I Took the Night Train to Vienna Y'all

The title and the tale are of a trip to Vienna, but it starts in the fabled city of Genoa. Young, newly widowed, already famous, Mary Shelly in a villa in the Albaro…Paul Valery endures a personal crisis during a storm on the Castelletto…Byron,Twain, Dickens, Chekov, Nietzsche, Eugenio Montale all confirm the beautiful, forlorn, Ligurian capital as a city of writers and poets. The city is filled with secrets. Stazione Principe has a tunnel leading directly to the magnificent Hotel Savoia. it has long been closed but it is there, intact, waiting. The station lies above the Sea and below the palm lined promenade of the old Hotel Miramare where F. Scott and Zelda stayed the night. A train station is a new beginning or the end of the line; a stage set even more transitory than a hotel. it holds both hope and despair. Above all, it is Romance. And, recently, a night train route was added linking Genoa to Vienna. Departing Stazione Principe at the wildly civilized hour of 8:15pm.  

I well know that we are no longer in the golden age of rail travel. I have no leather suitcase to fasten a sticker to that reads “Bolzano” under an alpine night sky. I cannot expect a luxurious dinner and a discerning glass of sherry. Nor do I expect to be lulled to sleep by the rhythm of mighty steam engines and the lonely counterpoint of the train”s whistle. I will not see a wealthy dowager with her maid and three tiny dogs demanding a better cabin and I am sure there will be no spies or saboteurs for me to furtively eavesdrop upon. I acknowledge all that. Unhappily. But it is the dead of winter, the middle of the night and I lie awake to the whoosh or trundle of my chosen soundtrack of the sorry age I live in. The cabin is comfortable enough. I have it all to myself. I stretch out, cover myself in the red OBB poly-cotton blanket and revel in my adventure. I feel that I’m awake but the nonsensical images in a pre dream state persuade me otherwise.  Just after Brixen the snow starts to fall. We climb the Brenner Pass. The snow is really coming down. We pull into tiny, empty stations. In the middle of nothing we stop for no seeming reason and just as arbitrarily start again. My sleep comes and goes through the night and two loud knocks on the door truly startle me. It is still dark outside my window but the attendant has brought me coffee and rolls. They were more delicious than they were. I savor my breakfast, pull my Zara top coat around me and think of what awaits me in the City of Music. Once there I will get a room at the Altstadt and make a pilgrimage to Cafe Braunerhof, the haunt of a favorite writer. I will eat schnitzel and strudel and I will drink beer and schnapps. I will look for Sisi and Schiele; Oscar Kokoshka and Alma Mahler. I will discover things I had not known I was looking for and make my way in the twilight of the Empire.

Stefania, one of the most stylish people I know, had a friend that took the night train. She told me that he said all-in-all, “just fly.” Tomorrow night I have tickets to Falco, The Musical. I mock his point. He is just wrong. To self consciously seek out vestigial Romance, to fall under the spell of a nostalgia for something I truly know little about is, at some level, kinda silly. I get it. I don’t care. I am connected to my beating heart. Rock Me Amadeus.