Today I leave Vienna, a city where time seems to have stopped. Time didn't stop for me, though. I celebrated my birthday here yesterday. But as I move on into another year, it's comforting to know that Vienna remains. A place of smokey cafes, quaint customs, careworn dignity. I'm looking for a picture that sums up this place -- and of course I can't find just one. Would it be St Stephansdom in the sunlight? An ancient walkway at the edge of the First District? A busy shopping street off Mariahilferstrasse? As I write these words, bells chime the hours. I'll miss the bells, too. You can hear them no matter where you are.
"When everything else has gone from my brain ... what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that." Annie Dillard
Pages
▼
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Moving On
Today I leave Vienna, a city where time seems to have stopped. Time didn't stop for me, though. I celebrated my birthday here yesterday. But as I move on into another year, it's comforting to know that Vienna remains. A place of smokey cafes, quaint customs, careworn dignity. I'm looking for a picture that sums up this place -- and of course I can't find just one. Would it be St Stephansdom in the sunlight? An ancient walkway at the edge of the First District? A busy shopping street off Mariahilferstrasse? As I write these words, bells chime the hours. I'll miss the bells, too. You can hear them no matter where you are.