23rd July 2019 Vienna, Austria
A campaigning journalist in Mexico receives a call before dawn about an incident at a night club. He quickly goes there. As he arrives, he is shot dead – one of 99 journalists killed worldwide in 2018. This vivid example was given by the Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, at a conference on media freedom in […]
22nd July 2019 Vienna, Austria
These are busy times in London and Vienna. A new Prime Minister will take office in London shortly. The UK is due to leave the EU by 31 October at the latest. In Austria, a new Austrian interim government was sworn in on 3 June, with elections due on 29 September. The UK has been […]
2nd July 2019 Vienna, Austria
Very, very, occasionally, when it rains in Austria, an Austrian friend will say to me “Englisches Wetter, ha ha!” I smile politely. The UK is famously rainy, correct? We’ve all read Sherlock Holmes stories where it seems to be raining and foggy all the time. In “Asterix in Britain”, Asterix asks the Briton, Anticlimax, as […]
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11th June 2019 Vienna, Austria
Are there 2,550 reasons to visit Gmünd, in Carinthia? No. There are 2551. When I first started work at the Department of the Environment in 1979, I used to go once a week with a friend at lunchtime to visit the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) on Bankside. I was fascinated to discover the works […]
4th June 2019 Vienna, Austria
At the beginning of April, I was delighted to find out that a British podcast at the intersection of comedy and science had been chosen for the City of Vienna’s annual science communication award. To me this is both a testament to the strong bilateral relationship the UK has with Austria on science and education […]
29th May 2019 Vienna, Austria
One of Vienna’s key international organisations is the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the UNODC. But how exactly do countries work with UNODC to combat the illegal use of drugs? Every March, the UK and other countries send experts to the UNODC in Vienna for the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, known as the […]
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29th April 2019 Vienna, Austria
Last week, for the second year running, the British Embassy Vienna took part in the “Vienna Girlsday”. I certainly learned a lot. The aim of the “Girlsday” (in German it is called “Töchtertag” or “daughters’ day”) is to introduce young women to areas of work where women are under-represented. In the UK in 2019 we […]
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18th April 2019 Vienna, Austria
I was delighted last month to attend the annual spring opening of Praskac Pflanzenland, one of Austrian’s largest gardening suppliers. Praskac rather brilliantly have this year chosen the theme of “English Gardens”. Based close to Tulln in Lower Austria, Praskac was founded in 1875. The company is one of Austria’s largest distributors of English roses; […]
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11th April 2019 Vienna, Austria
A family is torn apart by war and discrimination. Many family members are murdered. Years later, a descendant of one of the survivors tries to find out what happened. This might not sound a promising premise for a musical. But at the Landestheater Linz on 6 April, the world premiere of the musical “The Hare […]
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29th March 2019 Vienna, Austria
What is British and travels from Vienna to Bratislava? The answer is the new “Twin City Liner”, a catamaran built by the Wight’s shipyard in the Isle of Wight, which starts a new service along the Danube between Vienna and Bratislava on 29 March. I was delighted to be invited before the launch of the […]
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