Under the underpass, I went, down the steps along the banks of the grey-green Danube, to watch the rusty barges ply their empty-looking way along the river, as they must have done for decades (during the war, I wonder?  remembering that the great iron bridge I have just crossed was built by Hitler, and given the Wagnerian name of the Bridge of the Niebelung).  Along the banks are the messy components of the infrastructure of industrial life that fascinate me in such moods, essentially the same everywhere in the world but always revealing some distinctive local-ness of design nevertheless.  Would a pile of scaffolding poles look be stacked quite like this in any other country than Austria?  Or garbage containers have quite such classically functional curves?

In amongst this unselfconscious grey utility it is a shock to come across a coach-park, filled with the most garishly painted buses I have ever seen.  Running a stylistic gamut from kitsch to early seventies modernism they stand in astonishing contrast to the picture-postcard tastefulness of downtown Linz.  It strikes me that the painting of these buses must be one of the few authentic forms of folk art left in Europe and wonder why it has not struck me before that this is as interesting in its way as the painting of trucks and auto-rickshaws in India which I have been documenting so obsessively.  I wonder how the artists achieve their effects. Are they conscious of the influences from the art-galleries?  from pop art, for instance?  Surely they must use sprays - there's never a brush-stroke in sight. But how do they get such smooth curves?  such sharp edges?  Do they use projectors?  One design reflected in that of its shiny black neighbour knocks any remaining smart-aleck cultural commentator smirk from my face.  By almost any standards it is stunning.  Recalling the sudden childhood clutch of delight at seeing one's first rainbow of oil in a puddle.

Past the coach-park are the concrete nether-faces of some huge public buildings.  by now the rain is falling relentlessly but the setting sun still manages to cast a golden glow and long dark shadows, transforming this humble bike-rack into something majestic and primeval, like a mythological stag.  And beyond it someone has graffitied a slogan in English which speaks to something in my mood.

The next morning starts with a change of mood:  an exhibition of Hungarian art in which I find myself most excited by the Vasarelys and Moholy Nagys.  Especially the Nagy Photographs with their daring spirals and diagonals.  On my way down the stairs from the exhibition I find I am seeing the world through Nagy eyes.

Whenever I take a lot of pictures in succession I find that each roll of film has its characteristic colours and shapes.  In Linz the dominant colour was yellow.  I found it over and over again on the buildings, old and new.  Here a church in the centre of town with some building work going on around it.  As I walk past these architectural treasures I remember that Linz was where Hitler spent his childhood, and try to imagine him passing, perhaps with his school-bag, observing with his aspiring-artist's eyes.  He must have examined this carving, I feel sure.  What did he make of its yin-yang, life-death imagery?   There's more yellow in the surreal window display of a shop selling dental accessories.  I try to avoid following the associations too far.

The place is full of building sites - presenting compositions which strike one with the poignant certainty that they will never be seen again - like this startling scene  with its mysteries of liquid yellow wash and green felt.   The building workers seem more numerous than in England.  This hieratic chain could have stepped out of some socialist realist poster of the thirties.  But even they seem to share a doomed quality - some innocence which would have trouble surviving amidst the detritus of global mass culture which lurks in the corners of even such a well-scrubbed city as this.

I took more pictures, many gloomier than these.  But will end with a dusky image (albeit badly scanned) which has some elegiac quality for me and lifts the mood (though you of course may find it sentimental)

(*in the interests of honesty i must record that i wasn't quite alone all weekend.  Three new acquaintances each briefly lightened the time for me:  the writer, Anna-Livia Braun; the artist, Bob Adrian;  and the anonymous and fatherly proprietor of a small and otherwise-about-to-close Greek restaurant - to all of whom I will always be grateful.  Bob Adrian, incidentally, has developed a web-site which explores the Nazi relationship to art.  It can be found on http://www.thing.or.at)