It was a simple piano, wood subtly stained in embellished pattern; the central supports were lyre-shaped, and ivory keys showed their age in beige tint. A placard on top read “Bitte Nicht Beruhren”- Please Don’t Touch.

This simple piano in this bare apartment room may not have been a treasure of aesthetics, but chills still ran excitedly up and down my spine. On this instrument, 213 years ago, a German man in Vienna first played a four note pattern that would become the most famous motifin the history of music. He was in the midst of his ‘heroic phase,’ a period in which he had told a friend he “intended to take a new way” and through passionate innovation would create brilliant templates for countless musicians afterwards- all while he gradually deteriorated towards deafness.

And for the price of a few euro, I was sharing a room with his history.

This was my second day in Vienna, a city at the convergence of West and East Europe, full of lustrous beauty and cultural history: Mozart, Haydn, Brahms, Mahler, Kafka, Klimt, and Freud all created masterpieces here, spurred by a wealthy tradition of patrons and infamous seasonal balls. I was fascinated by the litany of architectural styles on display during long strolls past intricate Gothic churches, glimmering Baroque facades, Neoclassical halls of government and Modernist museums. A wide circular boulevard, the Ringstraße, helpfully demarcated Old Vienna inside from modern expansions outside; what was once a ring of fortified walls had become a welcoming boundary.

On this day I had no further plans, but a range of possibilities alive in mind. Still buzzing from my moment of banal wonder in that small apartment, I added a new element to my typical European walking routine: I put headphones in, and asked Mr. Beethoven to accompany my improvised self-tour. Not the influential 5th Symphony, or my beloved 7th, or his uncanny late string quartets; I went for the unabashedly epic 9th Symphony, an immense piece both mocked and revered, which I had absorbed in totality only once before. The first symphony to ever employ the use of a choir in addition to orchestra, with a choral finale based on the poem “Ode to Joy”; one of his last compositions, completed as deafness took over- yet it is by far his grandest, most dramatic work, reaching ceaselessly towards a hopeful future of united humanity.

I walked in a bouncing pace, beckoned by his breakneck tempos; the Gothic spires of St. Stephen’s appeared over urban horizon and directed my feet onward. I circled round the altitudinous cathedral, my eyes gradually drawn from arched doorways and stained glass windows up to slanted rooftop tiles patterned in forest greens, bright yellows, sky blues, up stone pinnacles and broaches of a 136-meter tall bell tower all the way to skyline-conquering peak. Inside I continued to gaze upwards, at ribbed ceilings and burnished statues in dim natural light. The drama of the vaulted space matched Beethoven’s music perfectly- until a playful timpani announced the scherzo, and a shift in mood.

I hopped out of the cathedral and back to the street, past Sigmund Freud’s memorialized face and Baroque roofs of ornamental fancy on my way to the alluringly curved Hofburg Palace complex and Spanish Riding School. Though the sky was blanketed with thin clouds, life itself felt sprightly underneath. I wove in and out of driveways, passageways and domed carriage rooms as 19th century life conjured itself in my mind- theatrical and endlessly ceremonial, where even the horses were trained to pompously dance; a society of extravagant waste, which also happened to fund some of the greatest art in history.

And then we were into the adagio movement, with its peaceable lyricism; I left stone structures and entered geometric greenery, quiet gardens of perfect symmetry marked by fountains, shrubs and statues, book-ended by two Neoclassical museums. We moved in tandem, patient melody and easy stride. Strings and woodwinds sang with deceptive complexity, painting serene surfaces over stimulated undercurrent- just as the organic grass, trees and hedges were trimmed and pressed into pleasing shape. Order imposed on natural power.

An exclamation of winds and percussion announce the finale, and I turned towards the broad, grand Rathaus. Vienna City Hall. As Beethoven dove headfirst into hopeful joy with shouts of “Freude! Freude!” I came upon a vision of merriment: a vast, winding ice rink lined with trees and shops, dotted by people of every age cheerfully skating, laughing, delighting in the moment.

‘Ice rink’ wouldn’t even properly describe it- the ice followed labyrinthine paths around statues, under walkways, and pooled into various inner rinks; it was as complex as Beethoven’s own finale, a symphony within a symphony of cascading variations through manifold voices and instruments. I laughed out loud yet again, unable to suppress empathetic elation inside. Life, celebrated without restraint. His finale continued to climb upwards, resisting despair and dreaming of salvation for the ‘brotherhood of mankind’:

“Joy,
beautiful spark of divinity,
Daughter from Elysium,
We enter,
burning with fervour,
heavenly being,
your sanctuary!
Your magic brings together what custom has sternly divided.
All men shall become brothers, wherever your gentle wings hover.”

It finishes in a frenzy, one more sprint to the heavens before dissipating into thin air; I sat down for a moment and let my body and spirit cool down, accompanied by the sound of blades on ice and human tones.

It was now just past mid-day, though it felt much later. I thought I might head to a cafe for some time off my feet, but a poster caught my eye: a vintage advertisement for the 50’s classic The Third Man, one of my old favorites via the rave reviews of a movie critic who helped shape my youthful development- Roger Ebert. He loved the picture wholeheartedly, saying “Of all the movies I have seen, this one most completely embodies the romance of going to the movies.”

I followed his lead. It is a film noir of wearied romance, disillusioned with love, valor, and heroic stories; it ends with a gorgeous, long shot that is a perfect embodiment of wistful hope. Behind it is one of the most brilliant, idiosyncratic soundtracks in the history of cinema- performed on a stringed instrument, a zither, by a local musician the filmmakers literally discovered in a wine cellar late one evening: full of haunting melodies and rhythmic complexity, somehow festively bittersweet. Plus, it features an utterly iconic Orson Welles with this perfect paragraph of dialogue:

“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. They produced Michaelangelo, da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.”

And in the greatest stroke of luck possible, this movie was going to be shown here, at the oldest cinema in Vienna, in one minute.

Seconds later I was in a well-worn velvet seat; the lights dimmed, the title card appeared, and the location flashed on the screen: post-war Vienna. Of course. The one detail I had forgotten! I laughed out loud for the third time today, a burst of riotous disbelief in a 112 year old cinema. What is this life?

After the movie finished, with my ego emboldened to dangerous levels, I flirted with the cute woman behind the ticket booth and stumbled into a date for the following night. Because why not?

I wandered back to the Rathaus, which now looked like a fairy tale setting, sparkled against night sky over a clamor of dancing, sprinting humans on multi-hued ice below. My face gasped into a permanent smile while I winded up, along, over a blur of skaters, every sound a spark of joy in the air. Mid-winter Vienna, decorated in snow, in iconic backdrop; how is this real life?

Yet I stayed apart, watched shyly from afar. I was already at my daily budget, and had yet to eat. I have to be smart, I have to plan, I have to have discipline. I’ve enjoyed a joyous, full day, yet again. What more could I ask for?

...and then Beethoven spoke. Handicapped by age, robbed of the ability to fully hear the magical art he sought his entire life. As accomplished and celebrated as any composer in history, justified in embracing permanent rest and respite. Instead, he looked up to the heavens and shouted “Freude! Freude!” - “Joy! Joy!” with the largest musical voice ever realized by humankind; they say at the premiere he was fervidly conducting long after the music ended, that the real conductor had to stop him and turn him around to see a thunderous applause crash over the audience, wild handkerchiefs in the air.

Maybe the music of life never ceased inside of him, and he was the one who would have to periodically pause and deal with human life. The 9th Symphony is an embarrassment of riches, a production that refuses to end when it’s supposed to- but then again, who is to say that our existence can’t be that way as well? Abundant with joy, whenever we want to experience it. Whenever life demands it.

Seconds later, I was skating swiftly, recklessly amidst multi-hued humanity, with Beethoven’s music in my ear again. Tomorrow I can ingest physical food, I thought; tonight I am consumed by joy.