Vienna

The place where I felt sure I was no longer in the Czech Republic, the destination I'd been looking forward to for a very long time.

Vienna felt much more metropolitan, much more Western. (Better shopping, lolz!) The art history was what held my interest (no way!), as Gustav Klimt lived and worked and created and started things in that city. To the right, the Secession building, home to the movement Klimt was a founder of, housing his Beethoven Frieze (which our tour guide tried to tell me wasn't there, the dolt). I visited two museums with Klimt's work with others, then when nobody wanted to see him I set off on my own to find two more I knew of. I didn't get to it all (there was not enough time) but was happy that Vienna was relatively easy to navigate and that I had independent museum time with the art and artist I'd looked and thought and written about so much.

Vienna was also a beautiful city (lots of white and gold, it seemed) and the weather was beautiful as well (excepting a couple sudden bouts of hail). It had a more open, organized feel than Prague, which I liked, but it was such a comfort to return to the more cramped winding streets.

Strange that it was comforting to return to a place where I cannot understand ninety-nine percent of what is said or written around me. The traveling made me realize how widespread English is, and you can get by on that if you really need to. But numbers are the same, visual language is largely the same (though if you're getting deeper, learned meanings might differ), sometimes gestures can suffice, and that's what I had to rely on what little time I spent in Austria and Slovakia. And actually what I have to rely on a lot of the time here -- understanding numbers and images and not much beyond.

Once more enveloped in the familiar unfamiliarity of the Czech language, in what has been my norm for the past two months, I think of how easily I'll be distracted trying to read in coffee shops at home this summer, how annoyed I'll get at stupid things people say, what snickers I might get from the overheard English conversations that will welcome me back. There are many things I've known I've missed, but I didn't realize till now that eavesdropping is one of them. For now, I'll be good and abstain (I have to) and rely on people-watching, but listening in on others is one more pleasure I can look forward to upon my return.