leopoldstadt goes banlieu

leopoldstadt, vienna - that is the neighbourhood daruman calls home. the banlieus of paris - that is the place where the local youth developped this custom of using blazing cars to illuminate the streets to compensate for their lack of perspective. right?

a funny smell in the kitchen, traces of soot on the toilet seat and yes, a blurred memory of flashing blue lights and a lot of shouting in the middle of the night... when daruman left his apartment this morning the pieces of that puzzle he was pondering on at breakfast suddenly fell into place. no, the fire had not been in the house on the other side of the street it must have been in his, because the whole stairwell was black from soot and the stench unbearable. indeed, as daruman steps down to the first landing he finds what had been the source of the fire: all that was left of the paper recycling containers just inside the entrance corridor were a few crumbles of plastic.

now, daruman as part of his formation as an communications expert has been monitoring an austrian newspaper over the last months where in the light of the recent upheavals in french suburbs commentators did not stop pointing out that such a thing would never ever occur in an autrian city. it is not because young heads this far east do not get heated so fast (which is what daruman thinks; the icy november winds in vienna freeze all ideas of revolution in his head) but according to them it is because austria follows a much more embracing and tolerant policy concerning the integration of immigrants.

so it is just a random act of arson ("some careless resident mistaking the containers for oversize ashtrays" is not an accident in daruman's book). how soothing indeed. if not pyromanic someone is certainly in need for more perspective in leopoldstadt, as well.

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