10 things to know about the viennese and why you should visit vienna anyway

8/9/2019 10 Things to Know About the Viennese and Why You Should Visit Vienna Anyway

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10 Things To Know About the Viennese

and Why You Should Visit Vienna Anyway

BY KATE WISEMAN

transatlanticsketches.com

In January, I moved to Vienna, Austria, without knowing a thing of substance about it,

including the language. The one thing I did know was that they have a butterfly house

that is open all year long. Why did I focus on that instead of something useful, like the

history of the Hapsburg Empire? I dont know. But since then, I have learned a fe w

things about Vienna. And despite the peculiarities of the Viennese, I love living here.

1. Number one most important fact: Austrians are not Germans.God forbid that you mistakenly refer to an Austrian as a German. Austrians are not

Germans. Austrians do not want to be like Germans. Austrians will, in fact, tell you how

much they hate Germans if you give them even a moments chance. Do not remind them

that they speak Germanthey will hem and haw and disagree, and then they will tell

you that they sort of speak German. It is Austrian German, and it is more melodic, less

harsh, more soothing essentially, less German. Charles V, King of Spain and Emperor

of the Holy Roman Empire from the early to mid-1500s, reportedly said I speak

Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse. Austrians

would probably take it a step further and say that if you speak German to a horse, then

Austrian is suitable for children, babies, and delicate plants.

At first, I thought this was a simple regional quirk. After all, Im from Michigan, and I

dont really want someone assuming Im from Ohio just because Im from the Midwest

and we share the same accent. Similarly, I would probably get extremely upset if

someone assumed that I shared anything with Canadians just because I used to live next

door to them. Lets be quite clear about that. So, ok. I understand: you are from Austria

and you live in Vienna and you do not want to be mistaken for a German. I am with you.

The longer you stay in Vienna, though, the more apparent it becomes that this need to

distinguish between Austria and Germany goes a lot deeper than simple regionalism. In

the constant onslaught of Germany-bashing, there is a harsh undercurrent. In the 1940s,Austrians and Germans shared a now-unpleasant role in World War II. While Germans

seem to be doing their best to atone for their part in the atrocities, Austriansequally

complicit at the timeare doing their best to forget it, or at least distance themselves

from that reality as much as possible. Historically speaking, that has already happened.

Austria famously voted for Anschlu, or annexation, thus inviting Hitler to return

home to his native Austria and establish his Reich there as well. After the war, however,

the Austrian constitution was re-written, and one of the founding premises of that
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constitution was that the Austrians were Hitlers first victims. All the joking and all the

snide remarks about how different Austrians and Germans are seem to be the

superficial manifestation of a national effort to desensitize themselves to their post-war

hypocrisy. On the plus side, it has led them to rejuvenate a very distinct sense of

nationality and culture, which brings me to the next thing you should know about the

Viennese.

2. The Viennese are cultured.Have you heard? Have you heard? No really, have you heard? The Viennese are cultured.

They have art, they have music, they have museums, they have opera houses and

theaters and exhibition halls and... and by the way, have you heard about how

cultured the Viennese are?

I cant really fault the Viennese for being as proud as they are about their wealth of

culture because it is warranted. They have something for everyone. Do you love music?

Their opera house is one of the most-renowned venues in Europe. The Vienna Boys

Choir, which dates back to the 1498, performs every Sunday in the Burgkapelle. Mozart,

Strauss, Schubert, and Beethoven all lived and worked in Vienna. Are you interested in

art? Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele all studied in Vienna, and some of their most famous

works are in the city. The Leopold Museum has the worlds largest collection of Schiele.

Kunsthalle Wiene was designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser and houses

international contemporary art with a specialization in cross-genre, cross-border

trends (according to the website). The MAK, a museum for applied arts, features

furniture and design. The Belvederes collection of Austrian art spans from the Middle

Ages to today, and you can see Klimts The Kiss there. Architecture? Dance? Film? It is all

there.

The wonderful thing about the Viennese being so cultured is that it does not feel archaic

or datedViennese culture is something that is part of everyday life for the Viennese.

Students lounge on the front lawn of the Hofburg Imperial Palace compound and drink

at the bars in the courtyard of the Museumsquartier. H&M took over what used to be an

elegant mens clothing store and kept the wood paneling and the chandeliers. There are

performance artists and those ridiculous people who paint themselves silver and expect

you to pay them for the rare opportunity of having a photo next to something bizarre

right outside of Stephansdom. Past and present mingle freely in Vienna, and what would

be in any other city cultural in quotation marks is just as much a partof Vienna as thepeople in it.

3. The Viennese are morbid.Part One: You Are Going To Die. Get Over It.

I do not know how to say it more gently than this: the Viennese are morbid. A couple of

weeks into living in Vienna, I went out with some new friendsa mix of Viennese and


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Today, I saw a bad Viennese in the U-Bahn. She was fat. She was drunk. And she was

letting her tiny little dog urinate in the underground walkway between the U3 and the

U2. Two days ago, I saw a good Viennese in the U-Bahn. I was rushing down the stairs to

catch the train before it left, and a man stuck his foot out into the door to make sure that

if I didnt quite make it, he could prop open the door for atleast a second or two for me.

As far as the Viennese go, wellsometimes youre lucky, and sometimes youre not. Itslike the rhyme about the little girl with a curl: when she was good, she was very, very

good, and when she was bad she was awful. Just substitute in the Viennese for the

little girl and multiply by approximately 2.3 million.

5. The Viennese like to drink.Some countries are beer countries. Some countries are wine countries. Some countries

are both and double fist. In Italy, you could mark the passage of afternoon into evening

with an aperitivoa drink with some finger foods or appetizers to wet your palate. As

one of my Italian professors explained it to me, You take the aperitivo in order to open

your stomach and prepare it for dinner, as if I needed any encouragement to eatwhile I

was in Italy. In Vienna, on the other hand, you can mark many of the days passages with

a drinkfrom night into morning, with sekt (Austrian champagne) or wine spritzers at

10 am at the Naschmarkt, from morning to afternoon, with a beer at noon for lunch,

from afternoon into evening, with an aperol spritzer or a glass of wine at five while

sitting at an outdoor caf, and then from evening into night, with whatever gets you

drunk for as long as you can last. The drinking literally never stops, and why should it?

Alcohol is cheap, and the Viennese have a lot to drink aboutyou know, things like

imminent death, the loss of the Hapsburg Empire, the encroachment of immigrants

from the East, and so on.

6. The Viennese like to smoke.From what Ive seen, it is more unusual for a Viennese person not to smoke than to

smoke. According to the World Health Organization, that is not quite trueonly 40.7%

of Austrians smoke. (In the US, its about 20%). I have a friend who is half-Austrian and

half-American, and she does not smoke. Her Austrian friends dismiss this peculiarity as

part of the American in her. The EU is pressuring the Austrians to ban smoking inside

public buildings and offices, but the smokers disagree. Recently, there was a

referendum in Austria about this issue and 81% of Austrians voted against the smoking

ban. 81%! I dont think that my family of five people can achieve that kind of quorum ona political issue, and we all love each other.

As it stands right now, there are special non-smoking areas in large restaurants, but

they dont have to be separated by even a wall from the smoking section. Workplaces

can choose to allow smoking if they want, as can small restaurants, which seems to suit

the Viennese just fine. As far as I can see, they just want to breathe in the deep aromas

of second hand smoke in every bar and restaurant in the whole city. "Mmm, how

delicious," said Reinhard. "Yes," said Hilde. "Let's just ash our cigarettes onto our food


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In the most of the Western world, we have moved past formalities like using someones

full title every time you write them an email or using formal verb forms. Not so in

Vienna. You must use the formal verb conjugation and full title of anyone older or better

educated than you until you are officially invited to be on a first name basis. If you are

writing to an engineer, for example, you must address her as Frau Diplom Ingenieur

Wiener Schnitzel, or Mrs. Master of Engineering Wiener Schnitzel. If you are meeting aprofessor, you must address him as Herr Doktor Goulyasch Suppe, or Mr. Doctor

Goulyasch Suppe. Forget this, and all is lost.

If you are invited into someones home, they will expect you to take off your shoes. If

this affects your showering behavior or your choice of socks, consider yourself warned.

Depending on whether you are dealing with a good Austrian or a bad Austrian, you will

either make your hosts extremely uncomfortable while they try to figure out how to

broach the issue or you will invite the wrath of the house upon your head.

Finally, you must greet the elderly. Young people do not seem to care about being

acknowledged on the street, but when you see an old person coming down the street

towards you and her posture says I am ignoring you, but I know that you are there,

she is not hoping that you will return the favor and ignore her too. She is waiting for you

to make the first step, and the appropriate thing to say is Gru Gott, which literally

means Greet God but in this context means Good day. If you miss your cue, you

might find out that the little old grandma in the fur coat and pumps has spent the last

forty years or so practicing using her shopping bag as a weapon for aggravated assault.

If you see a middle-aged person on the street, you are not necessarily obliged to greet

them, but a Hallo or a Morgan will doMorgan means good morning. If you go

inside a shop, greet the shopkeeper no matter what her age.

If you have had a nice evening or are saying goodbye to Viennese friends, they will kiss

you twice, once on both cheeks. Go to the left first. That is all I can say about that.

9. The Viennese have astounding facial hair.Part One: Facial hair, male.Never before in all my days and all my internet searches have I seen so many radical

mustachios in one place. We're talking twisted, waxed, curled, braidedyou name it,

they've got it. To make it even better, the mustache epidemic seems to be developinghand-in-hand with some sort of Gandalf revival movement. Long, full, white beards that

converge in a small, less thick point. And giant walking sticks and capes. And magic. And

little hobos, I mean hobbits, running around their ankles. Ok, maybe not the hobbits, but

at the very least, full beards abound in Wien.

Part Two: Facial hair, female.


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What is there, a special Austrian refugee visa for former freak show artists? There are

so many really, really bearded women here! And they always freak me out. I turn a

corner, and there's this little old lady OH MY GOD SHE'S GOT A BEARD and she's

hobbling along... Do you see the potential trauma here?

10.The Viennese do not jaywalk.There is a giant swath of Europe starting from just north of Italy and extending through

Scandinavia in which the people do not jaywalk. Why not? I ask. Warum?? It is so

fast and easy.

I thought at first that this reluctance to jaywalk was just timidity, but noit is actually

socially unacceptable because when you are setting a bad example for the children.

Which is why I jaywalk as often as possible. If I am going to pigheadedly cling to one

American trait obnoxious to the people around me, it is going to be jaywalking. First of

all, I have to cross a total of four streets twice a day between home and work. Do you

think I have time to wait for the light to change at all four streets? Absolutely not. And ifIm going to jaywalk at one street, I might as well jaywalk at all of them.

Second of all, it just feels good to jaywalk. I will never out-drink, out-smoke, or out-

naked an Austrian, but I can be too cool to wait for the light. I had a moment of

crowning glory the other night. An entire group of early adolescents was out by

themselves and totally giddy with their freedom as they waited patiently to cross a

deserted street. I saw them as I approached and I knew just what I would doI blew

through the pedestrians red light and showed those kids a little something about life on

the wild side. They were shocked and drew back as I marched straight through their

midst, voices hushed by the ferocity of the unknown jaywalker. I walked a little further

before turning back. Sure enough, half the group was in the process of crossing against

the light while the other half wavered uncertainly at the corner. Mission accomplished.

Who says you cant leave your mark on a city in only four months?

So now that you know all this, why should you visit Vienna anyway?

Vienna can take some getting used to. Local culture is not usually an issue for tourists

who come from approximately the same background as the place they are visiting, but if

you here for longer than that, it can be complicated. Butand this is a big butthe

Viennese are so damn interesting. The whole of European history can be found within

Viennas inner city, from Scandinavian marauders commemorated at Schwedenplatz to

territorial conflicts with Italy at Sdtirolplatz to the unsteady dividing line between East

and West in the local food (goulash, ksekrainer, and apfelstrudel) to the influence of

medieval plagues, the Catholic Church, and World War II (not necessarily in that order).

If you tour the Hapsburg imperial apartments, you will see cultural relics that represent

the artistic, literary, and political history of all of Europe, and you will see how

intricately the entire continent was at one time connected through blood, marriage, and

brinksmanship.


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Throughout the city, the streets are calm and the buildings are stately. The U-Bahn

stations bring all the Viennese together, from the most elegant old women to homeless

men with wine boxes. Everywhere you go, there are signs for new museum exhibitions,

art gallery openings, dance and theater performances, and film screenings. As you walk

along, you hear every language being spoken while pastries beckon from behind shop

windows. You get the feeling that this is a city where things are happening and peopleare doing important things, but the parks and the open air keep people from becoming

frenetic.

Besides all those reasons to visit Vienna, getting to know the Viennese is a reason to

stay longer than you would otherwise. The Viennese are complicated; there is no

denying that. But I think that their complications reflect many of the qualities that make

the city so uniqueits geographic location at the nexus of Northern, Eastern, Southern,

and Western Europe, its rich artistic history, its political hypocrisies in the 20th century,

and its particular cultural blend of being internationally-minded but nationalist at the

same time. It is not always easy to get to know the Viennese: some are undeniably

stand-offish and prickly towards foreigners. But those you do meetand if you stay

long enough, you willare interesting, complex people who do not take much for

granted. In visiting Vienna and getting to know the Viennese, you begin to see how the

strains of local and international histories have meshed in this particular city, and you

understand more about what shaped the continent and the Western tradition than ever

before. Even as the Viennese amaze and amuse, it is impossible to visit Vienna and avoid

learning more about the Western tradition and the forces that shaped our own cultural

grounds.

You can contact Kate [email protected]

visit her website to read more atwww.transatlanticsketches.com.

If you contact Kate and promise to send her (a) money (b) chocolate or (c) frequent flyer miles, she will promise to

(a) be extremely grateful (b) love you forever or (c) write, develop content, or copy edit in return.

Just so you know.
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