Waltzing On Water

(The Vienna Review, June 2013)

The “seafront” on the Alte Donau warms up sailing memories of a coastal upbringing

Going sailing was not on my agenda for my time in land-locked Austria. What I didn’t know is that the countryside is full of lakes, and in the city, the Alte Donau is full of boats.

I arrived at the Hofbauer Yacht Club feeling a mix of excitement, anxiety and a little fear. I hadn’t sailed since high school – those days had ended when I realised that my fear of wind was a strong indicator that I shouldn’t be a sailor. Therefore, the blustery days leading up to my recent sailing outing had made me a little nervous.

The Alte Donau does justice to its reputation as Vienna’s beach. The restaurant decks are the usual waterfront scene: leathery-skinned couples in navy knits and Bermudas, sipping wine to the sounds of clinking halyards and whipping wind.

Uncharted territory

Walking into the office, I managed to squeeze out enough German to get a locker key. I asked where the Vienna International Sailing Club meets; she didn’t understand me. A throat cleared behind me. It was an Englishman, right out of a Brooks Brothers catalogue – ascot and all – but awkwardly in a bicycle helmet.

“You’re here for the Thursday evening sail?” I nodded, and the gracious walking stereotype escorted me to the dock.

“Who has sailed before?” asked Andrew Parker, vice-commodore of VISC, greeting the group with a smile. Silence. “Okay,” Andrew continued, “Who has seen Pirates of the Caribbean?” Everyone laughed. “It’s the same thing.” I summoned all the Jack Sparrow in me.

Every Thursday VISC opens up to non-members for an evening sail. Novices are paired up with “expert” sailors. Besides a few old English seadogs, many of the members on this particular evening are fairly new to the game, having begun only a few years ago.

My skipper for the evening is Gyula, a burly mustached Hungarian who has been commuting from Eisenstadt for three years just to sail here every week.

As a Seattle native, summers always involved sailing school; I learned to sail on a tiny nutshell of a boat called a “pram” before I learned to tie my shoes. So we were an odd couple: Me with my childhood memories and Gyula, knowing the local “ropes”.

The sailboats at Hofbauer are wooden and worn, lining the docks in a rainbow of chipping paint. We rigged our big blue-hulled boat, with Gyula narrating every step of the process for me. Then we cast the line and headed out. The seafarer aesthetic was in stark contrast to the backdrop, the glass towers of an ultra-urban skyline, as we rippled our way onto “open water”.

Back in tack

The shifty city wind makes sailing on the narrow Alte Donau like ballroom dancing, waltzing around the other boats. We’d spot a patch of wind on the water, marked by dense, dark ripples. We’d trim the sails to speed up and try to catch it. I was on jib duty, pulling it side to side with the main sail as we tacked back and forth upwind.

When the gust died, we’d find another patch, and the chase would begin again. There is competition though: The skipper in the boat behind us would target the same ripples, but more often than not he ate our wake. By then, I noticed, I had completely forgotten about my wind-phobia.

Gyula and I traded jobs for the last half hour, and I skippered the boat. It took me a couple tacks and jibes to get back into the rhythm: Shove the tiller, duck under the boom, switch sides, trim sails. It wasn’t long before I was back in the groove. Shove, duck, switch, trim, repeat.

The wind started to die down as the evening wore on into night, and we used the last bits of breeze to ease back into the dock.

After Gyula had de-rigged the boat and we’d folded the sails, my friends and I sat down on the deck of the Ufertaverne. As they lit the torches we ordered dinner and watched the boats disappear from sight.

After cruising the urban waterfront, I realised that, like music, sailing is the same in every language and, even on the slim strip of the old Danube, had the breath of adventure. As we left the docks, I was already thinking about making my next excursion by daylight.

Portland Monthly Smile Pitch

(Assisted by Dash Paulsen, to be published winter 2013)

Vienna and Portland don’t seem all that different. There are beards a-plenty, skilled mixologists behind every bar, and fixies of various neon hues chained up and down the block. The winding cobblestone streets in the posh center of the city are lined with home stores and furniture boutiques, each with a substantial selection of coffee tables and floor lamps resembling dendrites and other anatomic forms.

In the hip 7^th district, a Portland native could mistake the view out the window of one of the local coffee-shop-by-day/bar-by-night hangouts for the corner of Couch and 11^th in the Pearl.

The city truly feels familiar—until you flash a smile at a stranger on the street. That’s when you know you’re not in Portland anymore.

Our group has come to a consensus on this:

“It’s hard to smile at people because they don’t even make eye contact…maybe I’m smiling the wrong way.”

“It’s not usual that people are scared of a smile…maybe mine is actually scary?”

“Smiling is starting to feel uncomfortable.”

“I feel awkward and wrong…”

“Smiling at people in Vienna is like pulling out a knife.”

With such an efficient public transit system, we couldn’t figure out why everyone looked so dismal all the time. So we asked them – the frowners themselves.

Some respondents were offended. “I don’t like generalizations,” said a man outside of McDonald’s between drags on his cigarette.

Others claimed preoccupation: “I’m fighting with my wife right now,” said a man on the notoriously grumpy U-Bahn.

What was most intriguing was that several people associated smiling with mental instability:

“People think you are a beggar if you’re smiling.”

“Smiling is like an attack…people who smile all the time are the ones that do drugs.”

“If someone is walking down the street smiling, I think they are from another country, or on drugs, or drunk.”

But we got logical answers, too:

“In the country people are more friendly, but in the city the stress gets to people.”

“People are just in a hurry”

“If she’s tall, blonde, and has a good figure, you might as well smile at her.”

“It’s true that the waiters here are unfriendly, but the cab drivers in Berlin are worse.”

What we found is that the Oregon “nice” doesn’t exactly translate across cultures. When one Viennese man told us he watched Portlandia, we told him that the skit – where Carrie and Fred roll up to a four-way stop simultaneously and insist back and forth over who has right of way – is the kind of  “nice” we’re used to. He didn’t understand.

As friendly Oregon transplants, our smiles feel out of place in a sea of cold, hard city scowls. But the question looms: Which city is actually weirder, Portland or Vienna?

 

Raiffeisen’s Upward Sustainability

(The Vienna Review, May 2013)

The new Raiffeisen tower, which opened last month on the Donaukanal, is now part of the ever-changing Danube riverscape. The building, shaped like the prow of a ship, points into the gentle curve of the canal, as if about to set sail.
Vienna’s relationship with the Danube (and its meanderings) has a turbulent history. In the beginning of the 16th century, what is now the canal served as the vein of trade and communication to the heart of the evolving city. Today the main river has been restructured and pushed to the outskirts. As Vienna’s appetite for urbanisation fluctuates, so does its relationship to its river.

Monumentally passive

The Raiffeisenhaus Wien Zubau isn’t just a sleek high-rise; it’s the first ultra-low energy (“passive solar”) skyscraper in the world.

Designed according to Passivhaus standards, the giant new Raiffeisen building uses several energy collection and conversion systems that work in synthesis to regulate its interior temperature and reduce its energy use.

While a standard passive structure uses only solar energy, Raiffeisen’s system is unique in that it makes use of its proximity to the Donaukanal. The 20,000-square-metre building is cooled using water from the canal, which is pumped through a network of “cold hoses” within the structure’s concrete frame.

Established in 1988 by a team of German and Swiss architects, “passive” design is a process incorporated into a building’s architectural planning. Passive structures are engineered to use ultra-low energy levels – less than 120 kWh per square metre annually, which is half the average yearly energy consumption of traditional office buildings.

A major concern for Vasko & Partner, the energy concept team, was Vienna’s climate. To prevent energy loss during extreme winters, the team patented a “double-façade” design, in which the building is encased in a second layer of glass.

Promoting new energy

In a fitting metaphor, the 21-storey tower is built on the spot formerly occupied by the lower-lying offices of OPEC (The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Companies). In essence, it replaces “old” energy with “new”.

According to Raiffeisen CEO Klaus Buchleitner, the decision to build the new office block according to passive design standards came out of the company’s Klimaschutz (Environmental Protection) Initiative. The measure holds Raiffeisen and its subsidiaries to a common standard of sustainability and socially responsible practices.

“The Passivhaus idea has to do with the identity of Raiffeisen,” Buchleitner explained, and it derives from the company’s roots in agricultural banking.

Buchleitner hopes other Austrian companies will follow Raiffeisen’s example in building passive-designed office buildings. “The most important factor in deciding to build according to this standard is ethics,” he said, “and how the company thinks about its role in society.”

 

Capitulation: Not on the Menu

(The Vienna Review, April 2013)

In Austria, the only thing that stands between my entrée and my stomach is an alphabet-long word full of Umlauts and scharfes Ss.

Last week, the study abroad troupe grabbed lunch at a traditional Gasthaus near Praterstern. It was difficult for me – the only vegetarian at the table – to figure out what I wanted to eat from the menu, where the only discernible word was Schnitzel.

I was spent after a long day of getting lost on Vienna’s pride and joy, the transit system. I needed fuel, so I gave up my deciphering and blindly pointed to something on the menu.

Ten minutes later, the waiter slammed a bowl full of white cauliflower florets in front of me. They were topped with what seemed to be a lot of brown sugar body scrub and some bits of shaved cheddar cheese.

When I took a bite, my taste buds were pleased to find that the sugar scrub was actually browned butter-soaked breadcrumbs, and hard-boiled egg yolk instead of melted cheese. Odd as the combination sounds, I cleaned my plate.

Maybe I was just really hungry, or maybe I’m adjusting to Vienna’s gastronomic culture.