Vienna: Can’t Ride the Undercurrent

If Prague approaches you like a rag-and-bones bum in a discarded Armani suit asking for some spare change, Vienna was that suit’s original owner. It just happens that Vienna got a newer, better tailored version of that same suit. And damn does he look good in it.

The center of Austria’s capital has efficiently buffed out any rough edges. Spectacular Victorian architecture stretches for miles along streets lined with names like Versace, Rolex and Cartier. It’s the kind of place that makes you want to put on your white powder wig, call up the coachman and head to the opera. And it seems that plenty of people still do that, at least with modern accouterments but all the same ostentation of bespectacled elite on their way to hear Mozart present his newest concerto. Vienna does not seem want for money.

There are tourists, yes, but none of the package groups waddling through the streets, and none of the tacky souvenir shops catering to fools looking to part with their money. No, Vienna is more dignified than that, with a look and demeanor befitting of the capital of an empire. City parks are veritable botanical gardens; the buildings are exercises in historic preservation and integration of avant garde design. Trams, trolleys, subways and buses combine to form one of the best public transportation networks in the world. Everything is at your fingertips, if you have enough money, and the multitude that do parade through the streets with shopping bags in tow, along an urban catwalk of Europe’s beautiful and hip and urbane.

Rules and order prevail. You’ll hear no music on the trains. Nobody crosses the street on red. Conversations are formal in hushed tones. There is no trash. A Costa Rican friend who had visited the city told me “Vienna is beautiful, but it’s too perfect.” She suspected something was amiss.

Perhaps it is. Other travelers and expats speak of a difficulty in penetrating the national psyche. Friends are hard to come by, they say. An African immigrant told me “It’s very difficult for a black man in Vienna. People say things, awful things, to my friends and me. But I do not let it bother me. I look at them and say, these people have not traveled. They know nothing.”

Below the rigid structure of being the world’s most livable city (according to the most recent Mercer ranking) lies an undercurrent that makes many outsiders uneasy. Just ten years ago an ultra-right-wing party was in power, and pundits spoke of rampant nationalism, heady anti-immigration movements and even throwbacks to Nazism. Recent years have brought much more social and political harmony to the parliament and daily newspapers, and a booming economy has helped keep the peace.

When I see a man in a new Armani suit, I am immediately jealous of his social standing, good fortune, and the obvious difference between him and me. I imagine how life might be so much better for him. But after I rub my eyes and adjust to the shine coming off of all the diamonds and gold, I realize that even though he looks good going out in public, I don’t know what things are like when he goes home. After this brief stay in Vienna, I am not privy to his dinner conversation and pillow talk. I suspect this is how he likes it.

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