You need to paint a picture of the real you
When we got back to Vienna, battered and bruised from our final night in Stockholm, it was time to make some money. We lived like we travelled — as cheaply as possible. As Paul’s mother owned our apartment we didn’t have to pay rent. That meant that it was really only day-to-day living expenses that we had to find the money for. We discovered one of the best ways to make a bit of money and to be active at the same time was to deliver advertising pamphlets.
In New Zealand, having a pamphlet run is pretty straightforward as most people have their letterboxes out on the street. Not so in Vienna. Paul and I used to ring every doorbell in the apartment buildings until some unsuspecting resident opened the downstairs access door. Then we’d set off on foot up the stairs. A lot of these old buildings didn’t have lifts so it wasn’t uncommon for us to do ten flights of stairs in each building to deliver junk mail. Once we got inside we’d get abused by any of the residents who saw us. I’d just started to learn German and couldn’t speak it very well but I still could tell they weren’t happy to see us!
Learning German was quite a mission for me. Paul had taught me some basics of the language while he was recuperating in New Zealand. What little I knew didn’t really prepare me for living in Vienna and I set about trying to pick up as much as I could. In the end, I learnt from watching TV and from talking to anyone who had the patience to help me learn.
Vienna itself is a great city to live in. The Danube River, which runs through the city, is beautiful. We used to train on the Danube Trail that ran alongside the river and we’d go up into the vineyards behind the city to run. While Paul was planning the next big trip, he always had to be doing something while we were in Vienna. If we weren’t up in the nearby mountains, we were biking a couple of hundred kilometres every weekend or we were working.
There was no such thing as down time. We were always out doing something. I just felt like I was always out of breath and always trying to catch up with Paul.
During my first year in Vienna, I spent a lot of time with Paul’s Auntie Fini. She was a traditional Austrian housewife and I used to love going to her house. She taught me how to cook traditional Austrian food all the while patiently teaching me how to speak German. She schooled me in the finer points of being a good Austrian housewife and after about a year I could cook a mean goulash with dumplings followed by vanilla kipfel and I could finally communicate with the people around me.
During the autumn of my first year in Vienna my mother came to stay with us for a couple of months. We were already cramped enough in the flat and Paul was not happy at the thought of her impending visit. I desperately wanted my mum to have a trip overseas and I really wanted her to see where I lived. Although I pointed out to Paul that he’d lived in her house for six months he wasn’t having a bar of it. He didn’t want anyone to upset our little twosome world.
I couldn’t help being excited at the prospect of Mum coming and I didn’t really care that Paul wasn’t happy about it. He tried explaining that autumn was the most beautiful part of the year and it was the best time to be out on our bikes and he made it clear that I had ruined the autumn for him by inviting my mum to come and stay.
When Mum finally arrived, there was no let-up for me. In the days before she arrived Paul and I had been earning some money by painting his auntie and uncle’s house that was about 30 kilometres outside Vienna. Was I going to have a day off because Mum had arrived? Not likely.
I went and met her at the airport and I was excited to see her for the first time in months. We went back to the apartment and dropped off her gear and then I had to get on my bike and cycle out to Fini’s house. I couldn’t bear leaving Mum at home by herself so we put her on the train to meet us there. When I think back it must have been absolutely awful for her. Here she was, in a foreign country, where people didn’t speak much English, just off a series of flights that took more than 24 hours and I put her on a train to God knows where. She must have been terrified.
Still, I wasn’t going to argue with Paul about it. As it turned out, Paul had bought her the wrong ticket and a conductor came and tried to fine her 1000 shillings. He even stopped the train while he was trying to make her pay. She didn’t know what the hell was going on and ended up getting off the train at the wrong station. Paul should have let me go with her and look after her but trains were only just better than cars in his book so I had to go on my bike.
When we finally arrived at Fini’s, she had a huge lunch prepared and she was really excited to meet my mother. The welcome Paul’s family gave Mum was great. It was good for me that Mum got to meet the woman who had looked after me so well and taught me German. After lunch, Paul and I went back to work and Mum sat in the garden watching us work. Once we’d finished our work, we all had dinner before heading back into the city. When it came time to go home, I could tell that Mum really didn’t want to face getting on the train on her own again. Paul’s uncle could see this, too, and said, ‘No. Isabel is not going on the train. I’ll take her back into town in the car.’
As Paul and I rode back into town, he completely lost his temper. ‘That stupid woman can’t even catch a train. How hard is that? And now she has to add to the world’s pollution by having my uncle make an unnecessary car journey. It’s just ridiculous.’ I stayed quiet and vowed to take Mum away as much as I could over the next two months so that she didn’t have to hear any of Paul’s diatribes.
While Mum was over, we took a trip to Hungary. Mum had always had these romantic dreams about going on the Orient Express so we booked tickets to head from Austria across to Budapest. At that time, the Orient Express wasn’t the flash train it is now. It was just a normal old train. We had our own compartment on the train but that didn’t stop us from getting the odd visitor. At one stage, I went off to the toilet and when I got back to our compartment, there was this incredibly drunk Hungarian bloke accosting Mum. I tore in and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and chucked him out the door. He wasn’t the kind of friendly local you want to meet.
The eastern bloc had just opened up and change was slow in coming to Hungary. When we reached the border, Mum handed her passport over with all her money for the trip folded into the passport. Luckily the guard was an honest one. He just laughed and handed Mum her money back! If he hadn’t had such a sense of humour we could have ended up in a Hungarian prison charged with bribery . . .
While we were in Budapest we visited one of the old spas that the city is known for. Mum and I hadn’t quite banked on the fact that the Hungarians are quite comfortable going naked at the baths. Thankfully, we were in a female-only part of the baths and we had no choice but to strip off. Leaving the changing room wrapped in our towels, we were chased by a big matronly Hungarian woman who made it abundantly clear that we weren’t even allowed to take our towels out to the baths. We did the best to maintain our modesty but we were both freaking out. The woman arrived back shortly carrying a couple of aprons. Apparently you’re allowed to wear an apron but not a towel. It wasn’t a good look.
When we finally got to the pools we were both really keen to get into the water so we dived into the nearest pool. It was about 40°C and we stayed in there despite the heat because we were too embarrassed to get out! We both absolutely cooked. In the pool with us were about 100 Hungarian ladies who all had plastic hats on to protect their hair. Around the sides of the pool, there were plenty of people getting massage treatments. They were being whacked with bunches of leaves and the noise was incredible. It took us about two hours to get the courage up to get out of the pool again. We must have looked like a pair of crayfish we’d been in the hot water for so long.
Having survived the local baths, Mum and I decided to take an excursion to an amusement park. It was about 150 years old and everything was a bit manky. It looked as if it hadn’t been maintained very well during the Communist years and absolutely nothing had been done since independence. We decided to go on this chair-o-plane ride, where you climbed on, belted yourself in and went flying around. In the middle of the ride, the strap that was holding us in broke. We were freaking out. I had visions of being thrown to the ground and killed — thankfully we survived it but it put us both off amusement park rides for a very long time.
In Budapest we stayed at this gorgeous ornate hotel. While it was very beautiful, the service was like something out of Fawlty Towers. We had dinner at the hotel one night where we were serenaded by local gypsy musicians. Mum loved the music and kept saying how lovely it was. She smiled away at them and kept saying how lovely it was, not realising that she was meant to be paying them.
The next morning we went down to breakfast only to find that all the leftovers from the previous night had been rehashed and served again. Twice-cooked brussels sprouts wouldn’t be my first choice for breakfast. Our waiter then managed to knock over the candle on our table, setting the table cloth on fire. He grabbed the nearest glass of juice and put the flames out managing to spill it over us at the same time.
Mum and I took the opportunity to do some shopping while we were in Budapest and found a great shoe shop. I bought some shoes and decided I liked them so much we went back the next day to buy some more. I wore the shoes that I’d bought the day before and as I left the shop, we were chased down the street by one of the shop assistants who accused me of stealing the shoes. Thankfully I had the receipt with me and could prove that I’d paid for them the previous day.
I was really keen to make sure that Mum saw plenty of Europe while she was staying with me so not long after we got back from Hungary, the pair of us decided to go off to Greece for a couple of weeks. As soon as we had booked to go, Paul announced that he had to go into hospital to have an operation on his foot. Mum and I were so excited to be going off to Greece we went anyway. We thought we were going to have the time of our lives in traditional Greek style. In hindsight, I should have done a bit more research. We ended up spending three weeks in Faliraki in what can only be described as something like an episode of ‘Hi-De-Hi!’ We were in a really grotty hotel right above a disco. There was nothing but English tourists wanting to drink lager and eat chips. Despite this, we had a great time and it was lovely to be able to relax and act like tourists for a change.
While we were in Faliraki, there was a massive storm and extensive flooding. All the beach deck chairs were washed out to sea and our hotel was full of water. I remember seeing water flowing down the stairs like a waterfall. To make matters worse, we were booked to fly out in the middle of the storm. Sitting on the plane out of Faliraki getting buffeted around and seeing lightning flashing outside was the most scared I’ve ever been.
When we got back to Vienna, Paul had had his operation. He looked terrible. He’d lost about eight kilos and he complained it was because he couldn’t feed himself.
The one nice thing that did happen while Mum was in Vienna was that she got to meet Paul’s mother. It turned out that they shared the same birthday. They had been born on the exact same day on opposite sides of the world. Neither of them could speak the other’s language but they took an instant liking to each other. We had not long found out that Paul’s mother had lung cancer and it was a good distraction for her to meet my mother. She was happy to know that Paul had a nice girlfriend with a nice family who would look after him.
Mum left Vienna in late November, and I was really sad to see her go. I had always been such a home girl before I met Paul and I missed my family like crazy. On the up-side, now that Mum had gone home Paul had me to himself again and he stopped being quite so nasty. And we spent a bit more time with Paul’s mother. Apart from the apartment buildings she owned, she also ran a large pharmacy and, despite her failing health and her alcohol dependency, she hated anyone trying to help her. She was a fiercely independent soul and she struggled on her own.
She invited us for Christmas dinner on my first year in Vienna. It was the first time Paul had been inside her home in some years and the sight that met us shocked him to the core. For Christmas lunch she had bought a huge goose, which is a traditional Christmas dish in Austria. Unfortunately, the kitchen was so jam-packed with stuff she couldn’t get to the oven. She told us that lunch wasn’t quite ready so she sent us out to a local bar for a while. When we got back to the house, the goose was no closer to the oven and she served us some cheese and crackers for lunch. The goose ended up coming home with us and we must have looked pretty funny wandering home with this great big, uncooked bird under our arms.
According to Paul, when he was growing up, his mother had been very prim and proper and expected everything in the house to be just-so. After we got home, he just sat there in complete shock at what had happened to his mother. It was clear then that she was not coping at all and that she needed more help. Just as we realised how bad things were, Paul’s mother went downhill really fast. The cancer took hold and it wasn’t long before she was completely incapacitated. We knew things had got really bad when one of the people who worked for her at the pharmacy told us they hadn’t seen her for three days.
Paul and I went round to her apartment but she wouldn’t let us in. We couldn’t think of anything else to do so we called the police and they came round and smashed the door down. When we got inside we found his mother lying in her bed. She hadn’t been able to move for three days. She was completely dehydrated. It was a terrible thing to see this once proud and beautiful woman reduced to this. She protested all the way to the hospital and said she didn’t want to go anywhere. She wanted to die at home. She was not to get her wish and she passed away quietly in the hospital a couple of days later.
Paul was traumatised by it all. Even though he had spent his life trying to run away from her and rebel against her, she was still his mother. He struggled to cope and withdrew deeper into himself.
We were stuck in Vienna for quite a few months. There was just so much to sort out. We had to clean out the apartment and work out exactly what was in there. We found diamond bracelets in ashtrays and gold rings hidden in stacks of towels. We couldn’t throw anything out without first checking it because we didn’t know what we’d find next.
There was also the question of the pharmacy. Paul and I worked together in the pharmacy trying to clean it out and get it in a fit state for sale. Despite his mother’s propensity to work long hours things there were in a bit of a mess. Eventually we got it sorted out and sold it. In the time that we were working together to sort out his mother’s estate, Paul and I got on better than we had in ages. He handled what was, for him, a very difficult situation incredibly well and I really got to see more of the good side of him over this time. We worked together well to get everything sorted out over this time.
I spent hours poring over Austrian law to work out just what he was entitled to. It felt like there were sharks circling Paul and I was determined that they weren’t going to rip him off. I became quite knowledgeable about tenancy law and found out that the manager of the apartment building that Paul and I lived in had been ripping his mother off for years. We got him fired and got someone honest in the position.
After years of having to scrimp and save and live frugally, Paul was now a wealthy young man. It was a burden that didn’t sit easily on him. Until now, I had either been working to look after him or we had been working together. Now things were completely different.