I woke at 6 am and texted Vanesa, who was still awake partying with the Telenovela that was sleeping on our couch. With only the morning in Vienna, I made haste into the crisp air, before the businesses opened, before the workers started their commute, before crowds formed.
My first stop was Stephensplatz. I wanted to film the Graben public bathrooms, which claim to be the oldest functioning public toilets in the world. Outside of the Herren bathroom were men working PVC piping into the ground. They were part of the many municipal workers out today; everyone awake at 7 am drove trucks or vans. The garbage men work in teams of four. One driver, one man hanging the garbage bings onto hooks at the rear of the truck and flipping the bins empty into the truck, one man bringing bins from the sidewalk to the truck, and one man bringing bins from businesses to the curb. The whole endeavor is fast and almost without litter. The garbage trucks are much smaller than in New York, having to fit into more narrow passageways and make tighter turns.
The toilets’ operating hours are 8 am to 8 pm. One descends into a marble-lined Art Nouveau room with antique urinals encased in glass display, opposing modern, low-flow urinals. One passes through a door to enter the room for toilets where the sliding doors are locked open until one pays the attendant, who removes the lock. The stall has a fogged glass doors that slide on wooden frames. A sink fits in one corner, and the toilet in another, with a wooden seat and wood back–where I presume the pipes or water tank is hidden inside; it stands about five feet tall. At the top is a brass knob that one pulls up to activate the flush. All of this is within a four foot-square area.
I ate breakfast at Anker, a chain of bakeries founded in 1891. I watched the steady flow of people come in and order and their manner of placing an order. Afterward I headed to T-mobile to get a European sim card with faster data. I stumbled over my bad German at the store, and the employee switched to fluent English and quickly sold me a an 8GB plan for 20€ and handed me the SIM card, but didn't give me a paperclip to pop out my old sim, so I spent the next few hours passively glancing everywhere I was going to spy something small. I finally ended up nicking a sliver of a chopstick off, which I saved in my phone case for any future sim swap.
I seemed to have lost my sense of direction in Vienna. I blame this in part due to the winding streets, the German names, which I tend to forget easily, the frequency of paths to change names, and the existence of smaller, sort of entrances (hof?) that look like driveways but area actually streets. In the course of trying to find my bearing, I noticed the strange reoccurrence of the word 'Vienna' inscribed in some buildings. Not signs, but inscriptions, or bas reliefs. Why would the English name for this city be here? In other places, sure enough, 'Wien' can be found. There didn't seem to be an order of age or style or function of building that carried the English name of this city.
I’m not convinced that people are paying for the Vienna U Bahn. I saw couples pass through the open gates at the entrance to the station, holding hands, and raised them in glee over the ticket validation station, without breaking hold. Only tourists from Spain, whom I saw trying to figure out the automated machine, paid, as I had. On the trains I have not seen anyone enforcing the tickets.
Entering from the U Bahn into the Hauptbahnhof is strangely similar to the Jamaica station and JFK airport in New York. At first, there's a sense that the architecture is functional but outdated. A long corridor opens into atriums with narrow stairways leaning against the wall, extending up to train terminals. A series of monitors states the departing and arriving train destinations, time and platform above a series of printed daily schedules of routes. The brick interior could be an old exterior, and feels like a child of the 1970s. And, like the vagrancy of Jamaica station, a young man asked me for a Euro at Hauptbahnhof! But very soon, the old caste of transit centers as a machine for movement dissolves aways and the contemporary transit center as a place to shop, eat, drink and hang out unfolds.
I bought a pair of Nike shoes for the gym at a sports equipment store in Hauptbahnhof for 49 euros. Black. The public bathrooms are turnstile operated with a small fee, which seemed out of place, given the socialist tendency and advocation of the public sphere. Though this is in keeping with the old toilets at Graber. Going up to the platform is impressive. The diamond-shaped apertures in the roof accentuate the waving undulations overhead. The platforms are only one story off the ground, but the designer, Swiss architect, Theo Hotz, made the space feel incredibly expansive and elevated.
In good Austrian manner, the train arrived and left precisely on time.
The train ride from Wien to Graz is gorgeous. After a few stops in Vienna, the train begins passing small villages with farming plots in rotation. Dairy cows grazing the hills. In almost every village we pass I saw someone jogging. The land becomes more mountainous and the patchwork of alpine trees becomes visible. By Payerbauch-Reichenou the full gamut of autumn colors had painted the hills. The train hugs one mountainside until finally shoring up the courage to cross a bridge over a canyon, the view opens up through a valley until the train can hug another hillside. Yellows. Burnt Sienna. The green fir trees. Lime undergrowth.
The silence of the Austrians is a national treasure. The trains are so well engineered and maintained that it’s hard to tell that they’re moving. Even in the winding hills, the rails barely growl. I thought of the trains in the US–Amtrak, MetroNorth, and of course the MTA subways. At one point, we passed over a bridge and a light whir sound began. I waited until we were no longer on the bridge and when the whir didn’t stop, I realized it was actually the sound of forced air inside the train car.
No one is on the phone. I realized I was in the Quiet car when someone started to softly snore.
Breitenfeld metal recycling.
Mürzverbrand water treatment.
The train finally arrived to Graz and I stepped off, looked in both directions for which of the two exits made the most sense to try locate Franz, the receptionist from Schaumbad who was tasked to pick me up. On the third glance right I saw him emerge from the crowd and casually walked toward me as if I had seen him before and we exited together. Franz's English was minimal, perhaps as little as my German. We drove in silence, with the exception of his pointing out the Schlossberg.
Iris met us at 2 Bürgergasse, Priesterseminar in front of the Dom. Franz helped unload my things and Iris showed me to my room, #339. The marble floors in the hallway recall the ancient past of this building, which has been well preserved, encased in modern windows and glass partitions that control movement, temperature and health. It was built in the 16th Century for priests. One can best see the eons past while descending the stairs, noting the worn porous stones, sloping in the center, which darkly contrast light gray marble in the hallway. On the ground floor an entire different stonework is present. Rough, aged, waxed.
Opposite my room was the town cathedral. I looked directly into a vertical stained-glass window protected by an aftermarket metal mesh. A pattern of three columns of circles, about the size of the bottom of beer bottles, run vertically down three columns of glass, which tapers at the top into three triangles divided by three leaf-shapes created by the sandstone framing. The translucent trinity.
My room was a one-bedroom with private bathroom. One enters through a solid wood door with an overlapping lip that seals the door frame. The entrance has wood panels and a low ceiling, so it feels like entering a ship. Two closets in the entrance and two bookcases inside the room, a single mattress, nightstand with lamp, two wooden Ikea chairs and matching coffee table, and a third white Ikea chair. All appeared new or close to new. A large writing desk sat in the corner near the double-pane windows, drapes and electric heater. The room colors were yellow birch wood, pale blue and white. I had a little anxiety about this living space; New Yorkers always do. We're so accustomed to being shafted and jammed into sardine cans that our trauma becomes part of our quirky outlook on life; that dignity may be independent of how one feels at home, or that adapting to an extreme isn't really adapting at all, but compromising with your own financial limitations. This room could be a luxury apartment in Manhattan. The bathroom has an English style toilet, with water in the rear, no platform. The shower has magnetic strips that seal the doors shut, perfectly flush.
Iris showed me the building's administrative office on our way out, instructing me to introduce myself on Monday when it opened. We headed down Bürgergasse to Jakominiplatz to take the 5 tram to the studio on Puchstraße. On the way, Iris pointed out the construction site of the city's combined sewage overflow system, which iss what had attracted me to Graz in the first place. In comparison to New York’s perpetually failing system, the Austrian claim that all overflow of untreated sewage during heavy precipitation can be diverted, stored and treated, was impressive. As part of the Illinois River Project, the conjecture of doing a project about a sewage system had seemed fitting, but I had imagined little more than a thematic outline. The need to renovate CSOs, including New York's, comes from the increased levels of concentrated precipitation due to climate change. Transitions between seasons are shorter but the amount of precipitation is the same or greater, but during that shortened period. The result is flooding, and rainwater flooding sewer systems, causing untreated brown water to escape into the waterways, causing infection and disease or algae blooms.[1]
How does one visualize a city-wide system? Sewage has been represented as messy mass, tubes, shown either in cross section or from within looking out, or bulky jointed pipes. But how can this be better understood? Intestines? Through the video of a colonoscopy?
We arrived to Schaumbad and Iris introduced me to Eva Ursprung, a founder of Schaumbad. She was exhibiting her work in the gallery space. Her collaboration with Doris Jauk-Hinz traced the water in the Mür and the Drava river. The project looks at the water quality, sensitive sites of the two rivers, and the appearance around the rivers.
The Schaumbad is an artist studio, cooperative, exhibition space and video production organization. It's about ten years old. The space reminds me of my graduate school studios, only with more developed people and interiors, and more wealth of resources–a cyc wall, green screen studio, audio recording studio, wood shop, risograph, gallery, two kitchens, and a friendly cat named Baba. The program includes artists in residence, Sunday artist discussions, exhibitions and performances.
Returning to my room, I plugged in my power adapter and a surge protector, plugged in my computer and phone for charging, then saw the charge indicator wasn't working; I flicked the switch on the surge protector and killed the power; wifi, lamps, everything but overhead lights, out. It was Saturday night, and the maintenance guy wouldn't be back until Monday.
[1] Climate change impact on infection risks during bathing downstream of sewage emissions from CSOs or WWTPs, Ankie Sterk, Heleen de Man, Jack. F Schijven, Ton de Nijs, Ana Maria de Roda Husman, Water Research, August 2016