First day in Vienna--Saturday, September 27

Today, Maggie and I had coffee in the backyard of Maggie and Daniel's apartment. The apartment is hard to capture in pictures, but I will try. It is in an outer area of Vienna, just on the edge of the Vienna Woods. Here you see the pretty little yard with a hammock and a couple of small picnic tables scattered amongst the pots of flowers, trees and shrubs. We spent the morning and early afternoon waking up, drinking coffee in her back yard. There were still some tomatoes and peppers growing--it feels like the last of summer.

We went into the center of Vienna and saw some of the beautiful buildings of the Ringstrasse.
We ate lunch at a delicious middle eastern take out place in the train station.

We then negotiated the un-geometrical medieval streets in the old central part of Vienna to go to a traditional Viennese coffee house. A trio (bass, violin, piano) was playing classical music--well, it seemed like classical music, but one of the songs was a Big-Band standard arranged like a classical song. People were sitting around talking. There were little ashtrays on each table. Newspapers on sticks like in the library. Lots of dark colored wood. We were both pretty tired when we got there--don't think we had a super profound discussion, but I felt like this would be a good place to do so.

Then we came home where Daniel, who had just returned from his father's 50th birthday at their country home in southern Austria, made dinner. Delicious pizza, a beautiful salad, and wine. Didn't get a picture of the dinner, but here is the dining room table.

Drinking wine, we talked about the American elections, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin. It turns out that not every country is as obsessed with American politics as we are. But it seems that the same forces and fears about the future exist in Austria.

Tomorrow are the Austrian national elections. Because neither of them has enough seats in the Parliament to make a majority, one of the 2 most powerful parties will have to make a coalition either with one of the right wing groups or with the Green Party.

The two smaller right wing parties are extremely anti immigration. (Austria for Austrians) They have become popular by talking about how they can make everyone's lives better if they stop the drain on social services by immigrants and their large families. They promise to lower the price of gas, make people's lives better. They portray themselves as the champion of the common people and exploit their anger and fears about the future. A lot of people aren't that happy with the Green Party, but see it as a matter of votinfeel that they are forced to vote for the least of many evils.
Meanwhile, 16 year olds are being allowed to vote for the first time and are turning out to favor the right wing. How could they do that I thought to myself self righteously? But then I remembered that at 17 I wrote a long research paper on Karl Marx, my main source of information being J Edgar Hoover's book "Masters of Deceit". I was for Goldwater in 1964 and even had an AuH20 hair ribbon (AuH20 was printed over and over on the ribbon). I remember his acceptance speech which I loved: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

While we ate dinner, we listened to Simon Boccanegra live from the opera here in Vienna. It sounded really good. We hope to get tickets.

After dinner, everyone went to bed. It was now daytime in California and I was able to talk with Bill. Dad's condition is worsening. Anne is there. Max and Casey and Max's girlfriend too.