"Neither London nor New York Will be Livable in Ten Years"

By Taki Theodoracopulos

A recent column in the FT had me mad as hell and not about to take it any more. The writer, Simon Kuper, calls Vienna a backwater, a bit like calling the Queen a busted flush because of her age. Sure, he writes how great Vienna was back when the Habsburgs ruled the roost, attracting people from all over, “some of them nuts.” He includes Freud, Hitler, Stalin, and Trotsky. Not the nicest bunch I can think of, but then the paper is a pink one at that. He fears London might go the way of Vienna, and price itself unaffordable to everyone but a few Chinese, Russian and Indian billionaires. The trouble is he’s right about London and dead wrong where Vienna is concerned. Vienna, incidentally, is dirt cheap.

Feeling myself inflate like a blowfish at the insult to my beloved city, I thought back to all those Schoenburg – Hartensteins gallivanting in fancy pantaloons around those beautiful palaces since the beginning of the 18th century. These were noble German counts who moved to Austria and became princes, a smart course however upwardly mobile. The place is still full of them, and my daughter recently visited Vienna and reported back that it was the most livable city in Europe.

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