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Full employment, a solid social state, an influential foreign policy and a ‘Sun-King’ chancellor who appeared to be an unbeatable. These are the images which are called up when you speak to Austrians about the time when Bruno Kreisky was Chancellor of Austria (1970-1983).

Even the FPÖ, a party not well-known for their love of socialists, claimed once in a manifesto to want to continue Kreisky’s policy of full employment. Clearly, people from across the whole political spectrum look back on the Kreisky Era as a ‘golden age’.

Every summer, Vienna becomes the centre of the dance world for one month between mid-July and mid-August when ImPulsTanz brings the world of contemporary dance to Vienna. Every day of the week there are two or three world-class performances during the long summer evenings, followed by parties late into the night. This year, there are even midnight performances in the Wild Walk series, with shows starting at 11:30pm.

It has taken almost two years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and more than three years since the beginning of the global recession brought on by the financial sector’s misdeeds for the United States and Europe finally to reform financial regulation.

Perhaps we should celebrate the regulatory victories in both Europe and the United States. After all, there is almost universal agreement that the crisis the world is facing today – and is likely to continue to face for years – is a result of the excesses of the deregulation movement begun under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan 30 years ago. Unfettered markets are neither efficient nor stable.

This past month’s weather has been a fortune teller’s nightmare; in fact, the previous two volcanos in Iceland, another two in Ecuador and Guatemala, a month long oil spill, all wreaking general havoc seem like the apocalyptic prophesy come true, echoing in shameless vengeance: I told you so.

For once there is nothing arrogant about preferring to be fashionably late.

Raising a kid is a tough job. Raising an adoptive child from a foreign country is even more so. When something really bad happens to your own child it’s a tragedy, but when something goes wrong with an adoptive foreign kid – it’s an international scandal.

Apr. 17, 2010, ICE 26 north to Dortmund, Germany from Vienna, departure time 10:40 a.m. At Vienna Westbahnhof the lines in front of the ticket counters are easily 50 meters long. The platforms are teeming with people. The numbers pulling little black carry-on bags and shouldering laptop briefcases are a clue to who these travellers are: the airline passengers stranded when the Vienna International Airport at Schwechat was closed on Apr. 16.

The “volcano-marooned,” they described themselves.

It is Thursday, Apr. 8, 2010. Tomorrow is the beginning of the campaign suspension before the election, required by law. Today they are really opening up all the throttles on the banks of the Danube in Budapest.

“Who supplies our government the water tankers that spray you down from the street when you are demonstrating?” shouts the speaker into the crowd. “Israel!” he answers himself. “Who is buying up our Hungarian land? Israel!”

It was an ordinary Saturday morning; I woke up at around eight and made my way out of bed to make myself some breakfast. I turned the computer on to listen to some music as I prepared for my day. I had a football match in a few hours.

My phone rang with an SMS. It was from Ammar, a friend of mine from school, it read “the Polish President has died in a plane crash.”

Since arriving in Vienna from London, the author has noticed that it’s all those little details that give away that this is somewhere a bit special...

Driving

Drivers are more considerate here and will frequently stop to let pedestrians cross, even far away from a crossing. The most dangerous spot for pedestrians unfamiliar with this city is when they wander into a bike lane – beware of psychopaths on cycle paths.

The Africans were perched on the low brick walls of a bridge over the moat of Sforzesco Castle with dozens of bags laid out on rugs. They whispered to the tourists coming out over the drawbridge of the red fortress into the blinding brightness of Sempione Park.

One of the bag-sellers, who introduced himself as Ahmadou*, sidled up to me as I was taking a photo.