V. Andenken

I got out to Mexikoplatz today; apparently the Assisikirche there has English-language services. They weren't listed on the schedule. But it was a nice excursion I had, anyway. Then I got a bit lost on the U-Bahn, ending up north of the Danube; from there, I headed back to Schwedenplatz, then returned home on foot. It's quite easy to forget how small the city actually is: I walked across the 1st district (the old city, what used to be within the walls before they were knocked down to make the Ringstraße) quite comfortably.

I had a small moment of epiphany while on my stroll: here I am, walking the streets of Vienna, Austria. This city is older than anything I've ever seen outside of a museum. Everywhere I look, each building is invested with a history, a meaning: here lived Schumann; here, this column commemorates the end of the plague in 1679; here's the building that so offended Franz Josef that he shut his windows to it. It is all very much unlike the strip malls and suburbs back home, where no place is any place at all. I'm not sure what Wendell Berry thinks of cities, but I'm sure he'd appreciate that Vienna has a past. Another prominent conservative thinker, Chesterton, speaks of tradition as the "democracy of the dead"; it is certainly easier to practice this when every moment we realize what a debt we owe to those who have gone before us.

II. Etwas Geschichte Wiens

I must apologize for not having posted before now. I have arrived in Wien, and spent three nights here already. It is a remarkable city, one with far more culture than any city of this size—less than two million people—deserves to have. You see, Vienna was once the capital of a far larger empire, ruled by the Habsburg dynasty.

Over centuries, the Habsburgs—known for, among other things, their habit of marrying cousins and their oversized jaws—acquired, by political finagling and expedient marriages, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, northern Italy, half the Balkans and much of the Ukraine. The imperial capital of this agglomeration of different peoples and lands was Vienna, and it shows. All over the city is monumental architecture, dating from the middle ages, to the apogee of the empire, to today. There are all sorts of influences from all over the vast Habsburg domains, making it a very eclectic-looking city.

Well, that's all for today. I'll write more later. Give me time: I want to spend my time in Vienna experiencing the city, not just writing about it for you.