Vienna Waits for You

Vienna, so far, has treated us well. Dr. Schnabel saved us from the plague by providing us with urine, cloves, and some delicious wine vinegar. People say the American South is hospitable, but no one has attempted to save me from the plague over there so Vienna has left a pretty good impression. I can’t say that I’ve been into a crypt before St. Michael's in Vienna. That excursion was probably one of the more eerie things I’ve seen. And of course, there was the Sigmund Freud museum and lecture.

              Dr. Schnabel received a lot of confused looks while walking down the streets of Vienna, but I think that goes with the job if you are a plague doctor. I had no idea that the plague affected so many people particularly those in Vienna. The only real solution was to leave Vienna because surprisingly eating sage leaves and drinking vinegar and urine did not cure the victims. However, the plague doctors like Dr. Schnabel tried the best with what they were given. Some were not even given educations. That’s right. Some plague doctors were not even trained doctors at all. Most real doctors did the smart thing and left Vienna and stayed gone for a long while.

              I don’t know what I was expecting before we walked into the crypt. Maybe some coffins and some closed doors with corpses on the other side. But I saw far more. In a poorly lit, damp room coffins were lined up with some of them even being open. I could not say how many bones I saw as well. There were literally piles of them. Being in the crypt caused me to see death in a new light because never before have I been surrounded by so many reminders of death. For each body there was a story, and many of them like me probably never really thought about ending up as a decaying skeleton. On a less morbid note, the excursion to the crypt made me realize that I should live my life to the fullest. As cliché as that sounds. But death is inevitable, so you might as well get the most out of life before you end up as dust in a crypt.

              Sigmund Freud was a peculiar man. And I think the most valuable psychoanalytic skill he possessed was his introspective ability. He tried to find the root causes for why he did what he did. Most people don’t delve into their psyche because they’re afraid of what they’ll discover. Beneath the false motives lie only two drives: sex and not dying. Or at least that’s the belief of Freud. And I agree to a certain point. After all, those are the two most primitive drives. Every animal possesses these drives, and I believe some humans pretend to have transcended these drives and possess other drives. While some people might have, the majority has not in my opinion. And the Sigmund Freud tour began my train of thought on this subject.