Final notes.

My grand symphony being almost complete, here I would like to thank everyone who has supported me in one way or another in my (ludicrous, I always silently suspected) efforts to make it to that distant coast known as Europe. They are too many to list entirely, but you know who you are. My family, my parents, the Academy: the usual suspects. Due to your unceasing enthusiasm and encouragement (especially my mother), I was finally convinced that success was in my grasp. I thank you all.

I have not much more time to write more of my travels tonight, opting instead to compose some small works about disconnected thoughts from my time spent in Vienna and in the train ride that lasted for much of today. I was vindicated, however, in choosing the nine hour jaunt, or else I would've missed the lovely scenery of the mountains as I returned to Mannheim. In this next entry, which I shall hopefully update Monday, I will outline briefly my adventures searching after all kinds of improbable objects on the streets of Vienna, but will devote more time to conclusions in general, being only six days away from return to the United States proper. This, therefore, is the last entry in this blog, although the final end may not be written until after my return. If I needed but one adjective to describe what I've found, there is only one candidate. Illumination.

The journey to Vienna began at night. The sun had long since departed the sky when we congregated on the second to last platform in the Mannheim station, our final communion traveling together before everyone went their separate ways home. I stood quietly on the platform while the others behind talked of home. My thoughts too were elsewhere. But yet my reverie was broken as the train slowly glided into place, hissing slightly as it halted. I climbed aboard, and remember shockingly little from our eight hour trip far to the south and east, into another realm. I was one of the few who slept- stationed at the top of one of the triple bunks, I was spared much of the drama of the trip when one of the girls had an asthma attack and had to be taken to hospital. Other than that, we were regurgitated upon the Viennese platform the next morning, no worse for wear other than a bit stiff at the joints. The body soon accustoms itself to the hardships of travel. Thus we began our pilgrimage to the hotel, carting the luggage behind. I had packed only two shirts for four days, but some of the others seemed to have packed two full sets per day. First we went down to the Underground, the strange sensation of wind coming from that concrete tomb brushing my face. We arrived at the Hotel Scweizerhof in short order, passing several examples of the rich Viennese culture, specifically the St. Stephen's Cathedral, a Statue of Gutenberg, and the toilets that play "Faust" in the background, on our short walk of two blocks.

I spent much of the first day looking for pens and watching German soap operas in the hotel room. My own trusty pen had shamelessly abandoned me not two minutes before our departure, somehow contriving to escape my pocket as I boarded the train. Thus, after the general orientation of the events for our weekend, I began scouring the city for a new ballpoint, for what is a writer without anything to write with? Two hours and 17 bookstores later, I chanced upon a pen shop almost right across from our hotel. Ironically, not only was I to return there, I spent much of my time in Vienna purchasing or looking for pens, and finding things that I had sought were in actuality quite much closer nearby than I had expected.

The second day, after a hearty breakfast of whatever it was that I put in my mouth (the lab results came back negative, so that's all I care), we visited the castle Schonbrunn, a living reminder of history which has since been turned into a gift shop. I counted 7 separate distinct gift shops while touring the place, which rendered such a feel of authenticity to the place that I could feel myself retracing the steps of history. They say Emperor Franz Josef would only bathe with his gold-embroidered "Schloss Schonbrunn" towel, while his kids loved their "Heroes of the French Revolution" action figure set. Those adorable rascally tykes. I toured the garden briefly, excitedly pointing and gesticulating at the wildly popular hedge maze, but I was denied entrance because I could see over the walls. Enraged, I quickly set about retaliation by goading Lichtenstein to TP the Imperial Gardens. At first the Austrians fought bravely, marching an entire corps of gardeners down the boulevard to assist, but once we began loading the guns with two-ply, their doom was certain and they had no choice but to accept my generous terms of surrender. I asked only for a shrubbery.

Afterwards, I once again set about searching for a pen, this time a nice calligraphy style point. I had always wanted to learn calligraphy, and the € 29 next to the Leonardo da Vinci quill set in the gift shop at Schonbrunn was too steep, even for my terms. I didn't want an escalation to aerosol warfare, so I meekly set about the town again, scourging (I didn't want to scour two times in a row, so I tried scourging. It did get rid of the canker, but a musty odor lingers) the city for a pen once more. And once again, I found it after much frustration and weariness, right next to the hotel. After this I swore off any more shopping other than food and drink, and dismissed the Liechtensteiners, promoting their captain to brevet colonel, giving the artillery major the Cross of Distinguished Merit in the Face of Battle, and complimenting the mess chief on his roasted duck. I resolved to celebrate by going out with everyone else for once, which I've refrained from doing so far. Finally finding them after an hour and a half later, I remembered why. I wound up that night in a place called Morgan's, another place just around the corner from our hotel (I was beginning to have my suspicions). It had a pirate theme, and they were playing the only Cyndi Lauper song I can recall just when I walked in. Everyone else couldn't understand what I was laughing about.

I slept fitfully once again, strange for having slept fine on the German equivalent of an army cot for six weeks. But my mind was too tired to think upon that deep mystery- I was concentrating instead on humour and philosophy, two things I only understand fully when I'm dead tired. It's my body's way of avoiding enlightenment. This way, any epiphany I have is forgotten by the time I wake the next morning. It makes like simpler, but a whole lot more painful. Sometimes.

The next morning was begun with three people being over 15 minutes late and the Army History museum, which I found amusing for two main reasons: that Austria could fit all of its military history into one museum, and 2) how much everyone else hated it. "I don't like war," they would moan piteously. "It's so mean." I simply stood in the back and tried to stifle the fits of laughter. Little do they suspect that, despite arguments concerning the natural state of man's soul, war is an essential to society. "You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty and you cannot refine it." (William Tecumseh Sherman) Yet without the cruels and terrors of war, how would we ever come to love peace? If you allow yourself to forget war, to ignore it, than you are just as likely to commit the errors of those who have come before.

Next on the chart for the afternoon was the Belvedere, another converted pleasure residence of the crowned and fabulous. There was only one shop here, but their beauteous gardens in the backyard had been devastated by the scurrilous French in retaliation for the Austrian National Team blanking them 7-0 in the shootout. You've got to admire the French for nerve though: they had the audacity to fill the entire first floor of the place with hideous works of art by some of the most obscure artists ever. For this reason I had been dreading my visit here: it was my first European art museum.

I am not much of one to walk around in cavernous museums and think about the exhibits. It fails to engage my mind and my attention, honestly. But I know what I like. Surprisingly, I found many of the paintings quite exquisite, especially the landscape pieces. There's something about the untouched beauty of the rugged wild that calls out to me, as it did in those paintings. Perhaps that's why I enjoy folk music so much: it is inherently alive, just as were these paintings. But I did not ruminate on every painting equally, sometimes skipping entire rooms of art I considered repugnant. To enjoy art does not imply to enjoy all art.

A quick side note here: in the previous paragraph, I commented upon how folk music brings images of majestic mountains clothed in cloud, and forests in fall, the sunlight filtering through the multicolored leaves to create a kind of comfort inside that reminds me only of home. Quite frankly, for me the relationship between music and memory is indelibly fused as one- to know of one is to know the other. The first song I sang for a rapt audience (who also were my backup singers) was "I'm a Believer," on my first Southern States Road Trip. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald echoes through my bones as I ascend Beech mountain almost every year. Over my Head was the one song I most closely associate with the Tijuana trip. It most closely represented my own situation at the moment, but I can also remember sitting in the kitchen, listening to "Cecilia" and "Hotel California." Each of which, whenever heard, bring up images of those memories. But this is how it is for hundreds of songs. Sometimes I'll have forgotten something, or not be thinking about it, when I hear a song that brings it back into sharp relief. It's strange, I've taken to cataloging my iTunes library, not by artist, genre, or album, but by the memories I associate with them. That's the odd part about this trip. I don't have a song for it yet. Perhaps it's like the others, that it can't become clear until later on. Like adventure, you can't know it for what it is until afterwards.

The next day I returned to Mannheim, opting to go both during the day, and without a reservation. This implied two things: 1) I would get to see much of the beautiful scenery as I traveled for nine hours back to Mannheim, and 2) I would also get to see much of the beautiful scenery of the interior of the train car, as I would indubitably have to move places more than once. As it was, I had to switch seats at least a dozen times. The way the rail reservation system works, there are sometimes gaps in the reservations, in which you can steal someone's seat until they board, at which time you are turned out and have to look for a new one. Thus I was set hopping to and fro inside the car, from seat to seat as many as five times at one station. I felt like I was in the railroad version of musical chairs. At Ulm, I was desperate. There was not one seat to be had: the one I had been occupying was taken, and I had to switch to a different car altogether, where the locals didn't know me, had a different currency, and probably spoke with a different accent. Dauntless nonetheless, I sidled into the next second-class compartment down and almost collapsed from shock. A full half of the car was completely unreserved. I had been running my wits to pieces in the next car for nothing, and now I had only two hours left. So I laughed, shrugged, and promptly propped my feet up and read the Great American Novel as the German countryside blurred outside.

I dreamed a strange dream the other night, in which a gopher was devouring my textbook. It was quite odd, and I thought nothing of it other than either I must have some subconscious fear of gophers, or hatred of my textbook, or a love of badgers. (go on Youtube and find a video with a badger in it, and try to convince me you hated it. And not the Badger Song! Try this link: Badger and Otter) But I've been dreaming almost nonstop this entire trip. The reason people dream, I think, more when they are away from home than when they are at it, is because of the nature of the subconscious. Home for the inner mind is a place of rest, refuge, solitude from the wild world around us. Conversely, when thrust into the wild, into situations that are foreign to it, the subconscious is forced to go into overdrive, always adjusting and adapting to new and ever-changing circumstances. Only when we cease to dream, will the weary traveler ever truly be home.

You may presume that the rest of the week will be spent in packing and preparation for defending my mind against the horrible onslaught of two finals within three hours on Thursday. This trip has been, as I said, illuminating. I came not only in order to study, but to gather information, experience. To judge whether a return journey next spring would be prudent. I believe it is. And I'll tell you the rest when I get back. Till then.