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The applause of the large audience echoed in the Camineum of the National Library, Mar. 24, as award-winning Austrian actor and director Klaus Maria Brandauer and Vienna’s Archbishop Cardinal Christoph Schönborn made their way to the brightly lit podium at the front of the hall.

The arrivals hall at Vienna International Airport – Schwechat. The normal crowd, the usual slight sense of heightened anticipation. Suddenly a burst of applause and enthusiastic cheering: the Vienna Boys’ Choir has come through the automatic doors, the boys in uniform, with caps perfectly straight on each head. Back from another tour, they fall happily into their parents waiting arms.

In a country where 66% of the mothers with school-age children work, the Austrian school system that sends pupils home at midday persists as a lumbering dinosaur, built around assumptions that no longer work for either children or parents.

The issue is that for some 1.2 million children in Austria (Kindergarten to Gymnasium), the school day ends at the latest by 14:00. After that they return home, some to an empty house, the lucky to a parent, usually a mother, waiting for them.

Nearly 50,000 Greek workers huddled together on the streets of Athens, taking over the city on Feb. 24. During the 24-hour long strike thousands of anxious Greeks protested against the government’s strict measures which intend to increase taxes and cut the salaries in order to improve the country’s debt crisis. The protests developed into violence, with police firing tear gas and seriously hurting some demonstrators.

It’s 1930 and in Vienna, a huge experiment is going on, to build a more healthy, harmonious and attractive future. The world is curious, following every move, eager to see whether a city council can transform its citizens with better housing, education and leisure. But while Red Vienna is being born, there are dark clouds on the horizon…

For snow lovers the call of the wild is getting ever louder as more and more of us seek respite from the madding crowds. During the upcoming high season of the Austrian ski winter, congestion on the groomed ski pistes can sometimes resemble rush hour in Tokyo.

Since 2007, Norbert Kettner has been exploring what Vienna means to tourists; why they come and why some don’t. Originally from Tirol, he worked previously at harnessing the city’s creative industries and nurturing them.

When the 39-year-old farmer’s son Wolfgang Kulturer took over as managing director of the Carinthian Hypo Bank, he formulated the bank’s destiny as follows: “Expand or die.” In order for the institution with 220 employees and total assets of €1.9 billion to balance the books, the Carinthian regional government had to take over. Three employees were put in charge of foreign business transactions. This was on Nov. 1, 1992.

With the passage of Interior Minister Maria Fekter’s new National Integration Plan Jan. 19, language has sprung back to the fore as a political issue in Austria. And not without a fight.

While jittery investigations into the events of that day continue – with authorities recently rejecting the prosecutor’s call to have action brought against one of the two officers involved – Brennan, who considers himself a victim of racial profiling, is intent on keeping the issue alive.