y first week at the hotel they made me Getränkekellner. Dirk the headwaiter took the orders and I ran up and down the stairs with trays full of Austrian beer, wine spritzers, and Kaffee mit Schlagsahne. I'd spent two summers serving burgers and shakes to country club kids to save enough money to come to Austria. The land of my Father, the Alps, Mozart.

Customers sat on the Seeterrasse and watched the swans float by on the lake and admired the mountains in the distance. They thought I was like the singing waiter from The Merry Widow, the operetta that made the Hotel Weisses Rössl famous. I told a husband and wife from Michigan that I couldn't sing. "Well then, yodel," the husband suggested.

"No good," I replied, "I'm American."

The man shook his head, "We come all the way to Austria and we get an American waiter."

The other waiters were all Austrian and young. One thin, blond fellow who was polishing silver whispered as I passed by, "Fuck you." Later, he leaned towards me as I was clearing a table, "Asshole," drawing out the words through his teeth. After "Cocksucker" and "Eat me," I found out his name was Amadeus, and except for some scattered phrases from American and English rock and roll, he had already exhausted his English. He was the only Amadeus in the hotel but there were nine waiters named Wolfgang. We were just thirty kilometers from Salzburg, the birthplace of Mozart. I taught Amadeus new swear words and he introduced me to a maid named Monique.

On our next day off, Monique and I took the cog railroad up Hundstein and walked in the alpine meadows. We ate Leberknödel and black bread for lunch in a small café with white and red umbrellas, and tossed pieces of bread to the swans on Wolfgangsee. Later, we sat on the hotel dock with our feet in the cold water. Monique pointed out her hometown of Strobl across the lake, but wanted to talk only of the beaches and movie stars in California. I heard my name from the lake and saw Amadeus waving to me from the rail of the Heimatlander, a lake excursion boat, his arm around a girl with hair the color of the gilt church dome in St. Wolfgang. His words sang out across the waters of Wolfgangsee.

"M   o   t   h   e   r   f   u   c   k   e  r.        When are we going in America?"

Copyright © 1997 by Rod Bauer. All rights reserved.