Grinzing

Sie sind uns nur voraus gegangen,
und werden nicht wieder nach Hause verlangen.
Wir holen sie ein auf jenen Höh'n
im Sonnenschein, der Tag ist schön,
auf jenen Höh'n.

It being an overcast and rainy day, I opted to go out to Grinzing. (A note about rain here: like everything else in Vienna, it is far more polite than back home. Perhaps less extreme weather conduces to a more civilized people.) It's a pleasant enough ride by the excellent mass transit system (take the U-4 to its end at Heiligenstadt and get on bus 38A; for variety's sake I took the Straßenbahn back into town), and thanks to the weather neither Heiligenstadt nor Grinzing were overrun by groups of Americans or Japanese visiting Beethoven's house (as if there were only one; he moved constantly) and stumbling out of the more touristy Heurigers.

I had not come for Beethoven, anyway, but for Mahler. Up the hill, pretty clearly marked, is the Grinzinger Friedhof, one of Vienna's smaller cemeteries (certainly much smaller than the Zentralfriedhof). Mahler is buried there. After some searching (for there was a small map by the gate, but it would be poor taste to label only famous graves, I suppose), I found the grave. Nearby were two other tourists come to pay their respects, as I had. (They had a Vienna travel guide in English, but neither their faces nor their accents suggested they were native speakers.) We shared a few kind words. I believe they were genuinely kind. For a short moment, at least, we shared a kinship, united in the love of the works of Mahler, this man who died more than a century ago. Music speaks to the souls of those who hear it; some souls respond. It is gratifying to meet a like-minded soul: "Ah, so I was not the only one!"