The Austrian windmills push my train from Budapest towards Vienna, chugging past rows of orderly crops arranged in the distance. Cheekbones shift higher on faces, and noses narrow to a point. Even though the winter weather bores well into spring, the Christmas markets have been retired and packed away months ago, carried by wind-whipped workers. Yet, I notice as I step out of the train station, Glühwein, lebkuchen, and leberkäse still linger in the air.
Vienna is a city contained in a Roy Lichtenstein exhibit… but set in the 17th century. Clean and vibrant dots color the uniformly numbered districts. Horses’ hooves gallop in the streets, the sound echoing in jeweled palaces and baroque churches. Parts of the city will eternally be in Klimt’s Golden Phase, a yellow luminosity adorns the Viennese rooftops and royal crowns alike. This pale light seeps, saturating the cafes with newspaper stands and the four hundred or so annual balls.
A good tenant, Vienna’s precise glitz lives everywhere, from the cakes to the canvases. Rows of art cover the museum’s walls, the oil paint is so rich you could eat the trees and rivers from the landscape. Paintbrushes could be your cutlery, and Egyptian sarcophagi and statues of Roman Gods could be your dining companions.
A quick walk from the museum and I’m at a pub (I already went to a coffeehouse this morning). My beer is poured with meticulous expertise, and a mug below it captures the excess foam.
When dusk arrives, glowing as brightly as a New Mexican sunset, I know it will be a bitter and blustery day tomorrow. A frivolous flat white will be, in this case, necessary. It is quiet in Vienna, save a rushed whisper of conversation as people say goodbye to each other on the tram. Even the dogs bark softer in the park after the sun sets.
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