The oppressive weight of opulence

June 3rd, 2024

Vienna is a stupendously beautiful city. Vienna is a stupendously rich city — rich in history and culture and arts and beauty. Vienna is a stupendously rich city in pure wealth itself. Coincidentally, Vienna is also a stupendously expensive city…

The wealth and opulence on display in Vienna are oppressive and become boring after a while. On some levels, I enjoyed it — especially when it comes to museums and amazing works of art gathered in a few places on display for everybody to see. But there was always an underlying nagging thought — that all had to come from somewhere. And is that the reason that other places are not as splendorous as Vienna? Of course, there were ravages of wars that somehow spared Vienna. But still — there was a time when half of Europe was ruled by Habsburgs from Vienna and had to pay dearly for that privilege. Also, because of their Spanish relations, a large part of the wealth stolen from indigenous Americans in South America went to Vienna as well. So there was enough capital to create the imperial capital to suit the sickly needs of a fabulously inbred dynasty. Now Austria is a small and rarely important country that can concentrate on staying wealthy and fat — which is easy to do when, after centuries of oppression, they only lost some lands that never were theirs, but still got to keep the already gathered wealth. I guess there is some perverted admiration I feel for this city.