I love travelling. I enjoy it probably as much as anyone who travels regularly. Even when the trip involves something unrelated to the act of travelling, the fact that of being in a different place to the one that would be my regular residence makes the whole experience exciting.

As of the moment I write these words, my last trip was to Vienna, the old imperial capital of the Habsburg dynasty, and even if it was not the first time I stayed in this wonderful city, this particular instance was special, for many reasons unrelated to the main, administrative, purpose of travelling there.

I could begin by talking about the special vibe I feel about Vienna, how everything looks so… golden, so to speak. Its combination with the dark stones of its streets and its churches, reflected in the white walls of the buildings make it a symbolic representation of the traditional yellow flag with the double-headed eagle in the center.

I could also speak about all the new places I went to, repeating very few of the ones I already knew from past visits, each now with a meaning in my heart, but what really made this trip special was the people I met during the overall day and a half I stayed in the Austrian capital, each with their own stories and their own spots in my memory and my heart.

Let’s begin with my delayed flight from the old Polish royal capital, Kraków, and how during the two hours I had to spend waiting in the airport, I met and befriended an Ukrainian girl going back home in Canada. Our differences soon became the center of our discussion in which I tried to explain, from Charles Maurras’ idea of the pays réel et pays légal (real country vs legal country) how Latin America was, in a sense, the opposite of Europe, as Europe was the firm ground of a well developed nationalism based on different languages and religions whereas Latin America was, in many senses, a single continental nation based on a common Hispanic, Spanish-speaking, Catholic identity, artificially divided in dozens of nations for political reasons.

I also read her some excerpts of my poems from Princely Rhymes, and her main impression was it was sad. I do agree with it. But ultimately we came along to see that it was experience and that we would always need to go on (especially as her trip was going to go for a longer while than mine).

Speaking of impressions, this was also what stroke the second person I met on the trip, yet another Ukrainian girl that was seated next to me on the plane, and with whom I bonded over our shared passion for travelling. We spoke during all the flight and then on the train to the center, and it was indeed a nice experience, probably as much as it was for her. She found out that me being a writer and speaking several languages was one of my most fascinating traits. I wonder how she’ll take being included in this essay, but I hope she appreciates the gesture.

After her, there was a third girl on my way, but given her increased importance during the end of the trip, I’ll leave her reference for later, mostly as a litterary device to keep you, dear reader, engaged enough to keep up with my story and the inmminent philosophical and historical comparison extravanganza I always include in my personal essays.

At this point of the trip, it was barely the beginning, but as I managed to arrive to the center, I walked over to the place I would stay for the night and the next, which was with a friend of mine from some of our common, international conservative circles. My friend was kind enough to offer me this favor, and as I took it, I am trying to show my gratitude by including him in here. All in all, a true noble knight of Christendom. However, he wasn’t home that night, so I was received by his flatmate, who kindly enough stayed up late to open me the door. I must also thank him for that gesture, which meant my safety and rest before the next morning.

After sunrise, I took my time to prepare myself, and then I walked around to meet for a while this very dear person to me I’ve previously taked about in past essays, to personally give her signed copies of my books, in what meant for me more of a closure event than anything else. It was a short moment under the rain, but as it was over, I moved on, both in my way back and with my life. I hope she understands and she keeps around although there’s always work needed to mantain such friendships.

My next stop was meeting one intellectual idol of mine, Mr. Charles Coulombe, for discussion over lunch. It was probably one fo the most pleasant parts of the whole trip because not only I found the same eminent mind and spirit I had the chance to interview twice (the first time it quickly became more of a magisterial lecture both Eric Robert Morse, co-founder of The Libertarian Catholic and I happened to attend, even if Eric was the other guest and I was the host), but I also had the joy to discover the soul of a jokester full of life experiences and the drive to teach and guide others into a fullifing life full of memories and zero regrets.

His whole take on life became soon reflected in that famous quote from Søren Kierkegaard: “Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.”

The twist, however, was that, the idea was to disregard the regrets to instead embrace the experience and make life a magnanimous experience, not only worth living, but most importantly, worth sharing as the pround and saint work of a lifetime. “Not that bad from a Hollywood kid“, said the world’s most important monarchist intellectual of our time as we cheered with his spritz and my beer.

Over the schnitzel and Zwetschkenfleck we shared while talking (thank you once again Charles, I owe you that one), we spoke of all and nothing, from the titular Habsburg family, to the Order of the Golden Fleece, our common friends (including my host in Vienna and his classmate), the spirit of the United States and of Latin America compared to that of Europe, and of the future of our ideas and our cause, that of freedom and tradition, around the world. After we parted ways, I felt full of hope, and revived in my own beliefs, that I sometimes let dry out of cowardly acceptance for the mundane politics in democracy.

In many ways, Charles Coulombe deserves the praise he gets, even if he reduces it out of Christian humility. And as the good mentor he is, he suggested me to go to a certain Mass while in town, and I, without thinking it twice, followed his advice, and went to the place, not before stopping at the local Order of Malta chapel for a quick knight’s prayer on my journey.

I finally arrived at the parish he told me about, and not to my surprise, it was the local church that celebrated Mass in Latin (to my benefit, since I speak as much German as any other non-German speaker), but in an interesting turn of events, it was a Mass full of young people, around my age, including my friend’s flatmate and other fellows from their circle.

After Mass ended, I joined them as we talked and met each other, and even if I had the impression of having entered into a world full of remnants of the Catholic aristocracy of old, my suspiscions were confirmed as true as I looked at the group and saw them all, guys and girls, in traditional clothes, full of brightful smiles and the passion only Andreas Hoffer may have known as he fought the French revolutionaries and then the Napoleonic troops in his homeland of Tyrol.

Of course, I joined them for dinner, and I even found out I had connections with some of them, not through my monarchist affinities, but through my libertarian, and mostly Austrian School of Economics circles, as well as over a common liking in rugby. It turns out there are indeed people like us somewhere around. We just have to be rightly atunned to find ourselves. Just like my Viennese host, or like Charles Coulombe, this group was indeed a pocket of resistance composed of the best knights (and ladies) of Christendom.

Now, in this point I shall do my intermezzo explaining the odd choice for title I picked for this essay, but considering how the first part was mostly focused on the trip and the Catholic community I found in Vienna, I thought it would be fitting to assign them the idea of being symbolized by John Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton, before getting on with the rest of the trip, whose intentisity, passions and emotions could only be represented by a fellow British peer, George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron.

I chose this contrasting tension between the Catholic Liberal intellectual and the Romantic poet because in many ways, such is the conflict I feel deep within my own mind and my own heart. I also chose both Lords as they, like me, belonged to a particular kind of group, that even if today has no special standing, it still means something for those who know its perennial meaning.

The difference, however, is that while Lord Acton devoted himself to a life of duty in his study of religion, politics and history, becoming a prominent advisor to Prime Minister Gladstone, a Cambridge professor and both an ally and a critic of the Roman Church, Lord Byron engaged with his passions both in his personal life as well as in his politics, living scandalously and dying in the shores of Greece as he fought against the Ottoman Empire for the cause of independence of a country that was not his.

Acton and Byron were also prominent wanderers, travelling extensively around Europe as their lives allowed them to, just like some of my other personal heroes, in the also contradicting likes of Alexis de Tocqueville, Ernesto ‘Che‘ Guevara, and Adam Mieckiewicz.

But the clash I see represented in me with Acton and Byron goes more about a dispute between my rational self and my emotional self, logos vs pathos, what is certainly and always good and what is intensely beautiful and moving, between the natural friendship of like-minded people and the passionate impulses of madness driving me to do the craziest and happiest things in my life.

So for this, I will expand on that previously untouched topic of the third girl I met on the trip, and just like I did in the last entry in this series, I’ll do so now, Lord Byron-style, with a poem:

“Alright, let’s call it dear fate
In a different city, after a delay
I meet a girl who was also late
Turns out, we’re going the same way
Alright, let’s call it destiny
After a full day by our own selves
At an unexpected place, who could it be?
Again that same girl, so brace yourselves
Alright, let’s call it Providence
That girl is a fellow lawyer
And also likes to write, such a coincidence
Maybe, after all, I should call her
Alright, maybe it was God making us meet
We ran hand in hand in the airport
So our plane wouldn’t leave us by a bit
In a sense, two strangers in support
Alright, I’m now almost certain
Maybe my life is like a movie
A romantic adventure in today’s version
I hope she sticks around to find its beauty”

In prose, the story would be the following: there was this girl who took the same plane and same train as me to Vienna, but we only met at last on the same tram to the station. When I tried to ask her for her number, her first reply was “Why should I trust you?“, and those words are still keeping me awake, wondering how things turned out in the end.

I met her again, by a strike of chance, in the central station to take back our train to the airport, and as coincidences just kept on stacking, we could indeed call it some form of destiny. Or maybe just natural attraction. It turned out we were around the same age, stayed in the city for the same amount of time, have the same profession, law, similar interests in said profession and outside of it, like writing, you name it…

We ended up taking the same train to the airport, and as we both arrived late, at some point, we had to run, hand in hand, all around the terminal to find our gate, in what pretty much felt like what happens only in films, and it carried the same emotional intensity as such. Talk about creating memorable experiences! It surely was one for me, to the point I am immortalizing it here now, and I hope it was the same for her, just as watching it may have been for the other passengers that saw us in Vienna Flughafen.

For someone who began mistrusting me as we met as fellow travellers, to end up recreating a cheesy, romantic scene on an airport, just because, that was surely a huge jump in trust, and obviously, it means for my impulsive and unstable emotions much more than only a nice rush of adrenaline.

After that, we ended up sitting together in the plane, and then again on the train back to Kraków’s center, and had a little ice cream/coffee as we kept talking about everything before she left on her way back home…

Now, where do I want to go with this story and with my reference to Lords Acton & Byron?

In simple terms, just as I’ve compared myself to other intellectuals and poets of our age, I think this trip to Vienna, and all the amazing, both calm and intense, experiences I had in such very short time represent this tension I have in my emotions between a mindful Catholic thinker and a passionate, Romantic bard, where the first gets along with his fellow rebel co-religionaries, and the second lives for the rush that means to run around with a stranger just feel a hundred conflicting things in a couple seconds.

Lord Acton is, up to our days, known for that singular phrase, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely“, which he wrote in a letter to his friend, fellow historian, and Anglican bishop, Mandell Creighton, when discussing about the idea of papal infallibility that was promoted in the First Vatican Council, and was opposed by his mentor, Ignaz von Döllinger, who ended up becoming a leading figure in the Old Catholic movement that broke up with Rome, although Acton himself stayed loyal to it.

Lord Byron, on the other hand, is still considered as one of the greatest exponents of Romanticism, a prollific writer with hundreds of works published and compiled in long volumes, with a life plagued with stories of his many muses, lovers and even women he rejected that later chased him, as well as other scandals, and mostly, for having being the most prominent foreign volunter to fight alongside the Greeks in their war of independence against the Ottoman Empire, dying in it, although not romantically in battle, but rather ungloriously with sickness.

Acton and Byron never met, as their lives had a ten year gap between the death of the second and the birth of the first, but curiously, it was during those ten years that the classical liberal ideas both of them espoused became dominant and history became plagued with world-changing events: the rise to the throne of the constitutionalist House of Orléans in France, the independence of Belgium and Greece, the explosion of nationalism in the then still-fragmented Germany and Italy, the independence of every country in Latin America from Spain and Portugal and the creation of dozens of new nations, both big and small…

Repeating the words Charles told me during our lunch, which he took, paradoxically, from Vladimir Ulianov Lenin, “there are years where nothing ever happens, and then weeks in which everything happens“, this trip to Vienna for me was just the culimation of some very intense couple months in which not only a lot happened for me, but pretty much my life itself developed in front of my eyes. Moreover, it was as if nothing had ever happened for a couple months before so much happened in a day and a half. It is those little things that awaken Lord Byron’s spirit in a life I try, and maybe both succeed and fail, to guide by Lord Acton’s model.

If power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, then what happens with passion? Does passion also corrupt, and absolute passion would also corrupt absolutely? Or can passion be a different kind of drive, one that creates a sense of trust and direction towards higher ideals? I still don’t know, but I think I might be close to finding that answer. And just like Charles said, living for something greater than us and never regretting anything we do for that cause, may it be tradition, freedom, or love.

And even if nothing ever happens, or further develops from this experience, I now know which two aspects of myself are the angel and the demon in my shoulders, which reason, guided by faith and liberty, and which passion, unhinged by love and thrill, I’ll be forever bound to modulate in every decision I take forward.

In a certain sense, I met Lords Acton & Byron in Vienna.