It is, of course, ridiculous to draw any conclusions about a country or a city when one's first visit to that place has extended to all of two days. It's ridiculous but, I hope, excusable when the conclusions that one has jumped to in those forty-eight hours are not the standard highly critical remarks of the fish, in a foreign culture, out water.
The two days that I have been in Vienna have left me with nothing but positive feelings for the place. Beginning with the quick and effortless trip through immigration and customs (even though neither my wife nor I hold EU passports) and the quick and effortless ride into the city on public transportation, extending through the striking architecture, good food, and excellent beer, and continuing with a day sightseeing (the Leopold Museum: it had somehow escaped me that Schiele is a first-rate painter, the cathedral, and coffee at Cafe Hawelka) it's all been a delight.
What surpsised me was the people. I had heard and read that the Viennese are notoriously grumpy and unfriendly, Indeed my guidebook includes three interviews with Viennese in which they assert that one of the worst things about their home city is precisely this grumpiness and unfriendliness, but we have been treated with unfailing courtesy and good humor--the fact that I've only completed lessons one through six of Just Listen and Learn German notwithstanding.
I guess it's a bit like the old canard about the supposed incivility of the French, something else I have seldom experienced.
The other thing the three Viennese interviewed in my guidebook cite as a problem with this lovely city is the abundance of dog-shit they feel they are compelled to dance around every time they venture into the street.
We've seen lots of dogs (something we take to be a good thing about the city) but have had to avoid very little excrement in the roads, so I guess the anti-dog-doo-doo campaigns which are periodically launched (the same unreliable guidebooks tells me) have been successful.
--David