The Serbian Express

Música: Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht. And what a gorgeous Nacht it is. Last night I went to a performance of the Vienna Philharmonic—what many consider to be the world’s best orchestra—and they played this piece during the program, with Pierre Boulez conducting. I stood there in the Musikverein, in all its Romantic splendor (um, yeah that gold you see ain’t no paint) and listened to music which was at once mysterious, sexual, sumptuous, (etc. etc., just think of any adjectives used to describe really excellent ice cream being eaten by your favorite supermodel), played by people whose level of talent I can’t really begin to understand, and conducted by a man whose name is on at least 10-20 of my CDs. Maybe this is my suburban middle-class upbringing talking, but when the sound of horse hair rubbed on cat gut over a piece of wood can cause an audience to examine and appreciate the magnitude of beauty that art can contain in a single moment, perhaps life was never meant to suck.


It takes a decent amount of time to realize the birth, the growth, and finally the death of an era. About a month, actually. I know this because I have indeed been in Austria for a little over a month, and I have indeed known a great transition in my life… the end of free maid service.

I live, you see, in the dorm for the University of Music. During the summer, as the building is not occupied by students, it becomes a very affordable hotel. (University summer in Europe, by the way, usually extends from June to the beginning of October). Now, picture your first college dorm. As a hotel, it probably wouldn’t have scored too highly in a Fodor’s review. Neither would this one. This is not the Waldorf. There is, however, one very important difference between this place and your average youth hostel: the service provided by 4 adorable Serbian ladies, ranging in age from maybe 30 to about 85.

My first encounter with the former citizens of the Soviet Bloc went thusly:

It was very early on the morning of Sunday last, and Julia and I were still very much asleep. We’d had a sizable German exam the Friday before, and had decided to unwind through Saturday. It would take at least till midday for our minds to filter out the night’s liquor consumption. We had not set an alarm, we had no plans to awaken before noon. ‘Twas not to be.

It sounded rather like a man being thrust against the door by a powerful kick, à la Jackie Chan movie. Or a battering ram. In any case, it was incredible fear of the most agitated explosion of sound I’d ever heard that caused me to fall from my bed and stumble to the door. I saw my clock as I ran: 7:14

My bed is maybe 12 feet from the door. There were at least 15 more knocks before I reached the handle. I thrust it open, mid-knock, and was faced with the meatiest fist I’ve yet to encounter. It was as if someone had stolen it from a Rodin statue and placed it on the end of her arm. The fingers were like clenched ham hocks, and the thumb nail was glacially large.

This enormous hand and its arm were only a prelude to the rest of the appendage’s owner. The colossal woman before me was much more than the sum of her parts: I didn’t have my glasses on, but she had to be at least 6 feet tall, and only the narrowest slivers of light from the hallway were able to escape from behind her and flow into the bedroom through the doorway.

“Frische Handtüche und Sauber?” the beast thundered. You’ve all had hangovers, you know what I mean when I say “thundered.” I was still in the one-eye-half-closed stage of wakefulness, and as such was not at all able to comprehend Goliatha’s request. Her moustache shook with indignation. “Frische Handtüche?!” she cried, impatient and unable to understand why she wasn’t getting answers from the pathetic figure standing in the threshold. [I was at this point still in my skivvies, and after a night of drinking and the sudden frigidity of being out of bed, I’m sure I looked like the sickly ET—horribly pale and thin, with skeletal fingers and a pair of tiny, pointed nipples]. I couldn’t answer. I hadn’t the mental capacity at that point to form words in any language, and I was more than a little intimidated and confused by the angry middle aged giant with nun’s shoes and a woman’s voice. Just then, Julia appeared behind me. She didn’t look any better than I did, but managed to push the words “Ja, bitte,” out of an abused and dry-sounding throat.

As if the starting gun had been fired, the maid burst into the room. Her entourage was not a step behind her: a young woman with rose-red Mary Janes and knee-highs of soft pink, carrying a pile of sheets; another middle aged woman who had obviously long ago rejected the notion of the bra as a necessity, carrying a number of hand towels; and finally an ancient woman, who looked not unlike Zelda Rubinstein and came up to about my navel, doing an admirable job of wielding a vacuum cleaner that looked as if it had been stolen from a museum devoted to homemaking. I mean, it could have been a 1950s atomic powered model.

Nascar has nothing on these ladies. They ran past Julia and me and into the room, each to a different task. The younger one ran at my bed, tore off the sheets, and began to remake it. The 2nd middle aged woman was not in the room when I looked—she had replaced the bathroom hand towels and was throwing the old ones in a basket outside in the hallway. She returned carrying neatly folded bath towels. Zelda had already vacuumed half of the room and was furiously thrusting the head of the apparatus at the area by Julia’s bed. With her bed being made, Julia had no means of escaping the vacuum, and she was dancing around Zelda’s attacks like a cowboy in a Western whose feet are being shot at. The 1st middle aged woman, however, who had been barking orders in an eastern European language, was still. She wore a look that would have been more appropriate for being branded or walking on hot coals. The look was aimed at me.

“Ihre Kleide?” she commanded, pointing at my jeans and t-shirt which had been lying near my bed from the night before. “Entschuldigung,” I begged, the tone of my voice telling my mistress that I very much wished to live and would do whatever penance necessary to avoid incurring her wrath. I leapt at my clothes and hugged them close to me. She began to clean the surrounding area and to dust the furniture.

Zelda came at me like an angry silverback—I leapt away just in time.

It was over before I had time to remember that “frische Handtüche und Sauber” meant “fresh hand towels and vacuum.” The leader was the last to finish, and they all fled the room as though Julia and I had Ebola. With a thickly accented “auf Wiedersehen” and a slamming of the door, they were gone. I felt like I was standing in a Midwestern barn that had barely survived a tornado. But what a clean barn! The beds were beautifully made and turned down, the towels in the bathroom were folded and smelled of fresh laundry, the furniture spotless, and the floor immaculate. I looked at my alarm clock: 7:17.

Their other visits (we discovered they occurred twice weekly) were less harrowing, and after learning on which days they came, we had the room ready for them every Sunday and Wednesday morning.

Up until now, Julia and I have been about the only guests in the building. This last week, however, has seen a number of students moving in. This Sunday morning, with the floor ready, I was up and waiting for my favorite Formula 1 team—they never showed up. I asked at the reception, and was told that the place was no longer considered a hotel, and that maid service was available at 15 euro per week. I would weep for the loss of the cleaning ladies, were it not for my black and stony heart.

Listening to Bulgarian folk music sung by a female a capella choir. It’s a very cool sound they make—quarter-tone harmonies sung with a kind of “correct belting.” I don’t really know how else to describe it. Since it’s all women, the songs are about everything from weddings to giving birth to menstrual pains, and the music is sometimes very harsh and real. I know they’re not really from the same region, but I can’t help thinking of the cleaning ladies… tough music for tough broads. They make Rosie the Riveter look like a debutante.