The train sighed to a stop somewhere between Budapest and Vienna today, the result of a missing operator in a town called Hegyeshalom. This kind of domestic dysfunction is not what I’ve known to expect of a European standard, but at least the commonality of frustration transcends language barriers and manifests into a series of stifled outbursts and exasperated hand and wrist motions that provide help in no way other than ego. Some of my elders on the train were far better at it than me, too; with age comes lower thresholds for gasket blowing, it seems.

Pushing through delirium is what a vacation is all about, after all, I found out today. Eat for the first time in 6 hours or make the last window for the Albertina? The choice is obvious to me, especially in the face of impending accusations about how I spent my own time in Europe. Imagine living your life for yourself!! Fumbling through basic transactions is the best tempering medicine of all and the clerks at the Albertina were particularly skilled administrators. Ticket in hand, stupid Euro coin jammed into the locker door slot, and five ticket scans later, I’m finally getting cultured.

The expressionist exhibit of Herbet Boeckel’s work is a prime moment of why art interpretation feels meaningless until the work is in front of you directly. It’s all nice enough to look at but not really, actually. I couldn’t tell you if it’s too “produced” or if it’s lacking in context but it really made me feel an unease, even in the format of a beautiful plum branch watercolor.

However, continuing my sole walk through the museum (which feels like a show in and of itself with me and my American shame on full display), the presence of familiar names (my former neighbor in the Greenwood ground, Basquiat) and an algorithmic Spotify “impressionist” playlist ease the experience into a true learning moment. I collect new names and shapes and works that will never come up on a quiz (academic or socially) but that I’m rather lucky to have made acquaintances with. Maybe I’m not such an inward fucking airhead, I think, but I’m really reminded that living is, in fact, all about caring and I really do like to care.

Perhaps the best gift of all from the Albertina (save for my new ‘Modernist’ t-shirt which I will need to read a few books about before wearing) was a song by Philip Glass. “Floe”, as it’s called, is the kind of piece I wouldn’t come across without you, good for nearly nothing Spotify. Hormones balanced by a soggy, pink blended sauce oozing Schnitzel Döner oeuvre, I embark to the Danube (I will not pronounce it in front of you if you’re European) River.

Here is where the Baltimorean-turned-New Yorker really makes his buck, at least from my wallet. Wading through the stream of faces and sunglasses and always the goddamn Yankees Hats, the immutability of feeling is more apparent than in even my worst breakdown on a Bandon hotel room floor with my Dad. While I remember how nice a simple hand in my own feels and try to compartmentalize the fact that these are all people with desires and lives as mundane or exciting as my own, the Europeans are fast at work demonstrating that they’re better at love than us, too. Tongues down each other’s throats and eyes sewn shut, the reek of bins overflowing with tar and ash nor the oncoming Skoda that’s just hopped the curb right at them will not break them and their saliva apart. Glass can take at least 50% of the credit for making me tear, though these Viennese couples get to split the other half evenly.

I probably just really needed to eat.