Vienna in the time of COVID – Chapter 9

March 27, 2020April 27, 2020 / jonathanrobb / 3 Comments

When discussing worldwide pandemics, very few people interrupt the conversation to point out the positives that come from a sweeping global infection. It’s quite likely because, when weighed against all the sheer awfulness of a widespread contagion (sickness, death, economic collapse), those trying to make these points are promptly chased out of the room. With rocks.

But as the bad media seem singularly motivated to drive the negativity of the moment down our throats until we are full and heavy and sad from it all, and as I am tucked in my apartment out of rock-throwing distance, I thought I’d highlight some of the unforeseen changes to the environment that have come about due to humanity hibernating for a spell.

As it is the place where we like to live, and the place where our food is farmed which we like to eat, and the place where the major production of carbon-dioxide into oxygen occurs which we like to breath, it’s not aggrandising to say the environment holds a certain special significance to us as a species. Unfortunately, as a species, we have the habit of treating the environment in the same way a teenager treats their room, which is to say the floor is littered with filth, the space is rife with noise pollution, and the air is not always safe to inhale.

But amazingly, or perhaps not so amazingly to those environmentalists who have been trying to convince the world of man-made climate change for the last few decades, once everyone turned off their toys, some of that damage started to become undone.

The first story I heard that drove this home was a report of dolphins appearing in the canals of Venice due to the cessation of water vehicles for the first time in years. Sadly, this story, which is ready made for a Disney film, is not actually true. Dolphins were indeed spotted, only they were spotted in Sardinia, which is approximately 748 kms away from Venice. I’m sure the dolphins in Sardinia are also appreciating the reduction of boats in their waters, but are apparently not so energised as to make the trip to Venice.

But, the good news is that, while apparently not good enough for dolphins too lazy to swim a few hundred miles, the waters of Venice are indeed cleaner than they have been in years, with locals shocked to see the liquid running clear. Let’s try not to focus on the tragedy of people shocked at seeing clean water and instead take it for the win it is.

Photo credit: Marco Capovilla / Venezia Pulita

Air has also benefited from humanity’s downfall, which in a circular irony is actually our windfall as we can all, literally, breathe a little easier. Satellite photos taken from above Beijing depict the incredible reduction of nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere, a substance made famous as the pollution that spills from cars, trucks, and power plants.

Photo credit: NASA

There have also been numerous reports of animals taking to the streets after the desertion of mankind. Much like Kevin from Home Alone, these animals are wandering around the empty house, not sure where the grown ups are, but sure to make the most of it. I wish the cheeky little scamps the best of luck while we’re away.

Photo credit: Tomohiro Ohsumi / Getty Images

But it is not only the external environment that has changed as a result of the COVID measures. Driven indoors and away from our offices filled with appropriately-sized desks and chairs that support the lower back, Alex and I were forced to go to some extreme lengths to reconfigure our internal environment to ensure we don’t emerge from the corona-confinement with the spines of an arthritic geriatric.

We knew the problem lay in a lack of suitable hardware and so set about rectifying the problem the only way bad-asses like us knew how: I’m talking about a raid, baby.

We hopped in the car, buckled ourselves in, took a moment to savour being outside of our apartment for the first time that day, and then pointed ourselves in the direction of Alex’s work. The place was lousy with office furniture and we were going to leave the place with a cache of our own if it killed us.

It turns out it didn’t kill us, nor was our doing somersaults through doorways and army-crawling down hallways at all necessary. The place was all but empty except for one of Alex’s colleagues who made polite small talk while we shoved monitors into an Ikea bag and wheeled away a couple of desk chairs. The colleague was supposedly in the office to get some work done, but the platter of bread, butter, and huge slab of bacon set up at his desk, plus the fact that we knew he had three children at home bouncing off the walls with the enforced isolation, said this was more of a place of escape than a place of work.

We tipped our hat to him and his scam and he tipped his hat to us and ours, and then we got the hell out of there.

The result of our perfect heist is a living room/home office that acts as a site of productivity rather than the slow and incremental torture of our joints and ligaments. Sometimes the crime is worth the risk.

Photo credit: Alexandra Robb-Hofer (Bonus “Where’s Jonathan?” for those who want to play)

I’ll finish off this entry and this week with an incredible video my mother-in-law shared with me which beautifully and eerily illustrates the impact this surreal moment in history has had on the city of Vienna.

Empty Vienna from Christian Haake on Vimeo.

Have a great weekend, everyone. Stay inside, video chat with someone you love, do a puzzle on your living room floor with a drink and some conversation, read a good book, eat your favourite food, make something, draw something, cook something, and let’s make the best out of what we still have.

On Monday: Community.

Vienna in the time of COVID – Chapter 5

March 23, 2020 / jonathanrobb / 2 Comments

It has now officially been over a week since the isolation restrictions were put into place and I’m happy to report my wife and I are still on speaking terms, our toilet paper game is strong, and the apartment has never been cleaner (another of my wife’s useful hobbies during mandated segregation with yours truly is a deep clean of the apartment. The other day she asked if I thought it would be possible to lift the microwave so she could scrub underneath it. I said I thought it would. You have to make hay while the sun shines, right?)

We spent a large part of Saturday in separate rooms, giving each other some space while tending to our own social networks. I chatted with my Australian correspondent, Jess (second shout out, Jess!), while Alex caught up firstly with her cousin and then with her two best friends. All of these interactions took place in the digital world, of course, both because Jess refuses to travel from Australia to Austria for a quick chat and a coffee, and because this is what it means to be responsible in the time of COVID.

These chats were beneficial as it gave my wife and I a break from staring into each other’s faces for a while (you have to let them miss you sometimes) and because we could lean into our friendships without putting anyone at risk of infection.

My brother, Matthew, shared a quote with me that bears repeating: During these times we have to isolate, but we don’t have to be isolated.

Prior to the commencement of the weekend, Alex and I strapped on our shoes, made a mental note of the exact length of three feet (the Austrian Government’s recommended keep-away-from-me distance), and steeled ourselves to go shopping.

Prior to pandemic precautions, one of my wife’s favourite pastimes was our weekly grocery shop. This is not hyperbole; she genuinely loves grocery shopping. While most people who travel to far and exotic lands like to see the landmarks, the temples, and the monuments, my wife is most excited about checking out what people from neighbouring lands like to stock on their supermarket shelves. Seeing her walk up and down the aisles with a grin on her face like a kid at a carnival is a damn sweet thing.

These days, however, the act of popping to the shops has become a battle royale for sanitary products and a loaf of bread. The most pressing question that arises for me from this shopping madness is this: why toilet paper?

If you have swallowed the aggrandising of the cheap and dirty media rags *coughdailymailcoughcoughheraldsun* and genuinely believe these are the end days, and that armageddon is scheduled for the week after next, why, of all the products available to sustain life, would anyone head straight for toilet paper?

Granted, I enjoy a satisfying wipe as much as the next person, but when compared to clean water and carbohydrates, it hardly rates as a priority on the hierarchy of needs. Not to mention that toilet paper is a product that can easily be substituted. If we were to run out of our rolls of Softis, I would happily transition to kitchen roll, then onto serviettes, then to facial tissues, then, if times were getting desperate, newspaper and catalogues, old linen, new linen, old clothes, new clothes, leaves from the houseplants, and finally that packet of leftover tortillas that’s been in the pantry for awhile.

I see the panic and greediness of filling your trolley with twenty packets of toilet paper as nothing more than a lack of imagination.

The Friday before last, at the beginning of the social shutdown, we were stunned to find the supermarkets stripped of 80% of their goods. We had heard the reports from other countries, of pasta and sauce shortages in Italy and wine and condom shortages in France (it’s all about priorities), but our local supermarket had always been a place of peace and stability. It took traversing to four additional supermarkets for us to complete our usual weekly shop.

In German, they have a word for people who display the hoarder style of shopping — Hamsterkäufer — which translates to hamster buyers, and is essential a cute way of referring to selfish assholes who indulge in buying copious amounts of things they don’t need while simultaneously depriving others of goods they desperately require. The German term is useful as it’s much quicker to say.

My mother, who is a pharmacist and so currently in the thick of it, told me that the Australian pharmacy board had to release an official declaration stating that a person was only allowed to receive one month’s worth of medication at a time. The absurdity that they would have to step in and, like a parent scolding their child at the supermarket register, look the public in the eye and say “No, I said you could only have one piece of candy. Now, off you go, go put the other ones back” is sad to say the least.

But I’m happy to report that the message appears to be sinking in, or alternatively that the hamster buyers have all trapped themselves in their own homes under mountains of bags of flour and toilet paper, leaving the rest of us free to shop as normal, and that this week the shelves were almost back to their usual state, and it only took two supermarkets to round out our shop.

As Alex’s parents are playing it smart and keeping away from others as much as possible, we also did some of their shopping on their behalf (no, don’t call us heroes, come on, it’s too much. What? Paragons of the community? Now you’re just trying to make me blush). As we trundled around the aisles, working our way through their shopping list, I couldn’t help but notice that a significant percentage of their purchases included a rather large volume of red wine.

We all use what strategies we can to make it through this incarceration.

Tomorrow: Fashion.

Vienna in the time of COVID – Chapter 1

March 17, 2020 / jonathanrobb / 6 Comments

To say that life is a little left of normal at the moment is perhaps putting it too lightly.

I am writing this from my apartment in Vienna that I share with my wife, an apartment that we haven’t left yet today despite having worked a full work day. This is already out of the ordinary, what with both of us having full-time jobs that come with desks and offices and normally a forty-minute commute to get to those desks and offices.

The primary school directly opposite our apartment has been silent all day, which is all but unheard of during the school semester. Even outside of school hours, the walkway between our balcony and the classrooms is normally populated with pedestrians drifting back and forth in their daily duties. It is currently empty and has remained mostly so since the sun came up this morning.

All of these not normal things are technically good. They are signs that the people of Vienna have received the message and taken it to heart. We are all taking what measures we can to try and protect the vulnerable in our community and the healthcare system as a whole. We are all social distancing. We are all living in the time of COVID.

As a measure against these strange times, against the potential boredom of remaining mostly within the same four walls, against the threat of cabin fever, as a method to record this novel event, and to just give my wife a break from my ceaseless sparkling company, I have decided to jump-start my blog and write about what this period in human history felt like to live through.

So, let’s recap where we are. I’m an Australian living in Vienna with my Austrian wife. Presently, we have been mostly indoors looking only at each other for the past five days. Alex, said wife, has only rolled her eyes twice in that time and is still laughing at my jokes, so I’d say we’re staying strong in the face of contamination-avoidance measures.

Here are some things we’ve learned about each other so far into our not-quite-quarantine:

When breaking up the work day, we like to have lunch at different times. Alex is more of a twelve o’clock girl, whereas I like to split my day right down the middle and eat at one. This detail was particularly highlighted to me when I sat on the couch, happily munching away on a toasted sandwich with my wife attempting to work at our dining table less than a metre away, only to discover less than twenty seconds into my meal that Alex had vacated her workspace in what I later learned was an effort to flee from the “disgusting masticating sounds.”

Our dining table/work space is also situated very near to the wall that is shared by our toilet, so we have been deepening the intimacy of our relationship by becoming very familiar with each other’s bowel and bladder habits. I’m thankful to the COVID precautions for allowing me to get to know my wife on an even more visceral level.

We have been turning these restrictions to our advantage in more ways than discovering the mysteries of each other’s digestive system, however. During the forty minutes at either end of our day that is normally dedicated to our commute, Alex via her car and me via an underground train-carriage, we have been turning this time towards the pursuit of perfecting our bodies. We start the day with a yoga session in an attempt to undo the damage inflicted on our spines from working at a dining table that was not designed for eight hours of working at a laptop, and finish the day with a run or a walk in order to breath in some fresh air, enjoy some sunshine, and stave of the creeping insanity that comes from never leaving your house.

IMG_20200316_173436

During these walks/runs, the streets are noticeably more vacant that usual, but not deserted. People with the same goals as us emerge from their home offices, squinting against the natural light, and often moving in pairs. The main difference in these walks is the way that everyone is maintaining a bubble of air between themselves and everyone else. When two sets of couples approach one another on a footpath, one couple will drift to the opposite side of the road. Dog-walkers will leave the path and walk on the grass to make space for joggers. Everyone is moving in their own private invisible sphere.

Thankfully, this is not done with menace or the glares of those eyeing off the potentially contaminated, but rather with polite nods and smiles of thanks that everyone is doing their part to distance themselves socially. Austrians are not overtly physically affectionate as a rule, so I feel this has not been too great a burden on them.

The eerie moments come when the closed-down stores are seen, empty and dark in the middle of the day. Or the abandoned playgrounds, sectioned off with plastic tape.

IMG_20200317_172013

We have been told that maintaining a routine is important during times like this to help to normalise things a little. Alex and I have kept to rather similar sleeping hours and eating habits, but have decided to introduce a few new activities to again reap whatever benefits can be wrought when the majority of the world is told to stick to a rainy-day programme. These new activities keep our minds sharp and aid us in challenging ourselves. One such challenge given to me by my wife this evening was the exciting task of removing the accumulated hair from the shower drain. As I plucked the wet clumps from the metal opening, the snakes of hair resisting slightly before slithering out like putrefied souvenirs of all the showers we have ever taken, I was grateful to my wife for this mentally-stimulating gift. It’s all about making the best of it.

I will leave you all with that delicious image, but plan to return with more tales of Vienna in the time of COVID. Hopefully you’ll join me and, even in this period of social distancing, we can come together through this weird and surreal shared experience.

Tomorrow: Extra-curricular activities.

2015/16

January 14, 2016January 14, 2016 / jonathanrobb / Leave a comment

This time last year I was writing about how 2014 had felt like a year of waiting. It had been a strange year, one of routine that had become monotonous, and of a sense of disquiet. Of waiting.

It’s hard to wait for something, but even harder still to feel like you’re waiting for something that might never come. For most of 2014, I didn’t know what I was waiting for. I knew that the lifestyle I had set up was only a way-station to something bigger, only that something bigger kept not happening. I stuck to my routine and waited for the universe to deliver the next turning point in my story. The universe did not provide.

So I did. I could only wait so long, and in the end I decided to make the turning point myself. I resolved to move to London to see the world and, more importantly, to just do something. I wasn’t sure what I expected to happen, if anything would happen, if anything would really, on a fundamental level, change, but I knew at the very least I’d be doing something. That seemed like a better alternative.

So the end of last year’s blog post was hopeful. The waiting was at an end — I would be moving to London come the new year. This turned out not to be entirely true. The waiting continued for another six months, but at least by this point I knew what I was waiting for. The waiting had a different flavour to it, an anticipatory taste at the back of my tongue, and the tedium at least felt like it was building to something. And it did.

It’s safe to say that, despite the first half of the year still being consumed by waiting, the second half more than made up for this period of inaction.

2015 was a year of exploration, of trying new things, and, to a certain extent, of making it up as I went along. I’m sure I’ve been doing this since the moment I was born, that there isn’t a book somewhere with the plot points of my life already written down in easy to understand step-by-step instructions, but I’ve always sat and thought things through so that by the time of decision, what I’ve decided to do felt planned and preordained. I would convince myself that I’d mentally explored every possibility, and the one I’d chosen was the most logical and responsible. This has not always turned out to be the case, but it felt like it at the time. The illusion is a comfort.

But after literally disbanding my previous life — renting out my house, selling furniture, quitting my job, and buying a plane ticket — it seemed not to be in the spirit of things to fall back on my previous method of nutting everything out first before taking action. That way of thinking had certainly provided me with security, but it also ended with me living in an empty house, repeating what felt like the same day over and over. I was trying something different, now. That was kind of the whole point.

So instead I had a loose framework. I would catch up with my cousin and his girlfriend in Italy and we’d explore the country before heading to London. I knew in August I would head to Vienna to catch up with a friend for a few week before the both of us, and a few of her friends, went to Greece. After this, I had vague ideas of working and travelling, the ratio of those two things dependant on my financial status at any given time. That was it.

I figured this cavalier attitude towards my future would liberate me, would eliminate the weight of expectation. Expectation can be a hazardous thing. On one hand it gives you something to hope for — a future you expect and anticipate is one you can prepare for, and look forward to. But expectation cuts both ways, and sometimes the stressors of the future, those far-off jobs we can do nothing about but sit and chew over regardless, can get to us. I had no expectation for the future and so reasoned I could neither stress about it nor be disappointed if what I expected never came to pass.

It worked, to an extent. I said teary farewells to my family and friends, and dived in to the rest of the world. I met my to-be roommates in Rome and, through a forty-degree summer, we ate and drank and trained in across a country I’d been hearing about since primary school. I had no expectations, and every new wonder was an unanticipated joy.

Eventually we made our way to London, and a new apartment, and before I knew it I was boarding a plane to see a friend I’d made in Vietnam two years previously. Alex and I had maintained contact through Facebook and the mutual pastime of writing. This mostly involved her writing essays for university and me editing those essays. I am very thankful to her university for making her write long and detailed essays in her second language as it gave us cause to stay in contact.

I hadn’t seen Alex since the trip through South-East Asia, and wasn’t sure what would happen when I got to her house in a country I knew little about. From memory, she was lovely, and her messages and generous offer to have me stay with her while I travelled reinforced this, but spending two weeks with someone you haven’t seen for two-and-a-half years is full of potential social risk. She could have been crazy. Or I could have been. We were both gambling.

But, armed with my new outlook, I dropped expectation and just let it be what it was. Thankfully, after landing, hugging Alex, and about five minutes of conversation, I realised it was going to be fucking amazing. And it really was.

Alex was as kind and funny as I remembered, and it didn’t take long for us to discover we had more in common than just booking tours through Vietnam in 2013. The city she showed me was stunning, and her family’s generous proved to be equally incredible. Those weeks in Vienna will forever be one of the greatest times in my life.

Part of this may be because I fell for Alex in that time, and we spent a certain portion of the second week kissing (I made the first move, for those of you playing at home). After another two weeks in Greece, I had a girlfriend. Another unanticipated joy.

But months of holiday had to come to an end eventually and I returned to London and set about procuring employment. And it was during this process I learnt that, just like expectation, a lack of expectation also cuts both ways.

I stressed about all the things I hadn’t thought through. I stressed about money. I stressed about the future. It fluctuated, this stress, my “take it as it comes” attitude gaining the advantage for a few days when I reflected I was halfway around the world and who cares about anything else, only to be knocked off its perch by my more experienced responsible self, who sat in the den of my subconscious crunching numbers and sweating about the results. I had nights of blissful sleep and nights of anxiety-ridden tossing and turning. The consequence of abandoning my secure life had finally hit.

The beauty of it all, the lesson I can take away if there is one, is that the benefits still far outweigh the consequences. Yes, of course having a lack of plan results in anxiety, particularly for someone wired like myself. Of course working three days and then disappearing to Vienna for a week causes financial stress. Of course stress doesn’t just disappear because I decided not to focus on it. Idiot.

But when I flick through the photos in my 2015 album, holy crap have I had some amazing experiences. It’s hard to be resentful when I have so much to be thankful for.

I’m thankful for the places I’ve seen, the breath-taking, mind-boggling places from documentaries and travel guides that literally spread out from my feet, feeling both intensely real and unreal as my brain tried to assimilate my new reality.

I’m thankful for the meals I’ve had, for the pizza eaten on cobbled Italian avenues, the home-cooked Austrian feasts of pork-belly and dumplings shared around a family table, the meals in London pubs enjoyed with a pint and friends from home, and of mugs of steaming punsch held in cold hands burning warm paths down my throat.

I’m thankful for the work I’ve had, walking the streets of London and disappearing into the homes of the locals, getting to see how the citizens of this land live and love and cope. Of strolling through the west-end past theatres and shops, of accidentally stumbling into Camden markets, of wandering the tiny cafe-lined streets of Soho, and eating lunch in Trafalgar Square.

I’m thankful for the people I’ve met, the friends I’ve made, and the generosity given to me that I never anticipated.

And most of all, I’m thankful for Alex, for the joy of having her in my life, for the hours of conversation and sharing of her fascinating and beautiful self, for her endless kindness, and for her making me stupidly happy.

So, all in all, all things weighed and measured, all stock taken, and all pleasure balanced against pain, I can confidently say 2015 was an incredible year. It was a year where I took risks that paid off. A year where I felt elated and exhausted, liberated and anxious. It was a year where things happened.
A year where the waiting came to an end.

P.S. I also got a new nephew this year. His name is Harris, and he’s beautiful. That was also pretty fucking amazing.

JOURNAL EXTRACT #06

August 23, 2015August 23, 2015 / jonathanrobb / 3 Comments

18th of August

I am once again relaxing on Alex’s couch, sharing the property with two cats and a tortoise. They’re good company, but they only speak German, so it’s hard to get a good conversation going. I have to take a moment to recognise how good my life is at the present moment. Each day I wake up, have a relaxing morning, before venturing out with Alex for my next Austrian adventure. If it wasn’t for the whole money thing, I could see myself being happily unemployed for years to come.

It’s been five days since I last wrote an entry, and this feels both too long and short a time. The days have whipped by, blurred memories and moments all traced with an edge of happiness. Yet when I think of all I’ve experienced in this time, five days doesn’t seem long enough to contain it all.

When I last wrote I was making wishes on suspicious shooting stars. Since then I’ve seen Klimt paintings, walked atop the bell tower at St Stephan’s Cathedral, relaxed at a bbq in Upper Austria, eaten at a wirtshaus with around twenty of Alex’s extended family, wandered the beautiful city of Vienna, celebrated Monika’s birthday with some of the best food I’ve ever tasted, chopped wood, drunk schnapps, and just generally eaten my way through most of Austria’s traditional menu. And loved doing it. And I know I’ve done even more, but my memory’s failing me right now.

It’s hard to pick highlights from this array of bright moments, but getting to relax at a bbq with Alex’s mates in Upper Austria would have to be one. Alex organised the event both as an opportunity to gather, eat and drink in the beautiful Austrian summer, as well as to give her friends a chance to meet the weird Australian boy she invited over. In both aspects, it was a success.

As with everyone Alex has introduced me to, her circle of friends were open and welcoming — I’m beginning to suspect the Viennese stereotype of being stubborn and impatient as being false.

Another highlight was being invited to lunch with Alex’s family for her grandmother’s birthday where I ate venison and soaked in the company of her family. I couldn’t understand the dialogue but could appreciate the rhythms of conversation and the shared laughter that are so common at my own family gatherings. If travel reinforces anything, it’s that we’re not as different as we think.

Today I was sitting around the corner from Alex’s office building, resting on a small square of wood, stones and greenery amongst the industrial grey of the area. A balding man with stained yellow teeth smoking a cigarette approached me and attempted conversation. I knew his sort — the lost and addled, deprived of interaction and having forgotten the social norms of a community from being too long outside of it. He spoke German and I spoke English, but that wasn’t a great deterrent. I have dealt with people like him for years as a nurse, and know that a calm face, a smile, and a patient tone is all they’re after. I gave him these and he grinned with saliva-flecked lips and bid me “Tschüss,” which means goodbye. I bid him the same.

It is strange being outside a language. I never realised how much of myself I projected until the option was taken away from me. When I’m surrounded by those speaking German, I internalize everything. It’s not the most comfortable feeling. I have things I want to express out into the world but have no way of doing so. So I remain quiet, and outwardly thoughtful, bottled inside my own head. I imagine it’s years spent like this that drives someone like my balding, nicotine-stained new friend to approach a stranger, even if it is just for a minute of conversation.

It’s okay, though. It’s a new experience, and I like new experiences. It makes me think of the immigrants who travelled to Australia, knowing no one and having no word of English, and somehow managing to build a new life. I can’t imagine the isolation they must have felt, how much they internalized to begin with, until some patient person helped them with the language. Alex is my patient person, but sometimes things simply cannot be translated. Conversation goes by too fast, or the context is too foreign. I understand, and instead just try to enjoy the atmosphere and the mood of those around me. I do take great pride when I pick out one word from amongst a hundred. It makes me all the more determined to master German. At the moment I have the reading level of a three-year old — although having read some of Alex’s niece’s books, I feel even this is being generous.

And on books, today I went into the National Library of Vienna. The irony of the place was that it was too beautiful for reality, and looked like it belonged in a book. The smell of the books, the texture of the wood, the bright and intricate murals decorating the ceiling could have been spun out of fantasy. It was certainly this geeky book-lover’s fantasy. Vienna continues to astound. Every time I think I’ve see it’s most beautiful side, it turns and reveals a new facet that stops me in my tracks.

Tomorrow I visit one of Vienna’s royal castles, the Schoenbrunn Castle, and I’m sure it will cause me to falter in my steps like all the rest.

EMERGENCY ADDIT:

Early after arriving, Alex and I were sitting in her backyard at night when we heard a noise in the bushes. Alex casually remarked that it was probably a hedgehog. I casually lost my shit. I was very excited by the idea of seeing a hedgehog. After a confused expression and something like, “Really? It’s just a hedgehog,” Alex attempted to find the creature but with no luck.

Today, I got to hold a hedgehog.

Alex’s Dad, Rupert, was in the garden and managed to find the most adorable baby hedgehog, which he then handed to me. I think you can see in the picture how happy I am about this series of events. It may have been the most exciting thing I’ve seen in my travels so far.

Vienna, you did it again.

20th of August

I am sitting on my bed in my adopted room in Vienna, with a belly full of wiener schnitzel. It’s a good way to be. Today is Alex’s first official day off from work, so I’m giving her the day off from her second job as my travel guide. I can be a generous employer. Suitably, we’re having as lazy a day as possible. It’s strange not to be going and seeing another of Vienna’s ridiculous wonders, but good as it gives me time to digest and assimilate all that I have seen. Overtime I think Alex has played her best card, laid the crowning jewel of Vienna out to wow me, I’m proven wrong. After the library I was convinced nothing could top this surreal experience. I was wrong.

Yesterday we trained it to the summer palace of the Austria Empire, the Schönbrunn Palace. Austria is now a republic, but historically it was an empire that used to stretch into parts of Italy, Hungry, Poland, and the Cheque Republic. As you would expect from such a vast empire, the living quarters of its royal family were suitably impressive. Actually, suitably impressive is a gross understatement. What I meant to say was mindbogglingly incredible, lavish and opulent in ways I couldn’t fathom. Yeah, that’s what I meant to say.

We started by walking around the mammoth stretch of building that was the main estate that used to house over one thousand staff — all to care for a family of five. The five I’m referring to is the very famous couple of Franz and Elizabeth, a.k.a Sisi, and their three children. There’s a chance they had more kids and they were simply lost in the labyrinth of the palace. There’s really no way of knowing.

After circling the building we walked through the central gardens which were all perfectly maintained, towards one o the most impressive fountains I’ve ever seen. To be honest, it was more of a man-made waterfall bedecked with beautiful statues.

We wound our way up an incline towards the Gloriette, which we theorised was used as a sitting room. If so, it is the mother of all sitting rooms. It was ordered to be constructed by Maria Theresa, a previous empress of Austria who ruled and instigated many positive changes, all while giving birth to fourteen children. I guess the mother of all sitting rooms is appropriate for this mother of Austria.

Given we had already climbed so far, we lashed out and paid the €3.50 to climb to the top of the Gloriette and look back down at the palace. I’m going to try to describe it, but please bear in mind that my words are insufficient. Much like a photo only captures a static image, my description will undoubtably be missing the bombardment of details taken in by the human eye that elevates it from something simply nice into something indescribable. For the full effect, I recommend seeing it yourself.

Looking down, the palace was reduced to a doll house, one of perfect and exquisite realism, with the stretch of symmetrical gardens laid out like a royal carpet leading to its door. To either side, the dark green of the wider gardens unrolled, a maze of beauty and shadows. I say gardens, but a manicured forest is a more accurate description.

Behind this picturesque setting that more rightly belongs in the pages of a book than my mundane reality, Vienna, the city, rose and fell, a mosaic of ancient buildings and modern skyscrapers, cathedral spires and aqua-rusted domes, far off golden statues catching the few rays of light leaking through the clouds.

In case my description failed to impart the sentiment: It was nice.

So you can see why today, a day of rest, of assimilation and digestion, is necessary. I need this time to convince myself it was real, that this boy from Australia wandered the palace of Austrian emperors, took in art commissioned hundred of years ago and featuring people long dead, but whose actions and decisions helped sculpt the world we have today. It’s a lot to take in.

Tomorrow, a border crossing into Slovakia.

23rd of August

I am sitting in my bed at the beginning of what will be my last full day in Austria. For the time being, at any rate. Vienna in the summer is unquestionably beautiful, but Alex has detailed all its winter attributes, and has made the idea of returning very appealing. She’s offered to let me stay with her again when I return, and it would be rude not to accept this gracious offer. Really, my hands are tied.

I know I’m really going to miss Vienna. I have only been here two weeks, but every thing from the kindness of Alex and her family, the open and impressive expanse of the city itself, the food and the history, and every person I’ve met, have made this a place that feels like home. A friend told me yesterday that Vienna was voted one of the most livable cities in the world — I can believe it.

My last entry finished by mentioning our planned journey into another country. We did it. And we did it by train. In fact, the trip only took about forty minutes. I’m pretty sure I’ve waited on a train platform in Melbourne for longer than that.

I was very excited to be plunging from one country to another, to see the change that would occur. Living on the world’s biggest island means a border crossing isn’t possible without the use of a boat or a place — that we were doing it via train seemed very novel.

Much to my surprise, there was no fanfare when we passed the border, no fireworks or welcoming wreaths, no security guards or cavity searches, the train just continued chugging down the tracks, and from one breath to the next, we were in Slovakia. The passport I’d brought stayed tucked in my pocket, unstamped.

Despite the lack of carnival welcoming my arrival into another country, there was no doubt it was in fact another country. The German words I’ve come to expect on signs and advertisements were gone, replaced a foreign collections of letters. The shape and style of the buildings looked different, and the language floating around me in conversation shifted. That short train ride and we were in a new culture, the old borders allowing it to grow beside the culture of Austria, untouched and unmixed.

Bratislava is a small city, by which I mean Alex and I walked in and around it twice in the few hours we were there, but it has a certain charm because of this. The age of the place is apparent in its narrow cobbled streets, and its charm is intensified by the ease with which food and drink can be bought. It’s a place made to appeal to tourists with a restaurant on almost every corner. Like every meal I’ve had since landing, lunch was delicious — for those still playing at hoe, I had the beef goulash.

And, really, that was Bratislava.

Yesterday, after an incredibly delicious morning of doing nothing, Alex and I headed to a fair. The fair is a three-day celebration of eating and drinking. What it is celebration of, I hear you ask? Why, eating and drinking, of course. The most noble cause for celebrating.

I was feeling very underdressed as Alex stepped out wearing a traditional dirndl — think shouldered white shirt, patterned dress and apron. The garb is reserved for special occasions, and the effect is stunning. And made more so once we arrived at the fair to see crowds of people in the traditional outfit — you could almost taste the culture. Which I soon did, by eating a baumkucken, which was kind of like a log length of cinnamon donut. It was good.

The men didn’t miss out, strutting around in below-knee leather lederhosen and checked shirt. Alex told me of the sophisticated system used by the ladies when tying their aprons: A knot on the left means the wearer is single, and open to a polite advance. A knot on the right means the wearer is in a committed relationship and all interested parties would be better trying their luck elsewhere. A knot centred in the back indicates the wearer is a widow, and a knot front-and-centre means the wearer is a virgin. Although, why this information needs to by public knowledge is beyond me. But I think this system is genius, and if adopted into Australia could save for a lot of failed attempts at picking up. For a very old tradition, it’s really quite ahead of its time.

Tonight we plan to farewell Vienna by heading to the top of the DC tower for a cocktail — a most appropriate was to say goodbye as the city will be laid out around us. As I said, I’m sad to be leaving, and have loved every second of my time here.

I can’t really complain, though. Tomorrow, we head to the Greek Islands.