Another long expository post, but with pictures

On Friday, I made two sizeable mistakes.

The first of these was that, having awakened around midnight and not gotten very good rest after that, I set down to take a nap around two o’clock in the afternoon. I awoke pretty well-rested around eight and realized that the night would again be problematic. I don’t know that I am going to buy a pillow, just because anything of mentionable quality is rather expensive (especially in Euros) and my sleeping bag really works just as well, but I’m not used to sleeping on it. Also, the window (which we must keep open for lack of air conditioning) opens onto a back street:


This street is pretty lightly traveled, though mostly by delivery and service trucks. It is also apparently much too long for those drivers, because they tend to share a need to gun their engines when cruising through at four in the morning in order to get to the other end that much more quickly.

Realizing I would need some help to get me to sleep, I made my second big mistake.

One thing I wanted to commit myself to over the summer was getting back to working out. During the spring of my freshman year, I was going to the Rec four times a week, basically running 5Ks two or three times a week and biking besides. I still kind of shake my head sometimes to think of how devoted I was. This habit fell off over that next summer as I worked 50 hours a week and decided not to do the triathlon I had been preparing for, and my commitments sophomore year left me no extra time for physical fitness. I found this unfortunate, because I liked working out and am no longer nearly as fit as I was.

To address this, I plotted out a rough route of maybe 5 kilometers, maybe a few more through the inner ring of Vienna, over to the Schottentor, a great cathedral on the northwestern side of the old city.


I stretched and pulled on my iPod armband for the first time since the first week of school this year and headed out, running through the twilight and the beginnings of the city’s nightlife.

I made it just past the church when I decided to walk for a break. I would continue do so intermittently until I reached the base of the hill to climb the Mariahilferstraße, at which I basically gave up altogether. In retrospect, the route I took was nearly 7km and, not having run that much in almost a year, the whole idea was rotten to begin with. I did some half-hearted cool-down stretches, took a shower, and tucked in by midnight for a restless five hours of tossing and turning.

The strangest thing about it is that I’ve adopted some sort of perverted anti-jet lag, since I’m on neither Vienna time nor home time. I get tired here in the early afternoon, which corresponds to morning in the States.

Regardless, I was up at 5:30, and had the great idea of walking back halfway across the city at that early hour. I’m reading a book about Sigmund Freud (most of his life a denizen of Vienna and eventually professor at the University) and was somewhat surprised to find, on my run the night before, the quiet little Sigmund Freud Park right out in front of the Schottentor.


I found, in my sleepless delirium, the opportunity to read my book in this park to be too poetic to pass up, and made my way down there to read a few chapters among the bums and litter. I was fortunate enough to time my return precisely with the opening of the grocery store where I had found the shaving cream, and made my first food purchases.


Although I would have preferred freshly baked bread (there are bakeries all over the place, and I am completely enchanted by the romantic notion of buying fresh bread every morning) my budget is a little tight and also somewhat unsure due to some credit card concerns, so I bought the wrapped Semmel rolls instead. I also bought a link of Leberwurst. I discovered my love of leberwurst during my German stay and, having gone without for the last three years of American diet, it was at the top of my list.

And now that I think of it, the claim that these are my first food purchases is, actually, a lie. My first food purchase was the Thursday afternoon I came in; I bought a Döner Kebap, a delicious treat brought in by Turkish immigrants consisting of succulent veal/chicken meat with lettuce, tomatoes, and a tangy sauce on pita bread. It is similar to a gyro, but definitely distinct, and I haven’t found an appropriate substitute stateside yet. Unfortunately, this Austrian variant (I bought just what was labeled a “Kebap,” but I have also seen them labeled as “Durüm”) had too much of a chicken taste to it, and, though tasty and filling, just didn’t quite fulfill my expectations.

Anyway, on my walk back from the Freud park, I saw an advertisement for a Blasmusikfest – marching band festival – which would be starting at the Rathaus at three that afternoon.


(The city hall isn’t normally so festive, but Austria is preparing to host the European soccer championships, so I suppose a bit of nationality is allowed.) I made plans to attend the band festival and, after breakfasting, grabbed a book and went out to find a shady spot in a city park to sit and read. As it were, basically every public space in the old city is cordoned off and being transformed into a “Fan Zone” for the championships, and it was back at Freud Park that I first found an open spot of grass.

The consequences of my bad decisions then came fully to the forefront, as I lethargically passed the afternoon alternatively sidling around the surrounding area to find a drinking fountain or to visit the Schottentor and napping here and there around the park. Shortly before three, I got up to go to the Rathaus, but since the only open spots were in the sun, I made my way down the street the bands were approaching from to the Parlament.


As far as I can tell, this was once the governing seat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a very large and dominant political force in pre-World War I Europe. I crawled up the balustrade and lay in the early afternoon shade with a few other people gathered at that vantage point, reading Of Mice and Men and watching the highly overdressed marching bands go past dressed in Lederhosen and bright blue woolen socks, playing mostly traditional marching beats, though one band also threw in an American medley of “When The Saints Go Marching In,” “Down By The Riverside,” and a Sousa piece of which I’ve forgotten the name. As the last few bands trickled by I napped and realized just how sore my quads were. It took me a few tries to get back up the hill to my dorm for the night.

Much more to come.