Akshay Hiremath: Memories Of Life In Vienna, Austria (1985-1989)

I lived in Vienna from 1985 to 1989, from the age of 12 to the age of 16. My father was the Indian Ambassador there, and it was his final posting before he retired following a 35 year career as a diplomat with the Indian Foreign Service. For him, it was more than an Ambassador's role, as he was also India's representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is headquartered in Vienna. There is no doubt that Vienna is an incredible city but I have very mixed memories of my four years in Vienna, some very fond ones, and some unpleasant ones.

Schonnbrunn Palace, Vienna

Stephansdom, Vienna

Karlskirche, Vienna

We lived in Spitzergasse 2, tucked away in the 18th district of Vienna. It was a big house within a large space with huge, beautifully manicured gardens. The second floor was the guest floor, with two guest bedrooms, and another room that we used as a library. The first floor had three bedrooms, plus the TV room. The ground floor had my father's study, an antechamber, a massive drawing room, the dining room and the kitchen. The basement contained the garage, the utility rooms and the servants' quarters. The 18th district is largely a residential district, away from the city's commercial areas, but it is well connected to the historic city centre by tram. I felt a sense of independence that I had never experienced before. Vienna was a safe city, with excellent public transport, so my parents were very comfortable with my being out in the city by myself without any supervision. In hardly any time at all, I was very familiar with the tram and metro routes, and could get around the city without any difficulty.

The Indian Ambassador's Residence in Vienna

My elder sister was away in college in England through our Vienna stint, but we got to see her quite often. My second sister was with us for the first two years, and then she came away to India for her college. My father used to stay busy with work, but he used to largely make it a point not to work over weekends, and he used to take out a lot of time for the family. He used to also take us on driving trips every now and then. We of course went to some of Austria's most beautiful towns, like Salzburg, Innsbruck and Graz, but we also went on two long international road trips, once to Paris, London, Brussels and Bonn in 1987 (my cousin, Arun Kathpalia, joined us on this trip), and once to Monaco, Barcelona and Madrid in 1989. I was too young to help out with the driving back then, so the responsibility lay entirely with my father. The long road trips used to get tiring - he used to count ABC backwards in order to try and stay awake whenever he felt sleepy!

A View of the old town, Salzburg

The Dom, Innsbruck

The Uhrturm, Graz

There were other trips too during my days in Vienna. My cousin Arun, my elder sister, and I went to Italy for a week in the summer of 1987, and we visited Rome, Florence and Venice (where I dropped my pouch with my passport into the Grand Canal - a gondola rider thankfully scooped it out for me!). In the summer of 1988, I made a couple of solo trips. I visited Budapest and stayed with the Indian Ambassador, Sati Lambah. I also went to Berlin, and stayed with the Indian Ambassador, J Doddamani, and got along very well with his son Sanjay, who was a terrific Indian classical dancer. On my way back to Vienna from Berlin, I missed my connecting train at Regensburg at 4 pm, and the next train wasn't till after midnight. In all honesty, I missed the train on purpose, so that I could see Regensburg Cathedral. After seeing the cathedral and having dinner at McDonald's, I waited for several hours at the railway station. It wasn't exactly a fun experience, because I was surrounded by drunk people, drug addicts and homeless people who kept accosting me. I went and sat next to a policeman at the platform and didn't budge until my train arrived!

My mother used to stay quite busy with official engagements, and there were constantly formal receptions and dinners at home, more so when there were visiting dignitaries from India. But my mother always took out a lot of time for me. She encouraged me to follow my interests like table tennis and chess, and she also took an active interest and joined me in watching Amitabh Bachchan movies and Michael Jackson videos! I used to enjoy music those days, and without batting an eyelid, she bought expensive tickets for me to attend concerts by some the biggest pop acts of that time - Michael Jackson, George Michael, Whitney Houston, A-ha and Europe. She and I would have these long conversations, and she was more of a supportive friend than anything else. She used to also send my favourite food for lunch everyday (chicken curry and rice, or meatballs and rice), and the big family joke was that my lunch bag was bigger than my school bag! She was a tremendous hostess to my friends whenever they came over, and she would entertain them with funny stories from my childhood. On my 16th birthday, she happily agreed to host a big birthday party at home, and I had 55 of my school friends who came over! She was once invited to my class to give a presentation on India as part of our Third World Studies class, and she conducted the presentation beautifully. I was so very proud of her for being the person she was - a warm, friendly person, with exceptional communication skills and wonderful story-telling abilities.

Our elderly cook, Moti Singh, stayed with us. Unfortunately, he got cancer and passed away while we were there. His son, Jaswant, also stayed with us and did work around the house. He and I were great buddies. We would play table tennis and chess together, and we would watch Hindi movies together. He was a very smart chap, hugely into body building, and I was genuinely fond of him. Mohan used to work with the previous Ambassador, S K Singh. After we came, he continued staying at the Indian Ambassador's residence, but he worked as a messenger at the Indian embassy. His brother, Puran, joined us from India when Moti Singh became very ill, and he started working for us. Our driver was George Thattil, a very amiable man from Kerala.

My family got close to several people in Vienna. There was Frau Sarma, who was the Indian Ambassador's Social Secretary. She was a very warm, friendly, elderly Austrian lady. She had got married to an Indian, but he had passed away years earlier. Frau Sarma was a treasure trove of interesting stories, and she was extremely resourceful. There was Hamid Ali Rao and his wife Asiya. Hamid was then a youngster at the Indian embassy. When their daughter Alia was born, my mother brought them to our residence for a full month, so that she could help Asiya look after the little baby. A life long friendship developed between my mother and Asiya. There was Marialena Fenandes, a pianist from India who had settled down in Vienna and had become an accomplished concert pianist. Listening to her play was always a special treat for my parents, my sisters and me. Dr Raja Ramanna, the distinguished nuclear scientist, was a frequent visitor to Vienna those days, and he struck up a close friendship with my parents. He was also a very good musician, and was adept at playing the piano. I recall an evening at Marialena's place, where Marialena and Dr Ramanna both enthralled us all with their piano skills! There was Bijoy Borthakur at the Indian Embassy, his wife Deepali, his twin sons Arijit and Avijit, and his little daughter Urvashi. The boys and I used to enjoy playing chess together. Sadly, Bijoy Borthakur passed away in 1988 after he got cancer, and the family returned to India.

I went to Vienna International School. It was at the other end of town from where we stayed, but I used to go by tram and metro, and the journey took almost an hour. It was a large school, divided into Primary School, Middle School and Senior School. It had absolutely fantastic infrastructure. The school had over 1,000 students, and there were kids from over 70 countries. The faculty was very good. I have pleasant memories of teachers like our English teachers Mr Graham (he was also the Drama teacher, and had a terrific sense of humour) and Ms Dettman, our Maths teacher Ms Smith (she was a very thorough teacher and got me interested in Maths, a subject I went on to pursue in college), our German teacher Mr Evert (I enjoyed my German classes, thanks to him), our French teachers Mr Decreuse and Mrs Gosset, our Physics teacher Mr Dindorf, our Biology teacher Mr Edgell (who was quite a heart-throb with the teenaged girls in our class), our History teacher Ms Ardley (I got along well with her), our Head of Senior School Mr Laidler, our Head of Middle School Mrs Ellwood, our Music teacher Mrs Schweighoffer, and our Physical Education teachers Mr Macaulay and Mr Bretherton.

I made several friends at school. There was Waseem Al Qaraguli, the son of the Iraqi Ambassador. I used to hang out quite a bit with him. Our parents knew each other rather well too, because they were all from the common diplomatic community. Humberto Gonzalez (from Spain), Fadi Jabra (from Egypt) and Basel Abdelmoneim (also from Egypt) were all friends I played table tennis with. We had a table tennis table at home, and my friends were constantly in and out of our place to play table tennis - Humberto in particular, because he stayed close by. Michael Csorba (from Hungary) was a friend I played chess with, and we used to hang out together. Rahul Narang was an Indian boy whose father ran a well known India restaurant, Taj Mahal. Yuri Fattah (who was half Bangladeshi, half Japanese) became a friend - he used to live close to our house and used to drop in from time to time. There were girls like Anamika Ghoshal (she was half Indian, half Polish), Jahanara Hasan (she was half Pakistani, half American) and Shokoufa Azarnia a.k.a. Shoki (from Iran) who became friends.

Sadly, one thing left unpleasant scars on me at my school. I experienced racial bullying, like no one should have to. It was probably done in jest with no ill intention (except perhaps by a small bunch of kids, who were genuinely nasty to me), but at that young, impressionable age, it can have serious long term implications. Now I was an Indian boy of 12, and I spoke like regular Indian boys of that age do. Yes, I had an "Indian accent", but coming from India, why would I have an American accent or a European accent? I found that within months of my joining school, kids were laughing at Indian accents whenever I spoke, and they were trying to mimic Indian accents. One of them happened to see Peter Sellers' "The Party", in which the actor plays the role of Hrundi V Bakshi, who speaks with a strong Indian accent. Every time I spoke, kids used to copy what I was saying, speaking like Hrundi V Bakshi. I wish I could say it was just a handful of kids who were doing this, but sadly it was quite rampant. I got extremely conscious of how I spoke, I became very introverted, I lost pride in my identity and I started lacking self confidence and having feelings of not being good enough or cool enough! It's something I carried with me for years, even after I left Vienna, and I'm not sure I've ever managed to get over it fully. The damage was done! I never complained to the teachers. I probably should have. My defence mechanism became that before anyone could mimic me, I would make fun of myself. I did talk to my mother about the situation. She came and met my homeroom teacher, Mr Thatcher, who said he would look into it. However, these daily incidents didn't really take place in front of the teachers, and I was not the type who would go complaining to teachers. On a few occasions, I lost my cool and got into physical fights, which was so uncharacteristic of me, but boy was I pushed to the corner and harassed!

I remember an incident in our art class where we were making objects out of clay. As I worked quietly, this certain boy kept taunting me, and kept making fun of me, my country, my religion, the way I speak, Indian food, and basically anything and everything Indian. He got tacit encouragement from his friend who was laughing, and he went on and on with his jibes. After almost half an hour of this, I looked at him and said "What about your country?". He made a hard ball out of the clay in his hands, and he smashed it on my face. He was stronger than I was. I was stunned and I just let things be, despite the physical pain I experienced. I remember another incident when it was an Indian festival, and my mother had put a red teeka on my forehead in the morning. I went to school and this other boy who enjoyed bullying me, came up to me and started asking what was on my forehead. When I told him, he made fun of me and told me to go back to India and do these things there instead of doing them in Vienna. These incidents still sting after all these years, and these are only two out of numerous ones that took place.

Another cause for bullying was that after our Physical Education classes, we were supposed to take showers and change before getting back to class. I was a modest person, who valued his privacy, and I was not at all comfortable taking a mass shower in front of everyone else, so I never did. This led to unending taunts from my classmates, with all sorts of nasty comments and shouts of "Akshay Shower!" I figured that as a teenager, one needs to either blend in with the crowd and be like everyone else, or be prepared to face harassment. Anyway, I stuck to my guns, but at the high cost of putting up with taunts for years. Even now, I'm pretty clear that I would want my son, Rehaan, to grow up in India and not outside. If he lives outside India, he will be different, and that is an invitation for mockery and taunts, and that's the last thing I would want for him.

Vienna was the place where I had my first ever crush. I was a shy chap back then, plus my confidence had in any case taken a beating because of all the racial jokes I had been subjected to, so I would be tongue tied whenever I met this one girl, and it would be an achievement worth mentioning in my daily journal if on any day I managed to gather the courage to say hi to her! So needless to say, there was never much conversation between us, because I would practically start stammering out of nervousness if she was in the same room!

In addition to the great faculty, Vienna International School had amazing sports infrastructure, with an athletics track, a football field, tennis courts, and indoor courts for basketball and volleyball. There were extra curricular activities on offer like cooking classes, and fabrics classes. I remember making a cake in the shape of a straw hut, which even our Lhasa Apso, Karma, refused to eat! In my fabrics class, I made myself a pair of shorts. My mother joked and said we would give those away in dowry when I got married! There were other interesting activities that the school organized. So for example, when we were learning about the Renaissance in history, the school took us out on a 3 day trip to Florence, where history came alive in the form of the city's fascinating art and architecture.

I have gone back to Vienna several times after we returned to India in 1989. I went in 2001, 2008, 2009 and 2011. Vienna is one of the most beautiful and historic cities in the world, and exploring Vienna is any traveler's delight, with fascinating sites like Stephansdom (the main cathedral), Karntner Strasse (the pedestrian street in the heart of the city, with its many shops and restaurants), Sacher Hotel (with its famous Sacher Torte), Kunsthistorisches Museum (which has a fabulous collection of paintings by top artists like Titian, Velazquez, Vermeer and Rubens), Karlskirche (a baroque domed church with beautiful frescoes), Peterskirche (with its rich baroque interior), the Rathaus (the gothic town hall), Hofburg Palace (with its treasury, and the world famous Spanish Riding School known for its Lipizaner Horses), Belvedere Palace (which features the world famous painting "The Kiss" by Gustav Klimt), Prater (a famous amusement park with its large ferris wheel and Madame Tussauds Wax Museum) and Schonnbrunn Palace (one of the most spectacular palaces in Europe).

Rathaus, Vienna

High Altar at Peterskirche, Vienna

Johann Strauss Statue at Stadtpark, Vienna

Every time I've gone back, I've met up with some of my Vienna International School friends who have stayed on in Vienna - people like Giacomo Strazzeri (a friendly, jovial, amiable chap from Italy, who I'm genuinely fond of), Armando Javier (a very social fellow, who is great at keeping in touch), Natascha Lavnick (a warm, friendly girl from England, who went on to marry a Sri Lankan), Shokoufa Azarnia (who went on to become a doctor in Vienna), Nassim Mafi (like Shokoufa, also from Iran), Igor Medan (Shokoufa's husband, from Serbia) and Juan Arellano (Nassim's husband, from the Philippines). In 2011, I went back with my then fiance and now wife, Kamalini, and we were there for the 20th anniversary of our graduation from school. Armando and Natascha had painstakingly organised the reunion and had done a great job of it. Close to 40 of us, from a batch size of about 100, had come. We had Facebook to thank for the great turn-out. It was good to see everyone. We met up in our school one evening. Then there was an extended lunch the next day at a restaurant just off the Danube River. On the third day, we went off to a little town called Langenlois, famous for its wineries. I've been to other reunions as well, but this one was really memorable.

Vienna International School Reunion, 2011

On my 2011 trip, I showed Kamalini the city where I spent four years of my childhood. She absolutely loved Vienna, and I enjoyed showing her around. I took her to the most famous sites of the city, I took her to Vienna International School, I took her to the Indian Embassy and I took her to the Indian Ambassador's Residence, where I had lived. At the Indian Embassy, we happened to meet the Indian Ambassador's wife. I asked her if we could come and see the house the next day. She said sure. Kamalini later told me that I kept referring to her as "Aunty", though she was probably my age! Well, Ambassadors' wives had always been aunties for me, so it just came naturally to me, and I totally forgot that I was now a middle aged man myself!

My wife, Kamalini, at the Indian Ambassador's
Residence in Vienna in 2011

Before Vienna, I had spent a couple of years in Belgrade, and I always say that those were among the happiest days of my life. Vienna could have been that too, had it not been for what happened in my school. But I put it down to kids having fun, being goofy and immature, and perhaps not realising the implications of their actions. Anyway, these things can happen anywhere I guess, so I shouldn't hold it against Vienna. It certainly is one of Europe's most magnificent capitals, and a city that every traveler must make it a point to visit. The Austrian country side is spectacularly beautiful, with the lakes around Salzburg and the Austrian Alps near Innsbruck. Austrian cuisines are world famous, with specialities like the Wiener Schnitzel, and of course the Sacher Torte. Austrians are by and lot a friendly lot. In the world of art and music, Austria boasts of big names like Gustav Klimt, Johann Strauss and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Whichever way you see it, Austria in general and Vienna in particular are among the favourite destinations for a lot of people I know, and I'm proud to be in that group!