I’m tired.
And not just physically but emotionally and spiritually. I haven’t slept much though which isn’t helping and is contributing to all three facets of exhaustion.
In my early 20s I stayed in a hostel in Paris. To use the shower, you had to push a button, a kind of automatic faucet button, that would stream water from the showerhead for a set amount of time – maybe 45 seconds. Basically you had to keep pressing the button to rinse, lather, repeat. It was sometime after the third push that I made a silent vow not to stay in hostels anymore. “I’m in my 20s!” I thought. “I really need to grow up.”
I’ve broken that vow only a few times in the ensuing decades, perhaps most notably in Stockholm when I feared the bunk bed would collapse and crush me in the night.
I’m tempted to make a similar vow about AirBNBs. “I’m in my 40s!” I’m thinking. “I really need to grow up.”
And it’s not just the shower in the kitchen – that was in the listing. And it’s not necessarily Momo the dog living in the place – again, he’s in the listing. But what wasn’t clear was that my bed at this AirBNB would normally be that dog’s bed; there was therefore a daily territorial fight for control that rivaled any fight for covers with a loved one. The dog’s gonna win in the end since he sheds and even when he’s not taking up the bed, he kinda is, ya know?
I think more than anything though it’s that I awoke this morning tired. More tired than usual. I’ve had a lingering sense of defeat and resignation but this morning was much more of the crisis of conscience and place and being, a psychological and emotional white flag raised.
So what better time to go see the Sigmund Freud museum.
I gather the museum is in a shared space, housed as it is in Dr. Freud’s former residence/office. To enter, you have to buzz to be let into the main building, much as a patient would have done to see the doctor in its heyday. I had already skimmed the reviews of the place and decided it was more a somewhat dusty and word-heavy experience (shocking, I know) and I viewed it more as a curiosity than a necessity. Plus, I’ve been overspending on certain aspects of this trip (transport and meals have been more than I had budgeted to be honest), and so I’m cutting museums en masse as I’m not really in the mood. Besides, in my current state of mind I thought lying down on Freud’s couch could either be cleansing or cataclysmically awful… and I am much more of a mal vivant than a bon so….
Some tourists were baffled about how to enter the place as I was there and I told them about the buzzer they needed to press. I consider that my good deed of the day.
I also went to see St. Stephen’s Cathedral, one of the typical Vienna “Must Sees!” It’s in the now commercialized city center known as Stephansplatz – there’s plenty of high end shopping, Starbucks, and souvenir shops nearby. But back in the mid-1300s it was THE church of Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vienna.
Inside the church.
I don’t know if below is supposed to be the Pope, Donald Trump, or a really poorly done Paul Newman…
I circled back to hang out in Sigmund Freud Park to people watch, read a few chapters of Great Expectations, and this being Freud, daydream.
Across the way is the Votivkirche, a 19th Century gothic church built to give thanks for Emperor Franz Joseph surviving an assassination attempt in 1853. Would the same could have been said for Franz Ferdinand in 1914.
In any case, I wasn’t sure if it was a sign of the financial strain that should rightly be placed on the church due to its repugnant and ongoing abuse scandals, or if it was just as part of a thank you for funding restoration efforts, but I did find it funny to see NASCAR style endorsement deals displayed prominently on this “house of the lord.”
The Votivkirche, brought to you by Breitling. “Breitling: It’s Time… To Talk To God!” And by Bling Bling. “Bling Bling – Say a Prayer and Scratch Your Way to Lotto Heaven!”
Stay classy, church.
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A few more architectural marvels to post here – The Hofburg Theater and an ornate building that I guess usually fronts an ice skating rink but right now there’s a circus in town. I’ve tried searching for the name of the building but I got nothing. I feel like such a clown.
After sitting in a park flipping through the misadventures of Pip in Great Expectations, a book I’m kinda hating, I noticed on my map that I wasn’t too far from the National Parliament building. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before in all of my walkabouts… turns out I had, I just didn’t realize it. It’s under MAJOR renovation, so much so that it looks to me like they’ve put up temporary trailers akin to a solution to overcrowded classrooms in US schools. It’s not the prettiest Parliament building I’ve ever seen…
I also wandered over to the Heldenplatz to take in a number of sumptuous buildings, from the Austrian National Library to the Imperial Armory. Most of these, if not all of these, are museums or research facilities.
Hey, so the armory is a little, I don’t know, violence oriented. Can we family it up a bit? How about those angelic cherubs we got lying around? Let’s use those.
As I made my way back to my AirDogHouse, I made a few random detours to sights and statues.
I like to think this statue is called, “Go away, kid. You’re bothering me.”
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When you see a sign for Time Travel Vienna… you go check it out.
Though I have no idea what 5D is. Height, width, depth, time, and… smell? Maybe it’s plague. If you haven’t been recently, you haven’t been — The All New Plague Pit!
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If I told you the coffee here was dreamy, how would that make you feel?
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Ladies and Gentlemen… a horse’s ass. Also a statue in the background. ZING!
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Salieri killed him. Is that what Mozart looks like? I’m askew,
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Street Sign game — this parking lot allows trailers, motorbikes, and vehicles up to 1.9M. What does it prohibit? Um… bombs falling or leaking into a car? I have no idea what that’s trying to tell me.
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That is a man’s head in some sort of steel waterfall thing…
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I’m prepping for my 6 AM train to Wachau tomorrow to run. Maybe some endorphins will help my mood and outlook. I had hoped this trip to Europe would provide a reset or epiphany breakthrough for me. Walking in the steps of Freud today, I think I was dreaming.
As for nightmares – I’ve run a lot of races. I have never seen a race timing chip like this. I spent the last ten minutes trying to get it on my shoe. It shouldn’t be this hard but I just couldn’t seem to thread my laces through the plastic notches. It’s worse than trying to pull one of those plastic bags open at the grocery store.
I am now and always have been a poor excuse for an adult.
I really need to grow up.