That film noire classic remains as vivid to me as when I first saw it while playing truant from school. Something about the harsh devastation of post-war Vienna made an indelible mark on my young Betamax-fuelled imagination leading, decades later, to this pilgrimage of a city break.
The Austrian capital, with its carefully preserved palaces and much lauded artistic legacy is a quite different place today. Forget post-war; nowadays Vienna is post-gentrification, post-yuppie and definitely post-Lederhosen. Underneath that wheel, for instance, is no longer an itinerant funfair squatting on scrubland; these days it's a slick, commercial set-up attracting streams of tourists who pour out of Praterstern station to enjoy the spacious tree-lined park as well as its rides. This long summer weekend, I am among them, dragging my two reluctant Viennese pals with me. Ignoring their shared grimace of dismay, I head straight for that wheel; someone better tell David O. Selznick that I’m ready for my close-up.
Ok, so I was wrong about it being the original Ferris wheel, it has graced the Viennese skyline only since 1897 when it was built to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Emperor Franz Josef I, uncle of the Franz Joseph whose assassination triggered WWI. This, however, was not the first big wheel; that was an American invention built in Chicago during 1893 and unveiled at the World’s Columbia Exposition. Little did the inventors know that their fin-de-siècle engineering boom would spread to most major cities in the 21st century.
My original plan was to visit all the major European cities with a wheel and see how they compare in size, and, more philosophically, how they compare in stature to the iconic rendering of The Third Man’s famous scene. But best made plans often go awry: I didn’t factor in how nerdy my local friends would find it. They tell me that to sample Vienna in a weekend I should start with a walk around the heart of the historic centre and see paintings by Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt at the Leopold Museum. On the Sunday, they recommend a trip to the flea market on the left bank of the Wien river in Mariahilf district before a lunchtime pint in the local gay bar called The Savoy, after which I should grab an early table for schnitzel in the pleasingly hipster Café Rüdiger hof. But, before they persuade me, I insist on the wheel and even sulk a bit until they acquiesce.
Vienna's fairground attraction has eschewed updates in favour of keeping its original design features. So Olde Worlde is it that most people are Instagramming it, not riding it, hence the queue moves quickly. Once aloft my eyes scan the beautiful city beneath - the flouncy baroque cathedrals and the palaces with symmetrical gardens. That is until my attention lands on an unusual island; a long, thin strip running down the middle of the Danube River. It's manmade, built in the 1970s as a city flood defence and now a nature reserve, popular for picnics. Daniel passes me his camera with a large zoom lens and I forget about the innocent dots of people far below and trace the elegant curve of the green riverbanks instead. There are dots of people on the island paths too but they’re all completely naked, wandering around in full sight of the passing cruise ship. Soon my friends are laughing at me for blushing “that’s FKK” they tell me; forget the Schnitzel, “we’ll take you tomorrow”.
In so much as I had ever thought about it, I associated the Freikörperkultur (FKK, literally 'free body movement') movement with East Germany, seeing it as the only logical way to experience some sort of freedom behind the Iron Curtain. I knew that the Nazis tried to ban it after they came to power in the early 1930s, Göring apparently thought it would kill women's natural modesty. Today we'd call it body positivity but to the Germans it was part of a wider health movement including sunbathing and sports. What I didn't realise was that FKK has is shockingly well organised and it even has official association, the first being founded in Essen, Germany a year after Vienna gained its Ferris wheel.
Austria has its own long-established FKK culture too. In Vienna, it turns out its located on and around this intriguing Danube island. Download the map from the tourist board and you won’t really get an idea of the distances involved but the Northern tip of the Island designated as an FKK area is almost parallel to Heiligenstadt - the spa town where Beethoven famously penned his letter of despair concerning his deafness. Running Southwards almost the entire length of the city, 21 kilometres to be precise, this thin streak of land also has a Southern site for FKK complete with camping ground. To access the Southern area, you can either take the Metro to Donausel and walk about an hour and a half down the Island's cycletrack or take a bus from Donaustadtebrüke metro down the East bank to a thin pedestrian bridge, little more than a hairline crack on the map, leading across the water to the heart of the FKK area.
I confess, I’m nearly 50 and less confident than my Austrian friends. I’m British - we don’t normally get naked in public when we’re sober - but I’m nothing if not stubborn so I agree to our FKK trip with a nonchalant shrug. The next day we take a packed lunch to the Island just as if we were the Famous Five but really because this is Vienna, and everything is shut on a Sunday unless you want instant coffee from the newsagents at the train station. I kid you not; no bakeries, no Starbucks, not a sausage.
The island is gorgeous in the warm morning sunshine. As we cross the pedestrian bridge I see a naked elderly man bending down to put a fishing rod in its carry case. He looks like a tired, leathery old prune, and I suppress a smile. But once past the fishing area and onto the island itself my blood runs cold: we’re still dressed as we look for our perfect picnic spot but so are lots of other people. FKK is voluntary – entire naked families with small children are dotted about amongst a whole variety of dressed and non-dressed people. Whilst I’m consumed with mild anxiety, I’m also aware that it’s very peaceful on the island, perched just outside the hum of the city, it's a sunny haven of insect sounds and birdsong. Generally, people are quiet, in fact the only human sounds are the tinkle of bicycle bells as lycra-clad figures whizz around the island’s track.
We choose our spot on the bank under a tree and undress dolefully. I’m at least 14 shades whiter than my friends and I sit primly clutching my kindle trying to concentrate on reading while brushing cascades of ants off my legs. I’m fine, honest. We’re fine too; we’re three gay men who shared a flat at university a quarter-century ago so of course we’ve seen each other naked before. That’s not what’s bothering me; it’s the other people that make me uneasy, the straight people. Older men with sunspots, a lady about my age wearing only tangerine-coloured espadrilles and a young couple with three children trying to roller-skate. This last group are clothed, and I assume they’re just passing through. But oh, the devastating normality of it all. It’s neither freeing nor sexy for me, it's banal.
As I look away, affecting a mask of boredom, my eye locks on to the ferris wheel in the distance, hazy through the midday sunshine. It’s all your bloody fault, I think, as I try to look cool while simultaneously holding in my stomach and nibbling on a Viennese whirl.
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