Elevate November 2017 | Air Serbia

conversations between visitors who meet every day and hardly know each other. Sen- tences uttered with so much caution and respect for one’s interlocutor are never a mere consequence of routine. In them is revealed a desire to cast aside the spectre of loneliness and discomfort, though in Vi- enna consideration is always more power- ful than rebellion. Having your own café, where you come for decades, is part of everyday life for most Viennese folk. All famous Viennese had their own regular taverns. Vienna is probably al- so a unique city in terms of the abundance of dozens of names for a cup of this black beverage that arrived with a Turkish siege of the 17th century. That’s because it’s not all the same whether you order a cappucci- no or a Wiener Melange, and if you choose the latter it’s not all the same if you opt for it to be with sweet whipped cream or foamy milk. And a Cappuccino is not the same as a Franciscan, although it’s tough to ex- plain the difference, but they are present, at least in the way they are served, so dif- ferently and such the same kind of drink. In Vienna I sought the tracks of Serbi- an writers: Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Dositej Obradović, Njegoš, Branko Radičević, Mi- loš Crnjanski etc. Passionate readers of Crn- janski remember the dedication for the po- em Misery,“Vienna. In the Revolution, 1918. For student Idu Lotringer”. They recall his comments alongside the Lyrics of Ithaca. “Having settled at that time in a boarding house, which had a view of the church of the friars of the Piarists and a girl’s school. (Frau von Thiess, Piaristengasse 54). A few steps from there was a theatre, in Josef- stadt, and a small restaurant where actors and actresses ate - when they ran out of money – and carriage drivers, while wait- ing in front of the theatre. I also had din- ner there. I also made some interesting ac- quaintances in that restaurant. I met one part of Vienna, well.” In Josefstadt, in Vienna’s 8th Bezirk (District), Piaristengasse still exists, and is still home to the church of the friars of the Piarists. There is also a theatre Josefstadt. The guesthouse where Crnjanski stayed no longer exists, and it is difficult to determine whether there is today a café or restaurant on the site of the tavern he mentioned. That entire neighbourhood, where Austrian writ- er of Serbian heritage Milo Dor lived for

more than half a century, is a place where life unfolds mostly in the “Viennese” way. There are also traces of our people in the cemeteries. Sankt Marxer Friedhof cem- etery represents a unique monument, as the world’s only preserved Biedermeier cem- etery. It has been closed for burials since 1874. Its footpaths are strolled by peacocks. The benches next to the main pathway are in the shade of lush treetops. The tomb- stones in the arches lie below the trees, in the shrubbery, covered with moss. How- ever, it is not only those who would like to walk through this unusual park who come to this place. In the silence of the side paths can be seen descendants cleaning and ar- ranging the graves of their ancestors from a century and a half ago. Vuk Karadžić was originally buried at

St. Marxer. Even today, in the Orthodox part of the cemetery, where the graves of Greek and Serbian merchants are located, there is a monument to Vuk. There is also a place where there was once a common tomb in which Mozart’s body was thrown. On his grave, instead of a stone slab, there is a rosebush, so the soil is constantly sprin- kled with petals. Hietzing, a former spa near Vien- na, where Montenegrin ruler Njegoš was treated and spent his last days walking over windswept hills, is today an elite quarter with many parks and forests. Hietzing is not the only place where every step makes you feel like a long-term plan stands behind everything, that nothing is built from today to tomorrow in Vienna. The best evidence of that is the Vienna waterworks, built during

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