i’m having Orange Fanta Screwdrivers tonight.
the last time i had Orange Fanta was in ’96. i remember well one of those last occasions. i hadn’t seen Fanta in years. it’s all over Europe. where we have Mountain Dew, they have Fanta Orange.
it was the day after my birthday, and i was in Vienna, Switzerland, at the train station. the day before was miserable and drizzly and we saw racist propaganda graffitti all over this sort of weird concrete micropark near our hostel. i had a shitty birthday, with no booze. our friend Sebastien (who was crazy as a loon – more later) wasn’t feeling well and stayed in his room. me and the girls (my friend Ria, who asked me to Europe in the first place (we would date for a few months, a few months later), and our brand new travelling companions Paola and Emily) went out. i was pretty broke (in Prague i had to call home to have money wired to me so i could continue – my friends went on without me, but that’s another story).
more on those crazy kids: we met Paola, Emily, and Seb in Munich a couple days before, and we all split two rooms. we got hella drunk, and i (as is my wont) ended up leaving Hofbrau Haus and stumbling directionless until i happened to find the hostel (how? i do not profess to know such things). Paola is a beautiful dark-haired Swede with a Cuban father. she liked raves and reading underground-y novels (esp. that crazy Irving Welsh). she was a Beautiful Person. Emily was the funniest person i’d ever come across – a true comic genius, and super nice to boot. she was from Pennsylvania somewhere. Seb was an Englishman with long blonde hair. quiet most times, but also fun and definitely quite mad. a real hoot. Paola and Seb hooked up in Munich. Ria and i were just sort of dancing, although she had a boyfriend in the Navy in San Diego. (we were both living in Jacksonville, FL at the time.)
so where was i? oh yes. Vienna…
so we went out to walk the night loose. we got directions from a lone character to a cool underground bar where they played nothing but metal. the girls had a beer each, but i had no money, so depressed, i walked back to the hostel. later on, when they arrived, the door jockey wouldn’t let us in. luckily, a rather brazen English chap who was out tour guide (on Eurobus) showed up and really ripped into the poor bastard until he let us all in.
the next day we were bumped off the bus due to overbooking. it turned out that all of Australia were on holiday in Europe, and half of them were riding Eurobus. me and Seb wrote “Eurobus SUCKS!!” in the grime on the back of the bus, we took a picture, and then deliberated on what to do and where to go. we all decided we’d go to the train station and go to Prague, where we were supposed to go anyway. we had just enough money, and a little extra.
so we get to the train station and buy a liter or two of some cheap vodka and a lot of Fanta. we sat on the floor in the train station for hours playing fucking drinking games. it was a riot. local Viennese would come up to us and watch us playing “Presidents and Assholes.” one elderly gentleman just stood and smiled. he didn’t understand, but it seemed to give him great joy watching us having a good time, playing our drinking games right there on the floor in the Vienna train station, which in turn of course made us feel real good, too.
at some point, the subject of the film The Usual Suspects came up. Seb said that he KNEW (his emphasis) Kaiser Soze. he hadn’t seen the movie, either. hence, our collective assumption that he is quite definitely insane.
so we boarded the train finally, and continued drinking until Ria and i got into a huge argument (my fault… she was pushing my buttons as we argued over the merits of certain beers, for chrissakes). we were so drunk. that crazy Irish chick tried to throw me off the train somewhere in the countryside! i would have deserved it, too! we were screaming and cursing… poor passengers, i’m still shocked we weren’t thrown off the train. later on, Paola came to me bearing such sweetness it still just really affects me. she was only 18 or 19, but she had the best head on her shoulders of all the rest of us combined. wise, sweet Paola…
we squatted in the eerily empty Prague terminal the next day until Seb’s brother came and took us to show us around. he almost got us arrested by buying us all KIDDIE tickets for the metro… there were some seriously tense moments when the police showed up. (the Prague metro is amazingly fast, and you can really feel it… the escalators are super steep and very very long as well. i think those crazy Czechs have a thing for danger or something. i digress againly…)
later (in a couple of days), Seb disappeared, and even his brother and his brother’s wife appeared to have completely vanished without a trace. and we got to see Meat Beat Manifesto on Hallowe’en.
thank “Bob” they brought it back here in the states again, finally.
in about two hours i will drunkenly write a horrific, rambling, incoherent mess about how much i love and miss dear sweet Paola.
