In Vienna, Austria

This was my 3rd day in Vienna; I am leaving for Warsaw tomorrow. At first, the people were very nice, but now I have a bit of a different impression. Yesterday, I tried to buy my train ticket to Warsaw, so I asked the guy selling train tickets, "What trains go to Warsaw on the 19th?" He told me to go to information and shut his window. I could not believe it. His fucking job is to answer that question!

Afterward, I played basketball at an immigrant court. It was a very cool experience, although I did not get a great feel for how Austrians play ball.

Today, I found some of the Jewish sites in Vienna, with my yarmulke on my head. I asked a cop working Judenplatz, where was the medievel synagogue. He laughed, walked me to where it was, pointed, told me it was closed, and laughed again. I did not ask him anything else because he was a fucking asshole.

Sometimes I fall victim to the perception that Jewish history is overrepresented in America. White Flint mall has an exhibition on the DC Jewish community, and without looking at it, I cringed a bit. But it occured to me, that while the perception is there, most Americans know very little Jewish history. It seems most people do not care.

The Jewish museum in Vienna was fairly pathetic. They had one little room for Jewish artifacts that were not put in any context and then a huge exhibition on Lorenzo da Ponta, who wrote for Mozart. He was born Jewish, but converted at the age of 14 and became a Catholic priest. He apparently had very little ties to his Jewish heritage. A significant portion of the exbition was about Mozart anyway (whom they absolutely love here) with a feeble attempt to tie him back to anything Jew-related.

I guess that is how people need to learn about Jews. It has to be overtly relavant to them or it is ignored. In this case, it was at the expense of Jewish history. Mike´s picking Hungarian Jews was similar in that he made the Jew draftrelavant to him by making it a Hungarian draft of people that happen to be Jewish. That is still better than Sherkhan wandering away from me before I found the Jew street and doing his own thing.

It is a very nice city (awfully expensive), but it lacks a welcoming feeling. Blacks and Turks are glared at or just ignored by white Austrians. They really did not know what to do when an actual real live Jew walked by them. But Sherkhan noticed that I got the stink eye several times. And now I do not have room to talk about the fat kid I saw running, oh was that fat Austrian boy hilarious!