A love/hate letter to my beloved home town. I've had this collecting dust on my old, hardly ever used blog and I thought it was time to brush off the dust bunnies and revive it. Because most of what I wrote here still holds true to this day, and I felt like introducing you to a big part of what makes me me: my birth place, my home town, my love,
Vienna
Let's kick this off with this most excellent timelapse video by a channel called "FilmSpektakel", I found a couple of years ago on Vimeo:
And now, let's jump right into my thoughts and musings on a random day in April 2015:
Disclaimer:
This is one of these "personal opinion" posts.
A friendly reminder - opinions vary, as they should, and opinions change, as they should. None of the things I am expressing here are written in stone, nor should they be. You are allowed and welcome to feel differently. As am I.
And I might. My feelings about Vienna differ almost every day, varying depending on my mood, my life, how much sleep or alcohol I've had...
Only one thing is constant: I love it and I hate it fiercly and simultaneously. Always. <3
Oh Vienna. How I love and hate you, old girl. You, with your pompous pride, leftover from an era when you were the buzzing metropole at the centre of Europe. A time, when you harboured emperors in your castles as well as the scum of Europe within your bowels.
You still glow with the beauty and lusciousness of a time gone by, when "modern architecture" meant elaborate facades full of statues, balconies, stucco and gold.
Your people are infested with the arrogance that comes with growing up in a city of such rich culture and history.
And yet they are also a most peculiar people. A weird nation of sort of "lovable bastards". A people privy to such concepts as "gemütlichkeit" , "Wiener Schmäh" , "Schadenfreude" , and a certain special kind of "joie de vivre", usually spiced with a good amount of indifference towards the rest of the world, plenty of sarcasm, and a love of complaining about- and lovingly mocking- everything and everyone. All in all not an entirely unpleasant mixture of traits. Most of the time.
I love and hate you equally, my beloved hometown, in true Viennese fashion as only one born of you could.
When I am away, I dream of you. I miss your winding streets, your parks, your air, your pecularities; the elusive, undefinable feeling of "being in Vienna".
Photo by me
I miss strolling along the Danube, and the tiny, twisty shortcuts I like to take through the inner district.
I miss my favourite spots and eateries, the music, the constant dualism and endless battle between tradition and the need to be modern, which has always been part of life in Vienna and is so apparant in the architecture through the centuries, as well as politics.
I miss the peculiar quiet that still reigns here on Sundays even though I hardly know anyone who still goes to church. We like our quiet weekends, we Viennese people.
I love the feeling of having the entire city to myself when I stroll home in a drunken stupor at 4am though the deserted old city centre, breathing the night air, my steps echoing through the "Gässchen". (small, often winding alleys)
I miss the kitsch, the way the sun gleams off the Hofburg, the trips to the zoo in the spring and the ice skating at the Wiener Eislaufverein in winter.
I love the museums and galleries, the theatres and the old opera house, even if I hardly ever set a foot in them. I miss the good old Steffl cathedral and even the way the tourists flock to the Stephansplatz at all hours of the day and all seasons of the year.
Photo by me
I miss the traditional Viennese eateries: the so called "Heuriger" and all the yummy secrets they hold. The food, I tell you! Oooh the food! If you only knew!
The Gulasch and Schweinsbraten, the Schnitzel and Tafelpitz, the Rindsroladen and Schinkenfleckerl, the Leberkäse and Käsekreiner, the Semmerl and Salzstangerl, the proper Schwarzbrot and Schinken, and Extrawurst and Gröstete Knödel, the Fritattensuppe and Gebackenes Händl, the myriads of pastries and sweets, the Kaiserschmarrn, the Sachertorte, Apfelstrudel, Marrillenknödel, Palatschinken, Mohnnudeln, and on and on the list of culinary wonders goes.
Yes, I think, I almost miss the food the most when I'm gone.
When I am not in your arms, dear Vienna, I miss you so much sometimes that I feel like I cannot breathe. I then listen to old "Wiener Lieder", look at photographs on the internet and start crying like a fool.
But when I am there... After the first couple of weeks, when the joy of being home has vaned, I slowly start to remember why I wanted to leave in the first place.
I start to notice all the little things that annoy me, irk me, disgust me.
Like the ignorance and small mindedness prevalent in a big part of the population, spreading throughout all social classes.
Like the weird, unwarranted arrogance some of us exhibit. Like we are something special just for the the completely coincidental fact of having been born and bred in this city. This incomprehensible self-importance some of us hold.
Like the sad fact that right winged parties are still going strong and some Viennese people have ridiculously racist, Xenophobic and generally intolerant views. This is partly due to another sad fact: Vienna is growing old. A lot of the smart young people leave to study and work abroad, and some rarely or never come back, like me. So the people who are left behind are the old folks with antiquated views or the unfortunate uneducated who tend to adapt intolerant opinions from the idiots who surround them.
(I do not actually think this is true anymore. I am now of the opinion that the young people are just as idiotic as the old, as proven by our most recent parliamentary vote results.)
I get annoyed at the constant complaining. "Nörgeln" or "Raunzen" we call it in our dialect. This "everything sucks" attitude people sometimes have although they have the incredible privilege of living in one of the most liveable cities in the world. For the past 6 years in a row actually THE most liveable city in the world according to the annual Mercer survey.
(It's now 8 years in a row, actually. and even on the other popular list, it's been pretty steadily on number 2, behind Melbourne, Australia)
But I suppose it is human nature to complain, I just feel like we Viennese have a tendency to do rather a lot of it. Sometimes it's oddly charming, especially when it's paired with humour but all too frequently it gives me urges to punch the offender in the face and scream "wake up you fool!" or something like "go live a few years in some other place so you'll understand just HOW fricking privileged you are to be living in this city."
These are gross generalizations of course and not all of Vienna is like this. There are a lot of truly, amazing, beautiful, hilarious, smart, intelligent people in this city too. And they are my balm of sweet relief and pleasure.
As an artistic soul working in mainstream entertainment, I also bemourn the poor taste of most of the advertisement and art done for mainstream media purposes. Some of the billboards, posters and ads make not only my eyes but also my brain bleed. And it is sad to me that a city that once used to be a hub for all things art and music has now, in modern terms, so little to offer in both of those areas. I am not talking about fine art and museums and galleries, nor classical music - Vienna is still top knotch in the more traditional forms of artistic expressions - but really good quality, modern entertainment, that could potentially compete in quality on an international stage, is painfully rare these days.
(Again, I've somewhat changed my opinion on this. I still think we could do better but it's improved quite a bit since I wrote this I think. Or maybe my point of view has just changed, and I more actively seek out "the cool stuff" happening in my city. Or maybe I just miss it more...)
Which is the reason that I, as well as so many other young people, cannot stay in my beloved city. There is nothing here for me, career wise. At least now, in the beginning stages of my career until I have gathered enough experience and made a name for myself in my field. Then I could concievably come back and try to change this.
(Oh my gosh how much has changed since then. I am actively considering returning to Vienna for a bit, as I have found quite a number of promising animation studios popping up in recent years. And frankly, I'm crazy home sick after more or less 6 years of living abroad.)
Actually, writing all this, I realised it's mostly the people of Vienna that sometimes make me hate this city and want to be anywhere but there. Which is weird in some way, because it is also home of some of the few people who are most important to me in all this world.
There are many more things I love and hate about this strange place.
One thing is for sure though: I will always come back to my beloved city, no matter how long or far away I will end up staying and attempt to "make my fortune". Vienna and it's inhabitants are a part of me and will always have a place in my heart.
Until the next time,
Peace and Love,
Jill
And there you have it. I hope you enjoyed this peek into my thoughts, and maybe you've even learned a couple of things and googled a few of the foodstuffs I mentioned ;D (seriously. you should. hee hee )
Come and visit, I promise you it's worth it. ♡
I'll leave you with this gem of music history: Vienna - by Billy Joel
PS: I reccommend you click the link I put on the word Schadenfreude (re-linked here for your convenience) because it's a pretty great video about some pretty great German words. It's not Viennese, but rather refers to German culture but we do have most of these words as well in Austria, and, let's face it, they're all excellent words. XD
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