Home to Wiener World

Just having returned from a visit to the US, I was reminded of how much I like travel but hate the process of getting somewhere. I had a terrific visit with my loving and generous family, yet I was glad to return to Wiener World, and not just because the flights here can be as colorful as the pastel city squares of many an Eastern European capital, though far more annoying.

Vienna is a funnel for Central Europeans traveling to and from New York, Washington, and U.S. points beyond. About a third of the passengers on my flight coming and going was comprised of people from Bosnia, Slovakia, and other Central European points whose airlines feed into Vienna. The people, young families, the middle aged, and the elderly, come from long broken and slowly mending economies, and many on my recent flight appeared to have little familiarity with air travel. I had a longer wait at the gate at Dulles, coming home, than I did departing from Vienna, and thus more time to observe. Some of the Central and Eastern Europeans loitered in the departure gate area at Dulles, staring as if amazed at electric lights. These visitors' appearance is sometimes an odd mix of fashion. One middle-aged man, who strolled continuously in front of me as we waited for the flight, wore a cherry red sports coat over a silver and white paisley shirt, tail out; blue jeans with knee pockets big enough to hold a supply of rolls and sausages to sustain him through the flight; and athletic shoes, though the beer belly suggested the footwear served other than athletic purposes. Like most of the men, he combed his slightly wavy iron-gray hair straight back. His eyebrows, probably never trimmed, had multiple steely curled wisps licking at his forehead, their length exceeded only by the hair growing out of his nose and from a large mole on his right cheek.

When I reached my seat row during the boarding process at Dulles, a man of about my age from Sarajevo (as I later learned), dressed in a jogging suit, was in my window seat. I was certain that he had boarded ahead of schedule, out of the order of rows called. I showed him my boarding pass, and he moved to the aisle seat. Normally I would have been more than happy to have the legroom of the aisle seat, but on this flight--ever the optimist--I planned to rest my head against the bulkhead in the hope of catching a bit of sleep. As soon as we had switched seats, my Bosnian companion plopped his right arm on the center armrest, covering the controls to my video screen, light, and audio system. Repeatedly during the flight I asked him to move his arm so that I could change the volume or change channels. For most of the night, his right leg leaned over well into the minuscule, cramped space I called mine, so as to use my left knee for his support and provide me unwanted bodily warmth. When our first meal was served, he stared at the tiny plastic cup of dressing accompanying our tiny salads and then poured it into his water; then he did the same with his coffee creamer. He started to scrape his pat of butter into the mix, but stopped when he realized that it might make the glass overflow. He stirred the mix with his fork and then drank it down. Then he ate the butter.

And the children.... Lawrence Sterne wrote that on the night Tristram Shandy was conceived, Tristram's mother famously asked her husband, at the exact moment of conception, whether he had remembered to wind the clock. The homunculus's discombobulation caused by the timing of the question, according to Sterne, resulted in Tristam's being born with a variety of character disorders. I mention this because several years ago a lineal descendant of Tristram Shandy's mother made her way to Slovenia, where she worked in a sausage factory. About three years ago, as she was being seduced atop a machine that inflated sheep stomach linings to bind the ground pork, she asked her lover, "What time is it?" Nine months later she delivered a child with porcine features and ovine character traits. Two years after that, that mother and child were on my flight from Washington to Vienna. For 6 hours of the 8 and a half hour flight, the child bleated, squealed, and screamed, counterpointing the music of his voice with the "bong" from his smacking the "call attendant" button. Dozing was impossible; I wished that I had taken the aisle seat.

I returned, happily, having been awake only 36 hours, and with my interior clock 6 hours off from Wiener World time--nothing that could not be cured by a week of alternating wine and coffee, much tastier and more comforting than a vinaigrette and coffee creamer in a glass of cold water.