Vienna Calling

I'd say Vienna's lovely, but it isn't really. Its great architecture is cheek by jowl with a lot of Soviet-style apartment blockery (this is pretty much Eastern Europe) and when you look closely you realize a lot of the city is chipped and flaked and graffiti'ed and grotty.

But it does have a lot of bridges. The Donaukanal is thick with them. Should I jump from Friedensbrucke? Rossauerbrucke? They're far from my hotel — how about Schwedenbrucke or Aspernbrucke? My body can wash up in Romania or some godforsaken place. I'll be fished out by some gypsy who'll look at the retired numbers on the forlorn t-shirt that encases my bloated, fish-eaten corpse and gasp, “A Mets fan?!” She'll make the sign of the evil eye and exclaim, “I'm surprised he pulled off killing himself!”

Sigmund Freud plied his trade here. I imagine if I visited some bearded successor of his, before I could rattle on about mother issues or toilet training he'd squint at me over his glasses and say, “You root for ze New York Mets. No vunder you are unhappy. You should try ze Yankees.”

Ah ha ha ha. I hope I'm still laughing Thursday, when we fall out of first place. And I'm not even trying to maneuver the baseball gods into a reverse jinx — I'm as certain the Mets will fall into second place two games from now as I am that the sun will rise.

Two of my colleagues on this trip are hardcore Phillies fans. At first their tentative optimism was balanced by their own freightload of bad karma — this was obviously just one more way for the Phils to torture their faithful. Since the Mets went to D.C. things have changed. This morning we had to be downstairs at 4:30 a.m. for taxis to Heathrow. I had woken up and stared in glum dis-disbelief at the 9-8 score, then watched Philadelphia and St. Louis stay tied until it was time to get a cab. The Phillies fans, Blackberrys in hand, would update me and the other Met fan on this trip as we trudged through the endless corridors of Heathrow, with our trip's lone San Francisco Giants fan providing Greek chorus.

It went something like this:

PHILLIES FAN #1: Still 4-4.

PHILLIES FAN #2: Man, it could be one and a half. Incredible.

[trudging, listening to polite, baffling British announcements]

ME: Who's in for St. Louis?

PHILLIES FAN #1: Isringhausen.

ME: Fuck me. Forget it.

[trudging, swearing quietly]

PHILLIES FAN #2: One and a half.

GIANTS FAN: That really sucks.

[trudging and brooding]

PHILLIES FAN #1: 7-4 Phils!

PHILLIES FAN #2: Amazing. Simply amazing.

ME: Where the fuck is our gate? Fucking Mets! FUCK!

METS FAN #2: Fuck.

GIANTS FAN: That really sucks.

PHILLIES FAN #2: One and a half. Amazing.

It was every bit as fun as it sounds. Jesus Christ I hate baseball. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to find Vienna's highest bridge.