Modern Times

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.

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.

Shopping can be fun in Vienna. With affordable catwalk-inspired pieces, and thousands of new styles churned through the stores every year, a trip to high street shops such as Zara and H&M can mean a good time without the guilt trip. While it might be nice to have that original studded Balmain skirt or Christian Louboutin snakeskin shoes, or to strut down the street with an exquisite crocodile PS1 dangling eloquently on our arms, affordability is usually what decides the day.

Working in New York four years ago, filmmaker Katharina Rohrer read an article on human trafficking in The New York Times. The extent of it as well as the cynicism of it shocked her, and launched her on a journey to research and create awareness about a crime done against an estimated 800,000 people every year around the world.

From 5 to 122… This is your window of opportunity! Your chance to find the perfect mate! Unless it takes the whole 122… In some cases, people have actually spent a lifetime looking. Many tell happy tales of success, but others… well, when it was their turn, let’s just say fortune was looking in the other direction.

Why start at five? Well, this is the age when children begin to develop social affections, when the identification with the mother is broken and a child can build focused friendships. It is also the time of the first puppy-love... Oh, those simple and exquisite romances of early age!

And why 122? Simply because this is the longest anyone has ever lived. Still, it may not be enough. Fortunately, there is a scientific formula that can ease the way!

This year’s Vienna Fashion Week took place from Sept. 24 to Sept. 27, the work of creative headz, quartier21, and MuseumsQuartier.

Held in a tent just outside MuseumsQuartier, the fashion show audience consisted for the most part of the usual bohemian design and art scholars, augmented by the stable of models working and not working. A starlet visitor from London expressed some disappointment that there was little of the money that one sees at London’s fashion week.

Less than 25 years ago you could leave your car unlocked overnight in Vienna and nothing would happen. The car would be right where you had left it, and whatever you had had inside would remain untouched. People say “Vienna is a village,” and in terms of personal safety and the security of property, it truly was.

Markus Seyffertitz believes that the world will end soon.

“Crises, earthquakes, epidemics and the cooling of inter-personal relationships. Many of the signs described in the Bible are observable today,” he says. However, the 44-year-old doesn’t appear particularly devastated. On the contrary, he has been waiting for the end for a long time, his whole life, in fact.

Bicycles will get you from point to point in Vienna faster than any other form of transportation. In fact, they have it all over cars: they’re environmentally friendly – no exhaust, no noise – and they are a great way to exercise. They don’t take up much space – no traffic jams – and there’s no stress looking for a parking space.

This year it’s not Summer Stage, or Hermann’s Strandbar; the newest hit on the Vienna out door summer scene is the “Tel-Aviv Beach” bar that opened May 1st on the Danube Canal at Herminengasse – just on the edge of the old Jewish Quarter in the 2nd District of Leopoldstadt.