Or should I say that UN organization employees in the Vienna International Centre didn’t get to leave as early as they had planned on Friday because security services closed Gate 1 due to a protest.

But the mystery remains: who was out there and what were they protesting?

We’re curious.

When one studies this language in school, one is taught “High German” Hochdeutsch or Oberdeutsch, which is actually spoken in large swaths of the German speaking world: like the TV. The reality is that almost everywhere has a specialized dialect and, in fact, some are so specialized that they are barely related to German anymore. One of the more perplexing to decipher, at least to my ears, is the Viennese dialect.

Viennese dialect seems to be spoken with a different palette than the rest of Austria – more laid back, mumble-y and in the back of the throat, and freely mixes verbs and nouns from other languages and slang to the point where it almost seems to be a different language. I’d be curious to know what native German speakers from, say, Hanover, would think of it or would they be able to understand it.

So, to welcome all the European Championship football fans from the German speaking world, I give you Wiener Dialekt im Alltag — a site with “Wienerisch” to German translations — complete with audio.

A German friend might correct one’s “Wienerisch” or Austrian/Bavarian expressions because they are not proper German, while a Viennese friend might say that when one expresses something in a more “proper” German, it sounds “pifkisch”. Pifke, from what I can tell, is sort of like the American word hick or redneck, but with a less regional connotation and more toward “uncultured”.

For those wishing to know a bit more, here is a cool little site about German dialects and a site with a listing of the major German dialects.

And finally, here is a Wienerisch-Deutsch converter, a Wienersich dictionary and the Wikipedia entry for Wienerisch.

Just as background, the thumbnail story is that the man imprisoned his young daughter, kept her there for two decades, fathered seven children, one of which died and some of which he brought out of the cellar, placed on his own doorstep and claimed they were the children of the imprisoned daughter, who he claimed had run away to join a religious cult.

It’s unbelievable, really. But I think I have one small piece of the puzzle. I’m not claiming to be an authority on the Austrian psyche, nor criminal psychology, nor anything else. However, I can remember a story that happened to me in Vienna back in 1991 that would probably explain a little bit about how nobody would suspect or, more accurately, allow themselves to believe this man could commit such crimes.

You’ll notice that in most of the news coverage, his neighbors, friend and associates all comment on what a good dresser Josef F. was, and how he was always responsible and authoritarian, and how he was a good business partner, a good consumer of their goods. Many called him “successful.” (In the US, it’s always “quiet” that neighbors say characterizes serial killers or other social miscreants, and in the US, that’s good: if you leave other people alone, you’re not perceived as a problem — but I digress).

When I was a student, I rented a room from an 83 year-old Austrian widow. I and two other students shared her 3 bedroom flat on the top floor of a slightly grimy part of Vienna’s Ninth District very near WUK. The owner of the apartment building was a lawyer with offices on the most-prestigious Stephansplatz in the First District.

The owner’s son, Peter, lived at the end of the hallway in a tiny one room flat. He had a hallway toilet and his bathtub stood in his kitchen. He wasn’t the cleanest fellow, because he was using his bathtub to grow pot. Our landlady warned us off of him, but, eventually, we became somewhat friendly — friendly enough for him to ask us for loans from time-to-time.

I could tell stories about this landlady for years, but one that really struck me happened in the middle of the night. It was about 2 AM, and I heard a loud knock at the door followed by what sounded like somebody falling into the door with all of his weight. I got out of bed and opened the doorways internal window to see what was going on, There stood a man in a business suit, tie sitting akimbo, hair a mess, alcohol vapors permeating every cubic centimeter of air between us. He saw me, and quickly said, in German, “who are you. What are you doing?”

I replied, in German, “excuse me?” He switched to English

“How many students live here!”

“Who are you?”

“I am the owner of this house,” he spit. “Where is Peter?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “But you should stop shouting, Everyone is asleep.”

“How many students do you have living here?”

I told him we had three, to which he replied, that he had not authorized so many and he was going to call the police. He then proceed to fall backwards into a pile of full plastic trash bags that Peter had accumulated in the hallway (he earned 50 Schillings/week from many of the old ladies in the building for taking their trash out, which seemed to be his only source of income). The man sputtered, quickly shuffled himself upright, and kicked the garbage bags all over the place. Then he picked up a broken tabletop that Peter had leaning against the wall, threw it down a flight stairs and stormed off into the darkened corridor.

Blinking in the half light, I locked the window and turned to see the twisted up, sour face of my landlady peering at me from behind her bedroom door.

“Scott,” she implored. “What was Peter doing?”

“It wasn’t Peter. It was Peter’s father.” I stumbled a little bit on my German there. I wasn’t really sure how to say “Peter’s father” in German, “Peters Vater? Der Vater des Peters?”

“Scott! What was Peter doing out there?”

“It wasn’t Peter. It was Peter’s father. Do you understand?” I wasn’t sure I was conveying the concept of father and Peter’s father to the old lady. She seemed to listen, but she wasn’t really getting it.

“Scott. That is nonsense,” she replied. “Peter’s father is a good man. He owns this house. He has an office on Stephansplatz and is a famous attorney.” She really did say that.

“Well, he was really drunk.”

“That’s not possible. It was Peter.”

Somewhere in Austrian society, there exist overt and covert hierarchies of humanity. In younger people, I haven’t noticed it so much or it is more good natured. For example, Austrians like to half-jokingly place Germans on the “bumpkin” level. But this is more good-spirited rivalry, a result of a very serious and long-standing intertwining of the nations and empires as well as a shared sense of tragedy as both empires were utterly destroyed in subsequent World Wars.

But if you chat with some of the older folks, you’ll see that there is a “does well/is well” dichotomy. A man who earns well can’t be anything but a “good man.” A son born into such and such family will no doubt be successful, morally upright and should be treated as such despite his merits. Quite simply, the stratification of society is very entrenched here, despite the extremely progressive social structure.

What’s more perplexing is that the other side of Austrian culture is the ever-watchful eye. Every visitor and resident of this country — especially in Vienna — can attest to the fact that everywhere you go, people are watching what you’re doing. You’ll be openly confronted for behaving outside of the social norms by, for example, putting your feet on the seat of the streetcar. I’ve been fussed at for pouring wine into a beer glass. Every time I take out my garbage, a man two floors up pulls back his curtains and susses out what I put in the bins. A neighbor left a note on my door telling my not to place my garbage bags in the hallway in preparation for bringing them downstairs. A friend of mine had her umbrella thrown into her apartment after leaving it just outside her doorway to dry. In short, behavior is observed and socially corrected everywhere around here. And yet, somehow, Josef F was given a pass. Nobody was peering over his walls, despite the fact that he allegedly fiercely protected access to it, because nobody was curious and nobody suspected a man so “successful” of doing anything at all. If he was seen working late into the night under his garage, it was probably seen as a sign of hard work. I’m sure few public officials ever once thought it strange that his daughter kept allegedly leaving children on his doorstep after disappearing into a cult. It simply wouldn’t occur to Austrians of a certain mindset that something could be wrong. And it’s probably indicative of the sexist nature of all humanity that the woman — a mother would automatically be assumed to blame, but that’s a topic for another post.

I’m not advocating spying on one’s neighbors because you think they might be up to something. I’m just pointing out that despite the extremely odd circumstances of this man’s life, he was given a pass because he was successful, a sharp dresser, a family man and an iron-fisted authoritarian.

I don’t mean to offend Austrians with my armchair analysis. And certainly what I’ve elaborated on here does not in any way scratch the surface of such a complex issue and horrific crime. It is just one of the small things one notices that is different. And now the debate explodes in every media outlet hungry for column inches and sensation. Is there “an Austrian syndrome” now that we’ve discovered two such cellar kidnapping and imprisonment incidents in the span of a few months?

I don’t see any U-Bahn tracking, and I don’t know how well it would work via a crappy mobile browser on a phone (other than iPhone, of course, which would work wonderfully).

I’ve often thought Wiener Linien needed something like this despite the fact that the transit is generally on schedule and so frequent that one rarely has to worry too much about arrival times. However, when I’m getting ready in the morning, this would really help me time my bus trip just right!

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.

Today, we had to go to the AKH (general hospital) for some tests on our baby. Now, the day sucked ass. We had one of those Vienna Days that makes you want to strangle people. First, a pediatrician said to go to the AKH to get this test.

We arrived a few days later at the AKH after having called and asked when we should come. We arrive at the designated time and wait in line. After we register, we are told “you have to pay.”

No problem, I think. We have private insurance and this is usually the case. We pay, then send the bill to our insurance and they reimburse us based on the coverage. So I whip out my wallet, but, here’s the deal: you can’t pay where you register. You have to go to another building and go to this special office called “Entlassung” (discharge), get the receipt and return with it to prove you have paid before you can join the queue to see the doctors.

This is fair, if a bit annoying because it was snowing, I had two kids with me, and, of course, in the US, they’d be very accommodating with the credit card machine. But here’s the part everyone wants to here. I go to “Entlassung”, and there are something like ten little Department of Motor Vehicle style desks with glass walls in front of them and little chairs for one to sit in while one conducts business with the administrative folks behind the glass. I hopped into a line that was labeled “private insurance” and watched as people in other lines delivered slips of paper to the people behind the desks and were given cash money Euros in return.

“Danke schön,” they’d say as they pocketed their cash and left the room. “Auf Wiedershauen.”

I finally got to the front of the line, delivered my slip to the lady, and started to have a seat.

“This is a bill,” she said, turning it over and sort of squinting at it in a mix of bewilderment and skepticism.

“Yes, I’d like to pay it.”

“You have to go the cashier.” She gestured toward the back wall. On the back wall was a typical Euro Kassa window with the typical money-sliding mechanisms and whatnot and a bankomat payment terminal. The thing is: it was closed.

She shrugged. “It’s closed. Maybe you can pay later.”

“I need to take the receipt over to the children’s hospital to see the doctor.”

“Oh, okay. Let’s see. How do I take your money?”

She finally figured it out, gladly gave me my receipt, and I was on my way.

So, yes, it’s true. It’s very hard to find a place in the hospital that will take your money

And that’s one of the things that’s just amazing about the Vienna health care system: it’s simply not all about the money.

We’ve had numerous doctors basically tell us that it’s more of a hassle for them to charge us because their service is normally included in the basic charges. For example, a specialist who visited my wife in one hospital after our baby was born, was actually part of the service for the hospital our OB/GYN normally works out of. He thought it was important she receive the visit, so the doctor traveled across Vienna, took a look at my wife, and never once worried about how she was going to get paid. When we later asked the OB/GYN, he said, “I don’t think you’ll see a bill for that, but you can call her if you want.”

Back to our story, where it turns into one of those Vienna tragi-comedies. We finally get in to see the doctor who was supposed to administer the test when, of course, he tells us that we have to wait several weeks before he can do the test because admitted patients take precedence over outpatient services. We could, he suggests, perhaps find a specialist in our neighborhood.

Remembering that our pediatrician once recommended such a specialist, we head home and call him in hopes of getting an appointment. It’s not quite noon, and his answering machine says he has visits from 3-8PM Mondays and Fridays. I leave a message and proceed to look for more specialists on the doctor listing website.

I call the first one, who denies he is such a specialist, but gives me the number of his hospital, who will gladly undertake the examination. I call the hospital, who, of course, denies such a claim and says that the only option is to go to the AKH (where we were just told to go elsewhere). A few other specialist I call all refuse or are on vacation or are otherwise occupied.

I finally find one who says she is in the office the whole day and to just show up. Oh, cool, we think. We can just knock it out. Are you sure I can bring you a three month baby? Oh yes. Anytime. We bundle up the family, trudge down the stairs and walk over to the office.

Upon arrival, she asks, “what is it I can do for you?”

I explain how I had just called and that she said she’d administer this examination to our daughter.

“No, I am not a pediatrician. I thought it was for the mother. Maybe there’s a pediatrician in the next street.”

So, in the end, we never got the test. So while the option is there, somewhere, and I’m sure a competent, thorough physician is willing to administer it. Vienna will do what it does best and bounce us around for a while before we finally land in the right spot.

Of course, The Naschmarkt is the Naschmarkt, and one can expect to get scammed there. However, I’d argue that the scamming there is relatively benign. For example, one stall may list a product for €3,50 per kilo while the one next door might sell it for €3,30 per half kilo and smudge the little “1/2″ that designates half and thereby scamming those who aren’t careful. But that scam only works on comparison shoppers — and those who hunt for bargains are unlikely to let a scam like that slide by undetected.

The other somewhat friendly scam is the relentless upsell. Only at the Naschmarkt do any Viennese salespeople exhibit this trait. You’re buying a stuffed pepper, and shorty grabs some stuffed tomatoes. “How about a couple of these?”

They look good, so you say, “sure”. He continues down the line until you suddenly have a small plastic container stuffed with €15 worth of antipasti.

But the scams I’m talking about are more insipid and, quite frankly, piss me off. Since one happened to me today, I’ll share the story — but this isn’t an isolated incident.

I guess it’s the accent. The second I open my big maw and order two Käsekrainers to go, I’m a mark. But that’s what I did today on my way home from work. I picked up a couple of sausages, two slices of bread and a beverage or two for the family. The lady was friendly enough — courteous, even, so I must have known something was up when I produced my wallet and fished out the only note I had, a crips €100 note.

She cheerfully takes the bill and very slowly and deliberately counts out my change. The only thing is, she only makes change for a €50. And instead of saying “and €20 makes €50″ as she slaps down the last bill, she said something like “now all is in order. Thank you,” she sings as she turns to the next customer.

When I point out the error, she of course acts apologetic. But this has happened more than a few times in the past year or so and I’m having a hard time believing somebody who works at a kebab or Würstelstand is that bad at counting change.

Regardless, the sausage was delicious!

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.

The inner city appears to be going through somewhat of a baby boom. Compared to when I lived in Vienna in 1991, this place is taking on a much younger hue. Maybe I was blind to it before, but it appears to me that Vienna young urban residents are taking up the government on their offer of Kindergeld and getting busy with the procreation.

Vienna’s benevolent and exhaustive network of city-sponsored and private child-friendly exhibitions, play yards, playgrounds and events has always served it well. But modern parents want something very simple. They want to be able to interact with their friends socially, while not neglecting their children’s’ needs for play and amusement. In Portland, this was a growing trend. Many restaurants, taking advantage of the totally non-smoking public space environment, would offer up some small amusement for the kids — maybe some toys, placemats for them to draw on, etc.

Smalltalk is filling that need, but many more such places are needed.

But here’s my tip. As much as I like the Kinder Cafe, it is a bit overwrought. I, personally, don’t want my kid to be too far away or detached from the group so thoroughly. Sure, it’s nice to have somebody watch the kids while they play, but on a smaller scale, what I really want is just a small, friendly, non-smoking restaurant/cafe scene that has a few toys in a corner so that the kids — supervised by their own parents — can entertain themselves a bit. It’s a formula deployed with enormous success by places such as the Laurelwood Public House in NW Portland.

Just serve up some fresh, decent food and hopefully some decent coffee, a selection of brews and wine, throw a box of clean toys in a corner free of sharp objects and stairways, smile once in a while, eliminate smoking, and watch the business boom.

The Austrian wine industry is finally truly recovered, and the recent opening of the New York Times “paywall” has made finding out about it that much easier for the English-reading community.

The plus side of all of this is that Austrian wine is making serious gains in reputation and quality. And while tiny Austria will never be on a footing with France or Italy in terms of wine production capability, there could be a huge boon for vintners focussing on quality products while the EU money flows into the development of Austria’s wine industry.

The Apple/BMW mantra applies: one does not need a huge market share, only a reputation for quality products to earn a healthy profit and a loyal consumer base.

Here’s my question, since I have never been: is it fun? Is there wine?

Unfortunately, the era we live in will see this type of thing all over the world for years to come — and I fear it will be increasingly random and more difficult to prevent. Remember the bombs on the train in Germany that didn’t go off? The series of inept bombings in London the came after the massacres carried out on the public transit all could have been horrific.

Sure, this guy tried to attack the Americans. It’s the oldest trick in the Islamist playbook and, from what I’ve read, this guy almost sounds like a “lone wolf” type — a loony fucker who had “had enough”. But the fact is that Austria has been announced as a target more than once, so it’s likely just a matter of time now before *something* happens. And the real shame of it all is that Austria is such an open, trusting and safe-feeling place.

I am not trying to stir up unnecessary fear for my Austrian friends because, quite frankly, the chances are low you’ll get killed and, as the survivor of a previous terrorist attack (the 1996 Atlanta Olympic bombing, for which I was mere meters away from the bomb), I have been struggling with this fear since well before 9/11. Here’s the things: you’ll manage. Have a good life, and lets all try to think hard about how to get out of this mess.