Quiet and imposing in their sleep, not even dust dares to cover the ancient brass shine and painted wooden scales. Their eyes stay shut even when you’re passing right under their noses, a misstep you would have regretted in their days. But now, energy has left them, no lightning flows through steely claws anymore. Visitors are allowed to get much closer than when their massive bodies were still weaving impassible runs on the streets of Zurich, skimming over melting summer asphalts and across icy winter tracks. They were tame creatures though, unflinching hard workers repeating the same ritual of the agreed schedules while carrying an entire small world in their large bellies smelling of grease and chipped wood, a world of cheerful school kids biting in crumbly biscuits, of talkative grandmas jokingly chiding them, of grave employees frowning from behind thick rimmed glasses when reading a morning newspaper and sometimes a street musician or two singing foreign songs, warm scenes punctuated by the lively ring of that familiar bell. Close your eyes in the golden evening, let a glass of Aranykakas Altbier tickle you with dried fruit and biscuits, and allow the flamboyant beast from your memories grow back to what it once was. Can you see its massive body stubbornly weaving that same path, year after year along those trees shedding colorful tears in the cold autumn rains and blooming again in spring pride? Can you hear also the faint screech of metal wheels, their determination starting to creak, inner rumble louder and louder, can you hear them starting to get tired? Times have changed… when the dragons first arrived they were heroes, now they’re museum pieces, body worlds… frozen in time here, where old trams came to die.