As Above, so Below

June 20th 2024

I arrive in Graz, less tired than I feared, to a wonderful hot lunch in Lino's WG, which is empty for the weekend. After a short tour around the block, we head to Kerstin's theater performance, which is bold and weird and experimental. It tastes like gossip from a stranger, and the loudest scream you've heard in a long time, and, uhm, the stuff inside your neighbour's nose.
After meeting more Graz people than I can possibly remember, and whose names will haunt me throughout anecdotes and gossip for the next few days, we head over to the Mozartgasse WG. That is: Kerstin, Caro, and Helene for the most part, Lino sometimes, and me for now.
I meet them all over a late-night puzzle on the living room table, where we discuss the performance as well as various friends' feelings about the same and how that bodes for the friendship.

Caro feels the most grown up of the bunch, with a stable job and circadian rhythm, would you believe it. WG mom vibes. When she's done puzzling for the day around midnight and goes to bed, the conversations turn all hushed an quiet.

Helene can only be described as a fairy creature: As we have our müsli the next morning, she drops by the kitchen, announces that she'll go to sleep after breakfast, and shows us the mashup of hey soul sister she was working on as we slept. Her personality consists of many layers, most of which appear to be crime. I drink some tea that she may or may not have stolen and admire the morgue sign on her door that she did. After breakfast, she disappears for most of the day - to sleep, maybe, or to tend to other business of the fae.

Lino can only get enough ✨enrichment✨ from the puzzle by connecting two- or three piece clusters with puns on them, which, yeah, that checks out.

And then there is Christian, who's a bit more monosyllabic and reclusive and I'm told we don't like him all that much, and Kerstin's parents of course, who are in town for the week. Of them I'm told that they have no opinions whatsoever, but they do pay for my pieroggi and try hard enough to like Kerstin's theater so I may be a bit biased in their favour.
We're off for the day doing a sightseeing bike tour to a staircase, a garden, and some abandoned building. My borrowed bike makes terrifying sounds as I try to keep up with Lino, but I'm told that's fine and it will not collapse under me, actually.
After lunch with Kerstin's parents, we need to re-assert our independence as rebellious teenagers and decide to hit the highs and lows this city has to offer:
The highest point of Graz, if you're not being annoying about it, can't quite be called a skyscraper. But at 24 floors it's a pretty tall apartment building and really stands out among the lowdown cityscape. And if you know someone who used to live there, you might know how to linger around the front door, waiting to sneak in as people come and go. And you might even have a copy of the key that opens the door to the roof.
And so this becomes a bit of a third space. Flat concrete with a single plastic chair. Wind blowing through your hair, the city at your feet. It's pretty nice, actually.

We're all a bit more scared about the part that comes next: There's a canal, part of the city's sewer system, that has an outflow into the Muhr just at the edge of the Augarten. There's a sign there that warns you not to enter, that this is all very forbidden and very dangerous. But who are we if not rebellious teenagers who are barely able to read? It's an open secret that, when the water is low, you can hop the wall and walk through the underbelly of Graz for half an hour before emerging next to a church downtown.
We've been checking on the water levels since I arrived and kept an eye on the forecast for unexpected rain. Perhaps part of me is looking for an excuse not to do it, but the skies stay clear, and ten in the evening we're heading out.
The path down the riverbank is easy, and soon we stand next to the ominous sign at the mouth of the canal. We turn on our phone flashlights and promise not to scare each other.
It's pitch dark. Our phone flashlights only do so much, but we do see the graffiti-covered walls as we pass by. There's not as much smell as we feared, but there's bits and pieces on the floor that you definitely don't want to step into. My shoes — my nice shoes! the only ones I brought! — feel uncomfortably dirty to say the least.

But it's also really wild and exciting to walk through the city's guts like this — with all its pipes and chutes and rough stone walls — and to be completely alone in this darkness, together. We make it about halfway until we get to a bend in the tunnel where the water is not quite low enough, flowing over the path we've been walking on. Just the tiniest bit disappointed, we turn back and walk home through the park until the icky feeling on our shoes subsides.
On my last day here I'm on my own for a bit, because of work and parents and suchlike. I head over to the Kunsthaus for an exhibit on the nature of work. Even though I'm by myself now, I find myself having a pleasant bunch of conversations while I'm here — one of them being with a shitty AI sex robot, but that's another story.

I return home to Kerstin brushing miso glaze onto eggplants. I join her in the kitchen, maybe helping a little bit, but mostly watching, mostly listening — and it strikes me that this is all very good: sitting in my little nook, watching someone cook for me, hearing gossip about all these people I don't know. It feels cozy, full of love, and maybe also full of the hate we share for the friends that didn't like the theater performance.

We sit in a loose semicircle around the tiny balcony to devour our miso eggplant and once the sun has set, the bunch of us head out to watch fireflies and see if we can spot an elusive badger. It's an interesting feeling, knowing that we're here right now, but all dispersing soon in our own ways. Me back home. Kerstin, soon, to Leipzig. Helene to Norway, to seduce repressed American Christian Lesbians, or something.

We don't see a badger, but it was a lovely trip either way.