Seb and the City

Viennese Opera Ball

I went to the Viennese Opera Ball in New York at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Friday. Tickets are ridiculously expensive - starting at 750 Dollars - but I got a press accreditation and had Alessandra signed up as my photographer. The ball has been running for over 50 years, and it is an Americanized version of the original Opernball in Vienna, including celebrities (Miss Universe, Sarah Ferguson), dancers, a cart with live horses and lots of kitsch.

Being (or posing as) journalists, we were supposed to stay in the press area, away from the fun, the food and the drinks. Of course, we didn't do that and kept on sneaking into the party. This led to two huge fights with the ball's PR people, but in the end we won. Somehow balls always end up to be a lot of fun, despite the stuck-up setting.

Home Alone

Short political update: President Bush is pretty much alone with his plans to send additional troops to Iraq. Even some Republicans are now turning against him. The presidential race 2008 has been kicked off, there at least 12 candidates already. The frontrunners on the Democrat side are Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, on the Republican side Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. One of them will probably have to deal with the Iraq disaster. The commander of US troops in Iraq estimates it will take "two or three years" to gain the upper hand over there. By then Bush will be history.

Read my profil article from last week about this: Download p04_080_bush.pdf

Metametablogging

I have been declared Pony Pal 4 Life by Princess Sparkle Pony! Ok, that needs a little bit of explanation: Princess Sparkle Pony's Photo Blog is committed to the surveillance of Condoleezza Rice's hairdo. The Princess is also utterly fascinated by the admittedly unusual fashion sense of Austria's foreign minister Ursula Plassnik (hint: BIG scarves). I mentioned this in profil magazine, which in turn made Princess Sparkle Pony mention me and my short article on the blog, which in turn leads me to write this post. Welcome to the self-referential world of blogs!

My first Op-Ed

Die Presse is arguably Austria's best daily newspaper, although I generally don't agree with its conservative viewpoints. Today it published my first op-ed, i.e. guest opinion article. I summarize the main findings of my book on Austrian companies and corruption in Eastern Europe and criticise the Austrian government for turning a blind eye. Of course the Austrian government has little incentive to rein in its own companies, just as the Italian government doesn't want to hurt Italian companies abroad. So I guess this is a problem that can only be solved at the level of the European Union.

Update: Here is the pdf of my op-ed, including a photo of me by Moritz Schell: Download wie_geschmiert.pdf

Publishing My First Book

When I was in Vienna over Christmas, I used the opportunity to present my first book, "Die mit den Wölfen heulen". It is about Austrian companies and corruption in Eastern Europe. I wrote it as my diploma thesis in economics some time ago. Now LIT Verlag decided to publish it because my findings are pretty interesting.

For the book I interviewed 50 managers of Austrian companies that have invested in the Czech Republic or Romania. I asked them (anonymously) how they deal with corruption and showed that they behave just in the same way as local companies - bribing whenever they consider it necessary.

The press conference I gave in Vienna's Café Prückel was a weird experience for me: For the first time I was sitting on the "other side", facing the journalists, and I felt powerless because I didn't have any control over what they would do with my words.

The coverage I got was great, though: There were big articles about my book in Die Presse, Kurier, Wirtschaftsblatt and Wiener Zeitung. OE1, Austria's most serious radio station, did a report as well as PulsTV, a local TV station. You can check out the article by Die Presse and the piece by OE1 online.

The Death of the Neocons

In profil's big and beautiful year-end-issue I wrote an article about the fall from grace of the so-called neocons. These were the people in George W. Bush's government who pushed for bringing democracy to the Middle East through violent means. This idea seems pretty dead now - luckily, as many might say.

In my article I argue that this is not necessarily good news, though. The disaster in Iraq might lead Americans to pull back from interventions altogether, and there is nobody else to step into their place (certainly not the European Union, despite all its rhetorics). The people in Darfur are suffering the consequences already. Read my article: Download pj52_092_neocons_1.pdf

Being a US correspondent

Yesterday I spoke at a panel discussion, at CUNY, the City University of New York. CUNY's Graduate School of Journalism had invited me and some other foreign journalists to speak to their students about our experiences with covering the US, trying to understand this country while fighting our editors who know even less than we do.

The journalism school was impressive: It is brand new - the first classes started in September - and better equipped than any newspaper that I have ever seen: There are TV and radio studios for the students to use, and every one of them gets a free Macintosh laptop. When I saw this, I wished I had ever studied journalism. But then again, I think lowly of studying journalism because I made my career without one single theoretical lesson in journalism.

Ban is a funny guy

Wednesday morning I went to a breakfest in the Hyatt Regency Hotel in midtown Manhattan. About 200 New York business people were attending to witness the first public appearance of Ban Ki-Moon, the new general secretary of the United Nation and successor to Kofi Annan. Mr Ban (not "Mr Moon", and with an "a" as in Bahn, not as in "to ban" as he explained winkingly) is generally thought to be pretty boring. But he was surprisingly funny and won over the audience with his jokes. (Somehow I never expect Asian people to be funny, but maybe that's just a weird kind of racism.) He promised to make all the heads of government and heads of state that descend annually on Manhattan for the UN general assembly ride the New York subway. New Yorkers hate the general assembly for all the traffic chaos the visitors create with their fancy limousines and big escorts.

Silicon Valley

At the beginning of December I flew out to San Francisco and drove on into Silicon Valley, the mecca of technology companies. It is weird to see an actual, physical Google building. One tends to think Google exists only in cyberspace. The working conditions at places like Google and Apple are amazing: Beautiful weather, great food (often for no charge), lots of sporting facilities, free massages when you are stressed - all for the sake of maximum productivity. The only drawback is a heavy gender imbalance (lots of male tech geeks).

I went there to do a story about a small Austrian start-up called Jajah. It turned out to be latest hype in the Valley. Venture capitalists like Sequoia Capital pour millions of dollars into it, and internet gurus like Guy Kawasaki line up to work for or advise Jajah. And one-and-a-half years ago the two founders, Roman Scharf and Daniel Mattes, were still sitting in their little office in Vienna!

Their idea is actually quite good: Worldwide phone calls for free (or a little charge, but that's supposed to be phased out eventually). You go to their website, punch in your and your friend's phone number, both phones ring and you talk. The connection is routed through the internet, but you don't notice that. It's heavy competition for Skype because you don't need a headset or microphone.

I spent the weekend in San Francisco - it's absolutely beautiful and feels like a real city should feel (as opposed to the Los Angeles sprawl or boring Washington, D.C. for example). SF captures the second place in my personal ranking of US cities, after New York and before Chicago. I could actually imagine to live there.

The photo of the Jajah office is by Andres Gonzalez.

Ice Storm

It's been a while. I'm back in New York City after three weeks in Austria, the Czech Republic and Italy. Time to post my last stories of 2006.

In late November I went to Buffalo in upstate New York, near the Canadian border and close to the Niagara Falls. It's a depressing and declining industrial city mainly known for its coldness. There was an intense snowstorm in October already!

But I went there for a different kind of storm: The Buffalo Sabres - the local icehockey team that all of Buffalo's inhabitants go crazy about - is winning one game after the other this season. They might well capture the famous Stanley Cup this year. And one of their best scorers is a 22-year-old Austrian kid named Thomas Vanek. He is on his way to become a NHL superstar and I wrote a long story about him for profil magazine: Download p49_098_vanek_5.pdf

I was impressed how thoughtful, focussed and articulate the young guy is. He has been following his career with complete determination since he was a child. I guess that's how you get so far.