Jill Rees: Welcome Press

 At breakfast I landed up chatting to an older EIA man who turned out to be a former Tiverton Grammar School pupil a bit before me. He was in the rugby team but had Lello as his head just before he left. We remembered the old teachers, who seemed to stay there forever. He lived on a farm in Cullompton and strangely worked all his life as a journalist covering farming topics, so was quite interested in my chemical article for Leadership which I’d just written! We get around, us TGS kids.

I couldn’t find the Buddhist Centre although I now realise where it is. Later, Sylvia texted me that it is closed for two weeks anyway, so that’s protection, as we say in SGI. I met up with Dylan again and we had a brief word about how little writing each of us had done this week before the rest of the gang arrived in Starbucks. I don’t know what the trip is here, they can’t decide if I’m cool. (No I’m not, by the way - get over it). I can’t be bothered with all that. I’m in two minds now, sad to leave Vienna just as I work out how to use the trams, but glad to be on to the mountains and out of this tiny hotel room, where you can’t even stretch your body out.

I tried to do some shopping on the Mariahilferstrasse, but honestly it’s no Oxford Street. All I bought was some packing material to send my extraneous stuff back to the UK. Even then I had trouble finding decent sellotape. The people in this city are so rude and push around, so I went down a side street just to get some elbow room. This led to a kind of dream world, with the Haus des Meeres boasting that it was ‘smashed to pieces in the still of the night’, which it clearly had been. The Police Station in a back street used to be the house where Copernicus wrote his treatise saying that he had observed that the earth orbited the sun, for which he was imprisoned. This seems significant and ironic, though I can’t quite put my finger on how, and it added to the surreal feelings I was having today. I felt inspired to take several photos of Viennese back streets, as I seemed to be suddenly able to see things in an artistic way. After walking for miles I went back to the Naschmarkt and ate kebab.  I’ll miss this ethnic food, and am not looking forward to relying on Austrian fare, which I find simply inedible. ‘The best thing about Vienna, is your immigrants’!

For elucidation, of sorts, see the Leadership article

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Tags: Art, Article, Leader, Leadership, SGI, Sun, Vienna, War, Work, Writing, Written