Miscellany: Food, Dogs, Traffic, and Urine

In one of Dylan Thomas's poems, "The Hunchback in the Park," a zoological garden is a void until its gates are opened in the early morning; at that point trees and fountains and animals rush magically into the emptiness to be in place as visitors enter. Our world here is still forming, flowing into the vacuum, without our making any conscious effort to make it happen. Although the detail and nuance are getting finer, there is so very much yet to fill in.

Downtown is less of a blur of concrete and pedestrians than it was for us at first. In churches otherwise modestly ornamented, we have found playful angels and monkeys and sassy faces intricately carved atop the pew ends; we have seen just off the Graben, a crowded modern pedestrian shopping area, more than one ornately carved Renaissance doorway and a centuries-old stone well in a quiet inner courtyard, with window boxes of red geraniums waiting patiently for a shaft of afternoon sun to call.

Dining out continues to lead us to experiences beyond beer, pork, and potatoes, though we like that menu, too--from time to time. We have learned that "heurigen," which I have called "beer gardens," are "wine gardens," though we rarely see any beverage served in them but beer. Brief conversations I have had with two locals suggest that Austrians consider themselves sophisticated wine drinkers, not beer drinkers. We shall nevertheless continue to treat the heurigen as beer gardens and order pork, potatoes, and beer when we visit them. We continue, however, to prefer the non-native cuisine. As we have found elsewhere in our travels, though, the dishes served in ethnic restaurants tend to be adapted to local tastes and can be noticeably dissimilar--usually blander--to what a diner would get in the country of origin.

-- Last weekend downtown we had lunch at a self-proclaimed "authentic" Australian pub (note the "L"). Sandwiches were about the only thing on the menu, and, continuing to look for beef rather than pork, I opted for a cheeseburger, though ostrich was also on the menu. The meat patty arrived on a roll and a bed of diced cucumbers, which I presumed to be a local adaptation. I could not imagine Australians garnishing their dingo and roo burgers in this way.

-- Italian restaurants we have sampled here offer pasta and pizza dishes that have less spice, fewer herbs, and more salt than the versions served in Italy. The menu dishes are often printed in Italian, which the waitresses cannot interpret or understand. Diners order using the German description below the listing, or, like us, pointing to the description.

-- Although we have not found a Turkish restaurant, "Kebap" stands, which look like carnival funnel-cake wagons, are abundant along the streets and in the tram stations; a few grocery stores also have kebap counters. Behind the counter, a huge slab of lamb turns continuously on a spit in front of a louvered metal oven, drying the meat until it has nearly the consistency of jerky; a Turk using a knife--would that it were a scimitar--more than a foot long slices the meat off in thin chips and stuffs it into a pita-like roll baked on the premises, with lettuce, tomato, pepper sauce, and sometimes, as in Grinzing, with slices of white Turkish cheese. For me it is one of the tastiest meals to be had here.

Further on Food

Recently on tv: A cultural program began by showing a man in a dark suit and tie, seated at an elegantly set table; he unfurled his napkin and placed it on his lap. A woman in a chef's uniform entered, carrying a silver, lidded tray. She lifted the top and slowly, carefully placed on his plate a single potato, the size of a billiard ball, still in its skin. With the delicacy of a surgeon, the man took up his fork and knife and separated a bit of the skin from the top of the potato; thin streams of vapor rose quietly from the delicacy. He took a tiny forkful of it and placed it in his mouth, and then smiled and nodded to the chef. This scene took place entirely in silence, which lent an even higher formality to the scene. I am not making this up.

Recently on the tram: Two women boarded together, each carrying two 5-kilo, plastic-mesh bags of potatoes.

Dogs

I have noticed that lots of women here are named after dachshunds that I knew during my years living in the States. I have not yet seen a Rottweiler or a Doberman, but lots of golden retrievers, German shepherds, and dachshunds of many varieties--wire-haired, long-haired, short-haired, standard, miniature--have been in evidence. And mutts, a fair number of mutts, and a few purse dogs. People here appear to be more conscientious than people in the US are about cleaning up after their dogs, which are only rarely off-leash when they are outdoors.

As he does in every country, the Dog Whisperer has work to do here: On a busy sidewalk, a medium-sized mutt that looked to be about 4-6 months old strained at its leash while a young woman yanked back, finally getting the dog close to her, at which point she began striking it repeatedly and then picked it up and squeezed its jaws from the sides. I thought of a time I was on the Metro in Washington, and a man slapped his child in the face so hard the sound filled the car.

Traffic and Transit

Sunday afternoon Linda and I had started across a street after getting off a tram, for which traffic is supposed to stop, and we were in a striped zone, for which traffic is supposed to stop. Suddenly she grabbed my arm to pull me back from the middle of the traffic lane, and an ambulance flashed past, sounding its two-tone horn only at the last second. In our Embassy briefing on driving on Wednesday we were informed that we need to be alert to flashing blue lights: emergency vehicles here rarely use their alarm horns and will happily run over you in silence.

Transit police, which we expected to see only rarely, have popped up three times now in my tram travels. They dress to look like any other passenger. The first was a woman of about 50, hair pulled back in a bun, wearing jeans and a jacket and carrying a shopping bag. At first I did not realize what was going on as she rose from her seat and began checking to see whether each passenger had a pass or a current ticket. Her credentials were in a wallet on her belt, which she flipped open to display as she moved through the car. The next time I was checked it was by a young man who looked like a college student. Wearing jeans and a black t-shirt, with tattoos on his arms, he also had on a back pack. He, too, flipped open his badge on his belt. Two young women sitting opposite me were carrying expired annual passes. At the next stop, he herded them off. I saw him pulling out his citation book as the tram sped away. The third experience was at a stop. As I approached, I saw a young woman with a sheepish expression on her face. She pulled two large-euro bills out of her wallet and, without a bleat, handed them to two young men standing next to her, both with badges on their belts, one holding a citation book.

The Body

At the downtown gym I visited before joining the one at the Embassy, a young woman member of the cleaning staff walked through the men's locker room emptying trash cans. She paid no attention to the naked men, nor they to her.

On the grounds in front of the Habsburg Palace downtown, tents and booths were set up for an outdoor music festival. On the edge of the lawn stood a round, green, plastic structure that looked like a large lazy susan. It was a four-man, open-air urinal. A middle-aged man stood in it, his back to the passing throng, relieving himself.