They say that you can’t go home again; that things always change, so it’s no use trying to recreate the past. I don’t want to revisit the past, really, but rather the city that helped to form me.

That is why I’m stretched out on a narrow bunk bed on the night train, its rails clicking and clanking with a familiarity that will soon lull me to sleep. We’re rushing through the Swiss countryside, where I’ve been working this past week, and the Alps are a thick blur in the darkness. In a few hours, we’ll cross the border and make our way across the tiny, key-shaped country of Austria. Then in the early morning, we’ll reach Vienna, the place that I’ve been missing.

Below me in the lower bunk, my 10-year-old daughter is fast asleep, snug and content in the miniscule cocoon that is her bed for the night. I’m eager to share this adventure with her, to show her a part of myself that she may not know.

With air travel so cheap in Europe now, we could have flown to the Austrian capital for the same cost. But it only seemed right to return to Vienna by rail. After all, this is how I first came to know the former imperial city, when I was just another American kid schlepping a backpack through the train stations of Europe.

It’s funny how one decision can make such a difference, how a country I had barely even heard of could alter the path of my life.

Vienna is famous for its coffeehouse culture. Pictured here is Café Central, one of the author's favorite haunts.

I had planned to study abroad in Spain, where I have relatives and could understand a bit of the language. But then a friend dragged me on a two-week trip through Europe, and I came face-to-face with Vienna and a boy named Richard. I was instantly infatuated with both of them.

So Spain was forgotten, and I landed in Austria six months later at age 20 with three suitcases and two months of German study under my belt. I was to attend an American university in the Austrian capital, but it was the culture here that intrigued me.

Vienna is known as the city of music and for its famous coffeehouse culture. Many visitors, however, forget the town’s royal past. Yet, it’s from this unique viewpoint that this city of two million is best understood. For nearly 640 years, Vienna served as the heart of the mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire. The ruling family, the Habsburgs, stretched the fingers of their rule from Austria to Hungary, and even into what is now the Czech Republic. The royal family built beautiful palaces; ordered court composers (like Mozart) to write dramatic music; and ate the royal pastries that were invented just for them.

When the empire fell after World War I, the remnants of this imperial heritage remained. It lives on in the regal air of Vienna’s citizens, the haughty atmosphere in many cafés and restaurants and the highly-regarded arts and cultural scene.

World War II also left its mark on the city. The wounds still run deep from those shameful times, but five decades have passed, bringing new understanding and knowledge. After WWII, Europe was divided up between the Soviets and the West. While Czechoslovakia, Hungary and even parts of Germany were pulled into the Eastern Bloc, Austria was allowed to be “neutral,” a fragile outpost of Western thought walking gingerly at the doorstep of communism.

That is the Austria I met when I arrived in 1987. I have a photo at home from that first week in Vienna. In it, I am smiling, wide-eyed and naïve, open to whatever the city sends my way. And in the background, in the gray skies and the busy sidewalks of Mariahilfestrasse, Vienna stands wary, caught between East and West.