vienna

  

The rainclouds cleared as we took the train away from Vienna. After four days of oppressive damp we saw the sky. This only helped to reinforce the image in my mind that Vienna city is perpetually smothered by grey cloud. I will always remember it that way. The European rain is like a child, clinging all day to your ankles and making life generally more difficult. It needs a few lessons from the wild Australian storms that throw lightening and bucketfuls across the sky, then get on their merry way.

I purchased my tourist trap six euro umbrella (production value 35c) from a shop selling novelty mugs and chocolates with Mozart’s face on the foil. From that point on my life improved in every category. Vienna has a huge selection of parks, all adorned with magnificent white sculpted fountains and flower gardens. Unfortunately, picnics in the grey Viennese damp fall short of my expectations. Strolls in the misty parks (with umbrella) satisfy.

Walks in Vienna are bound to be interspersed with unexpected highlights. I seemed the only soul in the city discouraged by the weather. The buskers were out in force, including a pair wearing rubber horse heads that made a fantastic noise when slapped. A film festival showed an outdoor silver screen casually erected in front of a gothic hall, and local markets peddled everything that can possibly be made from poppy seeds and hemp. There's also an abundance of statues to mimic. This is one of my favourite games. There's also the part where all this fun stuff is interspersed with a confusing number of people in traditional dress distributing bread to the public. I don't know either.


Vienna does a terrifying tourist trade, but the worst offenders seem to concentrate themselves around the cathedral, and Mariahilfer Straße, where one can buy the standard array of goods that are not actually Austrian. Avoiding these served us well. I’d quickly recommend walking some backstreets and doing some good ol’ fashioned exploring.

I found myself alone in the rain on Sunday (Ella being entirely more responsible for her soul than I am, and consequently finding a church). I have always assumed that the best thing to do alone in the rain is read a book and stuff myself with goodies, and nothing has ever proven me wrong, so that is what I did. On the corner of two fairly nondescript streets in the Museumsquartier there’s a small bookshop and café bar called Phil. The place is as concisely pretentious as its name might suggest, and the clientele seems a mix between well-dressed arts students and young business people wearing their weekend hipster moustaches. Clusters of vintage furniture cover most of the floor space, and a small sign indicates which vinyl is currently spinning.

I spent the next two hours making my way through a thick mango smoothie adorned with slivered almonds (genius), and the first hundred pages of a book about why I don’t eat animals. This book was a careful choice. Books bought during travel must meet a certain set of criteria for me. Having resisted buying a replacement copy for the Coetzee I lost Luxembourg, I was forced to employ my ruthless selection process based on a good weight to reading time ratio, which considers typeface and font, page coverage, length, and content. Carrying my possessions across the continent on my back has made me thrifty with my weight allowance and increasingly conscious of my dorkiness.


If I'd had the afternoon too I might have seen a movie called Woman in a Septic Tank at the art-house cinema around the corner, because that seems like the kind of thing to do after listening to records all morning surround by people in brown leather shoes. When I left Phil the rain had lightened. Then it started again.

If anyone ever ends up in Vienna and it’s not raining, I’d like to hear about it.