It was a fairly natural extension of my The Third Man themed day in Vienna that I should want to take a spin on the Riesenrad.  I’d been down the sewers; now it was time to be transported into the skies.

Besides, I had always wanted to take a ride on Vienna’s famous big Ferris wheel.  I don’t know why I had never done this before when I had visited Vienna in the past?

I suppose part of the reason might have been because it is located out in Prater, 3.5kms northeast of the city centre; an easy-enough train ride from Karlsplatz, but not somewhere that I would have considered readily walkable.

This time, though, I did make the effort to get out to Prater.  And I wasn’t the only one.  When I got there, it was packed.  It appeared that half of Vienna and their families had decided to spend that afternoon at the amusement park.  There was an hour-long queue for the Riesenrad.

However, ‘Patience’ is not my middle-name for nothing – clearly, given your initials, ‘Patience’ is not your middle-name at all; although ‘Composure’ might substitute. (Ed.)

I waited as the queue lined up to pay; as the queue snaked around an exhibition of Riesenrad memorabilia; as the queue reached the open-air.  When did this become a thing with queues: the queue within a queue?  Just when you think you have reached the end of one queue, you realise that it is only the start of the next queue.  Nevertheless, by the time I had reached the al fresco element of the queue, at least the big wheel was in sight, looming large above me.

I took considerable pleasure watching the antics surrounding every fourth compartment of the big wheel; these had been converted into private dining cars.  Each time one of these cars drew level to the embarkation platform, a uniformed waiter would emerge as if by magic, hurry into the carriage, and replace one course of the guests’ dining experience for the next one.  I speculated about whether slow-eaters would have time to complete their meal between each rotation?

But then, suddenly, there I was.  Front of the queue, and being ushered into a carriage, along with a dozen or so fellow travellers.  And before I knew it, we were off and up.

Amidst admiring the views of Vienna – even spotting distant Schloss Schönbrunn, where I had visited three days earlier – I rather forgot about my intentions of following in Harry Lime’s footsteps.  The bright daylight of a late-summer afternoon might have had something to do with it.  My memories of The Third Man are of a city cloaked in perpetual twilight; atop the Riesenrad, the over-riding impression was one of supreme clarity.

But, how wrong could I be.  Clarity was the very last thing that I had in my possession at that moment.

It was not until I reached home, several weeks later, that I gained any kind of real insight.  Feeling nostalgic regarding my previous visit to Vienna, I went in search of the photographs I had taken at that time.  And there they were, at the end of a pack of rather blurry snaps, two pictures taken at the Prater from close on thirty years’ prior: the Riesenrad from ground level and, more telling, a view of Vienna, clearly taken from the summit of the giant Ferris wheel.

I’d been there before; been to Prater; ridden the wheel; done it all before; practically taken identical photographs.  Did I remember any of it?  Not a jot.  Not even a false memory; just plain forgotten.

Within the field of False Memory research, Valerie Reyna and Charles Brainerd talking about Fuzzy-trace theory, suggest that humans store information in two distinct ways: verbatim and gist.  Verbatim is clear and precise; gist is fuzzy and indistinct.

While I like to believe that I walk through much of life in something of a continuous state of fuzzy-trace, when it comes to the Riesenrad, I don’t even have a gist.

© E. C. Glendenny

E. C. Glendenny wonders what other travels she has forgotten?