Sometimes you just need to listen to a straightforward banger. Something gloriously obvious and let it wash over you without conducting a taste audit. This is simply about lowering the drawbridge on the idea that you only consume music that is intellectually defensible. On occasion it is both efficient and pleasant to choose joy over discernment. Designed to be played with the sun on your face, outside if at all possible. My thought is that I am pretty sure it is structurally incapable of not making you feel, quite frankly, happy.

This is pure, glossy pop optimism, the sonic equivalent of accepting that life is administratively chaotic and choosing to be entertained by it. The whole thing runs on a kind of cheerful inevitability, the sense that when you decide to “don’t fight it, just let it go” you are opting into the ride rather than control.

Dreams has the musical equivalent of entertaining the idea that some of what you want this year might actually be possible. The lne “it takes a little time, sometimes” feels less like a throwaway line and more like a reminder that this particular week is for living in the in between, not for having your entire life solved by the first of January. Technically it is a love song, but it works just as well if you file it under all the other things you might like to see come true, hopeful without being naive and calm enough to feel usable.

Technically a sad song, but it moves with so much momentum and optimism that it ends up feeling constructive rather than bleak. Never Ever is reflection set to late nineties R and B - giving diary entry energy and layered harmonies. It begins in that scrambled place where “sometimes vocabulary runs through my head” and nothing quite lands, then gradually assembles coherence as the song goes on. You learn that you can start from confusion, say the wrong thing, feel ridiculous, and still arrive somewhere clearer by the end of four minutes.

Ordinarily this corner is reserved for exhibitions, performances, or at least something that comes with wall text. This week, in the spirit of taking comfort culture seriously, the Art & Culture slot is being given to Julia Roberts. Across a handful of films she has shaped what romantic comedy and what sheer movie stardom looks like for an entire generation. So instead of one worthy recommendation, we are proposing a Julia Roberts trilogy: Notting Hill, Pretty Woman, and Erin Brockovich - a survey of charm, fantasy, and functional rage.

Notting Hill remains the cinematic equivalent of the perfect cashmere cardigan, familiar yet still surprisingly capable of producing feeling again and again. Released in 1999, it paired Julia Roberts at the height of global stardom with Hugh Grant at his most gently bewildered, placing the world’s most famous actress in a small London bookshop and asking what might happen if glamour collided with real life. What has kept it alive is the tenderness with which it treats ordinariness: the cramped kitchens, awkward dinners, rain-soaked streets, and people doing their best. At its centre sits one of the great modern declarations of vulnerability: “I’m also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her”.

Pretty Woman is technicolour fantasy with corporate capitalism, questionable power dynamics, and yet an undeniable sincerity uncapable of being dislodged. It is glossy, heartfelt, and genuinely moving, a film that understands charm as a structural force and uses it generously. From the beginning it acknowledges that the dynamic between its characters is uneven, but rather than leaving it there, the story gradually shifts its weight toward her perspective, her strength, and her emotional intelligence. At the centre of its cultural afterlife sits one of the films great lines - “Big mistake. Big. Huge.” - a moment that has endured because it captures confidence reclaimed with grace and assurance. By the end she is the moral and emotional anchor of the film, and it becomes a story about self-worth, dignity, and the quiet power of knowing who you are.

Erin Brockovich is the performance that shifted Julia Roberts from beloved movie star to formally certified heavyweight, earning her the Academy Award for Best Actress. It is a film about a woman with no traditional qualifications, limited patience, and immaculate instincts who decides that persistence and irritation count as legitimate professional strategies. Roberts plays her with brisk charisma: sharp, unsentimental, occasionally incredibly indelicate. There is the scene where she is challenged on whether she keeps notes and calmly reels off phone numbers, medical histories, addresses and family details for every single plaintiff from memory, a clean demolition of anyone doubting her competence. In about thirty seconds, the film makes it clear she is the most prepared person in the room, and that is the beginning and end of the conversation.

Together, these three films form a small but convincing argument that Julia Roberts is not just comfort viewing, but cultural infrastructure. They chart fantasy, romance, and real world consequence, yet what runs through all of them is the same steady thing: a woman whose presence rearranges the energy of whatever room she is in.

Normally this is where we talk about restaurants and culinary happenings, but since we have already assigned you a Julia Roberts marathon, it feels honest to keep you at home (or your home away from home). The week between Christmas and New Year’s is rarely about dining out anyway; it is about being indoors and outdoors, slightly overfed, mildly restless, and willing to attempt recipes you would never touch in March. If the projector is already on, you may as well have something excellent in the background while you cook, which is where Anthony Bourdain comes in. We loved him because he growingly treated food as a way to understand people, politics, humour, contradiction and real life. He died in 2018, and may he rest in peace; the loss still feels quietly enormous, but what he taught us about curiosity, generosity and appetite remains, so thank you, Tony.

This episode pairs Bourdain with Eric Ripert, long time friend and three Michelin star chef at Le Bernardin in New York. Ripert arrives with classical French elegance and expensive taste buds, and Bourdain’s clear agenda is to nudge him cheerfully out of his comfort zone and into serious Sichuan territory. The heat here is not just chilli but that particular Sichuan pepper that creeps up on you, building into a tingling, slightly electric sensation that can feel borderline narcotic upon excess - which the food achieves every time. I was in Chengdu earlier this year and can confirm both the excellence of the food and the way the spice runs on a slow fuse, as well as the warmth and friendliness of the people, which the episode captures with complete accuracy. Watching Ripert negotiate that slow burn is half cultural study, half comedy.

Bourdain has a line that feels like the emotional key to the whole thing: “You learn a lot about a place by what people eat, and how they eat together.” In Chengdu that means hot pot steam, crowded tables, laughter, and a shared tolerance for food that is both comforting and confrontational. Here his reading of China runs through Chengdu’s dining rooms and sidewalks, showing a country that is social, funny and intensely alive, and where what is on the table is the clearest guide to how people actually live.

Recipe pairing: Grilled Sichuan pork neck
Slice pork neck into thick ribbons. Marinate with soy sauce, a spoon of sugar, garlic, ginger, chilli oil or flakes, and Sichuan pepper for that slow, buzzing tingle. Let it sit for at least thirty minutes. Grill or roast on high heat until just cooked through and caramelised at the edges. Slice, scatter with spring onion, and serve with rice and something green. It should feel lively, slightly mischievous, and absolutely right.

Since this is a Vienna-based publication, it feels only right to include the Vienna episode - and because, in its own way, it tells a very Viennese story. Bourdain arrives with the usual expectations: cakes, postcards, waltzes, the city embalmed in nostelgia for the past. And then the episode does what Vienna does to a lot of people: dismantles the stereotype through pleasure, appetite and a slightly darker sense of humour. Markets instead of music boxes, heuriger gardens instead of clichés, sausages eaten defiantly outdoors, serious wine, serious pork, and a seriousnes about pleasure. I arrived with the same assumptions years ago, and eleven years later I am somehow still here - which I guess proves his point.

The joy of the episode is how accurate it is about what Vienna actually tastes like. He visits Naschmarkt not as living infrastructure. He eats Würstel at stands that are closer to civic institutions than snack stops. He goes into kitchens where offal isn’t quirky, it is culture - brains, liver, heart, things cooked with competence. He takes the heuriger seriously: the way wine here is a system of living. He notes the humour, the dryness, the slightly philosophical gloom that never fully commits to sadness because there is always another meal. And there is a line he delivers that feels correct: beneath the sugar and the classical music, Vienna has “hidden depths” — a city that is clever about pleasure, clear-eyed about history, and quietly more alive than its own reputation suggests.

Recipe pairing: Beuschel (Viennese lung and heart ragout)

Vienna is most itself when it is elegant and slightly insane at the same time, and Beuschel is exactly that. Thinly slice lung and heart (or just heart if logistics require stability), gently poach in salted water until tender. In another pan soften onion in butter, add a spoon of flour to make a light roux, then whisk in stock until glossy. Season with vinegar, mustard, capers, bay leaf, salt and pepper until it tastes rich with a sharp, adult edge. Fold the offal back in, let it settle, and serve with dumplings or bread. Delicate, slightly chaotic, completely Viennese.

Beirut begins as a food episode and then doesn’t to stay in that category. Bourdain arrives ready to talk restaurants, nightlife and flavour, then the 2006 conflict erupts and the city tilts. What follows is one of his most human hours: watchful, uncertain, generous, occasionally funny, and deeply attached to the people around him. “You learn very quickly that food is never just food.” In Beirut, it becomes memory, continuity, comfort, resistance, and proof of ordinary life carried on under extraordinary pressure. He does not romanticise it. He stays honest, respectful, unsure in the right places. And through it all the city remains painfully, beautifully alive.

It is perhaps the clearest version of what Bourdain did best: letting a place speak for itself, admitting what he doesn’t know, and understanding that hospitality is rarely neutral. Here, cooking becomes an act of steadiness, humour becomes a coping mechanism, and care is expressed through plates that arrive even when everything else feels precarious.

Recipe pairing: Kibbeh Nayyeh

This may be the most startlingly “Beirut” dish to pair with the episode: raw minced lamb mixed with bulgur, olive oil, salt, and spices, served with mint, onion and flatbread. At home, a gentler approximation is wiser: use the freshest beef or lamb tartare-quality meat you can get, finely mince, mix with a little soaked fine bulgur, salt, olive oil, and a restrained dash of spice. Serve cold, with mint, lemon, onion and warm bread. It is bold, unapologetic, intimate food - the culinary equivalent of looking reality straight in the face and choosing to keep living well.

More than a chef or a television host, Anthony Bourdain was always a writer first - sharp, unsentimental, funny, and clear-eyed and even Roadrunner cast him among the great American observers, occasionally mentioned in the same breath as Mark Twain for the way he travelled, looked closely, and then told the truth as he found it. He left behind a way of seeing the world built on curiosity, generosity and attention rather than spectacle. Or, in his own words: “Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts… but that’s okay. The journey changes you… You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”

Literature

This is not a recommendation to “journal more.” It is a suggestion that, given the number of opinions, lists and reflections already flying around this week, you probably do not need another person’s thoughts added on top. A plain, well made notebook is the opposite of that. It contributes nothing by itself, which is precisely its value. No thesis, no reading schedule, no promise to change your life, just a small object that is willing to absorb whatever you decide to unload into it. Our pick is one from Louise Carmen, but truly any empty notebook will do.

It is there for the things that do not fit anywhere else: the sentence you half liked from a conversation, a list of things that went better than expected, a sketch of next year that is not yet ready to be called a plan. You can write in it a couple of times this week and then forget about it until October. It does not care. As a way to wrap up the year, that feels about right: no grand conclusion, just a blank, neutral place to keep your own thoughts, which I think is quite enough for now.

That is all from the void for this week. May the in between days be soft, with enough rest, a little or hopefully a lot of joy, and no great pressure to become anything other than yourself.

See you on the other side of the calendar,
R

Ruby Arabella Wallen tracks the city’s pulse, observes its culture and characters, and works with a small circle of her personal muses to create you a weekly Sunday Dispatch - your blueprint to the week ahead in Vienna.