All Of Monday’s Reasons - 30
30. Living Well In Vienna
Map
We were all happy to reach Vienna. As soon as we crossed the Austrian border, Claus said, “Ah, civilisation.”
“What’s that?” I said.
“Can’t you see, we’re back in the West!”
He sounded like he had been in prison.
“Back from those fucking Turks. It’s the middle ages there.”
I was too concerned with getting some food. We arrived at Wien Sudbahnhof and Caroline stayed in the station with our bags while John took Claus and me to a supermarket. He had come to Vienna earlier that month on his way to Czechoslovakia and knew his way around the city.
We stepped out of the station and Claus said, “Ah,
civilisation…”
I ignored him until we came to a pedestrian crossing where a car actually stopped to let us cross. The driver waited until we had reached the far curb before he carried on.
“Civilisation!” repeated Claus.
I laughed and said, “You haven’t stopped saying that since we crossed the border. What’s the matter?”
“We’re back in the West!” he explained in a patronising tone, as if I hadn’t realised something that was blatantly obvious and of critical importance. “High standards of living, stable currency, pleasant people-”
“-Organised crime, rising prices, Capitalism, a one-in-three divorce rate…” I continued.
John laughed. Claus was annoying him, too. I could see what he meant, though. It was nice to be in a clean country where you could walk down the street without being stunned by the too-familiar, sickly-sweet smell of piss; where you can walk into or even past a shop without an enthusiastic sales assistant picking up the object they thought you had been looking at, waving it in your face and saying “How much my friend? For you, special price. Where you from?”
On the way to the supermarket, we passed a McDonalds.
“Oh,” said Claus, “do I have time to get a Big Mac?” He looked at me.
“Well let’s get to the supermarket first. We can come back.”
“I’ll just run in, I’ll eat it as we walk along.”
He ran in, leaving John and I on the sidewalk looking at each other. I walked in after him. I found him speaking to the man at the counter in a mixture of English and German. He was trying to pay in Dutch gilders, and the man on till was trying to explain that the currency was not accepted in Austria. Claus persisted. I told him to give up and he did immediately.
I led him outside and we continued towards the supermarket, with me wondering why, if he had Dutch gilders, hadn’t he changed any to get some food in Yugoslavia?
A little further on we were walking behind a lady in her late twenties. She was wearing a short skirt, high heels, and a tight top. She was tall for an Austrian and had long legs.
This must have sparked off some Danish machismo on our friend, who said, quiet enough for her not to hear, “What an ass.”
I sighed in despair, which he must have taken as a grunt of sexual approval, because he carried on. “What a pussy! Shit.”
I sighed again, saying “Oh dear..” in despair as I did so.
“What?” asked John, who had been listening to us.
“Nothing,” I said, “it’s just-”
“Oh, yeah.” He knew what I meant. We were both on breaking point. Sadly, Claus didn’t realise this.
We got to the supermarket where I was able to pay with a travellers’ cheque. They didn’t make change, so I had to spend twenty pound worth, no small amount in 1990, which mean I ended up buying tons of food and a five litre barrel of beer for the eleven hour train to Amsterdam. I had decided I could not stay in Vienna, where the only person I knew was a xenophobic selfish fuckwit called Claus.
I gave him the equivalent in Austrian schillings of what he lent me in Greece, which he spent on food. We spent the next hour walking around the city with Claus, who wanted to find a bank that would give him schillings with his credit card, even though he was told at the station that Austrian banks closed on Saturday afternoons. Needless to say we didn’t find a bank.
Fucking Claus does it again.
“Well,” he said, defeated, “it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to stay in this town. I’ll have to go on.”
“Where to?” I asked. Please don’t say Amsterdam, I thought.
“Back to Denmark. I can do nothing without money.” There is a god.
We went back to the station with our bags of food, where Claus found a place that would accept his credit card, so he decided to stay in Vienna. John, Caroline and I said our long awaited goodbye and left the station.
We had to cross town to get to the other station, Wien Westbahnhof, on the opposite side of town. We took the tram without buying a ticket and hoped that a conductor wouldn’t get on between the two stations. On the way there, Caroline brought my attention to a sign on the wall of the tram.
It said that failure to purchase a ticket would result in what was the equivalent of a 30 shilling fine which had to be paid on the spot. Failure to comply would lead to a fifty shilling fine which had to be paid within a week. If that wasn’t paid, the notice said that a hundred shillings would have to be paid. If, after a month, this was not paid, a possible prison term of up to two years would be considered. Caroline, like me, got slightly worried. It was a relief to step off at the station unchecked.
“Home dry!” said John as we arrived.
“Beat the system,” I said as we walked away from the tram. I felt like the rebellious lout that some strangers took me for on appearance. That bothered me.
Quite often back then, I would be walking down the street towards a couple coming the other way. If the woman was between me and her partner, he would sometimes switch her over to the other side. I would just smile at him, which would make him feel embarrassed at his action, because I had a (deceptively?) innocent smile. It would annoy me if protective mothers gathered up their children as they saw me coming. What were they afraid of? No one hates cruelty more or was less offensive than me. Bastards.
We reached our deserted platform at Wien Westbahnhof with an hour until the train arrived. We put our rucksacks against a wall to use them as backrests. We unravelled our sleeping mats and lay down on them. After five minutes of complete relaxation and silence I remembered I needed to eat.
Like being dirty, after a while it doesn’t seem to matter how hungry you are. Unless you are literally starving, and I don’t presume to talk for people who are. But I found than in my rare, true lean spells between food, that the first twenty four hours were the worst, but after that you body locks into a hungry plane, where you don’t feel any hungrier. You do, however, get weak and tired, which is an unpleasant feeling.
Since I was weak and tired from the trip anyway, I simply forgot I was hungry. I spread the food out alongside me on my mat. There was more food than I could eat, so John and Caroline joined me for lunch and said they would pay me back in Amsterdam. I went over to a drinking fountain and filled my bottle up with ice-cold delicious water.
I returned and rolled the metal barrel of beer away from the food. It was just a big can, fifteen times normal size. I thought that if a regular can spurts a little when opened, the spray from this monster might be huge. I called John over to give me a hand. Leaning over it, I slowly eased off the rubber stopper at the top of the can.
Suddenly I heard an almighty WHUMPH! It was a kind of a crumpled explosion like a cardboard box filled with anvils hitting the water from some height.
The blast threw the stopper and my hand up and the air around me was filled with beer.
I fell back soaking wet and when my ears fully drained, I could hear John and Caroline laughing hysterically. It took me a while to open my eyes. John crawled over, still laughing uncontrollably, “Are you all right?” he managed.
I groaned at them and sat there laughing as the beer ran off my long hair and down my back.
“Death by beer,” I moaned
“Pilsner chaos,” he answered.
“Did we lose much?”
“About half a pint, but we did it in style.”
We drank about a pint between us and ate a salami and cheese roll each, saving the rest for the trip.
March 2nd, 2007 at 6:19 pm
It’s because you look like a serial killer.
You should have just killed CLaus.