Vienna

October 7–8, 2006

It takes three hours to drive from my studios to Sheremetyevo airport on a Friday. The flight to Vienna takes two and a half hours.

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The first striking thing about Vienna by night is the fluorescent lamps they have instead of the streetlights we’re all used to. They look like aerial road markings, a childhood dream of mine.

Aside from Strauss’ waltzes and “Austrian Airlines” ads stating that they have “twice-daily flights to Vienna”, I knew nothing about Austria, where I landed with little but a few hazy preconceived notions.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I fell head over heels for Vienna, but it definitely turned out to be five times better than I’d expected.

Vienna resembles Oslo, as well as Copenhagen, Riga, St Petersburg, and Helsinki.

It’s either that or they all resemble Vienna.

It’s very clean here. Piles of crap can only be spotted on Sunday mornings.

A road worker with a cowlick, rolled up sleeves, and a dessert spoon.

There aren’t any bums or beggars here. What they do have is a cardboard Mozart holding a chocolate on every street corner.

The locals adore dogs, and you can bring them into practically any establishment.

You can smoke anywhere you like. In all the restaurants. This isn’t Canada, where you’re not even allowed to smoke on outdoor terraces.

Dumpsters have nostrils for their dissociated diet separate glass collection.

The overwhelming impression you get is that here luxury literally oozes from every pore. If they decide to do eclecticism, they go all out. There isn’t a single free pedestal, they all have quadrigas mounted on them.

If they erect a monument then it’ll look as if they’d poured gold all over it using an icing syringe.

If they put in a woman with a wreath, then there should be one on all sides. And stick in some double-headed eagles for good measure. Gold ones.

More, more of them, left, right, and centre.

You get the feeling that the Austrian eagle has two heads for the sole reason that one head doesn’t look sumptuous enough. The same principle applies to regulating road traffic — traffic lights hang in pairs, just to make sure that there’s a surfeit of them.

There are as many sculptures as there is slush in your average Russian city.

Who are you calling a fag?

Here, there.

And everywhere.

All over the place.

If they run out of space on the facade they put them on the roof.

The main cathedral looks like a “Star Wars” spacecraft.

“Old Vienna” is recreated for the tourists’ benefit.

But they do call them as they see them, putting up this “good riddance to bad rubbish (ie. women)” sign.

Everyone is well looked after.

Branded loungers on the water’s edge, courtesy of “Raiffeisen”. This is smack bang in the middle of the town centre.

And yet the Danube is overgrown with grass, not with luxury homes.

As for the houses, they all sit along the canal.

Local suburbia looks like the cardboard architectural models at “Mosproekt”, an architects’ practice in Moscow. Hey, look, a scrap of paper on the lawn.

If you want to peruse the paper, simply deposit a coin into the honesty box. They’re counting on people to do the right thing — the newspapers in that plastic wallet aren’t under lock and key.

They have a soft spot for cyclists.

Not only do they get their own cycle paths...

But their own traffic lights too. They come in pairs, naturally.

After all, cyclists are people too — if you look closely enough.

What else is there that’s nice? Here no one believes those ads touting “German quality”, they don’t go in for insulated window units. The windows are good ones with two window frames. The frames are proper wooden ones, not those shitty PVC profile ones you see in Moscow.

Also, the coffee here is tolerable, not like that dishwater the French drink.

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They’ve begun putting commandments on the wings of “Aeroflot” planes:

Do not walk outside this area