Category: Austria

I recently watched “Der Untergang” (The Downfall), a movie by Oliver Hirschbiegel about Adolf Hitlers final days in his Berlin bunker. What made me think were the last lines of the movie by Traudl Junge, a secretary of Adolf Hitler and eye witness of the downfall of the Nazi regime.

“All these horrors I’ve heard of during the Nuernberg process, these six million Jews, other thinking people or people of another race, who perished. That shocked me deeply. But I hadn’t made the connection with my past. I assured myself with the thought of not being personally guilty. And that I didn’t know anything about the enormous scale of it. But one day I walked by a memorial plate of Sophie Scholl in the Franz-Joseph-Strasse. I saw that she was about my age and she was executed in the same year I came to Hitler. And at that moment I actually realized that a young age isn’t an excuse. And that it might have been possible to get to know things.”

I am fortunate to be born in the late 70ties, long after those horrible times. The only way for me to know about these days is through media, history classes and people around me who where born and raised during the Nazi regime in either Germany or Austria. Some of these people still can’t let know of the old days . “Didn’t know about it”, it was not all that bad, it wasn’t Hitler but his advisors etc.

I thought that we live in complete different times now, that we have changed, don’t close our eyes anymore, that something like WWII can’t happen again. But then I put myself into the future, around 40 years from now. Current problems like global warming came to my mind, atomic waste, pollution of the oceans and how badly our environment is treated this days. Problems that will affect our future big time. Completely different to what happened between 1938 and 1945? Maybe, but millions of people suffer and die right now while I live a happy life.

I asked myself how I would respond to my children or grandchildren if they wanted to know why I did not do anything about the problems of my time. Why did I drive a car which used fossil fuels, why I did not vote for a party that was against the use of nuclear power, why wasn’t I speaking out loud against the deforestation of the rainforest. Would I say that I “didn’t know anything about the enormous scale of it” like Traudl Junge? But I do know about the problems, its on the news every day!

Well, I haven’t found a good excuse yet, maybe I should start doing something about the problems around me, I don’t want to end up on a trial for misstreating the planet.

The past few days have been a wonderfull get-away from work.

I spent them with my friend from England and visited Austria, Czech (to be precicse Prague and Cesky Krumlov)and Germany – Munich and the Oktoberfest, better know as the “Wiesn” to be precise.

Full storie and pictures coming soon!

Hi folks – hope you are all doing well!

Summer has finaly started and today is a very special day in Austria – its called “Sonnenwende” and we celebrate the solstice with a huge fire. The whole family is gathering at my grandparents farm where we are going to have BBQ, lough, share stories and have a lot of fun.

Tomorrow I’m off to Vieanna with a couple of friends for the Donauinselfest – one of the biggest Open-Air concerts in Europe with around 1500 artists and about one Millon visitors.

Hope you all have a great weekend with the people you care about!

Ps: There are various reasons for not blogging much recently, but I’m sure there will be more stories in the weeks to come.

Stockholm – four days, not much time considering the activities and sights this city has to offer. The thing I really liked about Stockholm is that it was easy to explore as most of the sights were within walking distance of my hostel in Gamla Stan, the historic district of Stockholm. Public transport is also very well organized and since everyone warned me on how expensive everything is up in Scandinavia, I was somewhat prepared and it did not feel “THAT” expensive at all.

The main purpose to come to Stockholm was not just do some sightseeing, but to meet friends. Actually, it was a meeting that was originally going to happen in London, but things changed back then and so we somehow ended up meeting in Stockholm instead.

And what do friends do when they get together? Have a picnic in the park and get drunk with overpriced wine from South Africa! Which we sipped from Mac Donald’s paper cups by the way… At a certain level of alcohol in your blood you realize that doesn’t matter at all!

But even a box of wine is at some point empty and how do you keep the fun going? A very effective way for me was to buy Swedish vodka at the duty free store at the airport in Munich before I went on the plane, as it costs a little fortune to buy “Absolut Kurant” in Stockholm. Short storie: half of the bottle was consumed at a festival called Popaganda at the Univeristy of Stockholm…

The final day in Stockholm was spent with sightseeing rather then drinking. I managed to visit the museum of the historic warship “Vasa” and Drottningholm, the royal castle and Swedish Versailles (where i realzied that all castles in Europe look somewhat similar…). I did that all in less then 6 hours in one day, which I consider quite astonishing giving the fact that I still had a hangover from the previous night.

Before I even started to get into my holiday mood, I was on the plane, heading back to Austria.

Reminder for myself – Four days is just not enough!

Hey – this is my first entry not to be written in good old Austria. Yeah, just this very morning I left the beautifull city of Munich to fly to… Ahhhh – thats a big secret not to be revealed until my return to Austria. But its a nice city, somewhere in Europe. The reason to come here is connected to one of my earlier stories (look for “Priceless in London”). But this time its not England. Hope you are all having a wonderfull weekend. Will be back with more soon and the answer to the question “Whats left of right?”!