WOE, Vienna!

It probably served me right. I had, after all, spent the hours leading up to my Austrian misfortune swaggering around Vienna with a smug, melonslice smirk on my face. With hindsight, I can see now that, in karmic terms, I was cruising for a bruising, angling for a mangling, strolling for a rolling and hankering for a cankering. Pretty soon, that melonslice was going to have to be flipped upside down.
I d been grinning all day because of something someone had said to me. Actually, it was because of everything everyone had said to me. Austrians, you see, speak German, a language that I have always found asphyxiatingly hilarious.
I realise that this is a serious deficiency on my part but I m stuck with it. To my ears, German is the honking of distressed seagulls in a lightning storm. It s a tuba solo played by an old geezer with sinus trouble. It s (and yes, I know this may be a bit below the belt) a Gaeilgeoir on a bad telephone line.
I am personally convinced that German is a language which developed solely to allow a notoriously proud and prim people to spit at strangers and to talk dirty under the guise of polite conversation.
Life for the inhabitants of German and Austria must be one endless struggle to restrain themselves from dissolving into helpless, weeping laughter at the preposterous noises that come out of their own mouths. When you think about it, this explains the origin of that famous Prussian self-discipline.
One would clearly need the composure of solid steel to live in a world where an exit is an Ausfahrt and an entrance an Einfahrt. Perhaps, this is why the regulation movie German often wears a monocle and has a face criss-crossed with duelling scars it s a desperate attempt to distract attention from his lips which quiver uncontrollably with mirth whenever anyone inquires about the nearest way out.
Similarly, I ve long suspected that therapeutic corsets for the care and protection of aching sides must surely be available on health insurance in a society where a hospital is a Krankenhaus. The German for health insurance, by the way, is Krankenversicherung.
Anyway, given my cock-eyed weltanschauung (tee hee hee), it was inevitable that I would squander much of my day in Vienna giggling up my sleeve. As if to re-enforce my prejudices, I encountered remarkably few Austrians who could, or would, sprechen in Englisch.
What I did encounter in virtually every shop or kaffeehaus I entered was Michael Heseltine. Vienna s business community seemed to be comprised entirely of Hezzas; mighty, muscular Tarzans with thunderclap voices and multi-tiered crowns of unruly golden-blonde hair. Busy, busy, feverishly busy, these Heseltines came in both sexes and flitted about behind their counters with the manic energy of alarmed moths.
Impeccably genial as long as you were buying something, they appeared to understand English extremely well but to have no desire whatsoever to sully their tongues by conversing in the wretched stuff. Requests for directions or travel information were met with shaken heads and pitying stares. I might as well have been trying to open the jaws of a stone lion.
At one point, I popped into a small newsagents cum S|_warenladen (that s a humble sweet shop, would you believe?), in search of an English language broadsheet. Giddily emboldened by the chilly indifference of mein hosts, and confidently expecting to encounter a similar reception yet again, I amused myself by indulging in a flamboyant parody of the stereotypical evil Nazi.
Ach so! I boomed, squinting my most malevolent squint and clicking my heels together violently. Vere are your papers?
The female Heseltine at the cash register smiled serenely, and walked over to the perfectly conspicuous magazine and newspaper rack. We stock a wide range of journals and publications, European, American and Austrian, she declared with flawless BBC pronunciation. If you cannot find what you re looking for here, we will gladly order it for you.
Gott, as they say, in Himmel!
The reason for my flying visit to Vienna was the PopMart concert which was to be held later that evening in Flugfeld, an airfield in Wiener Neustadt, which is about 25 miles outside the Austrian capital.
I checked into my innere stadt (city centre) hotel a little after 2pm on Saturday afternoon. I would have about three hours to look around Vienna before I left for Flugfeld. U2 weren t scheduled to take the stage until 9.30pm but road and rail snarl-ups en route to the venue were widely anticipated. 100,000 people were expected to turn up to see U2, an all-time Austrian record attendance for a single musical event, so the earlier I set off the better.
My flight out of Vienna was at 11am the next morning. After a lengthy stopover at Heathrow, I was due back in Dublin at 7pm where a 1500-word review of the Flugfeld show was awaited by my tirelessly patient editor (my tirelessly patient editor being the one English phrase that, to my mind, rivals anything in the German language for black comic effect).
Getting to Flugfeld proved tricky enough but it was a cakewalk compared to what getting out of Flugfeld would be like. Having travelled by underground, taxi and tram, I made the final stage of the journey to the airfield by overground train.
The train meandered along through the bucolic Austrian countryside at an agonisingly slow canter; pausing at every station with a wheezing sigh and then shuffling back a few uncertain yards, like a decrepit amnesiac who suspects he may have forgotten something but has no idea what it was. Somehow, this is not the kind of transport system one expects to find in the midst of the progenitors of the autobahn.
The atmosphere in the carriages was eerily civilised. I was surrounded by gangs of concert-bound youths but there was none of the raucous drunkenness or imbecilic horseplay one would find in a similar Irish environment.
Most of the young folk sipped wine from plastic goblets, nibbled hors d oeuvres from their flashy lunchboxes and talked quietly amongst themselves. Others snuggled down on the travel pillows that seemed to me to be an essential part of the Austrian music fan s travelpack.
This, I suppose, was evidence of Gem|tlichkeit, the putative Viennese lifestyle ideal. Roughly translated, gem|tlich means comfy and cozy. According to one pocket guidebook, The Viennese protect the Gem|tlichkeit of their lives with their undying ironic sense of humour. Nothing is so bad that it doesn t have a good side and nothing so good that there isn t a risk somewhere.
The same guidebook offers an old Viennese joke to further illustrate the point: Everything in Vienna is gem|tlich except the wind . Yes , goes the answer, and the wind comes only because it s so gem|tlich here . I have no idea what the German is for Ha Bloody Ha!
I was struck during the train ride by the number of my fellow passengers who passed the trek to Flugfeld by reading what looked like weighty political tomes. But then, back in Vienna, I had noticed that the window displays in even the most gaudy high street bookstores groaned beneath piles of books about the Balkans, about Economics, about Socialism.
The largest section in each of the half dozen bookshops I visited was devoted to The Classics (Der Klassischs), while thrillers, romantic novels and the like were relegated to rickety swivel-stands in the centre of the floor. Maybe even Homer and Dante are thigh-slappers when translated into German.
Across the aisle from where I was seated on the train, there were three students of the musical classics. One wore an AC/DC t-shirt, another a Nazareth t-shirt and the third was swathed in a garment that testified to the artistic excellence of METALLIFUCKINCA while his wraparound shades paid fulsome tribute to Megadeth.
The trio were guzzling their wine with an abandon which suggested that they were somewhat more approachable than the average Austrian K|lschrank. In fact, by the time we arrived at Flugfeld, I reckoned that at least one of them may even have had Irish blood coursing through their veins; the Nazareth disciple had actually passed out and was obliviously snorkelling up wine and snot from the puddle in which his head rested on the table in front of him.
I asked the two (reasonably) conscious metal scholars what time the last train would leave for Vienna after the gig. There will be many trains, they assured me. Many people therefore many trains.
This was essentially what I d also been told by everyone else to whom I d spoken about the post-concert train timetable, up to and including the Wiener Neustadt station ticket-collector, who, you would imagine, would be relatively well informed about current scheduling trends at the Wiener Neustadt station.
PopMart finished a little after 11.30pm. I filed out of Flugfeld alongside 99,999 tired but elated Austrians. As I got my bearings, I fell in behind a sizeable throng which sluggishly trudged its way back to the train station. We got there at 12.50am.
The last train had left for Vienna at 12.30am.
I was fucked. Stranded 25 miles away from my hotel room, a paltry eight hours before I was due to check-out and head for Vienna airport. On the plus side, I did have an extensive knowledge of the German terms that sound vaguely like rude words in English.
There wouldn t be another train until 6am the next morning. Taxis were refusing to take fares out of Wiener Neustadt because the traffic leaving the concert area for Vienna was already bumper-to-bumper. All of the buses in the vicinity were fully booked up; their drivers simply snorted derisively when anyone approached them and inquired about the possibility of a lift.
Approximately two dozen people had arrived at the train station at the same time I did. Most seemed surprised that there would be no more trains but none appeared particularly upset. A few produced mobile phones from their pockets and proceeded to make some sort of arrangements for overnight accommodation, presumably with friends who lived in the locality.
Everybody else shuffled about for a bit on the platform and then collectively decided on a plan. Unfortunately, it was a plan that they were unwilling to share with me. Once again, I found it impossible to find anyone who could, or would, speak English.
All of my attempts at inter-cultural communication were met with wide-eyed stupefaction. One or two obliging souls did at least try to explain what was going on but it was hopeless. Eventually, I just decided to follow the crowd in the belief that they must know something I didn t know.
For 20 minutes, we walked along the main road out of Wiener Neustadt and then abruptly turned off. Into a field. A huge field. A field that, beneath the cold moonlight, felt boundless, uncharted and fearsome, like it was the USSR or the Abbeville estate.
We followed a wide, freshly-laid gravel path which, after about 100 yards, rapidly tapered into a dirt-track. The air in the field was sharp but fresh; it smelled of newly-turned soil. Gradually, however, my nostrils (nasenlochs, by the way) began to sense something sweeter, something altogether more wholesome and refreshing. It was the fragrant scent of car exhaust.
25 minutes into the field, there was a huge, gravel-surfaced parking lot which was lit by absurdly tall gooseneck lights. Hundreds of cars were revving up and reversing out onto the dirt track which continued on past the entrance to the carpark. They were moving at a snail s pace but, hey, at least they were moving. Ausfahrt, here I come.
Or, so I thought. Wrongly. My elation quickly turned to despair when I realised that the people with whom I had marched from Wiener Neustadt didn t really have a plan. They had merely come to this parking lot on the off-chance that they could cadge rides from neighbours or acquaintances.
I was up to my neck in deep water. And, just when I had begun to think that I might be able to hold my head above it, another ocean of trouble poured into the pool. Within 10 minutes, I found myself standing alone outside this carpark, in the middle of field, staring dolefully as an unending cavalcade of vehicles trickled out past me.
All of my fellow pedestrians had managed to secure lifts. I had tried but had gotten nowhere fast so I gave up. Fortunately, I was man enough to respond to my plight calmly, maturely and constructively: I rained every vile curse and imprecation I could think of upon U2, Hot Press and the whole population of the Austrian nation.
After a long soak in the seething froth of my self-pity, I pulled myself together and started to walk along the dirt track, in the same direction that the caravan of cars was headed. The further I went, the faster the cars were starting to move but their progress was still too tentative to allow any one car to stop and pick me up, even if any of the drivers had been remotely inclined to do so. Which they weren t.
By now, it was almost 3am. I was footsore, weak with tiredness and hunger, and extremely depressed. As the convoy of cars scooted past, tiny stones and bits of grit flew up and cut into my face like flung handfuls of ground glass. Just then, two helicopters flew overhead; U2, I presumed, on their way back to their swish hotels. It was time for more curses, more imprecations.
Before long, the last car passed me. The carpark had obviously voided its final occupant. I was now, officially, completely alone in an enormous Austrian field in the middle of the night. And, until you ve been completely alone in an enormous Austrian field in the middle of the night, you have no idea of the true meaning of the phrase woe is me.
There were lights on the horizon, what looked like an entire cityscape. I tried to convince myself that this was Vienna, that I had accidentally stumbled across a short cut, through the fields, to the Austrian capital that was unknown to the locals. As I approached the lights, however, my worst fears were confirmed. It wasn t Vienna. My walk through the field had brought me full circle. I was back where I started, in Wiener Neustadt.
The traffic out of the town was still bumper-to-bumper but moving steadily. I saw a cop on point duty at a junction. He was a classic model of Polizei manhood, big and buzzcut, with a wrestler s thick shoulders and arms. Surely, I reasoned, if anyone could help me, this guy could.
Wrong again. Talking to an Austrian policeman is like talking to a refrigerator; the light goes on, the light goes off but it s not going to do anything that s not built into it. I outlined my predicament but the cop just shrugged and told me what I already knew: there were no taxis, no buses and no more trains until 6am.
I asked what he thought I should do. He shrugged. I asked if he thought it was advisable for me to start hitching. He shrugged again. I asked if he had any advice to offer. He shrugged a third time.
I turned on my heel and stormed away from my Polizei friend, silently hoping that I would be murdered before daybreak and that this asshole would then have to explain his behaviour to his superiors. The more I thought about the wider implications of this particular strategy, though, the more my ardour cooled.
I stood on the footpath just outside the Wiener Neustadt town limits and began thumbing. For 20 minutes, absolutely nothing, but the occasional tooted horn or contemptuous wave from passing drivers.
Then, just as I was about to lie down and curl up on a nearby park bench until dawn, a car pulled into the kerb. It was driven by a fat, moustachioed man, and there were two young teenagers on the backseat.
The driver turned out to be a hackneyman, who had been booked well in advance to take these two kids from the concert to their homes, which were about six miles outside Wiener Neustadt. He told me that he would take me to Vienna but that it would cost me. Money was the last thing on my mind so I readily agreed. I almost kissed the driver as I leapt in beside him.
When we got to Vienna, 45 minutes later, he charged me 1,400 schilling (about #75). I ve never been so glad to be ripped off in all my life. n