km 0,000 Stadlau Entering the REx 2528 „Marchfeldwiesel“, my train. At present not exactly the most swift train connection, the Marchegger Ostbahn once used to be a major railway line. Opened in 1870, over decades it provided the rail connection between Vienna and Budapest, also featuring the legendary Orient Express. The fact that our weasel is currently riding Austria's longest straight railway track tells a lot about the morphology of the territory we are passing through. It is the westernmost spur of the Eurasian Steppe, the great wide open, for Austrians associated with a primal fear of sorts. km 0,725 Wien Erzherzog-Karl-Straße This is so nowhere, I once thought after having left my train from Bratislava to Vienna at that stop, still quite far from its final destination Südbahnhof. Somehow this suburbia captured me, and soon I found myself immersed in a Ballardian cityscape of large scale retail infrastructure, post-industrial brownfields, and shops that used to be, all nerved by the tentacles of commuter corridors. Suddenly, standing in front of a former secessionist cinema, now inviting to bet and win, I felt like discovering traces of some pre-suburban community long since gone. Actually it was back then, when I firstly imagined a fictive suburb between Vienna and Bratislava, a sort of neutral space enabling the two cities to confront each other at equal level. Back in the train I notice a group of young Spaniards sitting behind, obviously getting excited about their trip to Bratislava. km 3,981 Wien Aspern (under construction) My gaze follows a dead end railway track to the right, almost entirely conquered by weeds. Somewhere over there, in the middle of a former airfield, once there will beat the heart of the city of the future. According to its vision, right here Aspern - Vienna's urban lakeside should become home for 20.000 people until 2025. The accompanying brandbook does not only offer an incredibly detailed outlook on the everyday life of an exemplary future inhabitant of the development, but also nothing less than a clearcut frame to juxtapose things that might seem incompatible elsewhere. (1) Like one wouldn't have to choose
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