This was not supposed to be an emotional trip, but there it was. There it was: unexpected heartache, nostalgia, loss.

***

Everything began and ended in Vienna with a constant flurry of activity, crowds of tourists, stunning (and perfectly maintained) historic architecture on (literally) every corner, wonderfully engaging Mozart at the Musikverein Concert Hall, and Klimt (KLIMT!) at the Belvedere Museum. This is a city where you need not wait to be seated (they just know, like magic); a city that takes its dessert seriously, as it should; a city where I discovered that I’ve rarely encountered anything as vulgar as a selfie stick held up in a church. A city that gave us, also, the gorgeous Danube River tour to the Abbey of Melk, where we stood in the presence of hundreds of thousands of ancient books, where all within us dipped and fluttered at the thought of following in Umberto Ecco's quiet footsteps... where we fondly remembered our readings and rereadings of The Name of the Rose and its cleverness and its beauty.

Where our twin hearts leafed through every page again in tenderness and admiration.

***

The first of countless surreal moments flitting through this journey fell upon me on the train ride to the airport, where I looked up from the quiet delirium of Cormac McCarthy's Depression-era Mexico to face the Viennese dawn through a thick fog, a darkened tunnel, my own reflection; when, for a moment, I couldn't remember where I was or where I was going...

Outside in the abandoned village the profoundest silence.
(McCarthy, The Crossing)

***

This continued on the flight to Vilnius, with the passengers behind me--one of them possibly Mexican--discussing Roman Catholic religious practices as I read of a dispirited priest in the desolate Mexican town of Caborca and his Mennonite roots and his undefined selfhood.

This continued as I walked through the Old Town with my mother's difficult childhood in mind and stumbled on the Museum of Genocide Victims before all else. As I witnessed everywhere a country slowly coming to terms with its (extensive) role in the Holocaust. Felt everywhere a large and wholly absent population: plaques commemorating prominent Jews like Jascha Heifetz and Theodor Herzl; plaques commemorating prominent Lithuanians who saved many from certain death; plaques commemorating the Big and Little Jewish ghettos where, in what felt to me like the final insult, a now-trendy/gentrified area still bears the street name Žydų ("Jewish").

This continued when the hardest thing, the hardest thing happened as I panicked: How is it that I haven't sent Emma any photos of her beloved Vilnius? How the day after this we heard "Nah Neh Nah" on the radio--one of Emma’s favourites, I learned; the song she and my grandfather danced to over and over at their wedding. How the same day, during a night at the symphony arranged by Sonata's husband, we heard Beethoven's 7th--another one of Emma's favourites.

This continued as my father waved at me from every one of the million bookstores... as Sonata's youngest casually philosophized at the kitchen table: Everyone doesn't understand something (he, Russian; I, Lithuanian; Sonata, English)... as I noticed the insane difficulty of being a full workday ahead of home.

All continued as I observed this strange new connection to this half-empty city... this accidental city of my birth.