Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchVIENNA, March 20, 1891.MY DEAR CZECHS,I write to you from Vienna, which I reached yesterday at fouro’clock in the afternoon. Everything went well on the journey. FromWarsaw to Vienna I travelled like a railway Nana in a luxuriouscompartment of the “Societe Internationale des Wagons-Lits.” Beds,looking-glasses, huge windows, rugs, and so on.Ah, my dears, if you only knew how nice Vienna is! It can’t becompared with any of the towns I have seen in my life. The streetsare broad and elegantly paved, there are numbers of boulevards andsquares, the houses have always six or seven storeys, and shops—they are not shops, but a perfect delirium, a dream! There are myriadsof neckties alone in the windows! Such amazing things made ofbronze, china, and leather! The churches are huge, but they do notoppress one by their hugeness; they caress the eye, for it seems asthough they are woven of lace. St. Stephen and the Votiv-Kirche areparticularly fine. They are not like buildings, but like cakes for tea.The parliament, the town hall, and the university are magnificent.It is all magnificent, and I have for the first time realized, yesterdayand to-day, that architecture is really an art. And here the art is notseen in little bits, as with us, but stretches over several versts. Thereare numbers of monuments. In every side street there is sure to be abookshop. In the windows of the bookshops there are Russian booksto be seen—not, alas, the works of Albov, of Barantsevitch, and ofChekhov, but of all sorts of anonymous authors who write and publishabroad. I saw “Renan,” “The Mysteries of the Winter Palace,”and so on. It is strange that here one is free to read anything and tosay what one likes. Understand, O ye peoples, what the cabs are likehere! The devil take them! There are no droshkys, but they are allnew, pretty carriages with one and often two horses. The horses aresplendid. On the box sit dandies in top-hats and reefer jackets, readingthe newspaper, all politeness and readiness to oblige.The dinners are good. There is no vodka; they drink beer andfairly good wine. There is one thing that is nasty: they make youpay for bread. When they bring the bill they ask, Wie viel brodchen?—that is, how many rolls have you devoured? And you have to pay for224