Horse Piss and Cobblestones

When it's autumn and feels like spring. When the city ripped out the beautiful old cobblestones to replace them with modern train station tiles. And the smell of horse urine has been replaced with the smell of nothingness. Of no character.

Whose idea was this? True history isn’t as appreciated by locals as it is by outsiders. The Colosseum was also pissed on by modern Romans, and statues were used as building material until one day they woke up and realized these were treasures.

Perhaps cobblestones don’t matter, or perhaps they're unhygienic and unhealthy for the horses. But animal rights groups will tell you that horse and carriage is cruel, even though it’s been around since the invention of the wheel. I guess coffee is unhealthy too, even though it’s been practiced forever. Then again, who really gives a fuck?

Stop drinking milk, and there won’t be cows grazing in the fields anymore. How does that better the world? Changes come and go, and they’re not always liked, but who asked me?

Imagine I had been asked about the cobblestones and said, “Nope.” And then they wouldn’t have removed the cobblestones, and the Hofburg entrance would still smell of horse piss. What would it have mattered?

Someone who has never seen the cobblestones—will they now say, “Yikes, what a horrid city, this Vienna?” Of course not. So why even mention the cobblestones?

For I, as my Dalmatian pissed on the columns of history, enjoyed these cobblestones and the stench of horse piss.