By: Gilbert Pilayre
The Phantom Villa
I walk my dog Floki every day. This summer we can cover a minimum of six kilometers to eight if my stamina holds out, my resolve endures, anyway. No question about the dog. I let him go without the leash. Just his muzzle to refrain him from gobbling things along the way. There’s been a lot of reports of dog poisoning around the city. So, to avoid regrets, he wears his muzzle yet free from the leash. He can sniff all he wants while I watch him from afar. He responds immediately when I blow my whistle in case I don’t see him anymore. We kept on checking each other every now and then. Since I’m getting nearer to my senior years, I think he understands that I’m a little slow already. From afar I can see this big Villa painted white and gray. However, when we hike the route, it simply disappears. No traces of where it stands. But the street leading to the former Austrian radio and tv broadcasting (ORF) as well as the historical building that once housed its studio stood there as it did it before. I’m a bit obsessive. I don’t easily give up when a thing catches my fancy. Hiking these trails up Bisamberg is nothing new to me. I once joined a group of hikers that went around the city of Vienna. The trail is called Rundumadum which translates colloquially to “all around”. It covers a total distance of 120 kilometers, divided into 24 stations or stages. The route takes you through a beautiful cross-section of the city’s diverse green spaces, including the Vienna Woods (Wienerwald), the Danube wetlands (Donau-Auen), local vineyards, and recreation areas like the Bisamberg and the Prater. In the early 1930s, radio was fast becoming a powerful mass medium. Austria’s national broadcasting company at the time, RAVAG, needed a cutting-edge, high-powered medium-wave (MW) transmitter to blanket the country and push back against cross-border propaganda streaming in from Germany.
Following the 1938 Anschluss, the station was seized by the German Reichspost and integrated into the Nazi regime’s Reichssender propaganda network. Because of its high power, it became one of the most critical stations in the region during the war. After the war and the subsequent occupation, rebuilding began. In 1959, a brand-new, even more powerful transmission facility went into full regular service. Two giant steel masts were erected: a smaller South Mast (120 meters) and a towering North Mast (265 meters). At 265 meters tall, the North Mast became the tallest structure in Austria—even taller than Vienna’s famous Danube Tower (Donauturm). The station went permanently silent at the end of 2008. Because maintaining the colossal steel towers without any active broadcasting revenue was wildly expensive, the decision was made to dismantle them. On February 24, 2010, thousands of onlookers gathered as the two iconic masts were professionally brought down via controlled explosions. With the fall of the 265-meter mast, the Danube Tower officially inherited the title of Austria’s tallest structure. Today, Senderstraße is best known to locals as a peaceful, scenic route. It serves as a gateway for hikers tackling the local trail networks and a scenic path cutting through the famous local vineyards and cozy Heurige (wine taverns) built along the foot of the hill. Our daughter told us how her entire school watched the controlled demolition of the antennas from the school windows. Before the ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation) consolidated its operations at the massive ORF-Zentrum Küniglberg in the 13th district, its primary, historic home was the iconic Funkhaus Wien.
Perhaps that is why the phantom villa refuses to reveal itself. It is not hiding behind the trees, nor concealed by some trick of the hillside. It belongs to that curious country where memory and longing quietly conspire against certainty. We glimpse it only from a distance, just as we glimpse the lives we once imagined for ourselves—bright, complete, and somehow always beyond reach.
Floki, of course, knows nothing of vanished towers, forgotten studios, or the ghosts of broadcasting empires. He follows the scent of the earth with the confidence of a creature who has never needed history to explain the present. I envy him for that. My own steps grow slower each summer, and the hills seem a little steeper than they once were. Yet I keep returning, half expecting the villa to emerge from the silence as if to reward persistence.
It never does.
Instead, the vineyards remain, the wind wanders through the grass, and the paths continue without apology. The world has an unembarrassed way of carrying on after its landmarks have disappeared. Steel masts fall, buildings surrender to time, voices fade from the airwaves, and those who remember them become fewer with each passing year.
Still, there is a strange comfort in walking. The absence itself becomes a companion, no less real than the things that endure. Perhaps we do not search because we expect to find; perhaps we search because the act of looking keeps faith with what has already slipped away.
And so tomorrow, if the weather is kind and my knees permit, Floki and I will take the same trail again. I will look toward the place where the villa seems to stand, knowing it will vanish as I draw near. He will pause only long enough to make sure I am still following. Then we will continue together—an old man and his dog—leaving behind nothing but footprints that the next rain will quietly erase.
Those who would give light must endure burning.
-Viktor Frankl