After packing his luggage, Bismarck prepared to leave Vienna. He could only marvel at how every visit revealed the city's extravagant changes.
In Prussia, bicycles were regarded as cultural and economic symbols of Austrian imperial invasion, and everyone did their utmost to belittle their usefulness.
At least in Berlin, most people only dared ride them in private. In daily life, they still took public carriages or walked.
Even most of Bismarck's colleagues called bicycles toys. Of course, Prussia was producing these so-called toys as well.
Bismarck had bought Prussian domestic goods himself, and he felt his colleagues were not wrong. They truly were toys—bumpy, exhausting, and terribly unhealthy.
Yet in Vienna, bicycles had nearly replaced carriages. Only those with limited mobility still took public carriages.
As for private carriages, only a small number of dignitaries and nobles rode them. The hired carriages seen everywhere on Berlin's streets were almost nowhere to be found here, replaced instead by modified human-powered tricycles.
There were still some hired carriages near the train station, but they could only fleece outsiders who were foolish and flush with cash.
In fact, human-powered tricycles had already utterly surpassed hired carriages in every respect in Vienna at this time. The clearest proof was that the centuries-old Vienna Carriage Association had been bankrupt for three years.
It could not be helped. The difference in costs was simply too great.
Especially when it came to maintenance costs. The expense of keeping a horse had been mentioned before: concentrated feed, harnesses, stables, professional coachmen—the full set of costs was so high that many famous writers and musicians of the time could not afford it.
A human-powered tricycle consumed far less. It only needed one full meal, and sometimes not even one full meal.
That factor alone drove the prices of the