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A meeting in London and Viennese friendliness

Today was my first "real" day back in Vienna. I arrived here Wednesday morning but went home from the airport directly. Didn't see much of the city then. Thurday morning I left Vienna for London while it was dark and I came back home to Vienna in the middle of the night. Didn't see much either. Well and after I got up at 3 pm today I went down to the local supermarket around the corner.

I live in Viennas 20ieth district which is one of the "not so nice" areas of Vienna. The unemployment rate is high, a lot of people around here live on social welfare, you've got a lot of old Viennese guys hanging out with their buddies all day long drinking one beer or one schnaps after the other. At the same time you've got a lot of foreigners from Turkey and from former Yugoslavia living here. A lot of them have to live under bad circumstances, in small crapy flats. The tolerance between those - I'd call them typical - Viennese people and the people from foreign countries living in this neigborhood is not the highest. Obviously that's not true for everybody but I again experience this as a big issue.

So I went down to this small supermarket, getting some great bread (Americans can only dream of such bread) and some other food. Waiting at the cashier, an elderly Viennese man behind me suddently started to shout at the cashier for not working faster, for being lazy and for being a gypsy... The cashier was not at a loss for words and a small dispute started. After a couple of sentences I couldn't hold it back anymore and I just had to tell this guy that he should calm down a bit, I asked him if this is his usual way of communicating with people and I asked him if he had so much stuff to do that he is in such a hurry. Obviously this man was way beyond retirement age...

I am wondering where the Austrian friendliness went which is used by the tourism industry. Where did it go or better - did it ever exist?
Hey Vienna, I promise to do my best not to be too negative about you but it's hard. :-) I'll keep on trying and I'll keep on posting about my experiences.

A meeting with Magnum Photos in London

Well and of course I have to keep you posted about the developments regarding the job in London. I flew to London Thursday morning for a job interview with Magnum London's managing director Dominique Green and deputy director Hamish Crooks to see if I'd be fitted for the open position.

The first thing which amused me after arriving in London-Heathrow was to watch a cab driver almost starting a fight with another cab driver. Man this guy was so out of rage and it took the others quite a bit of work to hold him back. A promising beginning for my visit to London.

Since I arrived at 8 am in the morning and my meeting was scheduled for 2 pm I had some hours left. I wanted to meet with Siobhan (first photograph in this set) who was an intern at Magnum Photos in New York. Unfortunately the phone number I had from her was wrong. And I wanted to meet with Simon Wheatley, a London based Magnum nominee whome I got to know and interview in New York as well. But he went off to Paris the day before on assignment.

So I took the subway to Kings Cross station, found a barber shop, got my hair cut and took the subway again to Magnums London office. I came there early, sat down in a café and listened to some nice realxing music on my MP3 player. Time went by and I went to the office. A nice new office space with a big print sales room at the entrance. Some vintage prints on one side of the room, some digital prints printed on a HP Designjet on the other side. Dominique showed me around their new office and then we sat down together with Hamish for the interview. We talked about the responsibilities of this job, about my background and time in New York. It was a good meeting, the people in the London office seem to be really nice and motivated and the job seems to be really interesting. In some aspects a little different to what I've done so far but that's good. New areas of work and new experiences!
I am going to hear back from them with a decision on whether I'll get the job or not hopefully soon. I'll keep you posted!

And by the way: After 196 days of posting an entry every day this is the first one posted out of this daily schedule. Stay tuned for more updates.

Posted by Martin Fuchs on November 11, 2005 04:18 PM