I’m only in Vienna for a quick stopover over the weekend, to visit a friend before I head up to Norway. These sorts of trips used to be commonplace, but they’re a bit challenging during COVID. I suppose I should just be grateful for how normal the flights actually are; despite fears of imperious border control agents and draconian entry restrictions, just about every place I’ve been to so far has been the usual ho-hum passport control, and even then only if I’m going in or out of Schengen.¹ Iceland was the sole exception, with multiple pieces of documentation: COVID passport, locator form, negative PCR test.

It’s the ancillary activities — verifying the fluctuating travel requirements, worrying they’ll change up suddenly on you, scrambling to find a test or a mask in time for your next destination — that make it difficult. And doing that for what amounts to a long weekend seems unaccountably silly.²

But here I am. And it’s been good. Great, even. It helps I’ve been to Vienna a couple of times before, so I did all the MUST SEE sites on everyone’s list and so it feels like I can just take it easy, go out or not as I see fit. But it’s primarily because I’ve been crashing with a dear friend. It’s someone I haven’t seen in forever³ and I got to spend time with them, chatting a bit, hanging out, and otherwise relaxing.⁴ We had minimal plans⁵ so we stayed near the apartment all day Saturday and spent Sunday at the art museum.⁶ The rest of the time has been just cozy domesticity: shopping, cooking, washing up, doing some laundry, watching some television.

Granted, it’s not my domesticity. I’m just borrowing it. But after the past few months of touring, I’m glad to have it before heading onward. It may be especially awkward traveling while the world’s still dealing with COVID, but if I could spend more weekends like this, I’d be still more inclined to do it. Without hesitation.

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Footnotes

¹ Romania had an absolute chaotic mess of people crowded around the passport desks, but even after I sorted myself into the line and made it to the front of the queue only wanted my passport and my vaccination certificate.

I did get stopped in the Copenhagen airport after my flight from Bornholm to ask where I had flown from but they merely waved me on after I told them.

² Granted, I wasn’t going to get a direct flight to Bergen from Romania anyway, so it was mostly a choice of where I was going transfer and how long between flights I was going to spend.

³ Just like the other 97% of my friends, since the start of COVID.

⁴ Surprising no one, I remain not all that great at relaxing.

⁵ I booked a nice restaurant for dinner Friday, but that was it.

⁶ The Albertina, which had a very well-curated and organized selection of paintings and sculptures from Impressionism up through the mid-1960s along with a great exhibition on Modigliani and another covering American photography from the past 50 years. If anything it suffers from the same embarrassment of riches lots of big museums do, where you really ought to go back multiple times for shorter visits to avoid getting completely overwhelmed. Great art is mentally taxing in a way bad art isn’t.