It's not about a simple leap, but a process. The way from the Big Wheel of Prater to the De Lorean of Back to the Future goes through numerous crucial moments. I experienced one at Universal Studios before I embarked on the vehicle that flies in time and space standing still. I lived another after I got off from Riesenrad. A few meters from the Wheel you come across a place that is common to all the fairs in the world: the trial of muscles. Traditionally, everything is simple. You take a hammer and you strike an anvil hard as if you wanted to break it in two. A silver ball goes up on a transparent pipe and it reaches a certain line. It's up to your muscles! In the Viennese Prater I was confronted with the ultramodern version of this age-old trial. Like in the previous eras, you have to pay. Like in the previous eras too, after you paid the money, you receive a hammer that you can hardly manage to lift. But, after having moaned, you strike the anvil with it and the ball's climbing is accompanied by the insipid comments of the machine: Well done! Some fellow you are! Come on, once again! Hurraaay! This exclamation will express the ragamuffin amazement of the machine, for having succeeded to raise the ball above the 100 line. Around, a group of jackanapes are watching you delighted. Although they don't have an electronic device like the machine, their comments are just as dumb. Like Turk, like pistol! It's a saying we, the locals of Dambovita region, use. Like man, like computer! would say, just as rightfully, those from the shores of Potomac. From the Electronic Trial of Muscles, the main alley of Prater leads you, whether you want it or not, to The Trial of Nerves. The moment is called Superman. Which means that the survivor of this test may consider himself a Superman. It is not at all difficult to get this coveted title. You get on a certain cradle, like the ones meant for children in parks and especially in the yards of the blocks, so that they can rock in. Just like in Back to the Future, a mechanism of metallic bars grips you tight, so as not to fall, or worse, to be thrown several miles away. After all the seats have been taken, the party begins! The board on which the chairs are laying starts shaking, turning upside down, jerking from one side to the other. The poor body undergoes awful trials. These culminate with the moment when the cradle cracks from all its joints, as if it had broken in two. Its temporary dwellers go down about one meter. A horrified scream gushes out of the breasts, louder than the Turks' screams at Rovine, from Eminescu's Third Epistle. It is, however, only a trial. The metal rod doesn't fall down. When all those from it have said goodbye to their throats, considering them already broken, the fall stops. With it, the machine stops, too. Yellow in their faces, ready to throw up, the payers unfasten their seatbelts and get off on the asphalt, barely standing on their feet. Others, still healthy, red in their face, take their places. After paying, of course. Excerpted from: The World Seen by a Ragged Romanian. Satirical Travel Notes from Overseas, PRO, 1999
by Ion Cristoiu (b. 1948)
