What Up, Vienna? when a girl and a guy from los angeles move their asses halfway across the world

flugzeuge, zuge und autos

I wasn't really banking on doing any stand-up whilst in Vienna. However, an opportunity presented itself to do a USO show in Stuttgart, Germany. That opportunity came by way of Bengt Washburn, a comedian I had never met, though who was vouched for by my esteemed comedy colleague Moshe Kasher. So I knew he wasn't an axe murder. Or, at least he wasn't a hacky axe murderer. Hacky as in bad comedian, not as in hacking with his murderin' axe. No pun intended. And, yes, I am saying I'd rather be axe murdered by somebody who has a good sense of humor or at least somebody that has a bad sense of humor who knows it and doesn't try. The last thing I want before I die is some arrogant boy murderer who feels the need to get overly physical with his technique while making references to things we all remember. Or maybe that's exactly what I want...

Me: Could you please just commence with your murdering? (Hold my hair up and turn my head to the side to expose my bare neck.)
Hacky Axe Murderer: Let me axe you something... (waves his axe around and then paces for about 10 seconds) You remember Nintendo?
Me: ...
Hacky Axe Murderer: You had to blow in those damn cartridges to get them to work. YOU HAD TO BLOW IN THEM! (He drops axe to mime blowing into a Nintendo cartridge.)
Me: (Zork-style: Pick up axe. Kill Hacky Axe Murderer with axe.)

But I digress, let's get back to our adventure. We got into Stuttgart the day of the show and the never-met-before wonderful Bengt Washburn picked us up at the airport and let us stay at his house for the night. He even took us on a bit of sightseeing in the picturesque German town of Tübingen. Proof below:

So the USO show was at 7pm preceded by a lovely buffet dinner at 6pm. This should have been the red-flag warning for me. Young, comedy-loving, entertainment-starved servicepeople don't need to be lured in by buffets. Older people do. To them it isn't COMEDY SHOW in capital letters and buffet in teeny-tiny letters. It's BUFFET BUFFET BUFFET (oh, there's a comedy show too?). And do you know what older people do? They bring kids. Sure, that's a great idea. I mentioned something to one of the organizers who came back a bit later and told me she talked to all the parents and told them that this is not necessarily a show for kids and the comics will not be censoring themselves. Then I explained that my problem wasn't whether or not the parents were cool with it, but rather it wasn't my desire to tell any of my jokes with all their innuendo and colorful language in front of children. Also, it might actually make other people in the audience uncomfortable with the kids there too. That was all I could do though. I was introduced and brought on stage. And as I grab the mic, two kids both younger than 7 take seats in the front row. You have to be kidding me, Uncle Sam. I can't remember exactly what I said as I addressed those children but it was a thinly-veiled announcement to the parents that it was extremely inappropriate for their children to be in attendance and shit was gonna get uncomfortable. It worked. Those kids left after my first joke and the other kids left not long thereafter. Mission accomplished! The show ended up being great. The crowd was fantastic. I even got a fancy USO coin for doing the show. And, if you were wondering, it is not legal tender. I found that out the hard way.

The next morning, superhost Bengt Washburn brought us to the train station. We were going to travel to Strasbourg, France. This was our first European train experience. How exciting! We even managed to find our correct track and get on the correct train in the correct car. Did I mention it was a speed train? It was awesome. Well, awesome except for the fact that there were no murders on the train. How am I suppose to solve any train murder mysteries if there are no murders? I thought that's what you did on trains. Next time I'll just have to get the ball rolling and do the murder myself. And a future you are welcome to you.

We had made reservations at a Best Western quaint little mom-and-pop bed and breakfast in the middle of town. We checked in and realized that we got a room with two twin beds instead of a queen. And the Best Western bed and breakfast was sold out for the weekend so we could not switch. Merde! So we get up to our room and we realize that the twin beds are pushed together in the middle of the room with night stands on either side making it essentially a queen bed with a scary dangerous chasm in the middle. This is exactly how the bedroom in our Vienna apartment is set up. It is maddening. It's like a 50s television bedroom up in Europe.

One huge thing we learned in France is... that we do not speak French. I think somehow our brains thought with all of our success learning basic German, we would be able to understand and speak any language. Oh, not true, mon ami. We were just so used to people speaking to us in other languages and then responding to them in German. We were not used to this Frenchspeak. We would listen so hard trying to understand what they said until we realized we didn't have any idea what they said. We would just get so flustered trying to respond which resulted in a string of words from all the languages we knew. "Dankethankyougraciasankyouthay!" And then we would run away. So embarrassing.

This post has gone on long enough. You get the idea. And as a special treat, here is a video of dogs playing in a Strasbourg street. Enjoy.

You might also enjoy reading:

1. i need a raincheck, england (part two)
2. the last schlafwagen to venice
3. i need a raincheck, england (part one)
4. paris, franzen style!
5. my bonn thanksgiving (better belated than never)

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