#its about the fact he feels like a consolation prize is like the thesis of their friendship and dannys insecurities! and how that bleeds

[lesbiandarvey]

↳ casey: why do i have to prove it to him? isaac: because he feels like a consolation prize. casey: he's not.

[nic-and-annie-in-france]

Vienna in 10

1.Both of us having the sniffles. I was proud of myself for managing to spend three fall/winter months surrounded by hundreds of small children without getting sick. With two weeks to go before Christmas break, I could tell I was fighting something off, so I was doing my best to get lots of extra rest. However, travel takes a lot out of me, so I finally succumbed in the first half of our trip, dragging Nicolas down with me. In Vienna in particular, neither of us were feeling too hot. We scrapped a couple of things on our itinerary to make time for extra sleep, spent less time outdoors, and we swiped tea bags and salt packets from the breakfast buffet (🤫) to soothe our symptoms later in the day. At times, our sickness made things a little more difficult to enjoy, but I think we maintained a good attitude, which is half the battle.

2.The fancy vibe. When we were touring a palace in Vienna, I told Nicolas that I felt like we should be strolling arm in arm and I should be wearing a fancy old-timey dress. And that is kind of how I felt all over Vienna. I don’t have the vocabulary to describe the architecture, but so much of it was just fancy, right down to the typography on the train station signs.  In the center of town, there were horse carriages carrying tourists around and men dressed in wigs and coattails hawking tickets to the opera. Obviously the horses and ticket hawkers are more artifice than elegance, but it was fun to suspend my disbelief awhile and walk around in my imaginary fancy dress.

Portrait of the couple in invisible fancy attire.

3.“Imagine how nice this would be in the summer!” Our first stop on Christmas morning was to the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace. Unfortunately for us, it was very windy, rainy, and cold the whole morning. Despite the dreary conditions, though, we had a nice time. The gardens had all kinds of statues, fountains, and arches, usually situated at the end of a long hedge-lined pathway, so that your eyes were drawn to them. It was a beautiful place, but there were no flowers or leaves to speak of on the plants in the gardens. I kept saying how pretty the garden must be in the spring or summer, and tried to imagine it leafy and warm. Unfortunately, this positive thinking didn’t help me retain the feeling in my extremities.

4.Christmas Day in the art gallery. We spent most of our Christmas in an art gallery where half the fun was looking at the building itself.  Every inch of it was adorned with some sort of decoration. We spent hours looking at Egyptian, Greek and Roman art, only to be starving well past lunchtime with three quarters of the museum still left to explore. We ate our late lunch in the museum cafe, which was situated beneath an ornate rotunda. After we ate, we visited the wing called the Kaiserliche Schatzkammer, or Imperial Treasury. It was a collection of hundreds of ostentatious objects—altarpieces, tapestries, chalices, gems—amassed by the Habsburgs purely to display the breadth and depth of their wealth, power, and influence. We found all sorts of curious objects to admire there. We took a quick glance at the painting collection as well as a temporary exhibit curated in part by filmmaker Wes Anderson before the museum closed.

Nothing says “I’m rich” like a crystal egg cup shaped like an elephant.

5.The bells at the Gothic cathedral. We happened to in one of Vienna’s main squares as St. Stephen’s Cathedral sounded the hour. The sound was surprising and overwhelming and beautiful. Cathedrals are supposed to draw the spirit upward by drawing the eyes upward. This one drew my ears upward too.

6.The Monet exhibit. I know it makes me a snob to admit this, but I tend to not enjoy the Impressionists as much as other people do, precisely because other people enjoy them so much. I didn’t have very high expectations for the Albertina Museum for this reason. By the time we left, the museum had forced me to get over myself and really appreciate the genius of Monet. I’m a read-everything kind of museumgoer, so I was really geeking out at the connections between Monet’s visual art and the literature I studied at UK. Some of the same concepts and ideologies I was familiar with from French Lit were represented by Monet with paint instead of text. I left wishing I could write a new master’s thesis, which I think means the museum did its job.

7.The cathedral concert. Music plays a big part in Vienna’s tourism industry, because it was the home to Mozart and Beethoven. However, we weren’t able to get tickets to a concert or opera during our trip. I did plan for us to go to a free Christmas concert at a cathedral, though, which was a nice consolation prize. The concert was housed in one of Vienna’s smaller cathedrals, and it was slightly dark and warm inside. We listened to about 45 minutes’ worth of songs performed by an organist and a youth choir, including the Michael W. Smith song “Here I am to Worship” translated (presumably) into German. All the songs preceding that one had been arias in Latin or traditional Christmas carols, so Nicolas and I looked at each other in bewilderment when we found we both recognized the tune without recognizing any of the words.

8.Franz Josef and Sisi. We went to a three-in-one museum called the Hofburg that had exhibits about the imperial china and dinnerware, the imperial apartments, and the most famous Empress of Austria, Elizabeth, nicknamed Sisi. I had never heard of Sisi, or her husband, Emperor Franz Josef, so I didn’t have any expectations one way or the other for the exhibit about her life. I was surprised by how interesting I found that portion of the museum. Sisi was betrothed to the eventual emperor as a teenager, and very excited about becoming royalty, but after she was crowned, quickly realized that fame and power come with lots of restraints on one’s personal freedom. She became withdrawn and moody, obsessing over her super-long hair, her daily workouts, and her diet. She reminded me of a real-life Emma Bovary, withdrawing into her fantasies to escape the constraints of her life. But at the same time, it seemed to me like she foreshadowed the way the negative effects of fame and celebrity on people today, especially child stars.

9.Favorite fun fact: Franz Josef, emperor and Sisi’s husband, worked super hard! I feel like most monarchs and heads of state are known for enjoying luxury with a little bit of responsibility on the side.  Franz Josef, on the other hand, woke up super early every morning and spent the first half of his day giving an audience to anyone, rich or poor, important or not, who scheduled an appointment with him. Of course, these appointments usually only lasted a few minutes apiece, but I think it’s cool that he gave such a priority to listening to his citizens.

10.The Hundertwasser apartments.  We spent most of our time in Vienna basking in its traditional elegance. But on our last day there, we took a trip outside the city center to the Hundertwasser apartments. Hundertwasser was an artist/architect who was known for his distaste for straight lines, and thus built an entire apartment without any straight edges. I can’t confirm that there are no straight lines in it because they are private apartments that people still rent, so we weren’t able to go inside. But on the outside, the pavement rose up into big bumps and the façade looked like a rumpled patchwork quilt. Our visit here was short, but it added a lot of dimension to my perception of Vienna. Even in a uniformly beautiful city, there can be eccentricities hiding in plain sight.

**Bonus** Doppelgängers: Vienna edition