Transatlantic travel with a toddler is an active solicitation of agony, like willingly exposing yourself to the flu. You’re always preparing for the worst possible situation to occur in the most strenuous conditions, while at the same time knowing you’ll basically get through it. Last summer, when we made this trip for the first time, a long layover in Amsterdam’s airport nearly destroyed me and Rebecca, bruising our souls so that they are still tender to the touch. Gabby went on a manic, twenty-four hour sleepless tear, unrelenting & unquellable. We expected much the same this time; it was a drag, to be sure, but not nearly so bad. We took a night flight, so Gabby actually slept. Because he’s 2, he doesn’t travel with a carseat anymore, so he could stretch out between us. As I looked down at him slumbering, I envied his three-foot size, comfortably curled on the seat. After two hours, I felt like sawing my legs off at the thigh. And we flew on a 777, which, even in coach, is a spacious bird. But not spacious enough. In business class, they basically had barcaloungers. Will poets ever merit business class? We waited only an hour in London before getting on our plane to Vienna. Not bad. Gabby has spent the week working through the ghostlier demarcations of jetlag. For the past five nights, he’s been wired as if on espressos for about two hours in the middle of the night — only “DragonTales” seems to soothe him. We watch then on DVDs on this laptop. Have you ever watched “DragonTales”? I dare you not to be narcotized by its cloying “messages.” But whatever works. If past experience tells us anything, he’ll normalize his routine in the next few days.
Gabby at the Heldenplatz
The only difficulty in our arrival here was the time at which we made it to the airport: after 5pm on a Saturday night. The Viennese know what trouble this means: because of prolonged influence of both the Social Democrats & the Catholic Church, nothing is open on Sundays in Vienna. Likewise, Saturday nights (& until recently, even Saturday afternoons). It’s believed — rightly, I think — that people should get time off, for family, for themselves, instead of working weekends. Keeping longer shop hours encourages the abuse of a certain class of workers (they’re called Gastarbeiter, “guest workers” in German), who are willing to submit themselves to working hours & conditions others (non-Gastarbeiters) aren’t. So, to open shops for more convenient hours is to do so at others’ inconvenience. An interesting issue, one with subtler complexities than I’ve sketched out here. In practical terms, however, this means you can’t buy groceries on the weekends, except at the trainstations.
So, after a brief unpacking in our new apartment in the 18th District, I set out to get some essentials: coffee, tea, cereal, juice, milk, bread. It took me a while to reorient myself to Vienna, which coils like a nautilus into its hidden center, each outer district twice as large as the one beneath it. But walking helped reinvigorate my circulation, &, in spite of not having slept in over 30 hours, it reminded me of how hungry I was.
I love coffee & I love cake. And I love them both piled with Schlag. No city on earth — at least none I’ve been to — satisfies these loves, nurtures them, coddles them like Vienna. “Here,” the city coos, “have another slice of Sachertorte. Wash it down with this creamy cup of perfectly roasted coffee. “Who can resist her sweet-somethings, acupunctured right into the nerve of your sweet-tooth? Even so, the thing I love most about Vienna is its sausage stands. They are abundantly everywhere and they are always open, urging you to ease the woe in your soul by chomping down on a delicious Central European masterpiece. On a chilly late January night, these huts of flesh stand like radiators in the night, heated by links & links of grilled, encased meats. Underneath the Waeringerstrasse U-Bahn stop, I found a Wuerstel (= little sausage stand), & ordered the princeliest of sausages, the kaesekreiner — a Styrian beef-pork toothsomeness infused throughout with cheese, a wurst not necessarily for beginners, but once embraced, a friend for life. Its casing glistened from its slow-grilling; the Wuerstelmeister cut the sausage into bite-sized chunks, dispensed a healthy dollop of sweet-mustard onto a paper tray, added a slice of Viennese mischbrot (a rye bread with the consistency & flavor of a soft pretzel), & handed me my Almdudler (a Tyrolian ginger-ale — so refreshing, & cuts through the fat). Each bite was a benediction that I ate with a tiny wooden fork, like some crude ritual implement, perfectly devised for this cultus. I felt new strength! Five minutes later, I was moving onward to the grocery store.
The other great pleasure of Vienna is its public transportation. This most walkable of cities is serviced at every intersection it seems by some element of this system that includes the S-bahn (for schnell or fast train, something like the Metra in Chicago, but running 100-times more frequently), the U-bahn (a combination subway/elevated, not theoretically unlike the el in Chicago, but again 100-times more efficient), the Strassenbahn, or streetcars, & buses. To get anywhere involves a series of decisions outlandish to anyone familiar with Chicago’s public transportation system: should I walk one mere block east to catch the number 40 streetcar or two mere blocks west to catch 42? Or maybe I should just take this bus going past my front door? One needn’t even walk at all. Since we last lived here (for a year, 1997-8), the U-bahns have been updated one incredible bit: now, standing on a platform, an electronic sign tells you how many minutes away your train is. I have yet to see a number greater than 4.
Viennese streetcars
Since we’ve been here, Gabby has insisted on riding the streetcars everyday. They are, in my mind, the most superior mode of getting around: they’re relatively quiet because electrically powered, they move down narrow streets so you can get a feel for the life in the city, & they have big clean windows. Gabby’s crazy about them. He’s currently in a mode in which he asks us every 2 or 3 minutes, “Where are we going?” Which involves us explaining things over & over (I usually answer with the name of one of the planets: “Mars,”to which he says, “Nooo…”). He also asks “What’s that sound?” with the same frequency. What do you say to that?
Our return has meant revisiting some of the mildest but most irksome annoyances of this city: its lack of drinking fountains, its beds & its toilets. Vienna boasts perhaps the most delicious tap water in the world, the fabled Leitungswasser that sluices directly from an Alpine glacier into our kitchen sink. This water is always icy-cold when it emerges, utterly transparent, & truly refreshing. Where, then, are the drinking fountains? Let the water be celebrated by the placement of drinking fountains for the world to genuflect at throughout the beautiful city. To quench your thirst, you must buy a bottle of water, one that is invariably mit Gas, or mit Kohlensaeure, carbonated!
The Viennese beds I’ve slept on are catastrophes, farces of comfort. A full-size bed is invariably two army-cot quality twin beds placed in proximity, but with separate bedding. No snuggling allowed! There’s a gaping chasm between you & your sweetheart to prevent it. By the end of March, I expect to be bent over in a chiropractic rictus.
The toilets are vulgar. This isn’t a statement by a prudish man, mind you. I wallow in my own vulgarity with frequency & glee. I wipe Gabby’s befouled buns every day with a sense of purpose & familiarity. But the Viennese toilet was designed in the earth’s bowels as reminders of the nastiness we so commonly produce. In the nomenclature of diaper technology, poop is referred to as “the insult.” So, diaper technicians speak of how much insult a diaper can take — in terms both of frequency & amount. It’s the appropriate word to describe defecating into a Viennese toilet. Your insult glares at you from a concave porcelain shelf mere inches from your fundament. Not itself so foul, but the weakness of Viennese plumbing means that to “disappear” this insult requires multiple, futile flushings, followed by rude manipulations. Changing a toddler’s diaper is one thing; changing your own is entirely, horrifically another.
Other pleasures & horrors surely await. But it’s a different, in some ways even better place to see through the eyes of a two-year old. The city is filled with parks; there are snacks at every turn. Vienna appeals, after all, to the two-year old of the soul: a city with a hot dog stand on every corner, and with exciting red street-cars to get you from one to the next.