Before Sunrise (2/7/2009)

The most haunting scene in “Before Sunrise” – or any traveler’s DVD library – comes right before the fade to black. A solo violin resonates over empty Vienna; chairs, a graveyard, a bridge, a park, each of which Jesse and Celine – our travelers – had visited while falling in love hours before. The Danube flows on. Vienna lives without them. The message, of course, is clear; travel is never about the stunning landscapes or famous statues, the military parades or luxury hotels. It’s the fleeting moments – the late afternoons on rickety trams, the fleeting connections with random strangers, the midnight strolls through empty Hapsburg streets.

“Before Sunrise” is a dream Europe that now seems primeval. No e-mail, no Euro, no open borders, and less English. In 1995, two years before I began my own European foray wrought with plenty of walks through plenty of cities, the continent still felt foreign; no Lonely Planet, no Internet, and only discovery and imagination. Of course young romance could blossom: as the sun set over the Danube, you could plant one, as Jesse did, on French girl atop Orson Wells’ “The Third Man” Ferris wheel without a simulcast on YouTube.

The realization hit when I ventured to Budapest in July 2007, nearly exactly a decade after detraining in Vienna. The cities are natural foils, empirical compatriots that coexisted to rule a quarter of Europe for four decades. The blue Danube snakes through both, and each touts grand, old Hapsburg buildings echoing the whispers of a proud but forgotten empire. The two cities are more similar than any two I’ve visited.

But the timelessness of the late nineties, my Europe, had faded. The digital age was apparent amid the yellow stucco buildings, and my own teenage idealism replaced with a more mature realism. The airport was sleek and modern, the thunderous Central European rain seemed to shimmer less vibrantly. The locations, beautiful and memorable, could have been twanged with a lonely violin. No Jesse and Celine falling in love through new discoveries, a gorgeous city hauntingly empty.

Precisely that makes the time and location of “Before Sunrise” resonate. Having spent months strolling the streets of Central Europe with several memorable friends, only to return by myself later, I realized quickly how the tingling of newness and the ideals of teenage love fleet away.

Twelve years and four continents on, “Before Sunrise” has continually struck a chord in my worldwide travels – my Europe, my era, young love and friendships blossoming in the fading daylight. Though new venues are more foreign and more shocking, little can equal the awe of discovery in a musty Vienna (Prague, Munich, Nuernberg) café, interrupted by the echoes of a rickety steel tram.