my only cousin. Other schoolchildren assumed my father was a spy. Times have changed, but they can change back. Until then, I know I am lucky, fortunate to browse Expedia for flights to Santiago, or Shanhai. I can travel where I like, or start a new life almost anywhere I please. Not everyone has that choice.
When I lived in Vienna, Austria, 10 years ago, the proud imperial city seemed the last bastion of old-world attitudes. A sense of those old empires — the Austro-Hungarian, the Hapsburgs — not only lingered, you could feel it everywhere. The Viennese were resistant to change and unwelcoming of outsiders.
The revered coffeehouses, once haunted by Trotsky and Lenin, still serve the same fantastic coffee, and the waiters still wear bowties and black jackets. Cafe Landtmann, pictured here, still hosts Austria’s politicians, journalists, and diplomats. But, unlike a decade ago, the waiters are attentive and even — dare I say it — friendly. 
“Standoffish” doesn’t even begin to describe the Viennese in the past, but somehow the sunshine has entered their souls. Vienna has an incredible quality of life, with comprehensive and cheap public transport, beauty and cleanliness, and serene walks like these through the Vienna Woods, or Wienerwald. That quality hasn’t changed. What’s changed is that the locals suddenly don’t seem to mind sharing it all with the rest of the world.
