It’s beyond midnight now and it was beyond midnight, 24 hours ago, when I arrived in Vienna, so technically this counts as a Monday image.
The train had arrived 20 minutes late, late enough to have me running for the last Underground train, late enough to make me miss it. OK, a taxi is it, I thought, but when I arrived at the taxi stand, instead of a queue of taxis I only saw a queue of people competing for the single taxi that just arrived.
I didn’t feel like fighting, I didn’t feel like queuing, it was a warm night and I felt like walking.
Vienna has two main stations, one for west-bound traffic and one for south- and east-bound. The latter, Südbahnhof, is currently rebuilt as the new central station, and during this multi-year project, “Wien Meidling”, once a small station, takes over the responsibilities and functions of Südbahnhof. I really can’t complain. The Austrian Federal Railways managed the complexity of the task in an admirable fashion, and although this temporal solution is much smaller than the old Südbahnhof, operation is smooth. Really, a great achievement, a logistical masterpiece.
Anyway. When I normally arrive in Wien Meidling, I can connect via the Underground, and that brings me home in minimum time. Never had I only the idea to walk home from there, and as a consequence I don’t know the neighborhood at all. I had a general sense of where I needed to go and that was it.
And all the while I took photographs. I really love this feeling of not knowing where I am, of being in a place for the first time, of not having any memories that could distract me from seeing.
It took me a full hour to get home, but it was definitely worth the time, and instead of being angry or annoyed, I came home relaxed and with a bunch of images.
This is the third time that I use “A Walk In The Dark” from David Byrne’s 1992 album “Uh-Oh”. Hear it on YouTube.