I wrote of the porn placards, so I first write about just how frivolous a city Vienna is. It's one thing that at the entrance of one shopping mall, the placard with a woman's face isn't just looking seductive, but kind of like just before an orgasm. But explain this: the first mannequin at the entrance of another shop lies on her back, with legs spread, covered only with garlands (which you definitely can't buy inside) - but this is a women's cloth shop, so I can't really figure out on whom this objectification of women's body is supposed to work on.

Yet, in stark contrast, the only pretty women I saw on the streets (with a man's eye, sorry I know) were Turkish or Chinese. The jolly baroque Viennese women (unlike women in the countryside) seem to revel in the freedom of not caring about their body shape or hairdo (at least not according to male tastes), prefer some strong-coloured rouge as makeup, and care much more about clothes.

Speaking of Turkish women, a sign of how much multi-ethnic Vienna has become (or maybe always was - I may not have noticed during eighties visits) was for me another placard, for a cloth or what, with a clearly Turkish model. Meanwhile, another thing that was new to me (but maybe not to our German, French and other Western European readers) was that the ubiquitous döner kebab sellers now have a middle level (between good restaurants and one-man street vendors): there is a McDonalds-like chain called Turkiz. And, hurt local patriot speaking, even the cheapest street vendor had a much cleaner shop than Budapest counterparts...

Speaking of cleanliness, and earlier of elegance, a rather strange thing was the homeless. In every city there are homeless newspapers, selling which keeps many homeless from starving. But the homeless of Vienna are so well-clad that when I saw the first two, I thought they are just normal street newspaper sellers...

Finally, an anecdote on the paradoxical attitude of the Viennese people: how I got into a public toilet. The door opens with a 50-cent coin, but I only had €2 coins - so I opened into the cleaners' room to get a change. There was the cleaning lady and who looked like her daughter and her daughters' boyfriend, the latter playing a videogame. They didn't show much lust to bother (not to mention being friendly), only slowly got themselves to check the drawer to find no 50-cent coins, then seemed to just forget about me. I stood back, considering what to do then, while the cleaning lady slowly scuffled across the room in front of me - and opened the WC door with a key, letting me in for free!

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}