Schlepping Through the Alps by Sam Apple

Author:Sam Apple [Apple, Sam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-49052-0
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2005-08-24T04:00:00+00:00

It was midday. I bought a black Puma bag with gold stripes on the side because a very attractive saleswoman with long blond hair and an earring in her nose had encouraged me to do so, then headed to a small shoe-repair stand, hoping that my shoes could be returned to a single color. An old man with reddish hair and a strong chin stood behind the counter, racks of shoe heels and small tools behind him. “Because you are tourist,” he said, “I will polish shoes for ten schillings.” I doubted that tourists received special discounts, but it sounded like a good price, and so I stood on the street in my tube socks and waited. When the old man handed my shoes back, I announced that I was a journalist and asked him what he thought of the current government.

The old man paused, then looked me up and down. “You are Jewish?”

“Yes,” I said, slightly startled.

“I am Jewish,” he said. “From Russia.”

I smiled, but the man seemed no warmer now that we had made a connection. “And what do you think of this government and Haider?”

“More Nazis in America than here,” the old man said loudly. Then he glanced at my shoes and said it again. “More Nazis in America than here.”

“Do you really think so?”

The old man repeated the phrase for the third time, as though it were suddenly the only thing he knew how to say in English.

Unsure of what else to do, I paid him ten schillings for the shoeshine and walked off.

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