Do you still remember the Top 40 song from the band Soul Asylum, “Runaway Train”? The music video shows different faces of lost children and teenagers flashing on the screen.

Anyway this doesn’t have anything to do with the trains or even the lost teeners, but the lost shopping carts in Vienna. It is amazing how rampant it is–being practiced without thinking of any consequence–that you can’t help noticing the ominous number of carts lining up in the courtyard of every flat building. Sometimes they are left on the sidestreets ready to be used the next day.

I know that there is a certain ordinance now, urged by the grocery shops like Spar and Billa, to fine anyone who is caught taking home a shopping cart.

I am not sure if this a case of “only in Vienna.” In a way, I find it amusing.