Write to James Leavey

When I was last in Vienna, I was actively encouraged to ignite and smoke a Montecristo No.2 in the sewers, during Dr Brigitte Timmerman’s excellent ‘Return to the Third Man’ tour.  What brought on this apparently suicidal act, was the fact that we had entered the main sewer where the river Wien flows down from the Vienna Woods, under the city, and into the Danube.  Hidden away behind concrete walls on either side of the underground river are major sewerage flows, which converge with the Wien about two kilometres further in.

It all started when my tour guide opened the rusty door of a round advertising column - four of which offer the most comfortable access to the 7,000 kilometres of Vienna’s underground waterways.  She was about to lead me down 42 grimy steps in the wake of Orson Welles, whose famous cinematic character, Harry Lime, had been shot somewhere below us by Joseph Cotten, in Carol Reed’s classic British movie, way back in 1948.

There being insufficient electric torches to go round Dr Timmermann’s tour party of ten, we were each presented with a long, thin, sickly orange candle.  Then our guide realized she had forgotten the matches.  And that’s when my trusty S J Dupont double-flame cigar lighter came to the rescue.

Meanwhile, it occurred to me that if I could fire up a few torches, there should be nothing stopping me from using the aroma of a fine Havana to mask the faint but dreadful smell pouring out of the open doorway.  The rest of my party, about half of whom were non-smokers, suddenly, after one whiff of what was to come during their trip below ground, decided it would be a great idea for me to lead them through the sewers, behind our guide, and encouraged me to exhale as much Havana smoke as possible, which they breathed in like a balm.

After 30 minutes of trudging into the darkness, while carefully avoiding stepping on the slimy flotsam and jetsam that had been washed up on our side of the River Wien, which included countless cigarette butts, and an obscene magazine portraying a naked female cigar smoker, we arrived at the very spot where Welles/Lime stood, holding a cigar, before he went on the run.  We were then requested to extinguish all naked flames, in case we accidentally ignited the methane gas emanating from the open sewer a few yards up a tunnel on our right, and blew up Austria’s capital.

Later, over a cup of strong coffee and a slice of Sachertorte in the Hotel Sacher, Dr Timmermann explained that the Austrians had recently reintroduced their special squad of sewer police (who’d originally been established in 1934, to deal with the crime that then flourished via the city's countless interlocked tunnels and cellars, and disbanded in 1955), mainly to act as counter-terrorists on behalf of a city that is one of the world’s top international conference centres.

So, if you ever end up in Vienna’s sewers with Dr Timmermann and an armed Austrian policeman pulls you up for terrorizing his city with a lit cigar, please put it out promptly.  There are still plenty of smoker-friendly places on the ground level of Vienna, where you will be welcomed to reignite your cigar and smoke it to your heart’s content.