And boy is my everything tired

Gregorio Guglielmi's fresco in the Festsaal of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

You guys, Vienna is very large. Who knew: the former capital of multiple empires, not a cozy village? Well, here we are, then.

Had a smooth arrival into town, zipping from the airport into the city on the S7 line (pro tip: the airport plasters every surface with ads for the "express" CAT train, which saves you 10 minutes and costs 4x as much) and walking past Schloss Belvedere (the summer palace of Prinz Eugen) to my fantastic flat. My AirBnB host had messaged me the day before to say he'd had to move me into a new unit due to maintenance at the one I'd booked, which had made me nervous. Turns out the new one is much better-situated, and in fact just an upgrade across the board. The neighborhood is fairly heavy on embassies and there's not an awful lot in the immediate few blocks (although I could catch a play down the street at Akzent Theater if I was so inclined - they're doing Alan Ayckbourn this week!) but it's about a 15 minute walk to the Ringstraße to the north and the Naschmarkt to the west (more on these soon perhaps?) and that'll do for me.

My first night I just unpacked, got my bearings and took a jetlagged-and-dazed walk to Spittelberg, a delightfully cobblestoned neighborhood across town. There I settled in to dinner at 1070, a delicious "what's fresh today" restaurant where they take note of any dietary restrictions or allergies and then whip together a three-course meal that, essentially, only exists that night, with optional add-on courses if you're still peckish after your three. It being in the low seventies, I followed the lead of the local crowd and took my seat curbside in the pedestrian street. It was delicious and, more importantly, required me to make no actual decisions for the evening.

The next morning I was up at the stupid hour of 3:30 AM, as my body had apparently decided that, given the data of the past week, we were never going to sleep more than 4 hours again. I eventually decided to get an early start to the day, grabbing groceries from a local shop (rhubarb yogurt being the find of the day, and shut up, it is delicious) and tracking down an ATM to get some cash on hand. Then I met up with my guide from the Vienna Greeters Association, which was SUPERB.

Part of the Global Greeters Network, the idea behind the VGA is that locals who are enthusiastic about their cities volunteer to show visitors around for free (tipping is not accepted). It's often not a "highlights of ____" tour so much as that specific person's favorite sites. In my case it was a bit of a hybrid, as we did end up seeing a number of major sites along with some of my guide's favorite off-the-tourist-trail corners. This meant that I saw St. Stephen's Cathedral (though traveling with my guide meant I got to see the ancient Roman stone, complete with ancient Roman graffiti, at its base), Schloss Belvedere, the city's merry-go-round clock and the Stadtpark, but it also meant I saw the Academy of Sciences building (the old home of the city's university), including the stunning fresco from the building's main lecture hall, pictured above and below. My favorite detail below is the three-dimensional molding on the walls giving way to a trompe l'oeil effect in the fresco itself.

My guide spent the entire day with me (I paid for our lunch and felt thoroughly inadequate in thanking him for his time and generosity), sharing his stories from a lifetime lived in Vienna, from the bombing of the city by the Allies in his childhood through the Allied occupation in the decade following WWII, and through decades of work in Austrian media.

So, needless to say, today I am exhausted. Fortunately, with so much sightseeing yesterday and a much better orientation to the city as a whole, I'm in a good place to spend the day taking it a bit easier. (Handy, as I have of course caught a cold.) Today I'll be setting up my requests for archival materials in the days to come, picking up a few household needs, and spending a bit of time getting to know my immediate surroundings for the next month. Hard to believe how (relatively) little time I have here - but I am trying to breathe and settle in as I prepare for the work - and further exploration- to come.