[turkia]

Well, your people played it on mine. So, just a reminder. "Austria" the beautiful is skin deep. Great architecture, wonderful "culture", only as long as you ignore the reality of Europe these days. Racism is raising it's ugly head again in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and of course France (one of the worst) and the UK. It's not all beautiful architecture and culture. Part of your culture is the very recent past, and unfortunately, the present.

[consti2k]

Racism is present everywhere, I give you that. And it's terrible that right-wing political parties are gaining more and more traction in Austria, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and probably pretty much every other country out there (including the USA and Turkey). Did the possibility, that neither me, nor my girlfriend are Austrian even come to your mind? All three of us (my gf, our dog and I) have different "nationalities".

Trolls are not invited to our cookie and cake party! :)

[jacquesm]

You are making the classic mistake of conflating country aggregate with specific people.

[Yaggo]

Generalization is not very constructive, you know.

[turkia]

That's exactly my point. It's generalization to suggest that "Vienna is awesome". It's is not so for many people now a days, who live there, or just visit.

Imagine walking into a bread shop and not being greeted by the "beautiful" Austrian girl (you know, blue eyes, blonde hair shtick) just because you look a Turk/Moroccan. Rather the the typical greeting, you're treated with a "YES!" - Imagine what it makes you feel, knowing that no matter how much more educated you are then this simple peasant, she knows she can humiliate you. In the past she could refuse to server you, hang a note on the door: "No Jews or Dogs." - Just saying.

I've heard so many stories from friends and colleagues living in Vienna, Amsterdam, Paris and London, I really take it seriously. It really is strange for me to hear "awesome" in connection with Vienna.

Europe was once full of labor and concentration camps. It might never happen again, but lets not forget that then it was the Jews. Now it's Muslims. Nobody really thought the Jews are going to "take over", but this is what modern Europeans believe Muslims are about to do today.

There were 191,000 Jews living in Austria before WWII, only 12,000 after.

So, when claiming a place like Vienna (with it's horrible record, past and present) is "awesome" just pause and remember what happend there in the 1930's, and what is going on there, and elsewhere in Europe, these days.

[begemot]

> no matter how much more educated you are then this simple peasant, she knows she can humiliate you

Education doesn't make you superior to anyone, and calling an honest worker a "peasant" shows that you are not especially enlightened.

> just pause and remember what happend [sic] there in the 1930's

You as a Turk should pause and remember what happened 1915-1917 in Turkey, and maybe this time you will have the balls to admit you committed genocide, before that you might as well give up on criticising anyone else's history.

[xtho]

I personally think it's rather irritiating that you go off on such weird reasoning when somebody offers you a place to stay. The difficulties with that line of reasoning become obvious if you start thinking about whether Turkey or Marroc have been free of guilt during the past 100 years. (Although that would be weird reasoning in itself.)

Anyway, if you had ever been to Vienna you would know that the people there aren't oblivious to the events of WWII. And greeting somebody with Yes/Ja isn't all too unusual in Vienna. I also wouldn't assume a girl selling bread in a Viennoise bakery is necessarily Austrian who speaks fluently German. The simple assumption that she had to be Austrian demonstrates a certain nationalist/racist bias on your part.

[consti2k]

Now that was more detailed: thanks, I got what you mean.

I promise you, that you would have a <strike>great</strike> awesome time with my friends and me in Vienna. I choose my surrounding wisely: racists have no place in my friendships.

Also: let me know if your friends and/or colleagues in Vienna have trouble finding friends/nice-people. I can hook them up!

[prs]

I ask myself whether you have actually lived here or base your assumptions on hearsay from friends.

I find it intolerable to strike comparisons between the Holocaust and modern-day Vienna.

[GFischer]

I'm not going to defend the original poster, but Vienna does have some racism today, and especially against Turks.

Some of my family lives there (I have an Austrian half-sister), and when I stayed there, as a Uruguayan of German descent I never had any trouble, people were friendly and made some friends... but the son of the Uruguayan Consul at the time (a diplomat), who has some African or native ancestors and is thus a bit darker-skinned, had some trouble with buses not stopping when he was the only one at the bus stop, people being rude to him and other petty meanness.

[endtime]

I wonder what an Armenian would have to say about all your grandstanding...