“Dürfte ich ein Foto von Ihnen machen?” In a gallery filled with baroque bronze statues, in one of the most beautiful private family palaces I could ever imagine, I thought that I would be the last thing anyone would ever want to photograph. More than slightly embarrassed, I smile, nod, and answer, “Ja, natürlich.”

Normally, I would not consent to a random stranger snapping a photo of me, but this elderly woman has already peered a few times over my shoulder at my sketch of Adrian de Fries’s 1607 Christus im Elend and offered me some very kind words of praise. And so, I agree.

This lady is not the first person who has engaged me in conversation in the two hours I have been sitting in the main hall of Gartenpalais Liechtenstein, a gem of Vienna’s ninth district. I have chatted with another elderly couple, strolling hand in hand through the exhibition, and the security guard comes over every once in a while to offer encouragement and check on my progress. In a city where small talk with strangers is particularly uncommon compared to my American Midwestern upbringing, these interactions are a bit astonishing. But almost every time I sit somewhere in Vienna and draw, in a city perhaps unfairly known for its unfriendliness, somebody offers an enthusiastic compliment.

I feel so lucky to live in a country that values art and supports young peoples’ engagement with culture to this degree. Its rich cultural history is one of the main reasons I applied for my Fulbright year in Austria, as I am studying the connection between nineteenth-century theater costumes and everyday fashion for the research portion of my Combined Grant. But since I moved here, Vienna’s opportunities to see and do art have exceeded my expectations. Theaters offer student tickets at surprisingly affordable prices, museum exhibit openings draw enormous crowds, and the publicly funded fashion and art high school where I work as an English teaching assistant offers an impressive list of courses and resources to its students. Moreover, Vienna itself is so beautiful that I can find something to sketch everywhere I look.

“Zur Erinnerung,” she tells me, after she has snapped the photo. To remember this moment. And I smile again because she has put the best part of these sketches into words. I know that my artistic abilities can never completely capture Vienna’s beauty. But after this year is over, these impressions in pencil and pen can help me remember my adventures in Austrian art and culture as well.