Author and Artist
The Prater Peril
A fictional travelogue; three minute read.
My body is trembling. Like a rattle in the hands of a toddler.
I’m waiting in line to ride a Ferris wheel in Vienna’s Prater Park. My skin is tingly. My left leg is twitching.
The gondolas—they’re painted blood red—hang precariously from the Riesenrad (German for giant wheel). The wooden cabins are about the size of a minibus. My first thought is a supersized coffin of the kind I might find at Costco—big enough for twelve bodies.
“Are you nervous too?” a husky male voice asks. Up and down his arms, he’s a cascade of tattoos. Geometric designs and a dancing dragon. Bushy mustache and shaggy haircut complete the impression that he’s either an artist or a bar bouncer.
“I don’t do well with heights. I only pretend to like thrill rides to impress my girlfriend,” he adds. I nod agreement, and wonder if his girlfriend will soon appear to watch his bravado in action. My mouth is dry.
A shrink might have a clue about why I’m here in the first place. I ask, “Weren’t you impressed that the Riesenrad was in the murder mystery movie The Third Man?” He stares straight ahead, blankly. His lips—and mine—are drawn tight.
Tourists, divided into thrill-seekers or café-sitters, are strolling in the gardens or riding the rides. For my part, I stay away from moving contraptions that require strapping me in. I prefer a stationary bench bolted to the ground.
“I believe in travel adventures. I don’t believe in risking death while on holiday,” I confide. My breathing is shallow, wheezy.
In the 1780s Emperor Franz Joseph II donated his hunting grounds to the people of Vienna. Twice the size of New York’s Central Park, it’s ranked one of Europe’s finest urban green spaces. A forested parkland of meadows and pathways populated with runners, walkers and cyclists. I’m too unnerved to enjoy it.
One section is an amusement park with 250 rides. The Riesenrad towers 220 feet above me. Looking upward, my neck crunches against my spine. A gigantic breaking wheel used for public executions in the Middle Ages comes to mind.
Up until now, Imperial Vienna has been delightful and delicious. The coffee houses, the monuments, the museums, the baroque and gothic architecture, strudel, beer, sausages, Mozart and Beethoven music. The Viennese waltzes.
From the minute I step on to the Riesenrad, control over my body will rest with an omnipotent deity in the form of a distracted, pimpled carnival ride operator who looks entirely disinterested in my physical safety. I want to pee.
As we wait, the Riesenrad keeps rotating at a lazy two miles per hour. The mechanical sound, like time itself, is steady, unstoppable. Creaky like an old man shuffling down the halls of a retirement home.
I suppose to some the wheel’s speed implies leisure, as if the riders are Austrian royalty out for a walk, taking the air. I think of it as a protracted imprisonment.
I’ve already bought my ticket, but I’m on the edge of humiliating myself by walking away. In the corner of my eye, a single, salty tear of indecision forms.
The pamphlet promoting the Riesenrad promised panoramic views of Vienna.
I’ll never know.
