Anyone who has looked at a map knows that Austria doesn't have a sea. During the age of the empires, as Spain and England and Portugal were swimming in riches, flaunting their colonies and drinking their rum at the envious eyes of Europe, Vienna came up with a master plan. In the basement laboratories of breweries they fashioned a Frankenstein of sugar and colouring until from among the glass tubes emerged their own drink. They baptised it Innerländiche Rum and it is still brewed today.
Everything is monumental and proud in Vienna, every facade decorated in fauna and angels, flora and royals. Modern crowds bustle awkwardly while men and women dressed in powdered wigs and cloaks fit the city like silk gloves. Horse pulled carts trot on cobbles in front of symmetrical antiquity and tourists gape where decades before dictators marched.
Something about the city brought out my urge to write so I sat in libraries and cafes filed with students wrapped in scarves and intellectual old men wearing spectacles. Among changing sceneries and conflicting time frames, I scribbled on the blank page.
Viktoria and Lucia lounged under the high ceiling of their living room projecting videogames onto the wall. We played games on our tablets and computer screens, discussed the moral implications and messages only transmissible through the medium of games and introduced each other to queer music. All while outside the tall windows, Jewish men in woolly hats and curly hair hurried to the synagogue.
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