Vienna, after a Railjet afternoon

We came in from Salzburg on a Railjet Express, on the Westbahn, which for all its reputation doesn't go near the Danube at all; it climbs and ducks through the Wienerwald, all dark conifers and the odd grey village, and by the time you'd want a river it's already going dark outside. Sunset that day was just before four; I'd checked that morning. We pulled into Wien Hauptbahnhof around half three and the Perron was already lit like evening.

I'd half-promised Marc a Danube somewhere on this trip and I'm still keen to deliver it. The train that actually hugs the water is the Wachaubahn up by Krems, and that one shuts for the winter, so all December gets you is the canal in town and a lot of people calling the route a Danube line because it sounds better than Westbahn. I let it go.

Hauptbahnhof is a through station, not the dead-end shed I keep expecting from a city this old, twelve tracks under that white diamond roof, everything pointing onward to Linz and the border. We came up the escalators into the cold and took tram D up alongside the Ring, getting off near the Burgtheater because that's where the cafe is.

One Melange, ninety minutes

Café Landtmann sits right on the Ring opposite the theatre, and it is no secret; it's been there since 1873 and it had a queue of damp coats at the door when we arrived. We got a corner table anyway, a banquette with a marble top barely big enough for two saucers. The waiter brought the order on a small silver tray, coffee and a glass of tap water beside it, which is the part of the ritual I love. A Melange for me, espresso under steamed milk with that thin foam cap. Marc had a Sachertorte.

The newspapers are mounted on those wooden rods, the Zeitungshalter, and the unspoken deal is that you can sit for an hour over a single coffee and nobody hurries you. So I did. I read most of a paper I half-understood and watched the window fog up and clear. Outside, the Ring went past in trams and umbrellas. It wasn't snowing, just that flat damp Viennese grey, maybe four degrees, the kind of cold that gets into your hands rather than your face. Nobody is in a hurry in a place like this.

The thing I can never explain to people back home is how early the lights come on here in December. By half past three the markets are already glowing and it feels like seven in the evening.

The famous houses can tip into theatre, I'll grant. There's a performance to all the brass and mirrors, and on a busy Saturday you're paying tourist money to sit among other tourists. But the silver tray with the water on it, and being left alone with a bad newspaper for an hour, that part is genuine, and I'd queue again for it.

We weren't only there for coffee. We'd come partly to see Dani, who I know from years back in Zürich and who moved out here for a job a few years ago and now defends the place like a convert against anyone, me included, who calls it a museum with trams. She found us at the café, walked us a stretch of the Ring, and then over an early dinner somewhere loud and good off the Naschmarkt told us in some detail why we were wrong about Vienna, about Zürich, and about most other things. Marc agreed with everything she said purely to watch me argue. It's the most at home I felt all day.

Out into the dark by four

We walked up to Rathausplatz afterward because you can't really be in Vienna in December and not look at the Christkindlmarkt, even knowing exactly what it is. The Rathaus behind it does most of the work, all that neo-Gothic stone floodlit against a sky that had given up on daylight (eventually a bit much, all those spires). By then I was tired in the particular way the early dark does to you, and if I'm honest I'd have gone back to the hotel a good hour before we actually did. It had Punsch stands, the giant tree, and a small ice rink threading off between the booths. We didn't skate. We held paper cups and got slowly cold and watched a small dog in a coat lose its mind at the rink, which made me think of Lotti, back in Chur with my mother. She'd have made exactly the same scene.

One thing: the second hand on the station clocks here doesn't pause at the top the way the SBB ones do back home, that little held breath before the minute clicks over. Hilfiker built that pause on purpose, and I keep looking for it here and missing it.

By the time we found the hotel it was fully dark and not yet five. Marc was already plotting how we'd see the Danube tomorrow, and I let him plot. We had the canal. We had a Melange that lasted ninety minutes. Tomorrow we go looking for the river.

— Tobi