Me Be Funny One Day

In our nearly three months here, there is something very grave that Todd and I have discovered. It disturbs us to our core. It’s not the Austrian love of garish red hair dye, or Engrisch shirts, or even the dreaded manpri pant. It’s that Vienna sucks the funny out of you.

Perhaps it’s because of Vienna’s proximity to the stoic former Soviet bloc. Or maybe it’s the cold winters and the generally cool demeanor of its people. But for whatever reason, Todd and I frequently remark that we’ve lost our funny here, and as time goes by, it only gets worse. I’m hoping it’s only a temporary thing, but as we leave Vienna in 12 days, I’ll just have to wait it out, and hope that by the time we reach Rome I’ll have reclaimed some of my former (albeit not great) wit.

In truth, a lot of it comes down to the language barrier. It’s not something I fault anyone on. If anything, I’m embarrassed and appalled at the fact that I only speak one and half languages, when everyone I interact with speaks a minimum of three. So I can’t blame people for not understanding humor when it’s in their non-native language. If you told me a joke in Spanish, there’s only a 50% shot that I would understand it. But nonetheless, it can be a bit deflating. It’s one of the reasons I have been remiss in posting to the blog for the past two weeks. I feel like Linus without his blanket.

A recent example comes from a hike we took with a group of friends through the Vienna woods. The day had been posed to all of us as more of a casual walk through the woods, where we would stop at several heurigen, or wine taverns, along the way. And while we did stop a one heurigen, our walk in the woods turned into an arduous, eleven-mile hike complete with extremely steep hills. As we made our way up one sharp incline, Todd turns to me and says, “I certainly feel like we’re climbing every mountain.” I respond to him, saying, “Yeah, all you need are some lederhosen made from old curtains and you’ll be all set.” Crickets. The Sound of Music references are completely lost on everyone else. While to everyone outside of this continent Austria is the home of The Sound of Music, for most people here it will only illicit blank stares. They’ve perhaps heard of the movie, but few have ever seen it. In short, we lack the same pop cultural building blocks, so most references to film or television don’t translate – in fact, we may not even have the same name for a show. This happened when I tried to describe who Adam Brody is to some German friends (my Mom and Adam’s Dad are friends, and she told me he would be in Vienna for the Life Ball). When I tried to describe The OC, they had no idea what it was. After a while my friend said, “Oh! Here the show is called Teenage Life by the Beach. Case in point.

But back to our hike. As we reach the top of the highest hill around mile nine (all of us breathing heavily, muscles aching) we finally reach the crest and the incredible view. I bend down momentarily to place my hands on my knees and catch a breath, look up at the skyline and quip, “Whew! I think I see Switzerland.” One of the members of our group turns to me and says, “Oh no, that’s just the mountain by Modling. Switzerland is several hundred kilometres from here.” Great, I think to myself. Not only am I not even a tiny bit funny, but they think I am your typical geographically challenged American who can’t place Canada on a map. As with any joke, the very explanation of it kills any potential for humor, so as I try to explain that I was being sarcastic about the sheer amount of walking we had done in one day, I realize it’s lost. From this point forward I accept that even mild sarcasm isn’t going to work well in this country.

As a result, we’ve had to be very literal here, which isn’t all bad, but I find I have to be very careful with my words. Doing this has made me realize how many colloquialisms I use, and how many of them have a Midwest origin (thank you Wisconsin roots). Even the simple phrase “Good grief,” when broken down on a literal level, doesn’t make sense to people. But I know the same thing would happen to me if I were speaking my non-native language and someone used local phrases with me. It just comes with the territory.

I will say that I have a deep and newfound respect for people who can be funny in their non-native language. Of course on a basic level, physical humor, making faces, and slapstick seems to work well amongst all of our friends because of its easy translation. But more specifically, I respect and appreciate people like our friend Alex, who is genuinely funny in just about every language he tries. I swear, this kid could do stand up comedy in Arabic and he’d still be funny. To develop a sense of humor in multiple languages -- playing on words, making pop cultural references, etc – now that is damn impressive.

So for the next week or so we’ll try to reclaim a bit of our funny, and I’ll make a more concerted effort to post to the blog more regularly until we leave. And I apologize in advance if it stinks, but know that I’m trying, gentle readers. I am.