At Stephansplatz in Vienna in November 1994, I posed for a picture in front of Stephansdom. I decided to make a globe-like shape with my hands by putting the fingers of both hands together, fingertip-to-fingertip.

Which looks like some kind of nightmarish gluing of my fingers together. Just an eccentric little gesture that didn’t quite go right. I’d realized sometime earlier that Vienna was as far east as I’d reached in July 1983, when coming from the west. In 1994, coming from the east, I’d reached Vienna again. So I had passed through every longitude. Hence, a globe.

Actually, I’d already passed through every longitude by the time I’d reached Prague about 10 days earlier, traveling from Krakow, because Prague is west of Vienna, but never mind. I figured Vienna was the meeting point. It occurs to me now that besides London, Vienna is the only place in Europe that I’ve visited more than once. Need to rectify that in future years if I’m able.

Had a good visit both times. Here’s Yuriko on the grounds of Schönbrunn Palace.

It was a foggy day. Just barely visible in the background is the Gloriette. The day I visited in 1983 was sunny, not too hot, and pleasantly windy. I parked myself on a bench on the slope between the palace and the Gloriette and sat a while, admiring the view and writing a letter. A peak moment.

The Christkindlmarkt on the Rathausplatz had just started when we were there.
In the background is, naturally, Vienna’s Rathaus. Lots of pretty things were for sale at the market, I remember, but more expensive than the equally pretty baubles we’d seen at Krakow Cloth Hall market, which wasn’t a Christmas market, but had ornaments.

Belvedere Palace. You want palaces? Wien’s got ’em.

Vienna’s Ringstrasse.
One of the things that struck me when wandering around that part of town during my first visit to Vienna was spotting OPEC headquarters. It was in this building from 1977 to 2009.

If I’d known OPEC HQ was in Vienna, I’d forgotten that fact. OPEC isn’t that well known these days, but in the ’70s the organization was in the news all the time, generally characterized as shifty foreigners gouging upstanding Americans for oil. Not the kind of organization that occupies a building in a major European city, with offices and windows and phones and secretaries and all that. A silly thing to think, but often enough it’s hard to shake the prevailing nonsense.