Stefanie Rauchegger

Imagine you are sitting on the U-Bahn in Vienna. It’s lunchtime and there are not too many people on the train. Two cyclists are having a loud chat, talking about the Tour de France and not noticing that their bikes are blocking the way. They don’t even see the elderly woman hovering nearby, complaining.

When Miss Dunne typed in: “16 June 1904,” she fixed for once and ever the celebration of Bloomsday. In James Joyce’s Ulysses, this is the day on which all the action involving protagonist Leopold Bloom takes place and that has become the day for the celebration of James Joyce himself, as the pioneering novelist of the unconscious.

It was shortly after 11 a.m., when I entered Vienna’s legendary Café Hawelka in Dorotheergasse off the Graben. April 24, 2010 – but it could have been 1939 when Leopold and Josefine Hawelka first opened the doors of their new Kaffeehaus. Although their grandson Amir is now the owner, Leopold, dressed neatly in a suit and bow tie, welcomes every guest with a warm smile, every day from 10 to 1 p.m., except on Tuesdays – closing day.

The café owner turned 99 on Apr. 11.

With confusion dominating the world after a plane crash killed Poland’s President Lech Kaczynski and much of the country’s elite, the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajoekull could not have chosen a worse time to erupt, shooting clouds of ash into the atmosphere and grounding nearly every plane in Europe. The gods were clearly very angry.

Austria’s Interior Minister Maria Fekter wants to put all new asylum seekers into custody – an act that has puzzled many, as it goes against the principles of the Austrian Constitution, not to mention the UN Charter of Human Rights or the Geneva Convention. Her plans have stirred up intense controversy, not just on the Left, but also among most political parties and part of the population.