66. LITTLE GRAPEFRUIT IN VIENNA

This is part 4 of Little Grapefruit and the Capitals.

When Little Grapefruit wakes, she finds herself nestled into a vixen’s tale. She thanks her before rushing to hop onto a tram, then bus, to Leopoldsberg, high above the city. It is a beautiful morning. The sun shines like a white grapefruit, picking out highlights on the vista below. The Danube is blue today. Little Grapefruit observes the river’s route back the way that she swam, but is quickly distracted by the parkland and modern towers to the left, the islands in the middle, and the old town to the right.

Anyhow, she is grateful for her excellent eyesight. She wonders how many people realise that grapefruit are an excellent source of vitamin A as well as vitamin C. She zooms in on the sparkly orb that decorates the Spittelau Incinerator. She decides that she is going to have a day focusing on the work of the artist Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser. Imagine choosing a name that includes the words “rainy day”, “dark coloured” and “hundred waters”.  Little Grapefruit wonders what she would call herself if she had free rein.

Rolling down the hundreds of steps from the church high above Vienna to the waters of the Danube, Little Grapefruit struggles to control her descent. She arcs high above a busy road and plunges deep into the river, surfacing a few minutes later in the Donaukanal beside the incinerator. She would love to roll across the roof, along the curves. But she knows that is not possible, so she keeps going.

Hundertwasser had lots of ideas. He redesigned houses so that there could be space for “tree tenants”. He decorated boring buildings like the old incinerator with tiles and a gold egg and cut big chunks out to make unexpected shapes. And he thought that floors should be uneven and interesting, providing stimulation for the soles of your feet. He built houses by these rules. And they’re nearby.

Opting to roll rather than swim this time, she crosses central Vienna, narrowly missing a stomping busker playing the bagpipes and wearing a terrifying pair of floral Dr Martens. She crosses the Stadtpark, paying her respects to Johann Strauß.

Little Grapefruit buys a ticket for the Hundertwasser museum, rolling around the uneven floors until closing time. She decides that Hunderwasser was right: “the straight line leads to the downfall of our civilisation”. That night she sleeps under a Spraybanane (AKA banana graffiti). 

LITTLE GRAPEFRUIT AS SHARED IN A POSTCARD TO HER EVEN SMALLER WELSH COUSIN

28 November 2023

This post marks the end of part 2 of GANTOB’s 2023: A trilogy.

The adventures of Little Grapefruit will be concluded in a future pamphlet, which will contain some of the materials included so far in these 7″ single excerpts. The pamphlet (GANTOB Pamphlet X30) will be issued in a print edition of two:

• one in a Christmas card to the person who sent GANTOB the question “How I can I make my children appreciate the beauty and the value of a well crafted and thought through long playing record in the age of streaming?”
• one to the person who can identify the quote in GANTOB’s first book that attempts to answer that question.

Pamphlet X30 will also be available electronically, hidden in the blog posted on Christmas Day.

Have you found the electronic copy of Pamphlet X11 yet?

Send in your completed blog ideas for a chance to win the book of this blog (you’ll need to give an excuse for a late submission, but I’m quite reasonable really).