I try to imagine growing up in Vienna. In fact, I’m penning these words perched on a bench in Marie Theresien Platz, a glorious square that unites Vienna’s huge Natural History Museum with its equally large Old-Masters’ Art Museum. Both of these buildings stand directly on the legendary Ringstrasse (Ring Street)—a famous boulevard edged by massive building after massive building, each of which represents an important element of Austria’s national heritage. Even the existence of the Ringstrasse reveals Vienna’s history. Alas, the city’s medieval walls did not hold against the drastic attacks by Napoleon’s army (hence, why keep them around?). Consequently Emperor Franz Joseph I pulled the walls out, creating valuable real estate that begged for something grand to fill it.

And fill it he did. Of course, Vienna already had impressive Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical buildings. Literally across the Ringstrasse stretches the first wing of the Hofburg—a complex of Habsburg palaces that divides into the Old Hofburg and the New Hofburg. I’m guessing the number of rooms all told might be 2000. The number of staff that ran such an operation was probably the same.

Directly in front of me towers a spectacular monument defined by a quartet of life-sized bronze heroes astride horses, interspersed with bronze figures of famous ministers from Maria Theresa’s court. At the top of the monument sits the solid form of the Empress herself. Her thirty-nine years of reign expanded the Habsburg territories, took the empire from bankruptcy to affluence (primarily her husband Frances’ genius, but she had the sense to give him full rein), expanded education, medical science, and what we today call human rights, and led Austria into the modern age. With fifteen of her first twenty-three years of reign spent at war, it’s no surprise she is quoted as saying “Better an unhappy peace than a successful war.”

Maria Theresa’s bronze face looks intently upon a group of Japanese teenagers on the square to her left, a group of seniors from Poland to her right, and a motley band of American tourists in the middle, freshly bused from their Viking ship for their single day in Vienna. They all look back at her. The past connects with the present as it does hundreds of times every minute in a city like Vienna.

It really is hard for me to grasp Vienna, primarily because I feel I must try to “have” it all and capture it with my eyes, ears, and mind in a short amount of time. Thus it feels unattainable, cold. Yet it also embodies a vast portion of the things I care about most deeply, which adds to my sense of frustration.

At the moment, I had to choose what to see next. A dozen or more spectacular choices suggested themselves to me, but I decided to revisit the Kunstmuseum, primarily to gaze again upon the dramatic paintings by Caravaggio, the hilarious faces formed by 17th-century Arcimboldo (conglomerates of vegetables and sea creatures), and the winter scenes by Hieronymus Bosch. I am just one of hundreds of visitors inside the museum: individual art lovers pausing to enter a silent dialogue with the subjects as varied as John the Baptist, Venus and Adonis, or a bedraggled peasant child wandering through bawdy revelers stuffing themselves with game and mugs of brew.

Groups of high-schoolers populate many of the museum’s galleries too. They are clustered around teachers whom they clearly like and are paying attention to, while keeping their burning adolescent eyes fixed upon each other, as all teens do. In one large gallery sits an art student before a large easel, intensely engaged in copying a well-known masterwork. This is a privilege given to students who are at a level of proficiency sufficient to earn the honor.

All of this is well and good. I am lucky, very lucky, to have been many times in Vienna. Each visit has taught me a lot. Each visit helps me understand better the march of developments that shaped Western culture across the last thousand years. I gobble up everything I can to use in my teaching and writing.

But what would it be like to be a school child living here? How would it feel to walk daily past gothic towers, gilt-edged marble plaques, stucco curlicues, and façades from which spring griffins, nymphs, and heraldic stone weaponry? To what degree would I even notice placards advertising performances of the Lipizzaner Stallions, concerts by the Vienna Philharmonic, plays by Schiller, and the names of top singers appearing at the Vienna Opera? Would the streams of tourists bother me? Would I admire the elegant, fashionable (oh, they are fashionable) adults whose professional lives fuel the city?

I simply don’t know. Is it possible for a child to take in Vienna’s magnificence? Or would it just be “home”? Can a youngster sense the harrowing circumstances in which workers moved stone to stone, see the strained eyes of those who painted the vast ceiling plafonds, or feel the worn fingers of artisans nudging pieces of mosaics or parquet into their proper places? Or would these glorious structures become merely the background of daily life?

What if I had grown up in Vienna (hard to fathom)? Would the puzzling details of history still have lain flat as pancakes in my textbooks? Or would they have danced because I had proof of them at my fingertips? Maybe understanding the complexities of the past requires the same rocky journey, no matter where one lives. After all, learning is nothing if not a circuitous journey, taken stone by stone, realization by realization.

As the day closes, I remember with renewed admiration those teachers from my youth who had few, if any, opportunities for travel. Yet they still found ways to pull Marie Theresa off her marble stand, shake her steely gaze into laughter, and turn her cold metal horsemen into flesh-and-blood heroes. To them I am eternally indebted. These are teachers who lit the fires of a child’s imagination with few resources other than their passion and dedication. Is there a greater charge to be given?