Vienna's Recipe for Living Well | Hacker News Reader

Vienna's Recipe for Living Well

bbc.com

36 pointsanishkothari17 comments

Sorry but that's too much fluff and mozartesque stereotypes. Culture, liveable – yes, but not in a hurry or creative idling most of the time is just plain outright made up.

(Austrian here)

As fellow austrian i agree (hi thomas btw)

It's romanticized in international media to the extend it becomes a disney land version of itself.

Which is bad because it is a really good city to live in and should be seen as such - without the fairy dust and glitter.

* It's quiet (american cities tend to be very loud for no reason)

* A high basic standard of living for everyone (salaries, rent, health, etc)

* Education for everyone combined w/ very good universities (top tech university with people of other social class or ethnic groups)

* Clean streets (no homeless, no trash)

I am happy that people recognize the city as a pearl as it is - but other cities (esp in europe) offer the similar qualities and we should rather learn from the patterns that work than to simply romanticize all of it.

I've lived in Vienna for three years and the 'recipe' for the quality of life there is much more tangible than this article suggests. It's about the reasonable working hours (thanks to labor laws), low levels of crime (thanks to the social safety net), reasonable rent (thanks to public housing and renter-friendly laws), levels of education, well-maintained public parks and the excellent public transportation system. One can suggest that these things exist everywhere in Europe but the truth is that most of these things are done better in Vienna than in other European cities.

The Austrians are very proud of their culture and rightly so, they are also smart about how to build the system that can support this good lifestyle.

A BBC story not accessible from London! I thought UK taxes + TV license where paying BBC. Is there a mirror for this?

bbc.com is really BBC Worldwide, which is functionally a separate commercial organisation with really good access to BBC material.

And how is that a justification for blocking it in the UK?

It's not particularly, it was an answer to the question "I thought UK taxes + TV license where paying BBC."

Their argument for not showing it in the UK is indeed hilarious, but after accessing it through a VPN I suspect that the real purpose of blocking this content is to protect the BBC from damage to their journalistic reputation.

This is a completely vacuous piece of tourism marketing full of stereotypes and cliches. I know Vienna pretty well. This is not it.

Can't access the page from the UK

"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. "

Been to Vienna once; seemed nice. Love to watch the New Years philharmonic concert every year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIPL5gxjKO4

Reminds me of the story of the Italian village Roseto Valfortore from Malcom Gladwell's book The Outliers

Vienna is nice for a visit, I wouldn't recommend living there.

Why?

I can't speak for the GP, but I lived there for a month with my wife and 3 kids. During that trip we spent extended time in Salzburg, Munich, and Vienna, and Vienna was my least favorite.

It's hard to put my finger on why I liked it less. The people weren't as friendly, ethnic diversity increases as you move further away from the city center that I think might contribute to the lack of community feeling. (Language barriers)

There's a lot of "culture", but a lot of it feels very touristy and classical, and not organic or natural to me. I don't know, the city felt a little fake and dreary to me.

It's also not as naturally beautiful as the other two (but to be fair it's hard to compete with Munich and Salzburg).

Munich is amazing. They have a beer garden in the middle of a beautiful park... what more could you want?

> Munich is amazing.

Indeed.

> I can't speak for the GP, but I lived there for a month with my wife and 3 kids.

So you visited.

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