Wow, I just realized that since my trip to Vienna I’ve already been again to Brazil and then to New York! Time to catch up!
Walking in Vienna you get the strange feeling: from one point of view it’s like the time stopped in the 19th century, with huge imperial buildings surrounding everything, people riding carriages, and those wonderful cafeterias where you can sit and sip a cup of chocolate cream or have a slice of sachertorte or drink a glass of Ottakringer bier. On the other hand, modern glass-and-steel buildings stand just in front of ancient cathedrals (just like the Haas Haus in Stephansplatz, where I stayed), you can keep on talking on the phone while riding the very efficient metro, you can hire public bicycles from the many parkings scattered all over the city center and pay by credit card to the automatic counter and most importantly you can feel the good wealth of their economy.
After a while I realized they talk a different German. That is, the Austrian language is very similar to German but there are quite a few different words. For example, in the morning instead of greeting you with Guten Tag (good morning in German), they rather say Grüß Gott (God greet you). In a book shop I even found a German-Austrian dictionary. Anyhow, if you talk English everybody will understand, and if you talk Italian they you will probably get away with it as well.
On Sunday night I’ve been to Rathaus Platz. In front of the building they had assembled a temporary movie theater and then in the nearby park there were plenty of kiosks to buy drinks and food. Thousands of people gathered in that place to have dinner and attend the show, with age ranging from teenagers to the fifties. It was so crowded that I had an hard time buying some food and then finding a spot to sit down and eat it. After a while the show began, and I realized it was the movie of a classical music concert recorded somewhere else who knows when. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, positively impressed for how much they care about classical music. Can you imagine something similar in your country? Certainly not in mine.
I flew with Austrian Airlines and I have to say they’re fun: they play Strauss concerts all the time! One interesting note: it looks like Vienna is very well connected with Eastern Europe and in fact you can see lots of Eastern people walking around, talking Russian or reading newspapers written in Cyrillic.
