Vienna
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Frankie arrived at Vienna International after a short flight from Paris. Today she felt oddly detached from reality, lack of sleep was likely the culprit. 185Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjUMCzRYjri
She’d made use of her time in transit to ruminate on the last encounter she’d had with a man she’d once held dear. It had been a hot December evening last year, the final day of a 4 day heat wave, they had been arguing about Ian McEwan’s 2001 best seller ‘Atonement’. The gist of her contention being that the novels weakness was that it preyed on romantic sensibilities in the reader too often as a hook and thus took something of a literary shortcut. Her lover disagreed, countering by contending that ‘the book was successful because of its openness to sensibility and that it was a strength and not by any means a shortcut or weakness.’ It had been a short argument and despite the topic being impersonal, she still felt angered he didn’t see it her way. She forced herself to break free of the memory. Instead deciding to reflect on the emotional importance of reading and how surreal and essential the concept of inhabiting the mind of a another human being through written word was. She felt satisfied at her observance.185Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0Kg2EMUOVC
Walking through the departure lounges toward the exit she noticed a woman reading a book by Salman’s Rushdie she’d heard people rave about: ‘Midnights Children’ she knew nothing of the books subject matter but thought it was a catching title nonetheless.185Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTPeJo7GhAZ
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After a short cab ride, Frankie arrived in the city district of ‘Landstrasse’. It was eerily quiet for a Saturday and sheets of cold rain swept the streets in a manner that seemed to have a kind of menace to them almost as if there were a spectral entity pupateering.185Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDi4sOQdts3
Walking to her hotel, she noticed a vagrant laying in the gutter, disheveled and sick looking. She decided to give him €10 out of pity, at which point, he thanked her and produced a sealed envelope with a wax stamp on it.185Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzsb4Z4acVt
‘What is this?’ She asked,185Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHHqKIcnXDI
‘I pickpocketed some Jew dogs on their way to the Opera earlier. I think there’s tickets inside, they won’t let me in anyway, try your luck.’185Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡO820z9oq9d
‘Oh.. umm, thank you!’.185Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlbpkYluw0u
She hurried away from the unusually grateful metro-hobbit and tore open the envelope. It contained 3 tickets to 185Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmmMWzyDezQ
‘Il Barbiere di Siviglia’ at the The Vienna State Opera. (The Barber of Seville).185Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJzYhJxCeNT
She’d never been to such a thing. Her only experience with anything theatrical was when she’d tried her hand at standup comedy when she was 19. 185Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhEKDbgQWtu
It was a short lived affair.185Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡT0h7zzwzCR
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Frankie decided she may as well put the tickets to use, but what to do with the two spare tickets? Vienna was a city in which she had no ally’s, and she was averse to the prospect of the tickets going to waste.185Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1AfsWGmNbw
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In front of her hotel stood a hotdog stand. ‘Weiner Wurstle’ the sign read. She decided she may as well try a real Vienna sausage, as she’d already had the ‘other’ kind in a backpackers in Prague some time ago. A regrettable encounter.185Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmhUn4FogHN
‘One Scharf Wurst please.’185Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrz6TWkbbMy
The man handed her the sausage in bread.185Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZUhLMwMIo8
All of a sudden, she began to feel an odd sensation come over her, almost as if this whole time she’d been nothing but a marionette, every action she’d made being controlled by forces unknown and that the power over her had just switched hands..
