We walked the streets of Vienna at night, in late January, when it was blistering cold and the rain seemed as if it could not decide whether or not to turn to ice. During the day, we shopped in the main part of the city where stores with large glass windows huddled around a steeple church that rose toward the sky, its history refusing to be dwarfed by these people—Laura and I included—who shopped for blue jeans and leather shoes.
There were many piano bars that we could not afford to get into because we were students. Looking in, we saw suited men smoking cigars and women in dresses arching their backs lightly in their chairs. I wanted to go in anyway, but Laura wouldn’t have it. You’re wearing a North Face jacket and a Nike hat, she said, hooking her arm through mine and scooting us down the street.
We passed through a district of gentleman’s clubs, then a theatre hall, the faint sounds of a Mozart concerto ringing clear into the night. Laura didn’t believe that it was Mozart. In a way, I didn’t believe it, either. The music was so light it felt like it wanted to take flight, but we were walking in the cold, pressed together for warmth, so that it seemed impossible even for a genius to compose something so delicate in such nasty weather.
We eventually decided on a bar, though we only had enough money to share a pint of beer. We took a seat on the upper level where we could look down on a two-man band playing covers of U2 and Pink Floyd. One of the men was fat and wore red suspenders and played guitar like it could get him into heaven; the other sported a beard and shaggy hair and sang with an Italian accent, rolling the r’s of “With or Without You.” In the crowd, a blonde-haired man with dark glasses was celebrating a birthday and there was a lot of shouting from men who looked as if they played rugby their entire lives and occasionally we heard the shattering of dropped glasses. It was not so different than home, except for the walls that whispered of others, who a thousand years before might have been sitting in this bar, singing and drinking into the night. Well, it was the first time I felt like I was part of anything.