It is a beautiful March day. The last day in Vienna. The sun is bright and outside it is about 20°C. So quickly, let’s get out into the streets to collect my last experiences, see everything I haven’t seen so far, I must hurriedly visit all the monuments so I can feel like a proper tourist… Or not?
It is a beautiful day. The dandelions are blooming. Why am I in a hurry?
Previously, when we set off to the town by the tram, we always crossed the river. I watched people lying on the banks and was a bit envious of their doing nothing sitting by the water enjoying the view…
And so today that’s my destination. Instead of palaces, I will visit – the river bank.
Slowly I weave my way through the suburb where we are accommodated. All the houses here have an interesting design, they are organized into original premises. I would love to live in many of them. At least for a little bit.
I am admiring curiosities like the newspaper vending machines, attached to posts. You throw in a coin and get a portion of a daily read. (That would not last long in our country I told myself. A month later I met similar vending machines in Prague.)
I am aiming for the river. Very slowly. I am not in a hurry. I am doing what I love to do the most when traveling – wandering around and drinking in the atmosphere. I feel a bit like a local. At the same time, everything is magically different in many small details. My favorite feeling of traveling.
I stop at a Chinese shop and choose lunch. A little different lunch in a little different Chinese restaurant. I take the box with me and eat it on a bench in a park by a church. Then I wander on.
And finally here is the river! And ‘my’ place which I watched from above for several days, on the way somewhere else. Now it’s me standing here.
I wetted my legs in the shallows. I petted a small dog which came to sniff me. I bought myself pomegranate ice cream (yummy!). I eyed Donauinsel island and its tower blocks over the water. I walked barefoot on the grass. I watched swans bobbing on waves.
And so I arrived late to the meeting before departure home. Very late! Fortunately, Ben knows me well so he counts on me being late. (And fortunately, he also loves me otherwise he would probably have killed me a long time ago.)
And so under the setting sun, we set off back home through empty streets… and I carried in myself a bit of the Viennese atmosphere. Not the tourist one but the completely ordinary, everyday Vienna. A little bit of a borrowed life.
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