Absolute Demand

'Once, I had to have the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, I wanted to read an article on Mozart’s Zaide, which had appeared in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and since I could get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, as I had thought, only in Salzburg, which is eighty kilometers away from here, I drove to Salzburg, to the so called world famous festival town, with the car of a friend and with the friend and with Paul all for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. But in Salzburg I couldn’t get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Then I had the idea of getting the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in Bad Reichenhall and we drove to Bad Reichenhall, to the world famous resort town. But in Bad Reichenhall I couldn’t get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung either and so we all three of us drove more or less disappointed back to Nathal. But just as we were approaching Nathal, Paul suddenly thought we should drive to Bad Hall, to the world famous resort town, because there we would surely get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the article about Zaide and as a matter of fact we drove the eighty kilometers from Nathal to Bad Hall. But in Bad Hall we couldn’t get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung either. Since it was only a skip and a jump from Bad Hall to Steyr, twenty kilometers, we drove to Steyr too, but in Steyr we couldn’t get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung either. Then we tried our luck in Wels, but in Wels we couldn’t get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung either. We had driven altogether three hundred fifty kilometers only for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and in the end we had no luck. So then we went into a restaurant in Wels completely exhausted, obviously, to get something to eat and to rest, as the hunt for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung had brought us to the edge of our physical possibilities. With much hindsight, I think now, when I recall this story with the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Paul and I are pretty much the same. If we had not been completely exhausted we would definitely have gone to Linz and Passsau, perhaps even as well to Regensburg and Münich, and we actually would not have minded just buying the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in Zürich, since in Zürich, I think, we would have gotten it for sure. Because we couldn’t get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in any of these towns that we had driven to and where we had searched, since even in the summer it isn’t there, I know that all these towns we had driven to are miserable filth towns, which deserve their undistinguished names. If not filthier. And even then it became clear to me that a thinking person cannot exist in a place where one can’t get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. To think, I can get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung even in Spain and in Portugal and in Morocco anytime of year in the smallest towns with only the loneliest hotels. Not where we are! And because of the fact that we didn’t get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in all these presumably important towns, not even in Salzburg, all our rage blistered against this backward, narrow-minded, hick, and simultaneously repulsively megalomaniacal country. We should live only where we could get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, I said, and Paul agreed absolutely. But then in Austria there’s only really just Vienna, he said, since in all the other towns where it would seem one would get the Neue Zürcher Zeitung one as a matter of fact cannot get it at all. At least not every day and just when one would want it, when one absolutely needs it. It occurs to me that even now I haven’t gotten to the article on Zaide yet. I’ve long since forgotten the article and I’ve naturally also survived without this article. But at the time I had thought I had to have it. And Paul supported me in this absolute demand, and, what’s more, he as a matter of fact led me through half of Austria for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.'

from Wittgensteins Nephew