She had loved her trip to Vienna, the buildings, generations-old, blackened in crevices by acid rain. She took a picture of a shopfront that she just knew was decorated by Klimt. The history espoused by the tour guides made her realize just how young her culture was. She liked the feeling she had of being an outsider to this culture. Riding the extremely clean subway, she said "Gesundheit" to someone who sneezed and this validated her for some reason. The other people in her group were so obviously American with their loud frat-boy, sorority-girl behaviour.

She thought she looked European, but not completely so. Someone had told her she looked like she was from Bulgaria, and she took the comment seriously. She knew when they got to Italy, no one would think she was American. And she was mostly right - she was ignored as much in Italy as she was in America. No one tried to steal her purse which she wore in a diagonal across her chest. No one whistled at her in her walks through Venice and Rome.

In Vienna, she stood in Mozart's apartment and pretended that she didn't understand what the guard was saying as she took a picture of the ceiling. Well, honestly, she didn't, but the motions he made were easy to decipher. She spent a day trying to find Beethoven's dwellings, to no avail.

The first afternoon she was in Vienna, slow and logy from jetlag, she stayed in the hotel room, trying to nap somehow. Her body was so confused; it was pointless. She stood on her balcony in the fine mist and breathed in and out, feeling the difference. The feeling of standing at that place at that time inspired her to write a poem. She stood on that balcony and felt a part of something greater. With her basic camera, she snapped pictures of the scene she viewed, creating her own version of a panorama.

She swore she would come back someday, her swear induced by her sleepiness and the foggy beauty of the scene.
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