How to lose your goddamned mind in three easy steps
An exciting new method for visiting Vienna
Step 1: Achieve peak sleep deprivation
From the start, it’s vital to cultivate a solid foundation of mental blurriness and slowed reaction times—too much clarity of thought will derail your plans for a rapid descent into madness. By the time you arrive in Vienna, confusion needs to set in quickly.
This is best accomplished by sitting next to a four- or five-year-old child on the plane. The urchin needn't make much in the way of noise—my approach doesn’t require one of those cursed aviation-adverse infants that sobs melodramatically for hours on end. But the toddler must be both restless and disturbingly mobile. Ideally, its mother will seem lightly demented, hissing angrily into her phone, while glancing around suspiciously as though she fears she’s under surveillance.
If you’e got the correct set-up, the rest will follow naturally. Right before takeoff, the mother will surprise you by informing her child that you speak German. As you’ve said but one word to them (“hello”), it’s unclear how she’s arrived at this (admittedly correct) conclusion. Nor is it apparent what the moppet is meant to do with this information. Smile weakly in their direction for want of any better response; this will apparently satisfy the mother, who can then ignore you for the remainder of the flight. Her offspring will be another matter entirely.
After "dinner,” [1] the crew will lower the cabin lights in the hopes of lulling everyone to sleep. [2] This has no effect on the tyke, whose zesty pursuit of the active lifestyle is undiminished. Its mother, however, has no problem sleeping while in transit and pulls a hoodie over her head, looking for all the world like a body being transported home for burial. [3] It’s debatable how effective a barrier this is in fact, yet certainly lends plausibility to her subsequent feigned ignorance of her offspring’s gymnastic endeavors.
You have not brought a sweatshirt or indeed any other sort of garment in which you might enclose your head. (This will turn out to be the first significant oversight of your trip.) Resolve in future to pack a fabric bag with a drawstring closure in your hand luggage. Velvet maybe? It should be thick enough to baffle light and sound, yet sufficiently porous to escape self-asphyxiation,
Meanwhile, the tot will gyre and gimble in the airplane’s wabe, determined to force passage beneath the seat in front or to scale and summit its back. This will greatly irritate that seat’s occupant, who will shoot dark looks in your direction. Reintroduce your disarming smile, this time with a helpless shrug.
When ignoring the whelp becomes impossible, use your fabled German to admonish and reassure it in turn. The child will simply regard you with incomprehension, filling you with doubts about the state of your (admittedly rusty) German. Surreptiously and self-consciously look up relevant phrases on Google Translate, wondering if you’ve managed to get the words and their multitude of inflections wrong ( Try, for example: “I don’t know what you’re looking for.” “Unless you fasten your seat belt, you will surely perish.” “Just you wait until your mother unwraps her head.”) When these still fail to calm or chasten the toddler, withdraw into a fretful state of worry that your pronunciation is also now shot to hell.
Combining your crushing self-critical anxiety with the ceaseless antics of the indefatigable child should be sufficient to deny you much sleep for the next twelve hours
Exhausted? Excellent. You’re ready to move on to the next step.
Step 2: Set up the inciting incident
After landing in Vienna and collecting your baggage, reevaluate your transit plans. Instead of taking the train and then the subway like a native (a point of pride for you), decide to do the touristy thing and just get a cab. No one will know, and surely you’re tired enough to justify being overcharged for a taxi to the Innere Stadt.
Obtain a cab from a friendly and talkative gentleman who guesses you speak German after you successfully explain your destination without having recourse to English. Perhaps the child on the plane was deaf? (Fear this is a tasteless notion; tell yourself it’s far more likely the kid was just an asshole.)
The driver alarmingly makes cheerful conversation during the ride, which includes chiding you whenever have recourse to English. In proper Germanic fashion, he’ll feel both entitled to comment on, and compelled to correct, your behavior, warning that your German will never revive unless you discipline yourself to use it exclusively. He is absolutely correct. That very concern has nagged you since you started planning this trip.
But. You. Are. Just. So. Tired.
Compromise poorly by sticking straightforward sentences and banal observations (“Yes, the opera building is very grand.” “I was last six years ago here.” “Certainly I am looking forward to the schnitzel.”) Surrender to self-loathing over your cowardice to attempt natural conversation.
Arrive at your AirBnB, take out your wallet, and pay the driver, adding a generous tip because he's been so friendly. Thank him for giving you such a warm welcome to Vienna—it bodes well for your trip to begin this way.
Now, here's the really important bit: you must either (a) leave your wallet in the back of the cab ;or (b) drop it on the ground as you make your way to your lodgings. The method of loss doesn’t signify so long as you (aa) fail to notice what you’ve done and (bb) later have no way of knowing where and how the wallet met with misadventure.
Step 3: Descend into madness
Spend the next hour unpacking and getting acquainted with the flat’s peculiarly European quirks— don’t worry if at first it seems to lack a toilet; just look behind the door of what looks like a closet in the entry area. Debate whether to take a nap, then remember it’s only mid-afternoon local time, and you need to reset your body’s clock. Resolve instead to go explore the neighborhood and obtain a cup of wonderful Viennese coffee. Perhaps with a pastry or two? Yes, that should hit the spot.
Before you leave, do the standard departure check: Phone? Wallet? Keys? Your phone and the key to the flat are at hand, but the wallet is not. Discover it isn't in your shoulder bag. Look for it in your backpack without success. Go back to the shoulder bag and check again. Re-check the backpack. With a sense of growing panic, start looking in improbable places, like in your open suitcase (which was not open until a few minutes ago, but hey, maybe you somehow stuck it in there). Return to the shoulder bag and backpack and empty both of their contents. Pat and squeeze both in case the wallet wormed its way into a heretofore undiscovered compartment. Now do the same with every garment you’ve brought that has pockets.
Go outside and search the street, including underneath parked cars. Return to the flat and recheck every bag, muttering "fuck, fuck, fuck" in ever more frantic tones. Continue the stream of profanity, taking it up a notch to " fuck ME, fuck ME, I'm SO fucked,” all the while making futile gestures and running your hands through your hair until it stands on end.
Realize you have no cash, bank card, or credit card as you start on your six-week journey. Contemplate crying but discover you're somehow too tired to produce tears. Berate yourself for failing at this as well while muttering "stupid, stupid, stupid" under your breath.
[Repeat as many Step 3 actions as necessary until the pit of your stomach drops as far as it can go and the rushing in your ears drowns out your intermittent cursing.]
Postscript: Based on actual events! In our next episode, you’ll fail to determine which cab company’s lost and found might have your wallet; cancel your cards and discover that neither bank is familiar with the concept of “overnight me replacements immediately,” and find out that Apple Pay (your only means of purchasing anything for now) has made few inroads in Austria. As a result, dine your first night in Vienna at a McDonald's and enjoy your first breakfast at a Starbucks. Navigate the looking-glass world of Western Union and international wire transfers (with the assistance of a kind friend at home); delve into the mysteries of DHL overnight service (aided by equally kind neighbors), and resist the urge to just stay the hell in bed with the covers pulled over your head for the next week or so.
1 Every passenger receives the same (presumably) vegetarian meal: mustard-orange balls of an unidentifiable vegetable mash (squash? overcooked carrot?), under-seasoned rice, and a dish of pudding that smells like your grandmother’s face cream. Recall when meals on Lufthansa were actually pretty tasty; ponder the decay of civilization ↺ BACK
2 This feature of international flights is akin to putting a towel over a bird’s cage to convince it that night has suddenly fallen. I suppose that any avian passengers would indeed be fooled but the humans (yourself included) are well aware that it’s still only 5:00 in the evening—even if it’s 2:00 am in Europe at that moment. You’ll still emerge with jet lag, only now you’ll feel like that’s your fault for not buying into the charade. ↺ BACK
3 Or a parrot that’s put a towel over its own cage. There’s no difference for practical purposes. ↺ BACK