Antibiotics and Hot Love

This is not, I can assure you, how I’d intended to reacquaint myself with Austria. I did not want to take breakfast in my room, I did not want to hand over my credit card to pay for a pile of medication, I did not want to miss the field trip to the high meadows. My plan had nothing to do with alternating my hours between sleeping and feeling sorry for myself, but that’s what I’ve been doing. And not in a half assed sort of way, oh, no. I’ve been sleeping for 18 of the last 24 hours, and when I’m not asleep, I’m positively wallowing in sadness over what I’m missing.

On my first night in Austria, I went to bed very tired, and the next morning, I woke up very, very sick.

It’s nothing that out of the ordinary, tonsillitis, a sinus infection, something evil that’s attacked me from the collar bones up. I have a throat that won’t swallow, ears throbbing with pressure, a dull, persistent ache behind my cheekbones. It’s the flu, a virus, a bacterial infection, who knows? What I know is that I’m battered with aches and pains, and that on top of it, I feel so embarrassed. I’m meant to be swanning about Austrian Tirol, instead, I’m confined to my room with CNN Europe and an impressive selection of pharmaceuticals. Being sick is a drag, being sick while traveling is worse. Being sick while on a press trip is a bit humiliating.

I know it’s happened before – before the microbes came to call, my fellow travelers traded horror stories about what they’ve seen happen on prior press trips. Two had heart attack stories – they traveled with writers who died on the road. One had a tale of a broken collar bone, badly set and followed up with multiple stateside surgeries. I felt weirdly jinxed hearing these tales. Three of my five fellow travelers had horror stories. I traveled with a woman who took a bad fall – she recovered throughout the course of the journey. And also, her story is better than mine. I just got sick and had to see a doctor.

The doctor was dressed all in white and had one of those cutaway three dimensional models of the intestine on a lower shelf in his office. He had a treasure chest full of candy on the floor and a lot of books and papers on his desk. I sat across from him as though we were having a job interview. He was young and wore glasses and we opted to speak English which was kind of him. He handed me three boxes medication – antibiotics, decongestants, pain killers, and I thanked him. I paid the receptionist; she told me she had been to New York twice, and been road tripping all around New England and parts of eastern Canada. She was blond and pretty and wore big black glasses that looked like a Portland hipster affectation.

I kept turning to look at the clock. I didn’t care about the time, but the clock was in the shape of a stomach. I wanted to ask her about it, but talking hurt and my head hurt and I wanted to go back to bed. I took a picture of the stomach clock and I paid my bill and I went back across the street to my hotel. I stopped at the hotel restaurant to order some lunch.

The patio filled with senior citizens, a group excursion from a nearby home, perhaps. Old men, old ladies, some with walkers. I could hear them ordering, they were out for ice cream or coffee and cake. They laughed with each other, and with their attendants — for each two or three seniors there was younger person in Red Cross attire helping out. They sat close enough that I could hear them bantering with the waiter. And every other person at the table ordered something called a “heisse liebe.” “What on earth could that be?” I asked myself, and later when the waiter returned, I found out. It’s a kind of ice cream sundae covered in red syrup, cherry or raspberry, I didn’t have the voice to ask.

The waiter would reappear every few minutes and set down yet another one of these sundaes. “Bitte, madam, ein heisse liebe.” Heisse liebe, directly translated means hot love. This is how I was re-familiarizing myself with the place I used to call my part time home. By watching a group of gray haired good natured time bent retirees relish something called “hot love.” I ate my soup, my salad, and I did not forget to tip the waiter before I went back to sleep.