Entry 1

In the city of Vienna, it is late.

Looking out the small window onto the city streets I can see an old woman walking her dog, non-challantly smoking a cigarette as she passes underneath my stare.  She walks on the cement, crossing paths with parked cars (and a notable lack of parking meters) as she cuts down an alley, towards the main streets of Südtiroler Platz.  It is late, yet the city is awake.  But why the hell am I?

Today I woke up at ten, a nice change of schedule recently.  Having dedicated most of my trip to travelling, many day, including this coming Tuesday, have been spent waking up at the crack of dawn to catch buses across the city limits, to places like Salzburg, and the Benedictine Abbey, near the small quaint town of Melk.  In Vienna, where weekends are spent at pubs, drinking and raising toasts to indoor smoking, I find these bus rides the perfect opportunity to sleep off a hangover, as long as they have AC.

Rushing out the door, I spent most of the day with a friend, examining the art exhibition conveniently located down the street from here, at the Belvedere.  Once a large palace, the summer hang out for local royalty, while the Belvedere retains its history and medieval grandeur, the interior, in recent times, has been converted into a massive museum on artists throughout Austria's history, ranging from Albert Birkle, to Oskar Kokoschka.  The paintings are all beautiful; they range from creepy displays of medieval brutality (most notablely scenes from the Bible of course) to a wing on the second floor dedicated entirely to Klimpt, and his incredible displays of abstract scenery mixed with vivid and remarkingly human-like portraits.