Miscellaneous
Prelude to an end
The skies are clear, the sun is warm, the grass is brilliant green and there is much cool wine to be had. Out in the thousands of parks that break Vienna up into islands of concrete amid rivers of green, there are hammocks and lawn chairs, beach towels and bikinis, sunscreen and suntan.Pranaya SJB Rana
The skies are clear, the sun is warm, the grass is brilliant green and there is much cool wine to be had.
Out in the thousands of parks that break Vienna up into islands of concrete amid rivers of green, there are hammocks and lawn chairs, beach towels and bikinis, sunscreen and suntan.
There is so much light that simply emerging into the day from the gloom of your room can instantly lift moods.
That is, until the heat lays on you like a smothering blanket. But then, you can head to the Danube for a swim.
Unfortunately, and to my utter shame, I do not swim, for I cannot swim. The reasons are complicated but can be boiled down to a lack of interest and laziness. But I digress.
It is a beautiful time to be Vienna. It is when the city is at its most vibrant, especially after the slow wasting away of winter. It is doubly unfortunate then that I will be leaving Vienna in a week’s time.
Still, one would imagine I’d spend my times trawling through the streets in the heat of the day, spending as much time I can in this imposing city. Why then do I find myself increasingly taking to the night time when Vienna goes back to being its old stodgy self?
Vienna has taught me something about myself—I am not comfortable with order. By order, I mean, and let me put it as pretentiously as possible, the ‘tyranny of the straight line’, or everything in its right place.
A city where everything functions as it is supposed to and everything is as it seems. It is a clean city, an ordered city, a city of the conscientious, a city of comfort born out everybody keeping their distance.
On the U-Bahn, take the next seat and leave one empty in the middle; on the streets while walking, maintain a car’s length between the person in front of you and the person behind you; on the elevator, avoid eye contact; at the urinal, take the stall. And do not, ever, cross when the light is red.
So my nightly sojourns are perhaps at attempt to dig out another side to Vienna. And I don’t mean the prostitutes and the drunks at the Prater or the drug dealers at Spittelau and by Schwedenplatz.
They are there because the city has deemed it okay for them to be there. In a city like Vienna, nothing is coincidental or random.
The drug dealers are where the police can keep an eye on them and make sure they just peddle marijuana and the occasional psychedelic.
The prostitutes are where they can be reached for health check-ups and an occasional crackdown, if necessary, to force them into the licenced brothels. Other than this, there is no crime in Vienna.
What am I looking for then? Another face, another mask, a breath that comes not from outside but inside, a breath rancid and full of rancour.
I walk this city like a character in a story about a boy who walks, who echoes another story where a man with a false name walks the streets as a seeing eye. What does Vienna reveal to me in the dark? With the lights finally out, what do I reach for to find?
As of now, nothing.
I have walked on many gasse and strasse for hours on end with no purpose or destination. Not a single person stopped me to ask or harass or bother. Not one. No one attempted to rob me, no drunk accosted me, no prostitutes propositioned me, no racial epithets were hurled my way. I am not complaining.
But I am a little disappointed. What’s life without a little adrenaline? What’s life without worrying that every step onto the city might just be your last? That’s Kathmandu. This is Vienna.
I lay once on the canal, long ago, and watched two young men smoke joints under a tree. They smoked with ease, as if they were in their own living rooms, unhurried and conversational. I envied them a little.
A few weeks ago, a young man with a beard and only one leg beckoned to me outside one of the U-Bahn stations. I responded to his ‘Assalaamalaikum’ with a ‘Walaikum Salaam’ and he motioned that I stand next to him.
He looked at the camera in my hands and asked me if I speak Arabic or Moroccan, negative to both.
Then he asked if I speak English and we managed to hold a conversation in basic broken English accompanied with a generous amount of hand gestures. He first asked that I take a picture of him.
He posed magnificently, looking straight into the lens of the camera with a steely gaze, his thumbs hooked into his jeans, no smile. I showed him the picture and he was all smiles. He offered me a cigarette and we began to talk.
His name was Ibrahim and he’d been in Vienna as an Iraqi refugee for two years. He’d lived in the US for four years, had a wife and child there, until he was deported.
He’d managed to make his way to Vienna, from where he hoped to somehow make it back to the US to see his family.
He didn’t like Vienna. He’d been here for two years and was certain his application would be rejected. He planned to try to make it to Germany but he had no money.
Vienna didn’t give him a job and there was no allowance for him. So he resorted to doing what he could, which was selling marijuana by the station, hidden inside his fake leg.
The original he’d lost in Iraq to a bomb. As we spoke, a police captain came out and began shooing loiterers away from the entrance to the station.
He didn’t order and he didn’t threaten, unlike in Kathmandu or even the US. He requested, simply.
He left Ibrahim alone. Reminded me somewhat of another character, far away on the streets of Thamel, old and bearded, who hid illicits in a similar fake appendage. Bajey might not have lived to see today.
As I watched, a man who looked vaguely Indian drank straight whisky from an eighth bottle while an overly aggressive pitbull on a chain scared the cameras off of passing tourists while the owner and his friends, all with open beers in hand, laughed and smacked their knees.
This was dirty Vienna. Ibrahim was a Vienna you don’t see much. And I figured, this is as deep down the rabbit-hole as I could get in a city like this. The Lynchian universe that might be lurking behind the fin de siècle facades I might never penetrate.
For now, Ibrahim and the rest of the drug dealers and the assorted drunks who frequented this station would have to do.
Vienna is an oyster and I never had enough time to pry open its shell. While Brussels offered itself open, this city is stubborn in its refusal to be easy.
I admire that and that alone might bring me back here. But this is a farewell note. A note I leave by the bedside while I slink away into the night, shameless.
An old nocturne comes to mind, a song for the night, a song for the Danube and the flaktowers that pimple Vienna’s fastidious landscape as I prepare to leave without thinking twice and it’s alright. To reverse that old Dylan number, Vienna gave me her heart but I wanted her soul.
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