Memento Mori

The most interesting thing about Vienna is the confluence of the oldest, the old, and new. In the oldest sense Vienna has as stunning a historical district as anyplace, and large. There always seems to be another spire to wander towards, and the Parliament building and Royal Palace sort of hint at the possible granduer of the temples of Greece when civilization was more like an idea. In fact the Parliament building has a series of statues depicting the labors of Hercules, for some reason, mostly his notable defeats of monsters like the Hydra, Nemean Lion, and Cerebus. They are beautiful buildings despite my current bout of Cathedral/Castle fatigue. There are also blocks and blocks of worker apartments from the days of the Warsaw Pact which look to me like an American strip mall would look to Nikita Kruschev, and finally there are shopping districts to rival near anyplace, the elegant avenue leading towards the palace has a Gucci, and Tommy, and Burberry, and Chanel. It is a place with multiple personality disorder. Always an art loving cultural center and yet an enthusiastic participant in Hitler's purges.

In the evenings around 11pm the prostitutes start to wander, its legal here as well, more or less. These women I am told are from poorer countries like Slovakia. In fact in the news there was a story about a group of women who are nurses from that country that moonlight because they make so much more cash selling their bodies rather than helping to keep the bodies of others healthy. Human traffic is also a much more common occurence here. I had heard that many of these women come thinking they are to receive unskilled labor jobs and are then manipulated into selling their bodies and led to believe that all the police are paid off and there is no escape. So, last night when I mentioned to a particularly aggressive lady that she could get help if she wanted and she didn't need to do this, she spit at me and called me a faggot. So I suppose she was local. I have seen a lot of spitting women here.

Near the train station is an underground Synagogue, the only one that survived the purge. And last year they finally saw fit to raising a monument dedicated to the people that helped thousands to escape. Sometimes in this part of the world it still feels like the war is being fought, and it is easy to forget historically speaking how recent all of these events actually were.
The very end of the U3 line you can find the Zentralfriedhof, which is a massive cemetary that holds the bones of Beethoven, Brahms, and every notable Viener for three hundred years. The place is so large that three consecutive tram stops on line 71 stop in front of the gates. The avenues are wide and well kept and lining the streets are family crypts that seem to get more elaborate. There are hundreds of angels and people scultped in stone and metal for their eternal mourning, central steps leading the Patriarch's selpuchre, and large flat heavy stones to cover the stairs down into the vault where ancestors and beloved family members molder. The graves are as the 18th century and yet flower beds before all the markers are well maintained, watered, weeded, cared for. I was the youngest person there by twenty years and I felt guilty taking picures, at one point I walked forty five minutes without seeing another living soul. It was a very quiet and dignified and crowded place. It made me think of how we all need to make do with one life, even though it is not nearly enough, and the vital importance of shared experience. If modern life expectancy holds up I am nearly half way to one of those these quiet green places and repose, and I could never see and touch everything without the help from everyone I know who could report back to me what they have seen and what they have touched. Ironically the quiet and the calm of the massive cemetary made me want to hurry and never sleep, and yet... it made me want to sit on a bench and stare at the inscrutable face of another bust of an Austrian Doctor who died a hundred and thirty years ago and feel time wash over me and gradually push me in its current towards an urn or vault or coffin. Part of life is finding peace, and you can't find it if you hurry overmuch. The part of life is living, and you can't do it if you have too much peace. There are no answers, not really, and there never were, we just do our best.
I am sitting in a hostel and it is starting to rain here. At a table next to me a man going through a divorce is planning his next route on his bike on a quest to ride across Europe, two Aussie women are scrap booking from their four month long trip together and a girl sits drawing or writing in a moleskin notebook. Elsewhere an American is strumming one of the guitars that they have hanging on the walls, he is singingly softly to himself and it sounds very country, near him a guy from Montreal is drinking a beer and looing for something to do, and beyond him are groups of kids on laptops laughing and drinking tea. Last night I closed a bar with these people, and the next day many are gone, and the day after that so will I be gone. If this seems like an elaborate metaphor, that's because it is, but it is also all true.

Being on the road you struggle with the urge to squeeze every last drop of every day. Quiet moments seem like a waste. Like we are willing to let so many so called normal days pass but have this intense need to die on every hill in Cancun, Disneyworld, or Vienna. More and more I have been less driven to drink from the fire hose, and I have started to lose track of time. It takes longer than it should.