Dodging east.

I went to the Sacher Café this morning, and then to the WW I/II monument across the street. It's not a serious boxy one, but rather a powerfully moving one, with people struggling to escape from the rock and guns poking out here and there. I thought about it all the way down to St. Stephen's church, which was huge and captured my thoughts. You can see the outline of the old graveyard around the church, where it was before some Kaiser (Franz Josef I, perhaps?) moved it out of town, and I wonder what it would have been like to walk through the aisles, those huge towers looming above. It would be nice to see all these churches and cathedrals without any other tall buildings around. No skyscrapers, no offices, just humble little huts and one HUGE church. Instead, the area where the cemetery was is a giant square, chock full of shoppers and tourists.

Vienna also has the Kaisergruft, where the famous people are buried. Clearly, only the commoners are a contagion risk. Wealthy people can be buried in the middle of town. There are giant pedestrian shopping boulevards, and there are tiny little squares where you can find a great Biesl, a local coffeeshop, and chill out with some pastry. The square with the Jewish memorial (Judenplatz, naturally) is a good one for that. The memorial is nice, too: it's a cube covered in books, kind of like a library built on revolving theater stage walls that have been flipped outward. Yet another giant pedestrian street is the Graben, which as the name implies, used to be a huge ditch. The Romans used it for defense. This street has Vienna's plague monument. I've noticed that a lot of cities have one. The survivors were so excited to be alive that they all built fancy statues and columns all over the place. Understandable. I ended up back next to the Imperial Palace, where I found some Roman ruins I had overlooked the first time. I don't think I made it all the way around the palace to that particular square before. I treated myself to a smoked salmon, strawberry, sprout, and vinaigrette salad before hopping on another train. It was crispy and delicious.

I figured I could use a break from all the opulence of Vienna, so I popped out to Bratislava for a little while. It was fantastic, all onion domes and towers and crooked little old town streets. You can really see the influence Vienna has had on its neighboring city. When you hike up to the castle and look across the Danube, you can also see another architectural influence: the dull, squat, concrete housing blocks of the Soviets. I really liked seeing all the contrasts in Bratislava. Also of note: Bratislava had signs all over the place advertising its "twin cities" relationship with Vienna, but I saw only one such sign in all of the latter city. Poor little sib.

I had dinner in Bratislava, since I wanted to try Slovakian food and I figured it would be a lot cheaper than in Austria. It was. Though it cost 283... um, Slovakian currency units, it amounted to about twelve dollars for a large, rich, and garlicky fish soup, flamed crepes stuffed with walnut paste and lounging with some fruit in an orange zest sauce, and a huge Czech beer. That would easily have been double the price in Vienna, if not triple. The waitstaff were also very attentive in Bratislava. In Switzerland and Austria, they basically ignore you, thinking that they are letting you savor the meal and not feel rushed to pay. I savor, yes, but when I'm done eating I want my bill and I want to get out of there so I can see something else.

When I got back from Slovakia, the Österreich-Polska match was on. I joined the crowd standing outside the Fan Zone (they pat you down and take your water and all that if you actually go in), since we could see the huge projection from there. Poland led for the entire game, but both sides' fans kept up the cheering and good mood. In the 92nd minute, during the last bit of makeup time, Österreich's captain scored. You would have thought the guy had won every single gold medal there is at the Olympics. The match ended in a tie, but you couldn't tell the Austrians that. (I think their team usually loses.) They cheered and hollered and jumped for at least fifteen minutes straight, then went off on parades around the Hofburg Palace and through Stevensplatz and all along the pedestrian avenues. Naturally, I tagged along.

I'd ended up watching with a group of architecture students. They adopted me into their fold for the evening, striped facepaint and all, especially after I used my best German to say hi and ask questions. One of them proceeded to explain every single football cheer and pulled me off to the side when she thought she saw some Polish hooligans coming. She says they felt like the game was stolen from them and the Polish hooliganism is second only to that of the Brits. The architecture students and I stomped around chanting and cheering for a while. I tried to duck out when they headed for a pub, but the one girl made me come to a different pub for just a few minutes more. A guitarist was singing famous Austrian songs, and I just had to hear a few. She was right. They were great.

The football cheers are still cycling through my head. One translates to "Austria, now and forever," while another brags about how they're going to win their next game, against Germany. (Deutschland, Deutschland, alles historie!) Not likely. Another is pure Viennese slang: they shorten the captain's name down to Ivo and then uses contractions that supposedly mean "kicked a goal" afterward, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it. It sounds like "Da Ivo pitta manna, dunh dunnnnh dun-dun dunnnnh dun da!" The one that really stays in your head is to When the Saints Go Marching In and just consists of nonsense cheering about Rot, Weiss, Österreich!. All in all, a great day.