Of racism and other things: Why I’ll gladly leave Vienna behind (as soon as possible)

I often get asked why I would want to leave a country with a functioning social security system, great broadband internet and the safest capital city in the world. People don’t understand that being on top of the Mercer study year after year only speaks about quality of life but says nothing about peace of mind. I’ve lived here for almost 32 years, and Vienna really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The casual and socially accepted alcoholism

Vienna boast a certain “Beisl Culture”—“Beisl” being Viennese dialect for small dingy pubs. These corner pubs with their oddball characters who are completely wall-eyed by 9 p.m. may have a certain charm at night. But walk down a street at 9 in the morning on any given weekday and you’ll walk by the same small pubs, encounter the same characters, already working their way up from sloshed to legless.

Take the tram at 11 a.m. and chances are you’ll see someone drinking from a half-litre can of beer. In public. If they’re also rambling wild-eyed, then chances are it isn’t their first can either.

But it isn’t just the extreme drinkers. The other problem I’ve encountered are those that drink moderately but with a regularity and so casually that their drinking habits would scare the living hell out of people in most other countries.

This isn’t always what alcoholism looks like. In fact, it almost never is. Alcoholism is very often hidden well in casual everyday behaviour. In Vienna, no one would bat an eye if you told them you were having a beer or two after work every night—but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy behaviour.

My own father drank a beer for lunch and anything from a glass to a double-litre bottle of wine—yeah, they sell those here—in the evening. Every lunch and every evening. He wasn’t always noticeably drunk, but I think you’d have noticed if he hadn’t had his beer and his wine. I think he also often drove a car while not entirely sober. I will never know for sure, but I don’t think he thought he had a problem.

I was also friends with a 25-year-old once who thought it was completely normal to have a beer (or two or three) every night after work. When you asked them whether they thought it was a good idea, they’d argue they “deserved that beer”.

The blatant and tolerated racism

People here often wonder why I am bothered, since I am white and surely I don’t experience that discrimination. I might be pale as fuck, but I’ve got eyes and ears. I see and hear the crap people spew on the bus or the tram or in the store every single day and I fucking mind.

But I’m also tired—tired of getting into arguments with the racist strangers of Vienna, the uneducated junkies and alcoholics of the district I live in or the high-strung conservatives of the first district, when they sneer and utter things like:

“Why can’t they fucking speak German?”
“This is Austria. We speak German here.”
“Go back where you came from.”
“This might be how you do things where you come from, but it’s not how we do it here.”

Yes, people are helping out with the refugee crisis now, but people should be aware that those are not the majority in Austria.

Because I read things like this, from a Londoner who went to study in Salzburg, and am not surprised:

“I was walking to the bus stop on the phone to my friend I walked past a woman and stood at the bus stop and a woman started screaming at me in German saying “Wir Sind in Osterreich, deutsch sprechen, deutsch sprechen…” (we are in Austria, speak German, speak German…) she repeated this for about five minutes until my bus arrived. She screamed it walking around at one point up in my face as if she was taunting me, daring me to speak English again. Whilst this was terrifying on its own in retrospect what was more chilling is that not one single person at the bus stop said or did anything as this was going on and there were about 15 people there, it was almost as if we were invisible.” (Source)

I am not in the least surprised, because I have seen situations like that more often than I can count and often have been the only one to intervene—only to then take a lot of flak from third parties intervening on behalf of the xenophobes I was calling out. Because people don’t speak up and they generally don’t stick their necks out for anyone who is being bullied—except the assholes, who have no problem standing up for their fellow assholes, of course.

Because my friend who fled here from Iraq and just got his asylum status has been looking for a room in a shared flat and has been turned down by a boatload of people—simply because he isn’t white.

The general narrow-mindedness

I might be white and not face racism, but I’m definitely not fitting the idea of what is acceptable well enough — even if those facts about me aren’t immediately visible.

I’m a feminist.
I’m queer.
I speak up when others are ostracised.

I stand for a lot of things that aren’t typical Austrian. Foremost among those terrible things people like me stand for is change. Austria doesn’t do change. Progress is highly frowned upon and only happens once there is no other option available.

Let me give you an example: Adoption by same-sex couples will become legal in Austria come January 1, 2016. So far, so yay! But the basis for this is a ruling of the Austrian Constitutional Court from January 2015 in which it declared it unconstitutional to keep same-sex couples from adopting kids. The court gave the Austrian government a deadline—they had to change the law by December 31. And what did the Austrian government do? Nothing. They simply waited out the ultimatum and—simplified explanation—now the ban is lifted automatically per instructions by the Constitutional Court.

When in Austria, do as the Austrians do. Don’t be different.

This is only one example of many. Discriminatory laws are often only lifted after outside intervention, be it by the highest courts in Austria or by European courts. Someone has to give them a rap on the knuckles or Austria doesn’t change squat.

I could cite a few other problems I have with this country—and those don’t even take into account the current political landscape, because, to be fair, the swing to the right is prevalent all around Europe right now.

• The unmitigated and ongoing intervention by the catholic church in political matters, which I also assume to be the reason for the crappy opening hours of stores here.
• The unemployment agency that hands out benefits but never ever does anything to rehabilitate people into the workforce. Instead, they torture people with mountains of red tape—like telling my friend not to take the job he was offered, because then he would have to pay for his expensive, mandatory German language course himself. As long as he stays unemployed, they’ll pay it for him.
• Living in a society that doesn’t value intelligence. In school it still counts as extremely cool to be useless and lazy. If you’re smart, you get bullied. There’s a reason intelligent and/or highly educated people tend to leave this country. Brain Drain [Link to German language article], y’all!
• Working in a system that makes it incredibly hard for entrepreneurs to succeed. Which is all the same, since people generally aren’t instilled with entrepreneurial thinking to begin with. Just like in our educational system, striving for something better is nothing to be encouraged. The Austrian mindset is the opposite of the American Dream: You can’t do anything, so don’t even bother setting your mind to it.
• Austrians don’t talk to new people. It’s not just racism, it’s a general fear of the new. Expats have the hardest time making friends here. Most expats I know here are genuinely surprised when people finally show an interest in getting to know them.
• And then there’s German language dubbing on TV, in itself a reason to emigrate.

I’ve often tried to leave this place, but something has always come up, as in, I was hindered by either deaths, financial despair, or depression. I’ve always been able to tell myself that it could be worse. However, I feel things are getting worse and worse here. And I’m conveniently getting to the point where things have finally fallen into place in a way that will allow us to leave. (I’m even scared to say that, for fear that I’ll jinx it and be stuck here for eternity.)

Vienna, I’ve never been truly happy here. Maybe it’s not you, but me. Or maybe we just don’t fit. In any case, I’ve had enough. And now all I have to do is wait until it is time to finally pack my bags and physically leave. Emotionally, I’ve left this country a long time ago.

Edit: Austria is officially second “best” at drinking.

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