CITY OF FRAYED PEOPLE

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5290, 31 December 1946, Page 2

CITY OF FRAYED PEOPLE

VIENNA TO-DAY V REBUILDING SPIRITUAL AND MATERIAL WRECKAGE Vienna is still a sad city, and the: Viennese a frayed people;' *The: fold{ wives' summer" is rapidly declining; into winter and there is a fuel crisis: which on several occasions has put all trams out of, action. The new wine which lately.appeared in the cafes for free purchase has'disappeated again. In other capitals of Europe there is either food or enthusiasm, or as in Prague, both. In Vienna one finds too tlittle of either and sees less of the phoenix than of the ashes, A revival is beginning, but one has to look for it, writes the Vienna correspondent of the Times of London. Even with the recent increase ip calories food rations are still very low. A workman gets up between 5 and 6 in the ihorning to go to work; he goes with a stomach empty except perhaps for some ersatz coffee and a slice of bread, on a tram crowded beyond the doors with people hanging to it. At -midday he eats a bowl of soup and vegetables, with sometimes a little meat afloat in it, and for supper, to which he may get back at 7, about the same. ' The average wage is the equivalent of about 25s a week. Cigarettes cost 6d each and more on the black market. if you can get them. Shoes and clothes are worn out and prices are rising faster than wages. No Talk of Music The sun disguises the traces of hunger which appear in the slowness with which people move about and go up stairs. Conversations. you Qverhear in the streets are usually about food. Someone said, "It is hard to believe that the working people once thought about- such things as books and painting and music." The trains that take the- Viennese on holiday take hours to arrive; the fast jog, the slow hobble, and all are uncomfortable. Hans Weigel " has parodied the opce joyous lyric in the operetta White Horse Inn: "In Saizkammergut (it runs now), you can have a jolly good time, if only you can get there." Queues, not as in London, but real crowds, besiege a weary and overworked bureaucracy who always close exactly on time. An ally has only to become an'Austrian for a day to see what it means to have been conquered. It might matter less that the people have so little to eat if they themselves were devoured fey so'me passion to rebuild, to start again. They still have to lift themselves through a gpiritual as well as a material wreckage. Vanished Epoch .... Their double past, the alluring Empire and the domineering Reieh both collapsed within a lifetime, lies heavy on them, and everywhere one is reminded of it. Nowhere more than in the Belvedere (except perhaps in the Castle at Budapest) , it is the air of a vanished epoch conveyed more finally. Displaced persons liye in the ruins; weeds grow wild in the gardens; and chandelers gleam through huge holes in the facade. ■ The charming golden pavilions of the Prater are wrecked and charred tanks still lie on their sides along the avenues. What was most delightfu) about the old Imperial past may be restored, on a different footing. Nearly everyone in Vienna is determined that the immediate Nazi past is never to be restored;' yet it may be a long while before the black circular patch on the red Austrian flag, which marks where the swastika was, has completely faded. People, especially the young, are growing conscious of a craving to assert themselves along new and cleaner lines, but this craving is not yet satisfied.