Vienna, called the Shining Gate (la Puerta Brillante), is an imperial court city reached by train, linked by rail to Metz and Paris, and home to baroque instrument makers, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna Secession.
| Type | City, imperial court |
| Spanish entry | Viena |
Description
Whether “the Shining Gate” names the city, a building or a passage is not explained. The train is the default way in; one traveler had to say aloud “I am not going to travel to Vienna by train”. Inside, everything happens “before the emperor”. From Uchronic Paris it is a travel destination. The company must pass through Vienna on its way home, by train through the territories of Metz.
Music
Professional musicians make baroque instruments; flutes from their workshops were kept by someone “as something important”. The Vienna Philharmonic can be hired, at an unrecorded price. A director of the Vienna symphony was “the best conductor of Wagner’s works”.
The Secession
The Vienna Secession broke from the court’s traditional academy to propose “a new relationship of man with objects, with the spiritual”. Its headquarters, “a kind of ivory tower with strange domes”, is the only building in the city the archive describes.
Conflicting accounts
- The chronicles date the death of Gustav Mahler to 1911, yet the record has him conducting the Philharmonic at the recorded moment.
- Whether Vienna is a capital of the same political system as Paris or of a different empire is disputed.
Open questions
- Who kept the flutes and where they are.
- The city’s layout, size, walls and state.