1) Sometimes the payoff for being wakeful in the night is setting the alarm ahead one hour and having absolutely blissful sleep in that hour.
2) That’s not to say I bounded out of bed at 8:30 “sizzling with zeal” as the late Charles Fillmore said. Except for going across the street for my coffee and croissant, I didn’t get out and about until noon.
3) Today’s light focus was on shopping, first to get postcards for a friend of my sister’s who collects them from all over the world, and then to Knize for cologne. My progress was hampered first by the subway, “operating on one track in some sections,” which created delays. Did I mention they don’t really air-condition public transportation here? I ended up getting off at a stop where I sort of knew where I was, and ended up getting a bit lost, even with ye Gyygle backing me up. This is your opportunity to cue Judi Dench as Eleanor Lavish: “Two lone females in an unknown city; now that’s what I call and adventure!” And also “Inhale, my dear. Deeper! Now that’s what I call a true Florentine smell.”
4) Which gets me back on topic. Knize first came to my attention in the 1980s when ye Cyswyll-Myssey* opened up at Costly Space. They printed wonderful Victorian-inspired catalogs then (that the saleslady told me everyone loved, but not enough to buy anything), and they included some of the scents from Knize. The firm is, in fact, one of the most respected haberdashers in Vienna (and the world) since they first opened in 1858.
4a) And because I am who I am, I remembered finding Vicki Baum’s sequel to Grand Hotel, Hotel Berlin ’43, and that one of the characters (an old lady hiding her yellow star) was wearing something from Knize. I had to look it up: “Tilli kept on staring at Sim’s mother. That’s the suit Knize made for her in ’31, she thought. Good clothes will tell. But, God, how she looks otherwise. Sim’s mother nodded and opened her mouth in a grimace that was meant to be a smile. ‘Yes, Tilli,’ she said gently. ‘We’ve changed. Both of us.’” But I still remembered it.
4b) So I was not shopping for suits, but to get a small vial of cologne, even though I was dressed like a tourist in T-shirt and shorts, and lost in the heat of an early summer day in a city where I don’t speak the language.
4c) These ritzy stores can be very intimidating, but I didn’t have to penetrate much beyond the narrow entry to get what I wanted. In fact the small entrance was mostly taken up by a man trying on a pair of pajamas and his wife and the saleslady assisting them. I could barely see in the more expansive rear of the store. And then another saleslady came out, and they had exactly what I was looking for right there at the register.
5) The other event of the day was to go to dinner at a gay café that had been recommended to me, the Café Savoy, which was not too far from my hotel. Having had an extremely heavy NAP — when the alarm when off I genuinely wasn’t sure if it was 6:45 AM or PM — and apparently I’d slept through a real gully washer. The sky looked freshly rinsed, the air was cool, and the streets were running with water. No complaints, it was needed!
5a) In 2015, on my first vacation in San Francisco, I remember standing at the intersection of Bush and Stockton, eager to get a photograph of the street signs because that’s where Miles Archer had been murdered in The Maltese Falcon. But I was kept from taking that photo by the speedy approach of a woman with large flying hair, a total stranger obviously very eager to have a conversation with me which would, I knew, include a request for money. I fled. Coming out of the subway, I saw a building façade that interested me enough to take a photo. But I was kept from taking that photo by the approach of a Man Younger Than I very eager to interest me in his music, and nothing would dissuade him. You have probably seen him at every comicon and/or science fiction convention ever, which is all the description needed. I fled.
5b) The Café Savoy was agreeably Viennese, shabby, and gay — but without any empty tables for dinner, alas for me. So I wandered this new neighborhood, freshened by the rain but mostly empty, until I found someplace suitable, had a good dinner, and returned home without other musicians accosting me.
6) And I finished writing all this at the hotel bar with a negroni. Groundbreaking.
A rain-cleaned Pride crosswalk. Vienna is full of Pride rainbows.
*Apologies to those who find my lapses into faux-medieval irritating. The key is, I pretty much substitute Y for any given vowel.