Love notes from Siel is a weekly newsletter from Siel, who used to live in Los Angeles but is currently traveling around. If you love the notes, subscribe for free.
Dear friend —
Should you ever find yourself in the Vienna International Airport on a longish layover, get out there and explore! The city makes it easy. A pair of customs officers will be waiting just outside your gate to check your passport — no need to wait in a gigantic line! A green train called CAT (City Airport Train) will whisk you from the airport to the city center in a mere 15 minutes! Once there, you can pretty much walk to all the sights — the Belvedere Palace! The Mozarthaus! The Vienna State Opera!
Travel’s so convenient here, I thought, walking through Stradtpark. And that’s when it occurred to me: By convenient, I meant I didn’t have to talk to anyone.
I mean, everything was wonderfully automated: A machine spat out a CAT ticket with the tap of my credit card. A series of well-marked signs and escalators delivered me to the train. A free automated locker stored my carryon luggage — all I had to do was not lose the receipt with the QR code that served as a digital key. How lovely it was, being able to navigate a new country without ever having to deal with anything so messy as actual people!
Have I really become that misanthropic? I wondered. The answer is — kind of. But I don’t think I’m alone in this — I think a lot of us kind of hate talking to people to take care of basic, transactional stuff. I remember a friend just after college who picked his doctor based on the fact that the doc’s website allowed him to book appointments online. No need to talk to an actual person! “It was the easiest thing I’ve ever done!” he exulted.
If you tend toward introversion, interactions with people take a lot out of you. All the hellos and thank yous and pleases and goodbyes, the nodding, the forming expressions with eyebrows, the smiling — these things require energy. Time, too! A guy I met in Split told me he was incredulous when he met his girlfriend’s family for the first time. They lived in a village in France. “Every time someone comes in the room, they give each other three kisses on the cheeks, one two three. Then when they leave, three kisses again, one two three. Every time! Think about how much time they would save if they ….”
I’d like to think I simply prefer to conserve my limited social energy for more meaningful interactions, like long chats with friends or interesting strangers. That said, I’m aware that the more we do away with conversations for basic, transactional stuff, the less likely and equipped we might be to converse with others at all. Already, we don’t really need to ask for directions anymore — Google Maps has that figured out for us. We don’t need to ask for restaurant recommendations — the internet has boiled all those down to star ratings.
Vienna itself was lovely, though I had just a handful of hours there — not enough to take in museums or concerts. But I walked through parks where friends and families lazed on the grass and ducks floated around the ponds, squares filled with very talented street performers and statues of musical greats, churches open to visitors despite ongoing services. All around the Vienna National Opera were ticket vendors, some in anachronous gray wigs and getups, others in T-shirts and jeans, selling last minute seats for 25 euros.
The only real conversation I had in the city was after I got back in the airport, when all the eateries were closed though the sun hadn’t even set yet. Finally I managed to find one open spot — a Jamie Oliver chain — which had nothing left but pizza. The guy at the counter looked at me sympathetically and we got talking after he gave me two options: Margherita or Viennese.
“Yes, it is a strange thing about this city,” he said, ringing me up. “All the restaurants close at seven.”
“Wait, all the restaurants in the city close at seven?”
“Oh, no. I mean just in the airport.” He laughed then, and shrugged, and with this gesture managed to knock over the stack of paper cups by his elbow. They fell around him with a joyful clatter.
“It’s the end of the shift,” he said in explanation, and shrugged again before bending to pick them up.
I ate my pizza. I found my gate. The flight attendants on my plane were exceedingly nice, one silently clearing a spot for my carryon then making a ta-da gesture before I even had a chance to ask for help. When the plane took off I fell asleep almost immediately and was jerked awake only when it landed, a little after one a.m.
Entering the arrivals hall of the Athens airport felt like entering a brightly lit stage, the crowd of expectant people standing in wait, each shiny face studying mine. A driver was holding a small tablet with my name in purple letters, and when I walked up to him, wordlessly escorted me to the taxi and, 40 minutes later, dropped me off in front of my Airbnb. I put in the self check-in code to the apartment complex under the supervision of a graceful white cat, who watched me through the glass gate. Once I entered, the cat padded down the hall, occasionally looking back as if to ask, what?
Which is to say I didn’t speak to anyone again until late afternoon the next day, when I finally woke up and wandered out to meet a lifelong Athenian called Magda, who told me Athens wasn’t made for bicycles, in fact riding one was rather dangerous, but it was still fun, I should do it, I would enjoy it, wheeling around exploring the town —
But more about Greece another day —
Love,
Siel
Three links you might love:
Greece is still trying to get its antiquities back from Britain. “The dispute over the Parthenon sculptures has deepened after Greece rejected a claim by the British Museum that much of the statuary, removed at the behest of Lord Elgin, was retrieved “in the rubble” around the monument.”
What happens after TikTok songs go viral? Apparently a lot of young musicians have been able to turn their 15 minutes of fame into successful longer term careers.
Two maps of the future of abortion in America. The New York Times notes that “without Roe, the number of legal abortions in the country would fall by at least 13 percent.” The Cut shows visually which states have passed various laws restriction abortion (waiting periods, abortion pill mailing bans, etc.).