The Swifties take Vienna

I'm back after a very long break. Apologies for that.

You began to notice something was different last Wednesday. The subway was more crowded. Groups of young women, three, four, five together, all smiling, all looking happy, lots of those mini-suitcases that fit in carry-on compartments being pulled though Vienna’s public transportation underpasses. I started to listen to the languages. American English. Italian. Spanish. Portuguese. Croatian. I popped into a Starbucks next to a Subway station to hear the barista tease a group of young American women “would you like a waaaaaaater with ice?”. They didn’t get the joke. They beamed, their faces flushed from the heat, and thanked him profusely. The next American tried to order a drink no one on this side of the Atlantic understands. The barista patiently explained in perfect English that no, we don’t have artificial flavoured creamers. The next group of giggly girls arrives. This time, the barista switches effortlessly to what must be his native Portuguese. The girls swoon. At this point a grumpy Austrian woman, alone carrying a giant hiking backpack, starts to complain that his flirting is making it take too long for her to order a drink. He smiles and answers in perfect German that she should chill out, and takes her order. That is Europe. Your barista will be fluent in at least three languages. I smile to myself, happy to see this infusion of positive youthful energy in this city during the dog days of late summer.

Thursday night was supposed to be the first concert. At 6pm on Wednesday, I found myself in a super hot store selling crop tops and mini skirts to women under the age of 20. My daughter insisted on buying a dress which was nothing more than a long tank top. She begged. I looked for somewhere to sit while she queued with another two dozen girls of exactly her age to try it on. I caved and paid for it. Took another twenty minutes to pay. The girls were from all over but they all looked like they had stepped out of the same magazine. Some were with mothers, some with friends. I stepped outside of the shop whose single A/C unit was not coping. I exhaled. We took an overcrowded, too hot tram home. My daughter was happy. She had an outfit for the concert on Friday.

On Wednesday evening around 10pm, I saw a tweet with a screenshot from the Instagram account of the concert organiser here in Vienna, saying all three Taylor Swift concerts had been cancelled due to a terrorist threat. Earlier that day, there had been reports of arrests in Vienna and Lower Austria, of young men, teenagers, radicalised online. But these days such reports are not so unusual. Vienna has been struggling with gangs (for lack of a better word) of boys grouped by nationality (Chechen, Syrian, Afghan) stabbing each other with knives this summer in local parks and less wealthy areas of the city. By American standards, it is nothing. By Vienna standards, it is indeed something. A symbol of a long-term problem swept under a rug because no obvious easy solutions, and bureaucrats get paid their salaries independent of if they produce any positive results with their policies.

A quick google. It appeared the headlines were real. All three concerts really were cancelled. My heart sank. I would have to break the news to three teenagers eager to go on Friday night, who bought the tickets a year ago, all within the first minute of tickets going on sale. It had been such a big production to even buy the tickets. A year of waiting. Holidays planned around those dates. I began to text them. They had already heard. They took it fairly well, all things considered.

The next morning local news showed videos of girls of all ages crying over the loss. By Thursday evening, “Swifties” had begun to gather spontaneously in the city, wearing their full glam glitter and sparkle. They had spent so much money and effort to come to Vienna. The concert was cancelled, but they were here. They traded bracelets. They sang in the streets. They smiled and made friends with each other. It was so surreal for those of us used to the grumpiness the Viennese are normally known for. This is not a city where you just randomly start singing on the streets, and certainly not one in which a young girl gifts a policeman a friendship bracelet, and he happily accepts. And yet, it was all happening before our eyes.

I met friends for a drink in the city center on Thursday night, and I arrived first. While I was waiting, I overheard a couple from North Carolina befriend a family with 3 girls from Israel. They told each other everything within a matter of minutes. All still determined to enjoy themselves despite the disappointment.

The singing continued, the crowd grew. There was a large police presence. What the news will not tell you is the police were all the while engaging in racial profiling. Any young men with a certain haircut looking like they have what they call in German an “immigration background” (meaning physically look like they are from Balkans/Turkey/Middle East) were being pulled aside, lined up against shop windows, and having their phones and wallets searched.

The thing is. Austria would never have even known a terror attack was being planned by a group of radicalised kids because the security services here are so weak (and infiltrated by spies) that they rely on other countries to tip them off. It appears this time it was the Americans who warned them about the planned attacks on the three nights of Taylor Swift concerts which were scheduled for Thursday to Saturday. So on the one hand, they probably did the right thing in cancelling, although all the fans continued to gather together in public places (also potentially therefore targets), but on the other hand, searching random teenagers on the street isn’t exactly a high-tech approach to a problem best identified through observing social media and chat communications. It is what it is.

Vienna, in turn, welcomed the Swifties. There were free coffees, and free burgers, and free museum entrance, and bracelet exchanges, and even Swarovski was at some point giving away something for free if you showed a concert ticket. There are TikToks of hundreds of Swifties singing her songs inside historic museums like the Albertina. It is brilliant marketing, in a way. Although by Saturday afternoon we all started to wish they would go home soon (there were no hotels in the city this week, it took ages for an Uber to come, and public transport was overcrowded), I do hope at least some of them will come back to Vienna again. There is a street in Vienna named Cornelius, and there is some Taylor song about this, so they all gathered there, and then a man who lives on this street opened his windows, set up speakers, and started blasting music for hours at a time, catching friendship bracelets as the girls tossed them into the air to him. There were surprise engagement proposals. There were parents with kids and debates about whether to wear the glitter now during the day or on the flight home. So many t-shirts.

It has been like a very friendly invasion of the kindest people you will ever meet.

And yet, Taylor herself has still said nothing. Not even an Instagram story. There is a video circulating of her leaving her very expensive hotel by car on Wednesday night, when the news broke. Which means she was out of Austria around the time most of her fans even heard the news. There are five more concerts planned for London this week. It seems odd to leave nearly 200,000 of your fans hanging. You should say something, even if it is to say that you cannot add more than what the police already said, and you are so, so sorry. Maybe this is the beginning of the end of her popularity. She started a movement, that much is clear. But that also comes with a responsibility beyond producing music, imho. I think about a family my kids described: two gay dads, three kids, pretty small, all dressed in full glam at 11am — clearly American. You know they spent a year planning, spent thousands of dollars, just to put a smile on their kids’ faces, make once-in-a-lifetime memories. I think they and everyone else deserve at least a social media post.

This gave me chills when I read it this morning. I sat at that exact cafe recently, in the heard of Vienna’s traditionally Jewish second district. I was translating for a Ukrainian woman from Mykolaiv. The doctor told us he was running very late. Instructed us to “grab a coffee” and come back later. So we did. The things the city streets have seen.

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I cannot really comment in any informed capacity on the news out of Ukraine recently. I hear the Russians are moving forward on the eastern front, and we have all seen that Ukrainian forces are now inside Russia. I suspect the most likely reason for this is to have territory to later trade, as recent polls in Ukraine have showed more and more of the population leaning towards some kind of negotiated end. The question is when, and how. When I speak with Ukrainians, I hear more pragmatism. Less talk of the war and politics, more questions about their own lives and their own plans as each family has had to figure out how to create some kind of illusion of a safe space and a plan for the future since February 2022. People are understandably focused on their own stuff. They are mad at their government for how it treats men and especially with regard to the draft and the refusal to renew passports etc. This bad taste will linger in mouths for a long time. It will not be forgotten.

Here in Austria, more and more Ukrainians are arriving and the government has not expanded its capacities at its “arrival center” hostel which means yes some people are turned away and bluntly told “try Germany etc”. On the one hand, Austria is technically open, on the other hand, it really isn’t if you don’t have any funds. I receive many messages asking for help, I explain our donations have slowed. Huge thank you to Mario who sent out another batch of Hofer cards this week. But we cannot help everyone. It is what it is. You do what you can. I am the bearer of bad news very often when Ukrainians still write to me (they still write every day) about their situation and I have to say not to expect any changes from the Austrian side. I know it is a hard pill to swallow. But at this point I think straight talk is much better than false hope.

As I look towards the U.S., I feel relief in what seems to also be a very sensible VP candidate, yet when anyone asks me, I still say I think Trump will win. I have no scientific evidence for this. Just a gut feeling.

I have not watched the Olympics, only clips from social media. I suspect I am not alone.

My eldest is leaving for college tomorrow.

I now understood why my own mother didn’t want to go with me to the airport when I left.

Goodbyes are hard. You know they are coming and it doesn’t make it any easier.

That’s all I’ve got for today. Will close with an unreal sunset from Montenegro. If you ever visit, do ride the new cable car near Kotor to the top of the mountain at sunset. The views are crazy, and they even built a little roller coaster on top. I am afraid of heights, but it was so worth it.