Caught up, Modern Austrian History, Xmas

Hello subscribers!

Last week I uploaded another new post on to the DT Blog. It serves two functions. One is to mark the fact that for only the second time I’ve managed to be all caught up on my main website, i.e. used up all material gathered on my own travels. The first time I had reached that point was back in April, just before my travels to Albania and Kosovo provided new material, followed by the big summer trip to Namibia. The last two chapters for the latter were finished recently (Swakopmund and its museum). But the very most recent chapter is the one on the “House of Austrian History” here in Vienna, where I live. I had an annual ticket, visited the museum three times this year and now finally wrote up the chapter for it.

The rest of the new Blog Post hence focuses on that modern history museum, mainly picking out a few remarkable exhibits – including the last place name sign of the village in Upper Austria whose name used to be a homograph of what in English is the “F-word”. ... until early 2021, that is, when the village decided to rename itself “Fugging”, so that its place name signs don’t keep on getting stolen by (mostly anglophone) thieving tourists.

The largest and most difficult part of the museum is what’s depicted in the photo above. That’s a view out on to the so-called “Hitler balcony”, though it’s actually not a balcony but a terrace. It was from here that in 1938 Adolf Hitler proclaimed the “Anschluss” of his home country Austria to the German Reich … to a 200,000-strong crowd of cheering Austrians gathered below the “balcony” on Heldenplatz (Heroes’ Square). After WWII the tarnished “balcony” became a taboo, unacknowledged and ignored. But since the 2018 opening of the House of Austrian History inside the building behind that “balcony” (the Neue Burg part of the Habsburgers’ Hofburg palace), a discussion was started as to whether or not to make the “balcony” accessible to the public, and if so in what form. It’s tricky because you don’t want idiots posing for selfies up there while doing the Nazi salute or some such behaviour. Nor do you want the place to become a pilgrimage site for genuine neo-Nazi Hitler worshippers. The question remains how to prevent all that.
  

This Newsletter will most likely be the last one before Christmas – and to get you in the (dark) Christmas travel mood I refer you back to this elaborate international Christmas DT Blog Post from around this time two years ago. I still find it very entertaining whenever I look at it …

I’ll see if I can slot in another Newsletter between Christmas and New Year, but it will be tight timewise, as I won’t be back from the UK until late on the 27th and then will be due to fly to Cyprus early on New Year’s Eve.
  

This leaves me with just wishing you all a Merry Christmas – and possibly also already a Happy New Year.
  

All the best,

Peter