Change is the only constant, but it can take a long time. This summer, I’m spending a month in Vienna. I went to high school here, and I have been back since, but never for more than a few days.
Staying away gives you a new perspective. You notice what has changed, you notice what has stayed the same, and you notice things that are different. The ice cream popsicles you can buy in the outdoor pools I take my kids to are the same as the ones I bought when I went there a quarter of a century ago. But I notice there is one that’s called Bum Bum, which never struck me as funny when I was a kid, and another one is called Nogger. I want to believe that’s just an innocent coincidence, but it’s the only chocolate coated popsicle, and now I’m not sure.
There’s more segregation than I remember as a kid. Some streets are now lined with cafes that cater to men from the Balkans and the Middle East. This wasn’t the case 25 years ago. Other areas are unchanged, and the local cafes are full of old-stock Viennese men. To my relief, the menus of those places haven’t changed either, and you can still get Wurstsalat und Knödel mit Ei everywhere.
Aside: It’s easy to tell if someone grew up in Vienna because they will have a distinct way of talking. A few months ago my wife and I waited for an Uber in San Diego’s North Park neighborhood. Next to us, there was a group of half a dozen people who had just left a restaurant. From the way they spoke English I could tell they were American, until one woman, who hadn’t said anything so far, made a noise. To concede a point, she said “Aso,” and the way she said it immediately told me she was Austrian. I started talking with them, and of course I was correct.
Something else I hadn’t noticed before is how much puns are used for advertising purposes. Every trash can in Vienna has a pun in Austrian German on it. And I have yet to see the same pun twice. Most of them aren’t good. Talking of trash, how is it that all the trash collectors are smoking on the job?
I’m halfway through my visit and may follow up with more observations and photos once I return to California.
Nehaveigur 