‘They Are So Triggered by Me’: Conchita Wurst’s 10-Year Roller-Coaster Ride https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/06/arts/music/conchita-wurst.html?unlocked_article_code=1.q00.3TWi.lMQqENOx8cWq
So, 2014 must have been the last time I watched the Eurovision song contest. I remember Conchita’s win and how fascinating it was. And now Tom Neuwirth is being written up in the NYT.
Rise like a phoenix: https://youtu.be/huWRtziXEPk?si=46ee8k1SmdiYbuz6
There is an impromptu memorial to Alexei Navalny right across the street from the Russian embassy.
It is good to have somewhere to go to commemorate him. He was very brave and, apparently, had a sense of humor and seemed to truly want nothing more than a better life for average Russians.
It was a bit scary to go and place a flower there. There were guards prowling about. (Mind you, I get quite unnerved by the Marines guarding the U.S. American embassy, too.) There was no interference, though. I was able to leave my flower (a white rose, for those familiar with the student resistance in Nazi Germany) and look at and read what others had written.
It was a bit scary, yes, but also moving, and I’m glad I went.
Even if you don’t speak German, at least the video is fun: https://topos.orf.at/vor-100-jahren-wiener-strassenleben100
I think it was on the ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation) site that I first saw a mention of a series of postcards showing everyday life on the streets of Vienna in 1905 / 1906. It is part of an exhibition at the Wien Museum (in one of their temporary quarters on Felderstraße) about postcards in general of Vienna.
What is special about this particular series? Postcards, of course, usually show us the important sights of a city — the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Tower Bridge in London, Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto, and Stephansdom in Vienna, to name a very few. The black-and-white postcards in the series referred to are in the form of snapshots and show people, often engaged in manual labor, going about their everday business. As the article (link below) from the Wien Museum’s magazine tells us the subjects of the photos are people who are offering their wares or services (for example as porters) on the streets and in the squares of the city, are driving vehicles or pulling carts or riding on public transportation or bikes, taking care of horses, cleaning up messes, working in public gardens, cleaning lanterns, working on building sites, maintaining tram tracks, strolling, striding, standing, cowering, sitting, sleeping, getting into mischief — and taking photographs. (my translation of part of the article) They give a real, one could say unvarnished, sense of life in Vienna at that time, which is precious to me.
I’ll want to be sure to make it to the exhibition “Grossstadt im Kleinformat” (“Big City / Small Format”), on until 24 September 2023.
The article from the Wien Museum specifically on this series (in German and showing some of the images): https://magazin.wienmuseum.at/fotopostkarten-wiener-strassenleben
Today was the 40th anniversary of the Vienna City Marathon, although not the 40th race. (In 2020 the marathon was inexplicably 😉 canceled.) I wish I had time to really write about it and soak it up as in other years, but I am surfing a very big wave of work at the moment and nursing a sick dog so will have to keep it short.
Highlights: two course records were broken — for the men and for Austrian women, the former very clearly by Samwel Mailu of Kenya, who said it was a really big moment in his career, the latter by one (1!) second.
Julia Mayer, first Austrian woman today, said she was only able to dig deeper on the last 200 meters and so break the record because the fans were so supportive. Andreas Vojta, first Austrian man, who ran a much slower race than he had planned, also mentioned how the crowds helped him keep going in a race that at the 23-kilometer mark he realized wasn’t going to get any more comfortable. 
Full marks for bravery, if you ask me.
The ORF did better than last year. They interviewed the two first women this year, not just the men.
And now, with regret, I have to turn you over to other sources for more information. The marathon organizers are on Twitter and report highlights in German and English: #ViennaCityMarathon And I am pretty you can find out more on sport.orf.at
I have just discovered that there is a DIY restaurant in Vienna. That’s right — you pay for the privilege of cooking your own meal. I just wonder who gets to do the dishes …
I went to the pension office this morning to clarify a few points and saw that some things have really changed in Austria and some things haven’t.
One thing that has changed: the woman in front of me in line at the reception desk was talking about her “Partnerins” (female partner’s) appointment. When there was some confusion about her name, she explained that when they had married she had taken on her partner’s family name and officially changed it on all her documents. Then I overheard that she herself isn’t self-employed but rather her partner, and she would like to be covered under her partner’s insurance.
This would have been unimaginable even five years ago (Austria enacted “Ehe für Alle” or “Marriage for All” on 1 January 2019, building on the civil union that became possible in 2010). For anyone who would like more information, here is a website (in German) giving an overview of the history of same-sex marriage as well as legal details: https://www.familienrechtsinfo.at/eherecht/ehe-fuer-alle/
Something that hasn’t yet changed? When I came out of my appointment, there was a man waiting, with his large, well-behaved, non-service dog. Wish I’d known I could have taken Maylo!
Robert Clary, Who Took a Tragic Journey to ‘Hogan’s Heroes,’ Dies at 96 https://nyti.ms/3GwlErL
My brother and I used to sneak “Hogan’s Heroes” because (a) we were limited in how much TV we were allowed to watch and (b) my mother, having grown up in Nazi Germany, objected to making light in any way of what happened. Would she feel differently if she knew that one actor was a concentration camp survivor and three were refugees? Perhaps. Or perhaps the reminders of those years would all still be too painful.
Three refugees, you ask? Robert Clary’s obituary only mentions Wilhelm Klemperer and John Banner. They left out Leon Askin, who played General Burkhalter. He was born Leon Aschkenasy in Vienna and lost both his parents in Treblinka. Ever since I learned that, years ago, I’ve thought how therapeutic it must have been to play the bad-tempered and quite repulsive General.
Yesterday marked the second anniversary of the attacks at Schwedenplatz on that balmy evening that tempted so many people to be out and about on the eve of our third (or was it already our fourth?) lockdown.
So much has happened since then and life feels so different that it seems impossible that it has only been two years.
ecbinvienna 