Kommissar Rex

17 Feb

Today’s Kurier is reminding me that the only TV series I ever planned my life around, “Kommissar Rex”, is celebrating this year the 30th anniversary of its debut.

It seemed such a natural hit (Rex, Tobias Moretti, and Vienna) that I was surprised to read that the writer, Peter Hajek, tried for ages to get someone interested. Even when he found a director, Oliver Hirschbiegel, who had just won a prestigious prize for another crime show, it didn’t get much easier. Finally, a private network, SAT1, took it on. To think we might never have had it at all!

It was a show that not only appealed to the Viennese. It was shown in 120 countries around the world and inspired a Canadian version, “Hudson & Rex”.

And it gave work to some young actors who went on to international fame, notably Karl Markovics, who played the main role in “The Counterfeiters”, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2008, and Christoph Waltz, who, with two Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, is practically a fixture in Hollywood at this point. He got a good start playing very sinister characters on Kommissar Rex when he played a doll maker who liked to dress women up as dolls, photograph them, and then murder them.

The episode that has stayed with me the longest was one in which someone was killing off little old Viennese ladies to get their hands on the apartments, leased until death at very low rents. (I would say “rent-controlled” but I think the system in New York, for example, is a little different from here.) That seemed quite realistic to me, and perhaps a bit worrying as I am now getting older, living in just such a flat (although without quite so low a rent).

Thirty years. That takes me back.

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A memory (and some poetry) from quite a while ago

29 Jan
A very grainy photo from my first ever mobile phone

My Facebook memories just reminded me of an exchange with colleagues in January 2010 that gave me great pleasure.

First post
I had to work late yesterday and missed going skating. So this morning I went for a walk even though it was snowing pretty heavily.

This haiku is the result (in German first):
Viel Schnee ist heute
In Pötzleinsdorfer Schlosspark
Aber wenig Leut’

… which translates into English more or less like this:
Lots of snow today
In Pötzleinsdorfer Schlosspark
Very few people

Later
As I was waiting for the tram to make its way back into Vienna I sent it by text message to friends and colleagues. One of my colleagues challenged me to write a limerick and I came up with this (long tram ride!):

Eliza went out in the snow
She had nowhere else to go
She slipped on the ice
Said something not nice
And now when she goes she goes slow. 🙂

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Wiener Wasser (Vienna [tap] water)

13 Jan

I’ve written about it before, but it’s a topic that just keeps cropping up. The tap water in (most districts in) Vienna comes from the mountains and is wonderful, not only safe to drink but also delicious. (My Viennese father used to say with pride, “We flush our toilets with the water other people buy in supermarkets.”)

Even some of our closest neighbors, the Germans, who can certainly drink their own tap water without any worries, aren’t in on the secret, as this story from today’s Kurier shows. When Dirk Stermann, German TV personality and longtime resident of Vienna, met the parents of his then girlfriend at dinner in a restaurant, he ordered still mineral water. The girlfriend’s father, apparently an otherwise quiet sort of man, shouted, “We don’t drink that here!”

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That time of year again

23 Dec

As the year draws to a close, I would like to wish all my readers Happy Holidays, a good slide (as one says in German) into the New Year, and a peaceful and prosperous 2024. (And what would these wishes be without the annual haiku. 😉)

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The Votivkirche (Votive Church)

26 Nov

The Votivkirche was officially re-opened today with a celebratory mass. The extensive renovations, inside and out, have been going on for a quarter of a century.

The ORF story (in German): https://wien.orf.at/stories/3234020/

An earlier story from me: https://ecbinvienna.com/2023/04/19/votivkirche/

And a Wikipedia entry in English on the history of the Votive Church: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Votivkirche,_Vienna

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Neue Donau this afternoon

19 Nov

With some interesting bird life I couldn’t get in the photo. Ducks and swans I’m used to but today I saw a goose and, from a distance, two birds who looked like cormorants. Exciting. 🙂

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The Streets of Vienna 100 years ago

24 Sep

Even if you don’t speak German, at least the video is fun: https://topos.orf.at/vor-100-jahren-wiener-strassenleben100

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Street Life in Vienna (a series of postcards)

8 Aug

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

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The ORF on normality

21 Jul

Below is a link to a very interesting (and rather worrying) ORF article about the word “normal”. Recently, the governor of Lower Austria, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, used the phrase “people who think normally” (“normal denkende Menschen”) repeatedly in an interview in the newspaper the “Standard”. She is a member of the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) and, the ORF tells us, was only following the party line, which has also been embraced, as you might expect, by the right-wing, nationalistic Freedom Party (FPÖ).

The Vice-Chancellor, Werner Kogler, of the Green Party (“die Grünen”), as might be expected, sharply criticized that use of the word and called the “normal” rhetoric “prefascist” (“präfaschistoid”) in an interview in the news magazine “Profil”.

In my opinion, Kogler has some justification for doing so. The problem is, of course, who gets to decide what “normal” is — and then what happens to those who are considered “not normal”. In a country that has a not-so-distant history of labeling anyone who criticized the government “asocial” (“asozial”) and sending them, often, to concentration camps sometimes to be murdered, it does feel as if we are on a slippery slope. (link to recent ORF article on this below)

I accept that there is bound to be (always has been?) backlash and that as diversity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives make headway (I’m not so sure “equity” plays a big role in the discussion in Austria at the moment) there will be pushback against people who want inclusive language (one of Mickl-Leitner’s hobby horses) or reject schnitzel or cars as central to their lives (Chancellor Nehammer’s [ÖVP] examples). I also think we need to tread very carefully and always remember where this kind of language has led in the past and could still lead in the present and future.

What is, after all, normal?

https://orf.at/stories/3324510/ (in German, on “normal denkende Menschen”)

https://topos.orf.at/Vergessene-NS-Opfer100 (in German, on “asoziale”)

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Maylo

26 Jun

Some of my readers know from other sources that my darling dog, Maylo, is no longer with me. He got sick around Easter and all the vet and other care in the world didn’t make him better. Then he took a sudden turn for the worse, and his very kind vet came in especially on a Sunday (June 18) to end his suffering. He died peacefully in my arms. One word people have used a lot in sending their condolences is “companion” and, indeed, he was my wonderful companion in walks and more for over 11 years.

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