Vienna
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Frankie arrived at Vienna International after a short flight from Paris. Today she felt oddly detached from reality, lack of sleep was likely the culprit. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSVVwkF6B2E
She’d made use of her time in transit to ruminate on the last encounter she’d had with a man she’d once held dear. It had been a hot December evening last year, the final day of a 4 day heat wave, they had been arguing about Ian McEwan’s 2001 best seller ‘Atonement’. The gist of her contention being that the novels weakness was that it preyed on romantic sensibilities in the reader too often as a hook and thus took something of a literary shortcut. Her lover disagreed, countering by contending that ‘the book was successful because of its openness to sensibility and that it was a strength and not by any means a shortcut or weakness.’ It had been a short argument and despite the topic being impersonal, she still felt angered he didn’t see it her way. She forced herself to break free of the memory. Instead deciding to reflect on the emotional importance of reading and how surreal and essential the concept of inhabiting the mind of a another human being through written word was. She felt satisfied at her observance.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlvau4gKpw3
Walking through the departure lounges toward the exit she noticed a woman reading a book by Salman’s Rushdie she’d heard people rave about: ‘Midnights Children’ she knew nothing of the books subject matter but thought it was a catching title nonetheless.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡggs3L5VPnv
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After a short cab ride, Frankie arrived in the city district of ‘Landstrasse’. It was eerily quiet for a Saturday and sheets of cold rain swept the streets in a manner that seemed to have a kind of menace to them almost as if there were a spectral entity pupateering.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡL2NdCDrE65
Walking to her hotel, she noticed a vagrant laying in the gutter, disheveled and sick looking. She decided to give him €10 out of pity, at which point, he thanked her and produced a sealed envelope with a wax stamp on it.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoJHQApzPaY
‘What is this?’ She asked,220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7FWLxSf9ns
‘I pickpocketed some Jew dogs on their way to the Opera earlier. I think there’s tickets inside, they won’t let me in anyway, try your luck.’220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs72KqkQ6C9
‘Oh.. umm, thank you!’.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCqV7raGEmZ
She hurried away from the unusually grateful metro-hobbit and tore open the envelope. It contained 3 tickets to 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3V55kZQNPC
‘Il Barbiere di Siviglia’ at the The Vienna State Opera. (The Barber of Seville).220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCqirxrnhAE
She’d never been to such a thing. Her only experience with anything theatrical was when she’d tried her hand at standup comedy when she was 19. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu0vH64qVs4
It was a short lived affair.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0qItKRpwBr
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Frankie decided she may as well put the tickets to use, but what to do with the two spare tickets? Vienna was a city in which she had no ally’s, and she was averse to the prospect of the tickets going to waste.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVMZNjzTAbu
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In front of her hotel stood a hotdog stand. ‘Weiner Wurstle’ the sign read. She decided she may as well try a real Vienna sausage, as she’d already had the ‘other’ kind in a backpackers in Prague some time ago. A regrettable encounter.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJAcgp7QhOz
‘One Scharf Wurst please.’220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtqBH6BzMsF
The man handed her the sausage in bread.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN291CpNGrN
All of a sudden, she began to feel an odd sensation come over her, almost as if this whole time she’d been nothing but a marionette, every action she’d made being controlled by forces unknown and that the power over her had just switched hands..
