Road to Vienna

Although we’re heading to Vienna, this must be a German train. It’s obvious the second I step onboard: the posh seats, the plastic tables, the service menu, the reading lights, the onboard television, the electrical outlet, the hard plastic luggage racks, the LCD display alerting you to the name of the next station and expected arrival time. If all this weren’t enough to give it away, the train does something I haven’t seen any train do in the fifty days since I’ve been travelling, not in Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia or Hungary.

The train leaves the station EXACTLY ON TIME.

Off: to Vienna this time, a short three hour trip. Christ, is there any more wonderful sensation than that of being on a train as it slowly increases velocity out of the station? Possibly the feeling of being on a boat as it casts off its moorings. Or that sudden orgasmic eruption of acceleration that comes as an aircraft takes off. I’ve never sat on the top of a rocket as its mains fire and begins its long ascent into orbit, but I’m excited to try it.

I wept bitter tears at the thought of leaving the beauty that is Budapest. I’d known beauty like that existed in the world, known, but forced myself to forget, because if we knew how beautiful the world is we would be constant slaves to beauty, we’d be lotus eaters, gorging ourselves on the wonder and glory that the Chain Bridge, los Torres del Paine, the Hagia Sophia, the Parthenon, the Aegean. If we knew the beauty that awaits us we would all weep as I did last night every damn minute we’re stuck in a fucking cubicle. We forget because we have to if we want to earn daily bread.

But one thing, brothers and sisters: somedays, we AWAKEN. We awaken to beauty and truth and reality, and this awareness is its own blessing and its own curse. For one thing, it leads one to rhapsodize philosophic like an asshole for hours on end.

[Ed note: Thanks. We’ve noticed.]
[Auth note: Fuck you. Who’s writing this blog, anyway?]
[Ed note: Apparently someone with a split personality…]

I don’t know what beauty awaits us in Vienna, brothers and sisters. I can’t believe it could compare with the incomparable glory that was Budapest (Go. Drop what you’re doing. Divorce your wife, quit your job, give the kids up for adoption, abandon everything and GO, you motherfuckers, even if it costs you everything, if you have to live in poverty the rest of your life). But I would not have guessed Budapest could be what it was, nor that Novi Sad would have the world’s most beautiful women,