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Archive for November, 2008

Nov 28 2008

Looking for a Definitive Answer

Published by Travelling Blackbird under General Edit This

As I’ve mentioned in a few posts recently, I’ve been having a little trouble with the German rail service, Deutsche Bahn. The trains are not fully wheelchair accessible, and while there is a service that you can order to help you get on and off, if anything goes wrong with the order, you can end up being stuck on the platform, unable to get on your train. Problems with the booking of the service do happen, especially, it seems, if you make the order in person at the station.

Even if you’re a more mobile wheelchair user who can get out of your chair, or make small jumps and drops in the chair, you might find it difficult to travel: on one recent occasion, I was actually prevented from getting on the train I wanted by a station worker, even though I said I’d get myself on with no assistance. He said it was too dangerous, and that I couldn’t get on alone, but that since I didn’t have the assistance service booked, I would have to wait till they had time to help me.

On a good friend’s advice, I wrote to Deutsche Bahn and asked for clarification of a few points. Is there any way to get confirmation of booking the mobility assistance service? Is a wheelchair user required to book the service, or can we travel alone, unassisted, at our own risk? Is there any legal basis for a station worker to prevent a wheelchair user from getting on the train if they are unassisted? And what should a wheelchair user do if they want to travel spontaneously?

I am very curious as to when and if I’ll get an answer, but I do think this is the way to go in situations like this. Ask the questions in writing, get the answers in writing, keep it all official and then be able to say definitively what one should do in a given situation. At the moment, all I have to go on is what friends and station workers have said about the Deutsche Bahn services, and that’s just not enough of a clear answer.

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Nov 26 2008

Oh, the Weather Outside is Frightful…

Published by Travelling Blackbird under General, Rants Edit This

Winter has taken a firm grip on northern Europe this year. The last couple of weeks have been colder than usual for the area and the time of year, with temperatures below 5°C (in the low 30s F) during the day, and below freezing at night. We’ve also had snow. I’ve gone winters in Dusseldorf without seeing a single snowflake, but this year it seems we’ll be getting more than our normal share.

On Sunday, I went to Dusseldorf’s Museum Kunst Palast with two friends from Hannover, and while it was particularly chilly, there was a bit of blue in the sky that made it feel less wintery. However, while we were inside, snow-laden clouds rolled in, and we emerged into a particularly heavy snowfall: clumped flakes in a strong wind leaving next to no visibility, and a completely white courtyard.

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Nov 20 2008

The Weirdness of Austin

Published by Travelling Blackbird under City Overviews Edit This

Keep Austin Weird is a slogan you’ll see all over Austin. It’s on postcards, in shop windows, and on bumper stickers, not to mention T-shirts, hoodies, caps, and mugs. I’d know idea what it meant when I first visited. To be honest, I thought it was marijuana-related, some kind of organized and visible support for legalization of the drug. To support my theory (which, given that some of the slogan-bearing products were on sale in the official campus store, was admittedly a bit of a stretch), the character on one of the postcards was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette… and the smell of it did waft from a couple of windows as I was rolling around the neighborhoods, and I did see a large group of people on the university steps passing around a pipe: it didn’t seem to be something anyone was hiding. However, Keep Austin Weird had nothing to do with marijuana, nor did it have any relationship to the city’s live music scene (my second guess). It has a far more down-to-Earth meaning, one that I would’ve guessed if I’d just read the fine print.

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Nov 17 2008

Texan Rainstorms…

Published by Travelling Blackbird under Anecdotes Edit This

…or How I learned that a waterproof seat for a wheelchair isn’t necessarily a good idea.

 When I think of Austin, Texas, I think of it in many terms: the great friends I have there; the bars I like and the beers they have on tap; the good yet cheap food; the live music; the wide open spaces. However, I also think of it as the place where I got soaked worse than I have ever been without actually falling into a body of water. The very first day I spent in Austin, I found out what the word downpour really meant, and it was nothing like the wimpy little storms I’d experienced in Ireland and Poland. The worst Atlantic storm felt like light rain by comparison: this was rain that hurt.

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Nov 16 2008

Bits of Business

Published by Travelling Blackbird under General Edit This

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, my planned week of posts about the great city of Austin didn’t materialize. The past week was a tough one, tougher than I’ve had in a while. Work proved extremely stressful, as some long-brewing problems came to the fore and took all the joy out of the job. Two of my pupils also got into a fight during a class that was being observed. My day off started well with a tour of historic Aachen, but ended badly. A one-hour train journey took clear two hours, and involved three angry conversations with jobsworthy rail workers who wouldn’t allow me to board the trains I wanted. On top of all that, or rather because of all that, the back pain that I’ve been suffering from lately intensified, so even if I’d had the time to research and write the posts I wanted to write this week, I wouldn’t have had the energy for it. All I wanted to do come evening was sleep, and in the end, I decided not to fight it, but to rest up and come back stronger next week.

There are times when it’s good to be stubborn, and take on the world, despite long-term illness or other problems. During rehab, for example, being strong-headed is a good thing. However, it’s also important to recognize the days when you need to take things a little slower.

So, in the coming week, I’ll be posting about Austin, and the things to watch out for in the weird-in-a-good-way capital of Texas. I’ll also explain why a waterproof wheelchair might not be the best thing in the world. I hope you’ll stop by and join me in exploring one of my favorite cities in the world.

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Nov 10 2008

Austin, Texas

Published by Travelling Blackbird under Accessibility Ratings, City Overviews Edit This

I’d never fallen in love with a city until I visited Austin. I’d been there a day-and-a-half when I realized I wanted to move there, and even though I never did, the idea will always be in the back of my mind. I felt better there than I ever had in any other city, and I couldn’t imagine there was anything that would ever put me off being there. I’ve been back every year since, at least for a couple of days. This week, I’d like to share with you some of the reasons I love Austin.

What was it about the capital of Texas that so captured my affection? I am fond of other cities, but Austin is one of the only cities I really love. I have a few very good friends there, but that’s not the only reason. The city itself held fascination for me. I spent hours exploring it while my friends were at work, going into stores, wandering down by the river, meandering through the parks, and eating at small local restaurants. Everything was new, and I’m sure I bored everyone terribly in the evenings: I know that no-one could understand my saying how much I liked the grackles, as most long-term residents seem to loathe them like Europeans hate pigeons.

A common grackle

The thing I enjoyed most about Austin was the feeling of independence. I had traveled with the wheelchair before, through Poland, Germany, England and Ireland, but I’d always encountered enough barriers that I felt that I’d never travel independently. Austin was the first city I’d visited and felt that I could go anywhere I wanted alone. The buses had lifts, and the bus network covered all the parts of the city I wanted to get to. The stores were all accessible, the sidewalks all had curb cuts. I felt free and able to go anywhere, and I’d never felt like that before.

I will probably never actually do more than visit Austin. I’m sure the daily reality of living there would be very different to being an exploring tourist. I’ve never been there during the summer, only in the mild and pleasant winter months, and I don’t know if I could stand the heat of the Texan summer. More importantly, I’ve no desire to leave Europe and live in the US. Austin is just my dream city, an ideal born of a sense of not having any barriers to my movement for the first time in years.

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Nov 08 2008

A Personal Post

Published by Travelling Blackbird under Advice, General Edit This

Every year, just before my birthday, my mother’s aunt Jenny, a great woman who was a huge part of my childhood, would ask me if my back hurt, because of an old wives’ tale about the back hurting just before one’s birthday. It became a sort of gentle running joke between us: “How many times has his back hurt him?” instead of “How old is he?”; “My back’s that sore that I better get some presents tomorrow.”; and “You’d swear he had a birthday coming up, the way he’s complaining!” I still think of that every year, just before my birthday, and if I’m honest, I miss hearing it.

I’ve not been thinking of Aunt Jenny today because of any connection of the day to her life, but because today I developed a very uncomfortable back pain, and upon being asked what might have caused it, I thought immediately of my 35th birthday, just over a week passed. I thought of how she would have blamed the birthday, said I was late, or told me that was proof I was born before my time (which is not true: I was a late birth). The thought gave me a little comfort. I’ve always found the wheelchair and the associated pains easier to deal with when I can laugh at them a little.

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Nov 05 2008

The Perils of Being Short

Published by Travelling Blackbird under General Edit This

As I mentioned yesterday, since I started using a wheelchair, I’ve had to get used to being shorter. Besides the minor frustrations of high counters in stores, keypads being out of reach on ATMs, and paintings hanging too high in art galleries, there are some situations where being this short - and I mean about 2 feet under the average - can make life really uncomfortable.

I went to see the police yesterday because I wanted to make a statement about two strangers who’d come to my door and behaved in an intimidating way. I realize that, after the fact, there was nothing the police could actually do: no crime was committed. However, I feel that keeping the police informed was better, just in case something happens down the line.

When the doorbell rang, it was the same one-two ring that our postman uses, and I really thought it was his voice I heard saying he was already upstairs and there was no need to buzz him in. I opened the door to find two strangers, one in his late 50s, the other in his early 20s, standing there. I could’ve and should’ve taken the effort to stand and use the spy-hole in the door, which is at regular eye height, but I didn’t think. I was lucky nothing worse happened than getting intimidated by the two men.

They stepped in close as soon as I opened the door, effectively blocking me from closing it unless I actually slammed it on them, and started asking questions. They claimed to be looking for someone who used to live in my apartment, but they asked how many people live here, and where I was from, and whether mine is the room opposite the front door. Their attitude and their questioning were aggressive, and I really had a moment of fear. I couldn’t think straight to just tell them to go away: I just kept avoiding the questions, saying I didn’t know anything about the person they were looking for.

 What does this have to do with being shorter and in a wheelchair? It’s simple: if I’d been standing, I’d have been taller than both of them by a good 6 inches. Sitting down, I was around 18 inches shorter than the younger one, and easier to intimidate. I felt vulnerable, and feeling like that is not something that I used to feel when I was striding around Dublin and Wroclaw in my younger days. It’s a negative aspect of being in a wheelchair that I haven’t been able to deal with, a physical vulnerability that I haven’t been able to shake. How do you get back the kind of confidence that comes from your physical presence if your physical presence is changed? 

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Nov 04 2008

High-Low

Published by Travelling Blackbird under General Edit This

I am tall. Standing 6′2″ (188 cm) barefoot, I was a good couple of inches taller than most of my class-mates in school: not tall enough to tower over anyone, or to bang my head on low doorways, but tall enough to stand out. I got used to being one of the tallest people in whatever group I was with, and to being able to see and reach everything I needed to easily. When I started using a wheelchair, I didn’t think that I would overnight become shorter by quite a lot.

 Sitting in the wheelchair, I’m 4′1″ (124 cm), so my eye-line and vertical reach are 2 feet (61 cm) lower than they used to be. Initially, I was naive enough to think this wouldn’t matter, but it really does. Seeing over counters in stores, banks and offices; having conversations with people who are standing or walking alongside; browsing bookstores and libraries; and crossing the street: lots of everyday things are tricky or strange when you’re much shorter than average.

 For example, today I had to drop in to the local police station to let the duty officer know about a potential problem in the neighborhood. When I got in, I saw that the counter was just above my eye-line. I felt like a kid standing in front of it. That the duty officer is around 6′4″ didn’t help. I made my statement, getting a crick in my neck from looking up the whole time. If there’d been a low part of the counter, or he’d stood back a little farther, it would’ve made a big difference. Honestly, it felt a little intimidating.

 This kind of height situation is one I encounter often: buying bread in the morning, lodging money into my bank account, looking at paintings and sculpture in art galleries. My physically changed perspective gave me a new point of view from which I can better understand the problems not just of wheelchair users but of many people of under average height. The examples I’ve mentioned here are minor, but as you’ll see tomorrow, sometimes this being short can be a real problem.

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Nov 03 2008

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Published by Travelling Blackbird under General, Going Out Edit This

Friday was Hallowe’en, one of the two Irish holidays that made it big in the US, and from there have been creeping into other countries. Time was Hallowe’en wasn’t even acknowledged in Germany and other northern European countries, but each year, it seems to gain popularity, with stores, bars and restaurants getting into the modern spirit of the day. There’s even some trick-or-treating that goes on in some neighborhoods, although nothing like the scale of the Irish and US versions.

 I’m actually not big on celebrating Hallowe’en, even if it is an Irish holiday, but I’ll never turn down a good idea for an evening out, so when my friend Jens suggested going to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show at Galapagoz, I was right on board. Continue Reading »

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