Author's Note:

After having struggled for a very long time with a story that stopped speaking to me one day (and to this day remains mute and sulking in the corner), I have finally allowed myself to commence a new journey. Welcome to Vienna. I hope you will enjoy your stay.

I've lost track of the number of times I have visited this city, just for a weekend, a week or a month. As a result, it smells of familiarity. However, not everything I describe you will find there as such. Picasso worded it better than I ever could: Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.

Much gratitude to Sunking for finding time to beta (despite working on two novels!), because only in grammar can one be perfect, and to Brandy for being the wind in my sails and never tiring of my whinging about this particular project.

Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns the playground that is Twilight. I'm just playing in the sandbox.

Overture

"Therefore search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity." ~ Albert Schweitzer (1875 - 1965)

Red shadows dance behind closed lids. The air is muggy and dense, covering me like a second sheet that I cannot kick off. The window is open, but even the wind has decided that it's too hot, and so the sweltering air presses on my chest like a paperweight. I don't want to wake up. That would imply I'm sleeping, however. Yet, even though every fibre in my body longs for it, I find it impossible.

The springs in the mattress press in my back, and I twist and turn in search of the least aggravating angle. The heat has me covered in a sheen of sweat, and my hair is damp and sticking to my aggravated skin. And then there are the sounds. Outside there is the constant whooshing of cars passing by. Someone flushes the toilet a floor above. The paper-thin walls surrounding my bed (because that is about the extent of this "room") do not block out the chatter of early hostel guests in the hallway. I can't decipher the language. Maybe it's Italian. Or Spanish. Or Portuguese. I press my face in the pillow, hoping that I can muffle the stream of thoughts and sounds, but the scent of detergent on the pillowcase cannot fully mask the mouldy smell underneath and I sort of can't breathe. My sigh is heavy with frustration, but it hardly stirs the air. And when a streetcar chugs by like a podgy caterpillar, signalling its arrival with an impatient jangle, I give up.

I blink, shielding my eyes from the onslaught of light and cast an exasperated look at the yellowed blinds, which are hanging down limply on one side, strips cracked or missing all together, while the other is pulled all the way up. They remind me a of a dirty city pigeon - one that stares at your sandwich with ferociousness you don't expect from something that looks like it got stuck in a meat grinder. I push the irritation to the back of my head. I suppose I have nothing to complain about for the money I pay for my accommodation, and it's not like I will have to stare at it for much longer. Tonight, I will take the train to Budapest.

I sling my legs over the edge of the small bed and lift my arms over my head, trying to get my vertebrae to reassemble themselves into somewhat of a spinal cord. It doesn't even take a full step to reach the window, and I push it open further, sticking my head out.

The sky stretches out over the city like an endless cerulean tarp - not even a dust bunny's worth of a cloud in sight. It's going to be another scorching day. The heat wave I woke up with one morning in Paris three weeks prior is starting to look like a long term relationship, following me everywhere I go. For a moment I thought we were parting ways in Amsterdam, but then it caught up with me again like a stray dog by the time I reached Berlin and has been tailing me relentlessly all the way to my latest destination.

And so, as Vienna basks in the sun like Sylvia in the Trevi fountain, slightly intoxicated yet elegant, I breathe in the aroma of cinnamon and fresh ground coffee rising up from the little coffee-house directly under the hostel, and ignore the mongrel as best as I can, deciding to start my last day in this city with a cool shower.

I skip the free "breakfast" at the hostel that consists of toast (and on a good day a smidge of jam) and sacrifice a few Euros for a mouth-watering cinnamon bun and a Mokka at the coffee house. I sit outside under one of the parasols and watch the passersby. There is no air-conditioning in the little café and with the windows open there is no difference in temperature anyway.

I leaf through the newspaper on the table as I savour the bitterness of the coffee and the spicy sweetness of the bun. My German, despite a week or three of self-study, is non-existent, but the fiery red and orange all over the map of Europe tell me that my self-proclaimed companion will tail me relentlessly for a while longer.

I'm not sure what to do today. It's my last day, and I've visited the main sights in the five days that I have spent here. It seems too hot to stroll around the city purposelessly so I fish the guide from my messenger bag. Leafing through it, I search rather aimlessly for something that I may have forgotten. It's full of postcards I picked up on the way to remind me of the places I've visited, tickets for trains and a variety of sight seeing attractions, even receipts for different coffee shops (because that feels important somehow) and post-its with notes from my many Google expeditions before I started my journey. I had everything mapped out before I booked a ticket (Boston - Paris. One way.) Everything safe for one thing – my end destination.

And I'm starting to think there isn't one. I came here to find that je ne sais quoi that I felt was missing from my life. Having grown up in a town with a population of 3121 (3120 since I left for college), I felt the need to spread my wings. See something other than the constant coming and going of logging trucks and perpetually gray skies. First, there was Dartmouth. It was my golden ticket. Thousands of miles away from perhaps the dreariest place in the continental US it satisfied the hunger for a while, but much like a sugar rush it was soon over. It started to feel restrictive, small. And so four years later I was a graduate, a valedictorian, lost.

I had begun to plan this trip long before I actually thought about taking it. Working two jobs, one in the quiet confines of the library, the other in a bustling coffee shop just off campus, I saved every possible dime. Venturing, with mixed successes, in to the territory of French, then Italian, and for a while in the soft, rounded syllables of Swedish. My friends never understood. Neither did I.

It was when I dipped my feet in the Atlantic during a trip to the coast with my roommates, that I realised I wanted to cross it. I wanted to see more, learn more. I wanted to marvel at something. But after spending three weeks in some of the most beautiful cities that Europe has to offer, I'm starting to think that the world I'm looking for doesn't exist. Though it's hard to judge, when you have no idea what you're looking for.

Before I can turn the next page, a breeze fans cool air over my heated skin. It starts gently like a blown kiss, but it grows steadily, until I close my eyes letting it touch me where it can reach, and the edges of the pages flutter under my hand. I lift it and set them free, and the leaves flare up, with a gentle but persistent swish. It mixes with the rush of traffic, the clatter of cups and silverware, and the friendly chatter of the ladies behind the counter as they greet another customer. It feels like an overture of sorts. Hushed and contemplative. A tentative start of something I can't place. Different.

And then the current stills, and a car honks, and a cup shatters. I open my eyes. The bright light stings. The air is hot and thick like maple syrup. I can hear the swish of a broom against the pieces of porcelain on the tiles inside the café and my guidebook is open on page 67. The Belvedere Palace.

I had been there a few days ago. It had beckoned me, that 'place from which to see beauty.' And as I stood on the steps of what now is an art museum I watched how Vienna was curled up at my feet, forming an image spanning centuries of history, grandeur, and tradition. A city. Beautiful. And so it seems fitting that I revisit that place today to bid this grand dame goodbye.

One last look at the painting as a whole.