the world has turned and left me here

Vienna #1

Well Shaun saved the day at the last minute by checking his email (accidentally he said). Coincidence--or perhaps something that goes beyond coincidence, since there have been so many coincidences lately--struck again and decreed that we should hang out in Vienna together.

Saturday was a really long day that began for me at 5:30 when they woke me up on the night train, handing me two apologetic slices of bread and a coffee that burned my hands as I fished around in the half darkness, because the sides were too thin, thin like the kind of cup they take urine samples in. Morning had just dawned on Vienna when I emerged from the subway in front of the St. Stephan's Cathedral.

The first order of business after taking stock of my surroundings was to get coffee, as I continued to do in various places all day long. The coffee shops in Vienna are great, not just for melange (milk coffee) or moccha, but for the ambiance, which no coffee shop I have seen to date can touch. Wooden floors, seats with velvet, ceiling-to-floor mirrors, college students, aristocrats, people who speak german but answer their cellphones in french, regulars beginning to pour in and the good mornings multiplying, smoke curling. One peculiarly Viennese thing about these places is that they serve a glass of water with every coffee. The belief is that coffee dehydrates you. I can't second that officially, but with as much water as I rid myself of on a good day of coffee drinking, it seems plausible.

Shaun and I met in the Cafe Hawelka, and from there commenced intense tourist activities which were not to let up until nearly midnight. Saw Vienna from the top of the St. Stephan's Cathedral.

We ate lunch at the Naschmarkt, an open air market similar to Munich's Viktualienmarkt, except there was a lot more than just food. It was here among the junk bins that we came across this doll. I don't know why but the sight of a doll in a neglected or abused state has always made me sad.

After that we went to Schoenbrunn, the Hapsburg's summer palace.

We could have walked around in the garden for days without seeing the same thing twice. The trees were just beginning to turn so everything was golden to match the palace facade itself.

(To be continued once I get more pictures!)