Posts from the ‘Philosophy’ Category

Nov 1

Seegruber Restaurant overlooking Innsbruck

The Top 10 of the Top 5 Expat Bloggers in Austria – Week 1: The Practice Room

Back in April of this year,the English language online news blog, The Local, featured “The Five Best Expat Blogs in Austria.”

Who knew?

I certainly didn’t until I found out quite accidentally this past week. Thrilled to learn I had been included on a list with like-minded expats in Austria spreading the word, I decided to reach out and invite them to come hang out with us for a post and meet you all via a blog tour. Fortunately, they enthusiastically agreed so in November, I will feature one expat blogger per week, with each of their Top 10 Favorite Things Austrian.

So here it is — Week One featuring the blogger brave enough to go first: expat soloist/singer Kristina Cosumano who lives in Tirol and writes about just about everything and especially about all things Tyrolean and author of the blog, The Practice Room.

Expat Blogger, Kristina Cosumano’s Top 10 Favorite Austrian Things

1) Food

Wiener Schnitzel with a dollop of Preiselbeeren.

2) Drink

A Melange from Cafe Munding in the Innsbrucker Altstadt.

3) Film or TV Show

Anything with Josef Hader. “Indien”, for example.

4) Book

“Im Alphabet der Häuser” von Christoph W. Bauer. Right now I’m reading his book of short stories, “In einer Bar unter dem Meer”.

Fliess in late October, photo by Kristina Cosumano

5) Month

October. Tirolean “Altweibsommer” (Indian Summer), when it’s sunny and dry, is perfect.

6) Place

Unusual, forgotten places. For instance there’s a curve on a forest road between Landeck and Fliess, where there are grooves worn into rock from centuries of Roman wagon wheels. There is a cave in the Rofan Mountains north of the Achensee with “Etruscan” texts carved onto the walls. There is a grassy mound next to the Bergisl ski jump, under which are the remains of an ancient sacrificial burning altar from pre-Christian times.

the Roman “Via Claudia Augusta” in Tirol photo by Kristina Cosumano

7) Historical Figure

Maria Theresia. Mozart. Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

8) Tradition / Past time

A hike to the Alm for Schnitzel and a Radler.

9) Song

Mozart, Eine kleine deutsche Kantata, KV 619. The text, more or less: For God’s sake, stop warring and love your neighbor.

10) Word

Well, I have favorite phrases rather than words. Such as “taking the Nr. 71” (tram, which runs to Vienna Central Cemetery) as a euphemism for dying; that a situation is “hoffnungsloss aber nicht ernst” (hopeless but not serious). Or what I refer to as the Official Motto of Tirol, “Es wird schon”.

Oct 24

Sex, Sermons, Socrates and Streetcars

“A good sermon should be like a woman’s skirt: short enough to arouse interest but long enough to cover the essentials.” – Ronald Knox (English priest, theologian and author of detective stories)

In writing, there is a technique to heighten a story’s tension (and as a writer, you almost always want to maintain interest). You physically trap your mild mannered characters in a situation that they can’t readily escape in order to spark their extremes. If you do this right, you force them to confront something unpleasant.

Movies do this.

Never say: “It could be worse.”

Remember Hans Solo, Luke Skywalker, cutie Chewbacca and Princess Leia in the trash compactor? They duck into what they think is just an ordinary room. First the bullets ricochet because the room’s magnetic, then a snake gets Luke and as if that’s not enough, without warning, the walls start moving inwards. Hans Solo, our nonchalant hero remarks, “One thing’s for sure. We’re all gonna be a lot thinner!” How can Princess Leia resist? Again, Harrison Ford, but this time as Indiana Jones, forced to confront his aversion to snakes by being dropped into a pit of vipers in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” “Snakes, why’d it have to be snakes?” Or speaking of snakes, how about that classic action thriller of 2006 – “Snakes on a Plane” — in which hundreds of snakes are released on a passenger plane in an attempt to kill a trial witness? Or Will Smith in “I am Legend” trapped in NYC with a bunch of feisty zombies. You get the idea. Trap the character in a place he or she can’t get out of and force them to confront something annoying. That builds tension.

Likewise, this past week, I was happily making my way after work to meet a friend for dinner when I realized I was running a bit late. So I decided to break away from my preferred modus operandi of transportation in Vienna’s first district (per pedes), and take the D-Tram to make a quick round along the Ringstraße. Don’t get me wrong, I love Vienna’s Bims – particularly if you manage to get just the right seat in winter when the stinging Siberian winds mercilessly snip at all pedestrians wandering the sidewalks. If you get that seat, you find yourself growing toasty within seconds from the heater just below your wooden bench.

So there I am, happy little me looking forward to some good wine and good food with a good friend, as I board what I think is just a simple old ordinary D Tram in the middle of evening rush hour with every seat and the aisle completely full. This left me nowhere to stand but in the area at the door beside a seemingly harmless well dressed, grey-haired gentleman.

Vienna Ring Tram

At first from the way he was leaning toward the rest of those seated, I thought he looked like some kind of tour guide for a senior citizens’ group out to see the city. Or perhaps it was the typed notes complete with after-thoughts scribbled in blue and black ink in the margins or maybe just his air of authority, but I definitely sized up the situation wrong and should have taken better heed of the stunned expressions of the fellow passengers.

No sooner had the doors closed and the old tram inched its way forward, that I realized my predicament. I had not joined fellow passengers, I had joined fellow audience members. Did I say audience? Well, I meant to say congregation.

What he lacked in a pulpit, altar and choir, he made up for in gusto, conviction and tenacity.

“Pre-martial sex leads to those who engage in its evil ways to be struck with the HIV virus. Yes ladies, and gentleman, you need to turn your back from the evil ways and stop sinning and engaging in per-martial sex. A young woman, 22 years old who engaged in per-marital sex was brutally murdered by her partner. Murdered! Her young body dead…”

He then bowed and mumbled in a sing-song tone a two minute prayer for all our sins which he abruptly broke off to quickly dive back into a sermon about per-marital sex and AIDs.

I kid you not, when I say that just a day or two before I had been discussing Socrates with someone studying philosophy. Apparently Socrates spent his days going to the market stalls in Athens to spout off his notions of life and living. And not everyone was so convinced of his philosophical pursuits. His wife, Xanthippe, for example, often fetched him and no doubt dragged him back home by the ear, all the while complaining that he should find a real job like his friend Crito and spend his time doing useful things like cutting stone or herding sheep. This might explain why Socrates once said, “My advice to you is, get married. If you find a good wife, you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.”

Vienna Ringstraße Tram Line 1

The Vienna D-Tram had no philosopher’s wife but definitely some doubting Thomases.

By the time the tram had arrived at the next stop, the well-dressed university student sitting caddy corner to us merely three feet away, butt in.

“Could you please stop your preaching?” He asked rather politely, I thought, considering we were all rather trapped. “No one here is interested in what you have to say.”

Though I have to admit, I was certainly curious how crazy Mr. Streetcar-Sermon-Man would get and had even put my cell phone on record to better take note of his lecture. So to claim that no one was interested wasn’t exactly true. But there was no need for me to stand up and argue. The portly gentleman in the aisle next to the student, who looked like he was on his way from his construction job to the next Beisl, raised his voice in rebuttal.

“I do. I want to hear what he has to say.”

The stunned student turned to the fellow D-Tram traveler breaking rank. “Then go on over there next to him and have a conversation,” the student replied. “He’s disturbing me. Not everyone here agrees with him and not everyone should have to listen to him.”

Undeterred, the construction worker replied, “A bit of morality would do everyone here some good.”

I eyed the folks clutching their backpacks, texting on iPhones and fiddling with their city maps. Just minutes before they all looked so harmless. Was Mr. Constructor Workerman on to something?

Quite unexpectedly, a young lady from the back of the tram, closer to the spontaneous preacher, piped up, “Not all people who are HIV positive get it from AIDs and married women are often murdered by their spouses.”

Things were just getting interesting when, unfortunately, we arrived at Volkstheater and a good two thirds of the passengers stood up and started moving towards the doors. Obviously Preacherman’s stop as well. He grabbed his grocery dolly but before allowing anyone to pass by him to get through the door, he turned to his D-tram flock, raised his hand and waited for a bit of quiet. Then he announced our homework assignment: “Go home and read the Bible every day for an hour.”

Then he was gone. The doors closed and the D-Tram inched forward once again in an all too disappointingly ordinary manner.

Star Wars, Trash Compactor Scene – and you thought you were having a bad day!

Oct 14

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Trust No One – Vienna, The Spy Capital

“To write fiction, as I do, is to lie in the idiom of truth. To lie in a language not truly my own is to put an extra fork in my tongue. To be a spy is also a fork matter. It means trying to be the virtuoso of a daily duality.”
– Austrian born, American writer, Frederic Morton

A couple weeks ago at a writer’s conference, I ended up having lunch together with a British author. Halfway through the Quattro Stagioni, I mentioned that I live in Vienna. His eyes lit up and it wasn’t from the vino da tavola rosso (well maybe that too). Ahh, spy capital of the world.

He then confessed that his current book project concerns the real life tale of a former spy. From there we talked non-stop. Intriguing tales of the world of espionage got us so carried away that he almost ran late for an afternoon panel discussion featuring him as one of the special guests.

Key Logging – no doubt an effective spying tool

If the Vienna Tourist Board had an ad to attract spies to the city, I am sure it would read something like this:

If you’re a spy, Vienna is the place to go.

A Russian spy? Serve yourself up some Austrian Schnapps and reminisce with your comrades about the good old days after WWII. With your ten additional years in the city, I am sure you grew well acquainted with all we have to offer and who wouldn’t want to be posted at the station rumored to be the strongest intelligence headquarters outside the Soviet Bloc?

And the rest of you? Vienna welcomes all spies, all languages, all nationalities — that’s just how we are. Multi-kulti. That’s us. And we’re sure you’ll enjoy your clandestine existence in a place consistently voted world’s number one most livable city. We’ve got international stores and restaurants (amazing steaks and even a doughnut shop), top quality English-language international schools, acres of parks, annual balls hosted at the imperial palace and cultural events to keep you busy every hour of every day of the week.

Location, location, location

There’s that too. A great infrastructure with international flight and train connections, located in the heart of central Europe with easy access north, south, east or west. Bratislava? Just a 1.5 hour hydrofoil ride away. Budapest? In less than three hours and no transfers, you’re there by train. And trains leave every two hours. Prague? As of December, in just 4 hours and 10 minutes you’re there. Again, trains leaving every two hours. Munich? about 4 hours by train. Venice? Less than 6 hours by car. Zagreb? Less than 4 hours by car. Belgrade? 6.5 hours by car. Flights? Moscow: 2 hours, 40 minutes; London: 2 hours, 21 minutes, Ankara: 2 hours, 32 minutes; Bagdad: 4 hours. You get the picture.

And let’s not forget highly trained and qualified medical personnel, interpreters and translators, all at your finger tips. But if we’re honest, you’ll be moving heaven and earth to prolong your Vienna assignment because of the Grüner Veltliner, Ottakringers, Melanges and Milkas. What more could a 007 want? O.K. Maybe a martini shaken, not stirred. Vienna got that too.

Nowadays everyone is spy-worthy – a camera in the Vienna subway

And the Austrians? As long as you agree not to spy on them personally because that would be a big no-no – then hey – alles in Ordnung. Foreign espionage activities are not illegal in Austria, unless they are directed against Austria. Alles klar, Herr Leamas?

But don’t let that deter you from relocating. There’s plenty of spy-worthy targets here to keep even the most ambitious spies satisfied.

As a United Nation headquarters, Vienna is home to many international organizations such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the UN Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Of the 17,000 or so diplomats who reside here, it’s estimated that about half have connections to intelligence agencies which would make it the city with the highest density of foreign operatives in the world.

But every rose has its thorns. It’s like the house guest who starts to feel a little too much at home and starts to take advantage of the situation. Because spies oftentimes feel comfortable here, Vienna is also chosen as an ideal location for covert actions –like kidnappings, dead drops, high level international spy damage control negotiations and prison exchanges.

In July 2010, for example, Vienna International Airport was the chosen tarmac for Russians and Americans to do a little change your partner number and swap 14 agents. Eleven Russian agents – including the stunning femme fatale Russian spy, Anna Chapman , were rounded up by US authorities in Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Washington and Cyprus a month before and then exchanged for three individuals accused of spying for the US and who Russian authorities had held in custody for over 6 years.

But in general, Austria’s spy guests tend to be well-behaved and the Viennese, for their part, have found their place in the spy world beneficial. After all, it was the Armenian spy Johannes Diodato who, in addition to using his connections with the Viennese Imperial Court to send information to his home country, used information from his home country to open Vienna’s first ever coffeehouse. And all Viennese love a good coffeehouse.

Sticker in Vienna subway indicating presence of camera

“Vienna has long been a center of accomplished deception. For centuries, the Hapsburg capital was above all a courtier town whose citizens were trained rigorously to hide purpose under manner… Even today, the conjuring of otherness, the crafting of illusion, is important, not just for practical advantage but as a dynamic of Viennese culture. This genius for artifice underlies Vienna’s affinity for art. It shapes Vienna’s flourishes: the stylishly indirect speech, the use of titles, the adroit courtesy, the instinctive use of charm as strategy..[and according to Karl Kraus, Vienna’s pre-eminent satirist, in Vienna] ‘Politics is what one does in order to hide what one is.’” Frederic Morton

More about Johannes Diodato:

Vienna City Website: “History of Viennese coffee house culture”

In Vienna’s 4^th district, there is a Johannes-Diodato-Park which I think is dedicated in honor of his brewing beans rather than intrigue.

Spy books that take place in or pass through Vienna:

Another unconventional quasi-spy story is A Death In Vienna by Daniel Silva

Prelude to Terror by Helen MacInnes is spy story set in Vienna

John Le Carre: A Perfect Spy: Background of story at Wikipedia

Valerie Plame and Sarah Lovett: Blowback

National Public Radio, Inskeep, Steve and Pearl, Nancy, “Librarian’s Picks: The Best in Spy Fiction“, 2 February 2005

Morton, Frederic, “The Two Sides of Block, Vienna Spy Tale Fit for Austrian Capital” 9 Aug 1989, http://articles.philly.com/1989-08-09/news/26150203_1_felix-s-bloch-diplomat-vienna, accessed 11 October 2014

More Links with Vienna Spy Stories / News:

ABC News Report about Spy Swap in Vienna Vision Airlines Plane Sends 10 Russian Spies Home, July 9, 2010, Brian Ross and Megan Chuchmach

Vienna Review, “Spy vs. Spy: 20 years after the fall of the USSR, Vienna is still the espionage capital of Europe; A puzzling saga of Cold War proportion,” Rabel, Sarah, Rollwagen Joseph, Stadtlober, Hannah, 1 September 2010

The Telegraph, “Vienna named as Global Spying Hub in New Book,” McElroy, Damien, 31 July 2014

The New York Times, “US Weighs Dismissing Bloch but has an Evidence Problem,” Engelberg, Stephen, 30 September 1989

The Telegraph, “Five Unlikely Objects that could use in Espionage” 6 August 2014

Mental Floss, “World War I Centennial: Gay Spy Scandal Rocks Vienna,” Sass, Eric, 25 May 2013

RT, “NSA spies on OSCE HQ in Vienna – report,” 22 May 2014

Sun Sentinel, from NY Times, “Marine Gives Conflicting Accounts about Spy Case” 30 March 1987

The Local, Austria News in English, “Austria Investigates US Spy’s Local Links,” 13 July 2014

Press TV, “NSA spy center in Vienna snooping on citizens: Report” 13 October 2014

RiaNovosti, “Vienna Named International Spy Capital,” 1 August 2014

Two Articles with Interviews with Siegfried Beer who is works with the Austrian Center for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies – articles downloaded from the ACIPSS website where more information is available for download. Beer_Profil_Artikel Kaffeehaus_July2012_Siegfried-Beer(1)

Oct 5

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Testament to the Art of Finding your Own Way – Miro

Laying bare the soul…poetry and painting are done in the same way you make love; with an exchange of blood, a passionate embrace – without restraint, without any thought of protecting yourself. The picture is born…of an overflow of emotions and feelings.

– Joan Miro, Conversations with Georges Duthuit the French art critic 1936

When writing Chinese characters, each stroke has a correct start and finish direction and each character a precise stroke order

My first encounter with the works of the Spanish artist, Joan Miro, occurred in the most unlikely of settings — at the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) in Beijing. The exhibit was entitled, “Oriental Spirit: Art Exhibition of Joan Miro.”

Miro Exhibition visitors on a Saturday afternoon in Vienna’s Albertina

After months of intense Chinese studies, I was craving a good excuse to give my cramped fingers a break from relentless hours of practicing Chinese character strokes. Classes at the Beijing Language and Cultural Institute began each day with a drill of the 30 vocab words assigned the afternoon before. One lucky student of our class of 20 was randomly chosen to demonstrate the characters on the board while the others struggled to write them in their notebooks.

Me and my bike in China in front of the Kempinsky Hotel

Since I had the good fortune of living 2 hours away from the institute at the charming last stop of the Beijing subway in a town ironically called Ping Guo Yuan (Apple Orchard supposedly existing somewhere beneath the shadow of a huge smoke billowing factory) and since a commute which entails a bike ride, a subway ride, a bus ride and then another bike ride, is often subject to various unforeseen delays, I was often a minute or two late for class. Which also meant that the Chinese-ified version of my name, which sounded particularly brutal at 8:03 am, was often the one called out for the daily public drill. Fortunately, the class consisted of every nationality possible and my French, German, Canadian and New Zealand colleagues tended to be far less judgmental of any errors than the three Japanese businessmen who always seemed to get everything perfect (the rest of us accused them of having an unfair language advantage).

Chinese is a tough language to learn. Unless you’re a Japanese businessman. At least for me it was. First there is the whole Ting Dong stuff with the four tones. Assuming you manage to get those right – and let’s hope you do because a horse-mother mix up could cause quite a bit of awkwardness – you can move on to the next really tough part of Hanyu — writing.

Practicing Chinese Characters

To get the characters right, you have to get the strokes right. One Chinese word can have several characters and each character several strokes. Each stroke starts and ends in a very specific direction and are put together in a very specific order. All of this must be memorized and practiced, practiced, practiced. Any sign of rebellion – starting a stroke in the bottom right hand corner and moving upward and to the left, for example, is swiftly quelled by a stern reprimand by the Laoshi. Heck. I was even put in my place by a sweet looking but very strict schoolboy in a uniform seated beside me on the subway one morning. No doubt exasperated by the big nose lady (all foreigners in China have big noses, not just me) attempting a proper language that uses both sides of the brain, he gave me a vigorous head shake and stern look as he swiped away my homework notebook from me to demonstrate what I was doing wrong (and no, I wasn’t doing the homework the morning before class, it was the evening after, of course – just in case you were wondering. You believe me, don’t you? And just for the record, the English homework he was working on, wasn’t perfect either).

Needless to say, the art of learning Chinese is rigid. Very rigid. And after awhile, you start to feel a bit stifled. (Or maybe the mandatory start of every sentence with Tóng zhì (Comrade) causes that feeling.) Whatever the reason, Miro entered my life at a time when I needed him most.

The works must be conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness.
– Joan Miro

Oh the complete and utter awe to stand before his paintings in a place so rigid with rules. Bold lines, incomplete forms, and off-set shapes. Yes, “Heaven is high and the emperor is far away.” Strokes going right to left, up to down, sideways and through figures. Eyes of different colors, hand prints here and there and chickens afloat. Nothing conformed. Nothing matched. Every painting was free. Rebellious. Without restraint. Fire in the soul.

Miro Exhibition visitors admiring Miro’s painting, The Farm, which Hemingway scraped together 5000 Francs to purchase

This past Saturday, as I visited Miro’s masterpieces once again, years after my first encounter, I learned about the Spanish artist’s past and close encounter with a missed fate. How his family had pressured him to work as an accountant for two years before he had a nervous breakdown and retreated back to his family’s farmhouse to paint. I learned that he spent nine months in Paris, poor as a church mouse, working endless hours on a painting entitled, The Farm, that Hemingway insisted on buying (after going bar to bar to scrape together enough money to do so). What if he hadn’t had that breakdown? What if he hadn’t gotten through the rough times and kept painting? What if the world never got to see Miro’s paintings because he kept accounting or because he gave up and did something other than slave over a Farm painting for 9 months?

At the Language Institute we had a tone teacher who marched into our class and for an hour each day, she pressed the button on her cassette player, played a phrase and had us repeat. Played a phrase and had us repeat. Played a phrase…. The first phrase she taught us was the one we would use over and over again during our time in China: 我听不懂 wo ting bu dong – which literally translates to mean, “I hear but I don’t understand.”

Joan Miro could hear the voices telling him what to do but thankfully they made no sense to him. A stronger, clearer inner voice spoke louder and truer to his artist soul. Tóng zhì ta ting bu dong.

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Website of Fiction Author K.C. Blau

Posts from the ‘Philosophy’ Category

The Top 10 of the Top 5 Expat Bloggers in Austria – Week 1: The Practice Room

Sex, Sermons, Socrates and Streetcars

Trust No One – Vienna, The Spy Capital

Testament to the Art of Finding your Own Way – Miro

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