Topic: Vienna

A refugee programme in Vienna: magdas – the not-for-profit hotel

17.09.2015

The magdas hotel’s homepage not only displays a pretty witty sense of humour and fluffily formulated descriptions. It also shows deep respect for a cause. When scanning the site for the hotel’s location in Vienna, visitors casually learn that it is situated near the city centre, in the vicinity of the Danube Canal mottled with cool clubs and pubs and close to the „Prater“, the popular amusement park that offers space for a wide variety of outdoor activities and sports Vienna’s famous landmark, the Ferris Wheel. Good access from all angles, a key factor for hotels getting booked, is definitely given.

But most importantly for the magdas, it lies within easy reach for its employees „because we want to spare them another round-the-world trip when commuting to their workplace“: magdas staff almost exclusively comprises refugees who descend from 14 different nations. Amongst them, they speak 23 languages. Dinis, the receptionist from Guinea-Bissau, alone is versed in seven! He came by boat. It took almost ten years to be granted asylum.

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A Fiaker carriage in Vienna: as typical of the city as its many coffee houses.

Austria: The science of coffee-brewing in Vienna

9.03.2015

Coffee is not just an invigorating brew but rather a scientific field of expertise worth being explored. Barista Schools popping up the world over bear witness to the cognition that a cup of coffee is not something to be prepared in one’s stride. It is a challenge which has to be given care and devotion at least as deep as is granted to the meticulously performed Asian Tea Ceremony.

Here in Vienna, each type of coffee is honoured with its individual cryptical name. The least one can do for a treasure accidentally left by the Ottomans after their siege of Vienna in 1683. Apart from war and devastation, they had brought along with them a culinary novelty: Viennese citizens discovered a number of bags filled with precious coffee beans in an abandoned Turkish camp after the battle was over. Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki, a Polish-Lithuanian nobleman, had taken hold of the bags and opened Vienna’s first coffeehouse in the same year. www.wien.info/en/shopping-wining-dining/coffeehouses/in-the-old-city

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LGBTI: Colourful and diverse Helsinki.

LGBTI – der unterschätzte Markt

1.10.2013

Diversity Tourism: Reisen im Zeichen des Regenbogens

Vom anderen Ufer rollt – nur scheinbar urplötzlich – eine kraftvolle menschliche Welle heran. Weil lange ignoriert und immer noch stigmatisiert, wird ihr wahres Potenzial dramatisch verkannt: Bis zu zehn Prozent der Weltbevölkerung sollen homosexuell sein oder LGBTI angehören. In Realität sind die Zahlen aus nachvollziehbaren Gründen unmessbar und auch ehrgeizige stochastische Akrobatik kann nur an ihnen scheitern. Es bleibt ein Segen, dass zivilisierte Länder auf ihren offiziellen Formularen auf die Rubrik “Sexuelle Veranlagung” verzichten. Gemäß Statistik von ILGA wird Homosexualität weltweit noch in etwa 80 Staaten und Territorien strafrechtlich verfolgt. Die Palette variiert von einem Monat Gefängnis bis zur Todesstrafe.

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