Modern Times

Sweden—that shining beacon of egalitarianism, gracious living and simple yet elegant style. On the world stage, this Nordic nation presents itself as a peaceful, self-effacing exemplar of social equality, tolerance and democracy, and it works hard to build peace around the globe.

Sex and the City 2 opens in European cinemas on Friday, May 29. I, as the ultimate S&C fan should be ecstatic. Well, I’m not. I passed by a cinema with a jumbo poster above the door featuring Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda (in a desert?!) and I had a very strange feeling – it was a bit like looking at a corpse – a mixture of curiosity, disgust and sadness.

Vienna is by now world-famous for its consistently high “Quality of Life” ratings, whether by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the annual Mercer Study or even Monocle magazine (where they smartly ask, “How easy is it to get a drink at 2 in the morning?”). 

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!”

On this winter night, the fashionistas of Vienna had come together to discuss the question that had been hanging in the air over atelier, catwalk and show rooms – whether Vienna is indeed a fashion city (“Wien ist (k)eine Modestadt”, Westlicht, Feb. 21); in recent years, some fear it may have lost its edge.

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.

A little over a century after its founding, the Vienna Secession is again scandalizing the city with exhibitions that run against public propriety. Founded in 1897 by Gustav Klimt, this union of artists now presents Christoph Büchel’s sexually deviant club themed exhibition at the base of the Element6 building.

For the next two months all sexual taboos will be broken. For 18 and up, the museum includes a dress code of no t-shirts or jeans, including many DJ’s, strippers and dancers. Bondage, mask-mystery, body painting, red walls and black velvet, benches and beds, sculptures in erotic poses and women and men of different ages making out and having their fun was all part of this sexual experience.

France has the highest prison suicide rate in Europe, according to the World Health Organization, a staggering statistic that has shaken Jean Marie Bockel who took over as French Commissioner of Justice in June, 2009.

Overburdened and sagging under its own weight, Bockel wants to reform the system and arrived in Vienna Jan. 12 to visit two of Austria’s respected prisons “without bars.” A similar system, Bockel hopes could alleviate the pressures on the French system and perhaps someday abolish the use of high-level restraints in some facilities altogether.

I started my day with a cup of coffee and the morning paper, when a quote by Pat Robertson jumped off the page:

“Feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.” All that said in support of work segregation and elimination of women from competing for what are thought of as men’s jobs. This might be “old news” for some, but it’s a scandal nonetheless, at least to the eyes of women in Austria.