A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

The Hotel Karntnerhof

I had two confluent thoughts as I brought our taxied luggage inside. We had walked into a story by renowned American writer T.S. Garp. Or maybe my childhood chum Harry Lime had booked our room. Ann’s first thought upon viewing the reception area and the neighbouring lounge which also served as the breakfast room was Fawlty Towers, also a family owned and operated independent establishment. Fiction. Ann and I are usually on the same page even if we are unsure of its number.

The Karntnerhof is tucked away at the end of a lane or gasse in Old Vienna or Innere Stadt. The ring road around the city’s First District traces the fortifications of Vindobona, a Roman military camp erected on the bank of the Danube, an edge of the empire, sometime between 1 and 100 AD. Archeology is a long way down: the excavated ruins preserved for exhibit outdoors on Michaelerplatz are deep enough to demand a zoom lens.

Our quirky six-storey hotel was completed around 1880. The residential building became a brothel during the Second World War. The madame’s name was Rosa. It was transformed into a hotel sometime after the Germans pulled out; the Allies’ occupation of Vienna ended in 1955. The 44-room Karntnerhof is of its place and a very different time. The maximum capacity of the tiny lift is 225 kilograms, a close space for three people or two with luggage. The shaft, wrapped in a whitewashed iron grille, takes guests as high as the fifth floor. Our room was on the sixth, up a wide winding flight of stairs.

Travel lodging is secondary to the destination, but by no means an afterthought. Nobody wants to dread or barely tolerate the night after a full day out exploring a strange place. When Ann and I were at the Karntnerhof, we were unlikely to be in our room. For us, the hotel’s prime amenity was the fifth floor dachterrasse, an outdoor patio. It was enclosed on three sides by the hotel itself and two abutting buildings. The view through a grid of pigeon netting was white chimneys balancing at the apex of steep red rooftops, their tiles faded to a rusted brick colour. Towering over the tilted television antennas a little to our right were two green copper spires, their gilt accents shining as gold will. There was a silver cylindrical ashtray attached to the wall by the door. Attached to it by a sturdy cord was a paintbrush. The Karntnerhof expects its smoking guests to be tidy.

Sunrise and sunset in Vienna mirrored the timing Ann and I are used to in Edmonton in November and December despite the eight-hour difference. The late autumn temperatures in Vienna were chilly enough to require layers of clothing but not unpleasant. Because our room had no appliances, I cached my tins of Stiegl Goldbrau and Pilsner Urquell behind the flower pots on the dachterrasse. Isolated and above it all (“Up on the Roof”) and no bigger than an interior room it must be some kind of oasis come summertime. I considered it unser Zigarette und Biergarten. Apparently those two improper nouns require capitalization.

Jorge, the man whom I assumed to be the Karnterhof’s general manager was incredibly patient with me. I pestered him with questions. He explained that German is a grammatically complicated language and fluency is no easy feat. After Jorge listed the various forms of articles (way more than French), I replied, “The.” I asked Jorge about a curious character I had noticed on subway and tourist maps and on certain street signs. To me it suggested a curlier capital B or a stacked lower case a and b, rendered in some dainty font I was unfamiliar with. I knew strasse meant street, but from time to time it was rendered as straBe. He said the eszett represented an even sharper s-sound than pronounced in strasse and to try and imagine strassse. Not to be outdone, I countered with thorn, the defunct Anglo-Saxon character which closely resembles the capital Y on your QWERTY keyboard. Thorn’s sound is th as in "the" and so Ye is not ye if ye know what I mean. Ann and I asked Jorge about anything we were curious about: this or that restaurant for supper; public transit; the Art Advent am Karlsplatz Christkindlmarkt and the big daddy Christmas market at Schloss Schonbrunn, which boasted a skating rink and curling sheet.

One Karntnerhof curiosity I did not ask Jorge about was a painting in the hotel’s bibliothek. This was the room Ann and I passed through a few times per day en route to our semi-private cigarette garden. There was a desk with a computer on it, Windows, black (I found a few of my books for sale on Amazon Deutsch). Red hardbound volumes of Nietzsche on the shelves, coffee table books celebrating the arts and architecture of Wien, and, of course, airplane fiction left behind by fellow travellers: Mozart and mish-mash.

Works of art hang throughout Hotel Karntnerhof, in the halls, the rooms, the reception area and the lounge. Some are charcoal nudes. Many are studies of birds which I presumed dated from a time when scientists were known as natural philosophers. An oil painting by the dachterrasse door in the bibliothek stood out, captivated me. Mystified me. A scene from an art museum. Most of the art lovers wear military uniforms. Every arm of the Nazi war machine is represented and most of them are contemplating a large painting in an ornate frame. An inside story is more familiar to me as a literary device. The painting within the painting depicts a vanquished villain or wounded hero of myth. Christian or Classical, I could not say. Whatever happened to him was grievous. I read the date on the canvas as 1959. Ann read it as 1969. Consequently, the artist’s name remains as much a cipher as their subject.

I asked Jorge about the highs and lows of his trade. He said February could be a quiet month, but the Karntnerhof was usually always full otherwise. There were just too many people in Vienna, he said. A gentle lament for one of the hidden costs of a vibrant tourism industry. Naturally, Ann and I were not part of the problem. Strangely, despite the unaccommodating lift and the nineteenth century charm of the lounge, Ann and I rarely encountered the hotel’s other guests except at breakfast. These other people from other parts of the globe were most annoying, sometimes delaying our access to the coffeemaker and buffet for minutes at a time.

There is no place like home. Ann and I agree on that and most other things. As a trip winds down switches in our heads flip. We begin repacking a day in advance of our departure. We have missed our life at the Crooked 9. Our holiday is the blank squares on the kitchen wall calendar. I am always glad and somewhat relieved to revisit the chore done weeks before in Edmonton. Me and my clothes are worse for wear. I conduct myself like a spy when we travel: observe, explore, learn, blend in – we tend to bypass those racks of tourist brochures found in every hotel and avoid curated or orchestrated activities. Extraction is always welcome. Faces: I was glad to come and I’ll be so sad to go/But while I was here I had me a real good time. Ann and I have bedded down in every type of hospitality establishment ranging from no stars to five. Utilitarian requirements always. Until now. My memories of Vienna will always commence with the Hotel Karnterhof: I did not want to check out.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is still out there languishing in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still print. Collect the set!

A FAN’S NOTES

I Am Shocked! Shocked, I Say!

The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World’s Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of an inevitable chain – F. Scott Fitzgerald (Nick Carraway), The Great Gatsby

Modern-day Arnold Rothsteins (Meyer Wolfsheim in the novel) needn’t concoct such elaborate schemes. The Jazz Age has passed. There's a new flap about. 

Vices are fun. Their addictive nature demands strict management however. Therefore, it’s preferable not to have too many to juggle. For instance, drink and drugs may cloud your betting judgment. Card counters best not be seeing double. Have a cigarette and select an alternate. Know your limit.

Gambling’s never provided me a tenterhook rush. I’ve always viewed it as the opportunity cost of other vices. Sports and gambling used to have a taboo relationship, like incest or Rosemary’s Baby. Before you knew it, professional poker turned up on your TV’s sports channel. The creep became a sprint. Sports gambling has since been legitimized and digitized. There’s an app for that in-game prop bet.

A doughy and pasty Wayne Gretzky shills for one industry firm during hockey games broadcast in Canada. The gig probably pays better than his middle-aged men’s line of clothing in a failed department store chain. And probably better than the returns from his shuttered wine bar just past security in Edmonton’s international airport.

I was mildly stunned to see stadium advertising for betting whilst seated along the first base line at a late September Toronto Blue Jays game. This was after all the nostalgia infused apple pie sport still somewhat tarnished by the Black Sox and Pete Rose. More glaring mixed messages: beer and emulsified food (killers both and so addictive), but no peanuts because some pale, fragile child may have a reaction.

Have you been married more than once? Chances are, somebody’s going to tell you that one of them was a very bad idea. But you were thinking about mutual benefits at the time. Pro sports courted its first cousin. Well, gee. Well, genes. What could possibly go wrong? Betting scandals have erupted like volcanos in MLB and NBA of late. “Dropped like bombshells” in journalese. These are just the trailers: More scandals! More leagues! Coming soon to a theatre of the absurd near you. United States Attorneys will tut-tut and blather on about the inherent integrity of venerable institutions. Does corruption surprise anybody anymore? Really? Such a disgrace! Please.

The fix is implemented by sports books’ online in-game prop bets. Prop bets are micro-wagers, big money staked fleeting moments that the athletes themselves can manipulate and control. A basketball player may remove himself from a game upon playing a certain number of minutes and registering some other stat, rebounds maybe, assists. Somebody bet on those numbers. A pitcher ensures a slider is well out of the batter’s strike zone and below a certain velocity. Somebody bet on the umpire’s call and the pitch’s speed. Hell, gamblers could conceivably get to anthem singers now: “Your rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” will do America proud. You’re a diva, you tend to warble, but can we discuss the over-under?”

The motivation of the alleged complicit players vexes me. Greed is always the usual suspect, but these guys are paid well by any standard. Signed up union members at that. I think the reps (and even the shadowy influencers) would host a brief Burner Phone 101 seminar. Threat and duress? Favours for less fortunate friends? Stupidity? Maybe simple human nature is the key.

The Confessions is one of the world’s great theological texts. In any religion. Bit of a grind; I wouldn’t recommend it as beach reading should you be embarking on a discounted tourist compound holiday in a hurricane zone. No worries, there’s a cheat song for your earbuds and iPhone. Mick Jagger summed up The Confessions succinctly: Augustine knew temptation/He loved women, wine and song/And all the special pleasures/Of doing something wrong…

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is still out there languishing in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still print. Collect the set!

A FAN’S NOTES

Game Seven on the Radio

“This pitching change brought to you by Home Hardware.” Oh, my boy, there’s lots of pitching changes in modern baseball. “He’s thrown thirty-six pitches already; he’s got to be getting tired.” Where have you gone Bob Gibson? Home Hardware’s pitch is Canadian local ownership. Everything a pitcher needs to doctor a ball always in stock, I suppose: grease, files, sandpaper.

I’ve also memorized the telephone number of Pizza Nova even though I’m certain central Alberta is a titch beyond the Ontario chain’s delivery range.

Toronto Blue Jays, a beleaguered nation turned the spotlight up on you. Ann and I saw them hosting the Boston Red Sox in late September. One of those games that mattered. A road trip for us, a fun and memorable night at the ballpark. I can never be a hardcore Jays fan simply because they aren’t Montreal’s expired Expos. Had the Jays lost the American League Championship Series to the Seattle Mariners, I might’ve shrugged. This World Series wasn’t about cheering for the Jays. It was about cheering against the Los Angeles Dodgers, the big money and the Hollywood glitz.

My friend Stats Guy was mildly torn over the match up. He grew up in California. A lifelong Dodger fan now delivered from any loyalty dilemma by the demise of the National League Expos. International affairs have thrown him a curve. Relations between the United States and what is now Canada haven’t been this fraught since the War of 1812 and the Fenian Raids fifty years later. He was reluctantly leaning Jays. Something of a wincing blustery shout at U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra who has infinitely raised the volume of Ugly American deaf douchebaggery.

The 2025 World Series is now in the record book. The end came for the home team in the bottom of the eleventh inning. Down by a run with just one out. Jays on the corners (They’d loaded the bases with futility in the ninth). Infield grounder. Two outs turned. Series over. Stranded runners don’t haunt winners.

Saturday afternoon I said to Ann, “I’m interested in the final game.”

“Do you want to go out and watch it?”

“God, no.” A crowd of other people. I’m too tired of tribes. God, no.

I can’t remember how many years ago we cut our cable television. As much as I enjoy baseball, Montreal Canadiens hockey and Canadian football, I can’t say I’ve pined for their visual wastes of time. I check the results next morning. Our streaming access is lean too. There’s too much stuff out there unworthy of subscription. Still, this fall’s World Series commenced with a huge hook: Us and the US. And that hook became increasingly huger.

Ann and I drove a little south and a little east of Edmonton last Thursday morning. We were to stay overnight in the “Rose City”. The occasion was an informal wake staged at the Masonic Lodge. A high school friend of Ann’s had died. The scattered old gang would gather in “historic” downtown Camrose. My selfish hope was that the afternoon’s affair would bleed into a World Series game in the hotel bar. Alas, there’s never a convenient time to die. Thursday was an off day.

I said to Ann, “I’d like to listen to the game on the radio. I don’t know if that’s even possible.”

Ann replied, “You used to love listening to baseball on the radio.”

I did. Expos broadcasts were a conversation between announcer Dave Van Horne and colour man Duke Snider, he of The Boys of Summer and the third proper noun in the chorus of “Talkin’ Baseball” fame, California laconic. (A hardcover of his 1988 "autobiography" The Duke of Flatbush is still on my shelf.) Dave and Duke did not clog the air with maniacal recitations of statistics. Dave and Duke simply chatted. And like drop-in neighbours around a kitchen table, they were comfortable with silences even though dead air is a radio crime. The rhythms of baseball should naturally deflate windbags. Why analyze nothing? Much more mercifully, not every moment of action was brought to me by a paying sponsor.

Duke’s in game pitch was for Orange Maison, “The major league taste I really enjoy.” The stuff was sold refrigerated, its container a bulbous orange plastic bottle with a convenient slim neck. Designed to swig. Its two main ingredients were sodium benzoate and floor sweepings from the pulp and paper mills in Alma and Bromptonville which masqueraded as pulp. Orange Maison paired well with vodka.

When the opportunity presented itself, between innings or during a rain delay, Duke would tell Dave a story from his glory days as a Brooklyn Dodger. Me and my friends Glenn and Tim knew Duke wore just three pairs of spikes as a pro: his mudders, his gamers and a new pair that had to broken in. None of these plain black leather baseball shoes came with a paid sponsorship. And we’d riff on Duke’s other stories. “The Dodgers barnstormed through Japan one off-season. And Jackie, Pee Wee and I…” The three of us would add sake, geisha girls, You Only Live Twice rice paper walls, Fat Man and Little Boy. “The Dodgers used to hold spring training in Havana, Cuba. There was quite a fine hotel close by our grounds. One night, Jackie, Pee Wee and I…” And off the six of us would go; Glenn, Tim and me departing from Woody’s Pub barstools.

As a boy I experienced time zone bliss. A rainy night in Montreal and the Expos crackling over my bedroom radio from San Francisco, LA or San Diego. Dave and Duke talking about the weather, the brown haze in the sky or the cold wind off the bay. Central Daylight Savings was pretty good roadtripping too. Middle America, an hour's difference, Chicago and St. Louis, formerly the extent of the major league's reach. Ballparks and cities I hoped to visit someday.

Ann found the Sportsnet radio stream on her iPhone. She plugged her device into the socket beside the landline and above the kitchen counter for me. Then she disappeared. Ann knows her sports when she has to because she’s a good listener and the clichés and Cathal Kelly in The Globe and Mail often amuse her. Ann has her limits. I spent three or so hours alone in the Crooked 9’s kitchen. The miracle of puttering is that even the simplest task can be stretched out for however long I decide it takes. Our supper dishes eventually got done. I scribbled in my Hilroy copy book. I prepped Sunday morning’s coffee. I spot washed the floor. I smoked on our front porch between innings. Long before the Jays flamed out in the home half of the ninth, bases loaded, I sensed the ending. This was going to one of those games where the winning team doesn’t score more runs in one inning than their opponent through nine.

“Well, Ann, you talk about momentum. How is momentum a factor tonight?”

“Well, Geoff, it’s huge, just huge.”

“Does it get any bigger than this?”

“Well, Geoff, as I said, it’s huge. Just huge.”

I can’t recall the names of Sportsnet’s Jays radio broadcast team. I can tell you they weren’t Dave and Duke. Conversation to them is some kind of pre-Apple and -Android abstract. Less than six outs in their stilted patter, their spew of banal inanities, began to annoy the fuck out of me. Listening to the radio with the volume set on MUTE proved impossible.

Doing something the old way couldn’t take me back, couldn’t replicate something I can’t explain, what I was hoping to maybe feel. More disturbingly, I now have positive focus group thoughts about Home Hardware and Pizza Nova because I craved and welcomed their tiresome interruptions.                 

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential has been available since June in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Collect the set! Buy Of Course You Did (2021) too.

NONSENSE VERSE

Feast of All Hallows

Did I just see a mouse in our house?

Grey hallucination, a shadow of doubt

A late onset form of acid reflux?

Teenage recreational drug redux

I killed a real rodent with a trap

Its big-eyed Disney spine went snap!

Silverfish and centipedes on the floor

I crush them all and stomp some more

Maggots fill me up with dread

Festering wounds or life in the dead

We once babysat a pet tarantula

With a thorax larger than my fibula

This Charlotte was no E. B. White

Hirsute creature, Halloween fright!

And what to make of you, my love?

I will require black rubber gloves

Your sleazy, casual perfidy

Has not been sitting well with me

Your treachery bungs my craw

Your sentence is hammer and saw

I shall cut you into hundreds of pieces

Then hand you out as bloody Reese’s

You’ll always be my dear “Buttercup”

Which is why I must slice you up

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential (2025) is languishing out there in multiple formats. Go against the flow and visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did (2021) still gathers dust in the marketplace. Collect the set!