The God-Fearing Austrian Grandmother

My time in Austria contained a number of great experiences I loved, and a similar number of shitty situations that were terrible due to our ass of a club president. One of those things happened to be my living situation. This was a club I wanted to be a part of for the entire winter, and had to be pushy for them to just write up a contract to give me, even though they verbally expressed they intended to sign me. One piece of the contract they were not able to sort out was the living situation. They had expressly stated that finding an apartment for me and the other import to share would be no issue, but months passed and nothing came about. We came to agree that if they couldn’t find a place for me to live by March 1st, I was free to find another club. This agreement was trash though, because no one finds a club after March 1st.

On the final day of the agreement the president reaches out with a solution. He sends me 3 pictures to preface our phone call and I can’t believe it. He tells me on the phone that they’ve ordered these livable shipping containers to be put at the field. I have no choice to find another team at this point, and I briefly debate asking them to purchase a van for me to live in so I can at least get around, but that was quickly shot down.

So I spent the entire summer living in a shed in a public park rented by the club, showering in the clubhouse and eating most of my meals in the bar underneath the stands. We had our fair share of drunks and homeless people coming by, and kids opening up our doors thinking they were the bathroom at 7am on game days. During Pfingstenball, I woke up in the morning to one of my gloves soaked in piss from the previous night when someone decided to piss on the corner of the container. There’s some shit you just can’t make up.

During the end of my time in Austria, we missed the playoffs by one game. This gave me a ton of freedom to do whatever I wanted for the last month and a half of the season because they had scheduled a 5-game series for 7th place in a 10 team league that I couldn’t have given less of a fuck about.

One of the activities I always wanted to do while I was there was hike up this mountain called Traunstein, which is a massive mountain you can see from miles away on a clear day. At the foot of this mountain is a beautiful town called Gmunden, where the grandmother of the girl I was dating lived.

I had spoken with this girl about hiking up one day and we eventually found a day we could make work that was the day before the game that would clinch 7th place for us. I briefly entertained the idea of having her stay in my shed, but I was genuinely too embarrassed to bring a girl I actually liked in there. Fortunately she tells me that her uncle owns the flat across the hall from her Grandma and if we want to stay there the night before we hike, we’re totally welcome. So the night before we were to hike up I took the train to Gmunden and she met me at the station.

We walk to the building her Grandma lived in and go inside. She had been having a few glasses of wine with her, and intended to just grab the key to the flat next door and call it a night. Her grandma opens the door, sees me and says hello, and motions for me to give her a hug.

I should mention that months later, the girl tells me that she had to explain to her grandma that I’m just a friend of hers who will be sleeping on the couch in her uncle’s place. Being the protective, catholic grandmother she is, she expresses her concerns that she’s going to wake up to screams in the middle of the night because I’m this murderer from America. It takes some serious prodding to make sure she accepts the fact that I’ll be staying there overnight.

Alright, back to the story.

So when she opens the door and asks for a hug, the girl relays to me that she’s asked me to come in for a glass of wine with the two of them. I can’t say no, so the next thing I know I’m sitting in the apartment of the grandma of the girl I’ve been seeing for only a month. We are not on a “hey you should come meet my grandparents” level yet. Mind you that this woman doesn’t speak a lick of english so I’m essentially sitting there listening to them speak German to each other in a heavy Austrian dialect. Every few minutes the grandma turns to me and says something because she forgets I don’t speak german.

The girl is fortunately patient enough to translate for me, and we exchange a few sentences in German that I can barely piece together. The only one I remember is her saying and understanding was “Traunstein ist ein schon Berg”, and I just nodded and repeated the same sentence back to her. Despite the serious language barrier I seemed to have played my cards well because she at least seemed to think I was a nice young man. She did express some serious concern though that I only had shorts to hike up the mountain the next day though.

After we finish a glass or two of wine, we tell her we should probably go to sleep and she agrees. We’ve got to get to the trailhead by 7:30am or so. As we’re leaving, her grandma insists that we come back over for breakfast in the morning and she would love nothing more than to make breakfast for us before we get on the trail. The girl tries to tell her that we’ll pick something up along the way and eat at the trailhead, and the grandma eventually gives up and says ok.

We go next door and get into bed. At around 6:15 or so, the girl gets a call though and walks out of our room. She briefly comes back in and says she’ll be back in a few minutes. I start to get my stuff together for the hike and hop in the shower. She comes back in a bit and says, “alright, so my grandma made us breakfast anyways, you don’t have to come over though”. But I thought it would be incredibly rude to pass up on that, so next thing you know we were back in her dining room having breakfast and coffee. Unfortunately it took us 2 hours till we were an hour into the hike that it was actually decaffeinated coffee.

When we were about to leave the Grandma expressed some concerns that there would be no parking at the trailhead because there was a new route that opened up that day. The girl tried her darndest to tell her grandmother no, but she insisted. This woman was not to be stopped with anything she set her mind to.

We finish eating and get all of our stuff together. The grandmother leads us outside to her car, which happens to be parked in a precarious spot. The car is parked in an area that is the width of two cars sandwiched between the apartment building and a hill that’s held back by a cement barrier.

On this particular day, another apartment was getting a new kitchen, and a maintenance van was parked next to the nearest entrance which was about 25 yards behind the car we were about to drive in. So there is a space that is marginally wider than our car, which would be fairly easy to get out of going forward, but is a tall order if you’re backing out.

She acknowledges that it’s going to be tough, but reckons she can do it and gets in the car. Before she starts the engine though, she gets a phone call and answers it. It’s the girl’s mom on the other end saying she’ll stop by around midday and the call lasts a minute or so. When she hangs up though she starts the car and chucks it in reverse with the confidence of a nascar driver.

We start going back at about 15 miles an hour and it becomes apparent that this woman has completely forgot about the maintenance van and cannot see it in her rear view mirror. She didn’t even bother to turn her head around. Once I realize what’s about to happen, I let out an audible “Uh-oh” and we smash into the maintenance van and stop about halfway down. She then has to put it in first, and drive back, causing more damage to both cars.

We all get out of the car and one of the maintenance men pokes his head out of the second story window and says “Oida”, the Austrian equivalent of a casual “Fuck me”.

This grandma is unbelievably embarrassed and we check the damage. The van has a small dent in the door and some scratches that will rub off, but the grandma’s car is good and messed up. There are a couple massive dents & scratches, the gas cap is caved in, and the passenger door handle is partially broken off. The girl is also clearly embarrassed but the both of us are also looking at each other and this nervous wreck of a woman and trying to hold back the laughter at her expense.

The maintenance company and grandma exchange insurance cards and contact info, so there’s nothing more to be said. The entire group of tradesmen is standing outside at this point and the grandma gets back in the car to continue backing out. We’re giving her the best instructions we can, but this woman was not blessed with much spatial awareness and proceeds to drive straight back into the van once again.

She was so flustered by the second run in that one of the workers just got in the car and backed out for her. I did my best to not make her feel any worse about the scenario and told her in broken German that all was ok and there was nothing to be ashamed about.

We got to the trailhead and got out of the car, and said our thank you’s and goodbye’s. The grandma calls her granddaughter back after I’m a little bit away from the car, and says a line that completely exemplifies her as a god-fearing catholic Austrian; “You know, that wreck was Jesus punishing me for insisting I drive you to the trailhead, I’ll pray that you’ll have a safe hike as soon as I get home”.

When we get down from the top of the mountain at the end of the day, we organize to make our way back to the apartment by ferry because we have no car. But before we can purchase tickets, the girl gets a call from her Grandma saying that her mom is on her way to pick us up about 10 minutes away.

When I got on the train to Gmunden the previous day, I had no intention of meeting the majority of her family, which I thought was far too early in our relationship to happen. Apparently though I had already met her brother (a housemate I had run into that she didn’t tell me was her brother), and I was far deeper than I ever could have imagined.