Mysteries of Language

Next week I start German lessons here in Vienna. That is a good thing, because doing anything by myself here is a lot harder without at least some German. I spent 40 minutes in a Billa yesterday searching for yeast to make a pizza for dinner. I had a list of four different words for yeast in German, but not one of them was the word on the package that allowed me to make dinner last night. And although I can say, “How are you?” to friendly strangers, I can’t actually understand their answers unless they say “Gut.” Fortunately, most of them do.

However, I secretly enjoy misunderstanding the conversations that buzz around me on subways and in the crowds swirling around the many icing-sugar palaces of the Hofburgs. I can invent dialogue that titillates and intrigues. My Vienna is filled with spies, sucubi, nature spirits down from the Vienna Woods for a night out among the humans and all manner of other oddities. Vienna is such a beautiful place, it’s easy to imagine all sorts being drawn here.
Vienna is the perfect place to write a dark fantasy–even a dark fantasy set in Nashville, Tennessee. So perhaps I should get back to work!