Last week, I took the train south from Klagenfurt (in south Austria) to Trieste.  Reviewing Google maps, I had assumed that the train headed directly south through Slovenia.  But history or geography planned a route that skirts Slovenia completely.  The …

I started this story yesterday and then lost the draft, so I have started it again, and I need to make hay of it. . . . My sister is a something of a hero; she is stable, thoughtful, considerate. …

Vienna is not huge. It is a substantial city, and it is a capital city, with about 2 million inhabitants, and about 2.6 million in its metropolitan area.  It has a long history, combining remnants of Imperial Majesty with established …

Before World War II, my maternal grandparents owned an Auskocherei and then a Gasthaus in the Ottakring district of Vienna. About the first restaurant, my uncle wrote: “My family’s little restaurant offered some specialties once in a while.  My father …

March 12, 2022 “Among the so-called neurotics of our day there are a good many who in other ages would not have been neurotic—that is divided against themselves.  If they had lived in a period and in a milieu in …

March 4, 2022 I flew into Vienna on Wednesday, and today, briefly, I felt that I was out of my mind to have come.  I have some old, inherited fear. . . But the move is temporary, and it feels …

This morning (Sunday, June 6), I searched the  StreetEasy website for real estate in Manhattan and found 282 cooperative and condominium apartment listings on the Upper West Side, priced from $3 to $10 million.  Most buyers would not look across …