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23 tOUrIsts #1: apprOaChInG GlOrIette at sChönBrUnn palaCe, vIenna The museum is an imperial 1,441-room rococo summer palace, and the palace is sprawled like someone thrown headlong from the heavens into lush Viennese countryside. Schönbrunn Palace is in fetal position, cheek in the dirt, and has been for the past three hundred years. Begonias fatly clump at the lip of the stairwell and the stairwell is a marble sneer bringing us into another badly lit rotunda, a rotunda exquisitely throttled with portraits of the Habsburg family. We have elected against the tour. Our legs are tired from wandering the hedge mazes and reflecting pools. The statues are Greek tragedies. Several marble depictions of Zeus pitching his thunderbolts remind us that passion is worth celebrating. To live greatly and within striking distance of flawed and partial gods is to move properly within these families of married cousins. The smell of powdered flesh beneath an unwashed corset mingling with the champion roses. How we flock to see it. Horsehair wigs and wooden teeth on china at tea hour. We eat sandwiches by the fountain where mermaids spit swales of water fifteen feet in the air. Alabaster cupids piss endless arcs. Just meters from where they decided the fate of the kingdom, dusted and unsmiling, in a place without mirrors or a single shaft of direct sunlight . ...

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