20. The Autumn People.

“Beware the autumn people… For some, autumn comes early, stays late through life…For these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir in their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eyes? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles- breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them.”

– Ray Bradbury, “Something Wicked This Way Comes”

One of my favorite books is Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes," which is about a traveling autumn carnival that wrecks havoc on a small town. The carnival freaks manipulate and bend reality, terrorizing two boys and the other townspeople they visit. While the boys manage to save the town at the end of the book, their father contemplates his own mortality in the wake of defeating the evil forces. It's a terribly melancholy book, and I've always enjoyed revisiting it in the late summer when the California State Fair and other county fairs come to town. A stroll through the Midway during sunset, watching the dizzying rides and rollercoasters, always reminds me of Something Wicked This Way Comes. While summer draws to a close, the nights start to become cooler and the sky darkens a little earlier, evoking the feeling that fall is near.

I'm a sucker for fairs & carnivals in general, I love the inherent anxiousness that is embedded within the various sights, where you are never quite sure what you'll see around the next corner. A clown? Magic show? Haunted house? All emotions are turned up to 11 - the smells, the sounds, the lights - carnivals are places where reality bends. 

I decided to walk from the Augarten flakturm to the Prater in the Leopoldstadt district. The flakturm, one of Hitler's anti-air monoliths, is a place where reality truly does bend. I'll save that story for another day. Anyway, some classmates mentioned that they had visited the Prater, where the iconic Riesenrad (or giant Ferris wheel) is located. Shown in the Orson Welles film The Third Man, the prater amusement park is the perfect setting for a film noir thriller. 

The Riesenrad. 

As mentioned, I love fairs and carnivals. I've been to quite a few, and when I'm feeling particularly brave, I'll ever ride a rollercoaster or two. But I truly did not expect the beauty and uniqueness of the Prater. For one, you see the Ferris wheel in the distance long before you hit the park. As I was walking from the flakturm to the park, the wheel becomes clearer and clearer in the distance, and anticipation builds. 

The admission to the park is free, which is a stunning feature on its own. Unfortunately, the park museum is only open on the weekends, and I want to be sure and return to this before I leave.

Setting foot into the amusement park was one of the most magical experiences I think I have ever had. The weather was comfortable and the swarm of nightly visitors hadn't yet come, and the park was relatively empty. Families rode on water rides, cooling off in the humidity. Children ate ice cream and sat in the shade. I was a very small visitor to a very large park, where every corner was detailed with history. What was once a hunting ground, Emperor Rudolph II forbade entry because the area was being overrun with poachers. In the 1760s, Emperor Josef II declared the park free for public enjoyment, facilitating the establishment of cafes and other attractions to the area.

Nowadays, each attraction and food booth is mostly owned by local families. The craft and care that is in each attraction is worth slowing down and taking a close look: there's so many things to see, so much detail on each ride and haunted house - even the arcades were in 100% working order. I couldn't find a single out of order machine, the one air hockey table out of commission was being tinkered on by a mechanic. It's hard to properly convey how surprised I was at the pristine yet retro aesthetic that was present at the park. Having traveled to places like Great America and Six Flags, usually many rides are dirty, paint peeling off the edges, where little attention is given to the artistry of the rides and attractions. The Prater was the antithesis to every crappy attraction I've ever seen, it was clear that the artisans and maintainers of the park truly take pride in their work. 

The following photos were just a handful of what I took - I spent about 3 hours here, wandering down each corridor, mouth agape. I am not ashamed to admit that at one point I had to sit down and collect myself, particularly on the corridor where all the haunted houses are located. I just had never seen such beautiful pieces of amusement park art and architecture. It was like the amusement parks I had always seen in movies and TV shows, wishing that I could have an adventure at a place so grand. 

Out of all the places I've visited in Vienna so far, this is the place that stole my heart. I don't know it's the odd preoccupation with death imagery (there were so many skulls, devils, skeletons, ghouls, monsters....!) or the kitschy beauty, but I just fell in love. The subtle humor in the park pokes fun at its Viennese audience. In such a deeply Catholic country, I admire the gumption of the cathedral tower ride that sends people on a huge vertical drop down a church spire (you can see a few of the riders in the midst of a drop in the third photo above.) With the presence of so many ghosts and monsters, murderers and mutants, the spire is at the midst of it all, triumphantly standing tall.