When I was a younger, the seats in the U3 were dull and comfortable. I can’t quite remember their color, but it was really nice to sit in them - unfortunately, they were often ripped open by what lawpeople call “vandals”, and what I tend to call “fucking punks who should be castrated”. A few years ago, a new kind of seat was introduced - blue, much less comfortable, and covered with a psychedelic mix of symbols, all for the sake of keeping vandals at bay. But it seems that didn’t help either, and now we have those things in the U3. They are made completely of plastic, they’re probably the most uncomfortable thing I ever sat in, and to top it all, they’re butt-ugly. What’s next? Cubist benches made from concrete, colored brown and black? C’mon, I know vandalism probably costs the Wiener Verkehrsbetriebe quite a lot, but it can’t be bad enough to justify this.

On an unrelated sidenote, is it me, or does the amount of insane people always rise shortly after new year’s eve? On a single trip from my home to the Möbel, I was confronted by a guy who constantly screamed that everyone around him should be thrown into the train tracks while he did gymnastics with his duffle bag, a loudly singing sikh who was aiming his flashlight at people as if it were a gun, and a guy who demanded that I show him the nearest place to buy hashish, and made some rather rude remarks about me and my direct family when I declined. O tempora, o mores.