A sense of the absurd married to an inflexible observation of the rules of etiquette

She [Countess Bianca Maria Colomba Korvin] came to personify for me more and more all the qualities of the Habsburg world: perseverance, courage, detachment, and, perhaps above all, a sense of the absurd married to an inflexible observation of the rules of etiquette. However much we laughed together and became friends, the formal Sie was never once surrendered to the informal Du.

R. Bassett, Last days in old Europe (2019), 14-15

This once great metropolitan port had become, in practice, an enormous museum - a museum with very few visitors.

Trieste has been quiet since the early 1960s. Its status as a minor port of Italy, much disputed by Marshal Tito's Communist Yugoslavia in he immediate aftermath of the Second World War, had finally been stabilized by international treaty four years earlier. The Cold War had sealed it off from its hinterland and this once great metropolitan port had become, in practice, an enormous museum - a museum with very few visitors.

R. Bassett, Last days in old Europe (2019), 2

Possesses still, at least for romantics like me, a fragrant sense of what might-have-been

The most appealing aspect of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, at least in retrospect, was its European cosmopolitanism. It had few black , brown or yellow subjects, but it contained within itself half the peoples of Europe. It was multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-faith, bound together only, whether willingly or unwillingly, by the imperial discipline. it was closer to the European community of the twenty-first century than to the British Empire of the the nineteenth and possesses still, at least for romantics like me, a fragrant sense of what might-have-been.

J. Morris, Trieste and the meaning of nowhere (2001), 32