Parking laws are strictly enforced in Austria’s capital city.
Naked sunbathers were left completely stark naked after their cars were towed by police on the Donauinsel in Vienna, Austria.
Police towed 57 vehicles parked illegally near to the naked bathing area along the Danube river.
Many of the bathers had left their clothes in the car as they went for some all over tanning and naked swimming.
As some of the bathers noticed the cars being towed they rushed to try and beg for their clothes but they were too late. The cars had already been towed.
“Naked bathers left stranded as cars towed“, Austrian Times, 10 July 2012.
That is one reason not to own a vehicle in Vienna. Another reason is the high quality of public transportation. Good public transportation is one thing that 44-year-old Austrian expatriate Gert Michael Binder misses. Blinder has been living for the past three years in Caracas (Venezuela), where public transportation is poor, and traffic jams can turn a five-minute trip into a two hour ordeal.
Caracas is blessed with a proximity to verdant mountains, national parks and Venezuela’s picture-postcard coastline but, like many Latin American metropolises, it’s also beset by a staggeringly high crime rate and a decrepit infrastructure. For someone raised in the stability and orderliness of Vienna, adapting to life in Caracas can take some work. ….
[Gert Michael Binder] is troubled by what he describes as the “Americanisation” of post-oil boom Caracas, where everyone drives their cars from one commercial centre to another. And then there are the little things about home that take on added significance when they’re no longer at arm’s length: “Good black bread, homemade Austrian food like Viennese Sacher cake, and my morning muesli, which I always bring with me to foreign countries,” says Binder. ….
Binder … imagines he will likely settle back in Austria someday because, though he harbours fantasies about living in Nairobi or the mountains of Santiago or Quito, in the end Austria is where he can speak in his “home slang” and where his friends and family are. “Plus,” he adds, “it has a functioning public transport system.”
Nisa Qazi, “Expat lives: Uncommon ground“, Financial Times, 14 July 2012.
I would add that Austria’s public transportation is inexpensive and functions very well, especially in Vienna.
HT Elizabeth B.
