Günter Dinhobl (Hrsg.): Sonderband 7. Eisenbahn/Kultur – Railway/Culture (2004)

Aufsätze - Hillary Keel: West Train Station, Vienna

A Balkan Roma clan wait together on a row of chairs, dressed in polyester sweaters, skirts, trousers; all belongings stuffed in plastic bags at their feet. Toddlers with pacifiers, school kids, mothers, uncles. Ready to leave with plastic potties, apple juice, hair pins, scarves. A little girl kisses her crying-infant sibling, pops chocolate in her mouth and runs away. Will they leave this paradise of nowhere, everywhere, on the road, in waiting rooms? Will they arrive?

The clock tells time as coffee cups clink, automatic teller machines blink, lettuce wilts on sandwiches stacked in a display case and freshly printed newspapers smudge their readers’ fingers. A woman sells Halloween candy. There’s Sturm to drink, Pizza Schnitten and heiße Würstel to eat. A television flickers pictures of American detective- show star. Art video clip shows Elvis shaking his hips to a Vienna Waltz. Japanese men stop to look.

Click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click tick tick tick tick

"Host fünf Schilling für mi? ”

Clock hands move, show us time we’ve wasted, time still ahead, tells us to run for a train departing in two minutes, tells us to relax in this paradise of pigeons, mayonnaise and beer foam. Relax. Find a spot away from the draft, you’ve got hours to wait and nowhere else to go. It all merges here: beauty, decay, eternity and death. The naive, the rich, the searchers, the wanderers, the living dead and the stone-cold souvenir of the Empress Elisabeth.

A convergence: The Orient is at our heels

click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click

tick tick tick tick

and New York’s at our toes.