The Euro 2008 is just around the corner. Less than 18 days and Vienna will be a massive fan zone. I am not sure if I get excited just thinking about the hullabaloo of fascinated individuals at the train stations. Austria wants to make it “the event” of the year, which is true in many aspects. My husband, just to make sure, already hanged a poster that lists all the schedule of matches throughout the month.

As we all know many hotels are overbooked due to a huge number of soccer enthusiasts that will storm the country in June. I wonder how many fans will spend their nights on the street during the event.

Enter Fan Camp, a board and lodging possibility with a feel of a camp. If you think 38 euros is worth to spend a night in an immaculate white-painted booth instead of a chic hotel room, of course with the company of your buddies, then it might be a nicer option.

I am not sure how safe or convenient the booths are but they sure look promising (complete with amenities like assurance of a 24-hour security watch and facilities for washing/showering) for the soccer followers who don’t have enough money but at the same time living/sleeping closer to the stadium.

Though a preventive measure should be undertaken by Fan the Camp owners. That is, apart from knowing the guest’s gender, there should be a way to detect if he/she tends to be violent or a prospective hooligan.

Hopefully there will be no clashes happening inside the camp between the fans of the participating European nations.

Another option is to search for private individuals who would be willing to share for a fee/lease their house/flat for strangers.

“Krocha” is an ultra-proletarian Viennese jumpstyle dance, and I frequently check YouTube for new “Krocha” obscurities. Here is a compelling video labeled “Bundesheer Krocha 07 presented by checki und leimi”… two Austrian military guys, two gas masks, a Catholic cross, a trash bin and …well… rhythm.

Link (thanx, Thomas Thurner @ IND06)

I don’t watch movies or films, so I definitely haven’t seen Michael Moore’s much-in-the-news flick about health care in the US, but I’ve read plenty about it online from all of the experts that seem to be everywhere on the internets. Anyway, I’ve been an adult for a long time, used the US healthcare “system”, loved and hated my insurance companies, have very good friends and family members who are doctors or in the health care industry, and just generally have enough experience in that world to have an opinion. And my opinion is that health care in the US is excellent, but insurance is fucked.

I now have some experience with Austrian health care. We recently had a baby here, and we’ve been living here as near-middle-aged adults for close to two years. We have private insurance through my work — not the Krankenkassen, so my experience may be a bit out of the ordinary. But my summary and expert opinion is that health care in Austria — or at least Vienna — is excellent and the insurance is awesome.

I plan to write some comparison and contrast type posts in the future, but I wanted to quickly tell the story that so many US Americans are wanting to hear that confirms an anecdote about EuroInsurance in Michael Moore’s movie.
Read more

If you are the parent of a young child and live anywhere within the “first nine,” you’ve almost certainly already heard of or been to the Smalltalk Kids Cafe just off of Mariahilferstraße. For those not in the know, it’s basically a big open room that is divided into 3 parts: a bar area, an open area with tables and booths, and a large, staffed play area with innumerable toys and equipment for the amusement of the youngsters. The whole place is, of course, non-smoking.

I applaud this effort, and have visited quite a few times. So, apparently, has the rest of Vienna. This place is a serious success. It’s always crowded, and word is spreading quickly. It underscores something that I’ve been ranting about since I moved here, and I hope it points toward a trend. The other day I was lounging there with my wife, my two kids, and another couple with their two kids, and we agreed: if the same company or a similar place opened a location 2 blocks away, it would be equally successful. So I think we’ll see a huge boom in child-friendly establishments in the years to come.
Read more

If you, like me, don’t like crowded places, then you might want to avoid Rathausplatz this Saturday. If you, like me, don’t like ritualised mass-happines and bigot excuses for staging a big party, then you might want to leave the city for the weekend. Like me.

Anyway, you might like a free concert and a lot of people like rock festivals (otherwise why would there be so many?) and you might be a fan of Madonna, James Blunt, Beastie Boys, Police, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins and a few thousand others, so you probably want to check it out. Jeez, Michael Nyman and Silbermond on the same stage… Live Earth is being staged this Saturday in every major city of the world and on the Rathausplatz in Vienna there will be a super mega big screen for people to watch. And a hundred snack-counters and the next day a brigade of trashmen to pick up the litter.

Do you remember when people used to talk shit about Sting because he wanted to save the rainforest? How credible are people like Snoop Dogg, Madonna or The Pussycatdolls in regards of ecology? The city of Vienna will offer information on how to save the planet. The gastronomy will offer ways to get loaded. Wonder where more people will be cueing? Is U2 not joinging because the payment wasn’t good enough? The stars will arrive by private jets and limousines, why do they tell you to use public transport? Is Live Earth a bad thing now? No, I don’t think so. But the amount of bigotry and self-rightousness is nauseating.

A good place to start getting more info might be the webservice of the city: Wiener Klimaschutztag

I saw this yesterday and it rocks.

I know, macho, the usa-myth of the loner against the evil hordes, saving the world aka the usa, etc. I don’t care. Bruce Willis found the role of his life in John McClane and it is a great action movie, that has already found its intellectual apologizing in the cineast media years ago. Either way, I wouldn’t care. This movie is fun to watch.

There is a lot of self-irony, an unbelievable fighting scene you haven’t seen that way yet, not a lot of defined characters and some nerd-jokes. Oh yeah, and a lot of shit gets blown up. What else do you need on a hot summer night?

This summer it seems to be all stupid blockbuster-sequels to me: pirates, shrek, die hard… Aren’t there any decent independent-movies coming to our cinemas anymore?

Summer is coming and people like to go outside. They also like to watch movies. That’s why there are so many places with open air movies in Austria in the summer.

And the best thing: at some of them entry is free, like these:

VOLXKino: on diverse places in Vienna. info at: Volxkino-Website
Prater Filmfestival: in the vicinity of the Riesenrad on the Kaiserwiese, the Austrian Filmarchiv shows old sci-fi-movies
Margeretener Filmnächte: the 5th district, Margareten, will also have its own movie-nights with old sci-fi, but I only read about that and haven’t found any more info. Other districts might stage their own things as well.
St. Pölten, Innsbruck, Krems, and Wr. Neustadt also show movies for free on the main places if the weater is okay, but since neither of them are Vienna…

Of those open air cinemas with entrance fees the one in the Augarten and the one in the Krieau are probably the nicest ones. Don’t forget to reserve some tickets and to show up early.

Mid-April the Austrian broadcasting company ORF made a huge program reform. Central point of the new program was a daily comedy-soap (the first one ever to be produced in Austria) about people living in a house in the 8th district of Vienna. Therefore it was called “Mitten im Achten” (in the middle of the 8th).

The viewership figures went down continually until they hit rock bottom the last week - so the show was cancelled.

Rock bottom - that is also the intellectual level of that show, which doesn’t mean that nobody would watch it. Probably the contrary. Anyway, the ORF blew 6.5 million Euros on two and a half month of portraying the lives, dreams and talking of people living in Vienna.

I have been living in Vienna for quite a while now and though I know types that the producers tried to portray I never heard anybody speak the way they did in the show or talk about issues the way they did. (The show will be replaced by “Malcolm” with beginning of July, which is a lot closer to my teenage years by the way.) “Altagsgeschichten” give a way better introduction to the way (some) people in this city are than this show.

In a few years DVD-boxes with all shows will be traded as “cult” and people will miss the times when the show was on, like they always do. Maybe one of the local stations (PulsTV or Okto) should pick up on the show (probably too expensive) an re-start it on a smaller level (probably still too expensive).

I don’t know - should I applaud the fact that these kids are doing something “creativ” or bemoan the way they seem to take this whole gangsta shit seriously. The music is boring, too, but this, obviously, is some kind of Vienna Rap underground.

Well, most rap - and I do admit that I don’t know a lot about it - is sexist, ignorant and self-referential as hell. But this here is awkward from their crew-name onwards. Absolut HIV - hello!? And then rhymes that go “You ask me why I don’t like gays? because they are gay. I think gays are cool, but not if they are gay. And when they are gay, they are sons of bitches.” Is that ironic? Moreover, I never got this whole “respect”-thing, where everyone wants respect from the other people first. And finally, where are the girls? Don’t they like girls? Or is this some kind of boy’s club?

Judge for yourself: Absolut HIV-video auf YouTube

It is probably a stretch to call this an urban legend from Vienna, because back then there was no urban area to speak of, it is a historic fact and it all occured in lower Austria not Vienna. Then again back then Austria wasn’t much more than the stretch of land alongside the danube in the Wachau, Vienna and eastwards to the river March. Nothing you couldn’t drive down in two or three hours on a highway nowadays. Moreover it shows quite well how Austrians / Viennese tend to behave towards people. Finally it is the best legend I could think of under pressure, so here we go:

In the beginning of the 10th century the Babenberger Heinrich I. ruled the little stretch of land alongside the danube through the wonderful Wachau, which had little economic interest but a lot of strategic interest. In 1012 an Irish pilgrim named Koloman, son of a celtic lord, was held up in Stockerau. Because of his strange clothing and his language, which nobody understood, he was held for a spy from Hungary, cruelly tortured and executed. He was hanged on a tree.
His body hanged there for one and a half year without rotting. Finally, a hunter came along and wanted to check, but when he put his spear into the side of the body (remind you of something?) fresh blood poured out. So the body was taken off the tree and brought to the monastery in Melk, where it was buried.
But because wonderous things happened at the site of his death, a cult-following started to rise around the memory of Koloman and he was pronounced a martyr. He became a sort of patron saint of Austria (he was never pronounced a saint officially), which he remained until 1663 when saint Leopold become the patron of lower Austria. His patronage helps against bad weather, fire and epidemics.
St. Koloman in Salzburg is named after him and even nowadays if children aren’t behaving well, parents might say to them “…watch out, or Koloman comes.”