Categories: culture, words, translation, austria
Date: 31 August 2007 19:09:16
Lying in bed reading a book last night, I was apprised of an extraordinary fact. The author was writing about her childhood experiences in Vienna and how when the family went on holiday to Italy she found it amazing that they had to change to drive on the right side of the road. I was so astonished that I had to re-read the paragraph to see if I had understood correctly. Gentle reader, there it was in black and white as any old fool with an O level in German could see:
Einmal sind wir im Auto nach Italien gefahren, auf Sommerfrische, und als wir über die Grenze waren, mußten wir auf der anderen Straßenseite weiter, wie komisch, denn in Österreich fuhr man bis Hitler auf der linken Seite**.
She then went on to explain that when Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, half the country drove on the left of the road and the other half on the right. He decreed that there had to be a bit of Ordnung and, with immediate effect, i.e. overnight, this meant that everyone should drive on the right. This applied to all vehicles - except the trams apparently - which couldn't comply immediately so they continued on the left.*** It all got a bit messy because those areas which had been driving on the left couldn't see the traffic signs (with these facing in the wrong direction and all) and no doubt this was the beginning of road rage as we know it.
The reason the discrepancy existed was because about 120 years earlier Napoleon had thrown his weight about telling people which side of the road to drive their carts and the parts of Austria that drove on the right were those which had been affected by his conquests. (It appears that people must have been happy with the status quo because nobody bothered to change back to the way it had been once he'd left.)
I have delved further into this subject, entirely for the completeness of this blog entry, gentle reader. You may well know the following. I could half remember some of it but realised the gaps in my knowledge when quizzing the Lödgerin over breakfast about the History of European Road Usage. So here goes:
Back in olden times almost everybody travelled on the left side of the road because since most people are right-handed, swordsmen preferred to keep to the left in order to have their right arm nearer to an opponent and their scabbard further from him. Also a right-handed person finds it easier to mount a horse from the left side of the horse, and it would be very difficult to do otherwise if wearing a sword (which would be worn on the left). It is safer to mount and dismount towards the side of the road (i.e. the pavement - I would suggest this also applies to trams), rather than in the middle of traffic, so if one mounts on the left, then the horse should be ridden on the left side of the road.
Today, only approximately 20 countries drive on the left - but as this includes India - this is a third of the world's population.
So is there a moral to this story? Well, I guess if there has to be a moral, anyone considering world domination may like to take into consideration that if the plans include insisting people drive on the right, their military campaign may end in failure.
* Is right always right?
**This is inserted for my gentle readers, Smudgie and Lanark, and any others who have battled their way up to O level or beyond. [“Weiter leben: eine Jugend” by Ruth Klüger]
*** I have a feeling that when I lived in Vienna I had to make death-defying dashes through the traffic to reach the little island in the middle of the road to wait for the trams. Were these pre-WWII trams still fitted for left-hand drive or a cunning ploy by the tram company to scale down its operations? I shall make it my business to investigate when I am next there and shall report back.