Vienna and the Curse of Franz Ferdinand’s Car

I walk through Vienna across rain-sparkling cobbles to the History Museum. This Austrian city has fascinated me since childhood. At ten years old my favourite book was a mouldy paperback called Stranger than Science. These frightening stories of real life horror ignited my childish curiosity. The best was The Curse of Franz Ferdinand’s Car. It was a tale about a 'demonic motor' that ended up in a Viennese museum after a succession of owners met with grisly deaths.

The car’s relationship with its owners generally followed this formula: car breaks down, baffled driver peers under chassis, car reverses over baffled driver. The car fell into the hands of the Hapsburg Court and in 1914, claimed its most famous victim, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The shots fired on that Sarajevo morning lit the touchpaper for a world war. The book is unequivocal; the car was the evil mastermind. The story engrained itself in my young memory and although it took some years, I finally reached the city that fired my childhood imagination.

The ring road preserves an old city atmosphere, creating an island in the centre of the metropolis. The streets have spillover cafes and elegant shops, architecturally independent but never crassly juxtaposed. Eccentric public housing sits alongside slim art nouveau offices and rose-bordered gardens add colour and scent. I see Stefansdom and its reflected glory in the glass facade opposite the church. Mozart lived here, Haydn just over there. I hurry past the Third Man sewer tours, away from the city of Orson Welles and Graham Greene. The streets have a brooding, moonlit atmosphere and the squares shine romantically as locals splash through the rain. Vienna has many stories; of smuggling and war and demonic cars from cheap horror books.

Inside the museum, against a plain orange wall is the cursed car from my childhood. It appears innocuous, studded with leather and a faint smell of engine oil hangs in the gallery. It looks in better shape than several cars I've owned. I tell the curator the story and he laughs, "do I believe the car has its own will?" My hesitation amuses him. "Your first visit?" I nod, "The city of Klimt and Schiele, Mozart and Freud and you’re interested in this car!"

I grin, recalling that tatty paperback story that brought me all the way here and I think of all those other Viennas, waiting, just outside the door.