Vienna

This city is fantastic- you can smoke inside buildings, after dinner, over a quiet drink, in a hotel room, or even in a dance club- honestly, wherever you might like. Of course, this will soon change, and the war for our lungs and health organisations will see another skirmish concluded in favour of those who always have our best interests at heart- thank the Lord. It is a dirty, smelly, anti-social affectation to persist with. Soon, hopefully, one will only be able to smoke (indoors) in lawless, undeveloped countries with low GDP and corrupt, miscreant authority. Thus our pure, enlightened innards will be preserved, we will live as statues of virtue, striding the earth in search of other dirty, smelly, self-destructive habits from which to liberate the poor fools.


Habits like music, for instance. I've noticed a great preponderance of musicians are unkempt in both hairstyle and lifestyle. Is this really necessary? Surely the current troubles being suffered by record labels could have been simply avoided through a little personal discipline. The kind of discipline you can detect in the cut of one's trousers, the hour of one's descent into sleep, the trim of one's body or facial hair, the class of one's degree (one does have a degree, surely). If there were more like the cellist I saw busking in Vienna, exquisitely talented and turned out, piracy and internet media distribution would never become a problem.


Even the pigeons in Vienna smack somewhat of the endemic elitism of that city. I like it. A lot.


Architecturally, the Austrian capital was a rather charming hybrid of religious Italianate pomp and that slightly austere Germanic grandeur we find so appealing in our minimally technical club nights, that whiff of autobahn and concrete. But this was emphatically clean. The cleanest capital I've ever visited, certainly.


Perhaps my favourite aspect, however, were the sausages. Though to associate them with our bland, watery, gristly, and distinctly unmeaty offerings seems rather unfair. They shall remain nameless, therefore, since I have no recollection of their textual sensation, merely that of taste, which was sublime. To them, I raise my glass.