A Streetcar Named Wunchen

(Wunchen, with an umlaut on the 'u', means "Desire")

Some mornings when I exit our front gate, I stand at the curb next to the separate recycling bins for clear glass, colored glass, "old paper," and plastic bottles. I look first to my left to check traffic before I cross. It's a dangerous moment because we have no crosswalk stripes, and cars speed on the long straightaway as they descend the hill into Grinzing. (Memories of my kids' computer game "Frogger" skid and hop across my mind.) The two sets of tram tracks set in the street provide another hazard: I am quite certain that one day I'll get a shoe stuck in them and be run over by a BMW and then a tram will come along and sever my leg from the gory heap that is my torso. Some mornings I am lucky enough to see the tram coming over the hill. At first all I see are two angled metal rods reaching up to the over-street powerlines, very much like the horns on a slug, and then the red and white metal beast glides on down the hill into Grinzing station.

When I board the tram for the trip into town, I first deposit 2.20 euros in a yellow box on the lead car, next to a sign about bringing aboard dogs. (Beisskorb, the German word for "muzzle," literally translates as "Bite Basket.") A light grinding noise follows, and my ticket plops into a glass-door metal cup at the bottom. Public transit here operates on the honor system, with spot checks by officials. Friends tell us that, if you ride twice a day, you'll get caught about twice a year and fined 60 euros each time. The threat of the fine and the heaps of contumely and humiliation I imagine I would feel are enough to leave me too terrified to try riding without a ticket. I take my seat and prepare to watch life's rich pageant ascend, sit, and descend for the duration of the 30-minute ride, and I look out the window at the colorful and sometimes bewildering variety of shops and businesses, many with signs in English, among them: Style Your Head, Hair Wolf, Taco Grill, Lion Rampant, Design at Nails, Beauty Farm, and, across a 15-foot-wide storefront, Outlet Fashion Mall.

On every trip I see one or two passengers bring their dogs on board; usually they are leashed and wearing their bite-baskets. On our trip to town on Sunday, someone brought aboard a dog without such a device; two passengers complained to the tram driver, who, at the next stop, ordered the man and beast off the tram. By the time I am out and about, lots of moms are out with kids in strollers--which have specially allocated spaces in each car--doing the day's shopping. Yesterday, however, I saw a business woman (I presume) who, a few generations back, might have had the role of Heidi, She-Wolf of the SS: tall, strong, stern, blond hair severely pulled back, pin-striped suit. Also fun to watch are the bums and bag ladies. Yesterday I saw a man who looked like an Old Testament prophet but without a "Repent!" sign: thin, weathered face, long and unruly gray locks, rumpled coat, scuffed shoes. He ambled on past several vacant seats and squeezed in next to a young woman who might have been on her way to work, and he tried to start up a conversation. She rose and moved to another seat. At the next stop, he got off. A very large woman of dumpy build got on, dressed very much like the man who had just gotten off, but she also sported a dirty baseball cap and a cane. A friend of mine once described a woman as looking like she had strapped to her chest a pair of stockings with oranges in the toes. This could have been she. Only it would have been potatoes.

And a couple of days ago, a black family boarded. They were quite well dressed--man in a business suit, wife in nicely tailored and coordinated outfit, three small children in shorts and clean shirts with collars. Because the car was nearly full, the family had to spread out. Two passengers--one a scruffy-looking young man with hair that hadn't seen a comb or shampoo for many days and the other a nicely dressed middle-aged woman--got out of their seats and motioned for the children to move so they could sit by their parents. Shortly after, another woman got up from her seat, crossed the car, and tucked in the end of the mother's shawl, which had dropped to the tram floor. One day soon after we had arrived in this city, one of our new friends commented that Vienna was "notoriously racist," citing the case of a black employee at the Embassy who had been taken off a street corner and badly beaten by the police.

Environmental Note

Shops are stingy about giving out a sack or bag with a purchase. Grocery stores charge dearly for them. Smaller places may deign to provide a small sack with a purchase, but grudgingly, and only if requested in a soft voice, eyes averted to the floor. To request one can feel like I'm poking my head out a bathroom door and, trying not to attract attention, asking someone to bring more toilet paper. I had stopped in a housewares store and purchased a nightlight, and afterward I walked to an electronics store and bought a 1-meter cable to hook up our television. The clerk at the second store seemed to understand that I was waiting for him to bag my purchase and pointed at the small sack I already had in my hand, as if to say, "Why are you waiting for a bag, you environmental criminal?" Drano and bleach are not for sale here.

Vignette

At the end of a 3-page, microprint form required to open a Bank of Austria account, otherwise all in German:

"Sign Here Official Binding Signature"

and

"Please indicate:
__ AM
__ AM NOT
a politically exposed person."