It should take six hours of leisurely driving from Belgrade to Vienna, with two short breaks. We left last Thursday around eight in the morning and planned to have lunch around three in Grinzing, a wine-growing, quiet town near Krapfenwald, where we booked an affordable apartment with two bedrooms and a kitchen. It is a part of Vienna that is organized as a small town within the city, quiet, green, outside the tourist flow. There are many wine tavern, taverns mostly with large gardens where domestic wine is poured, roasts, sausages, potato salad and similar high-calorie dishes are served, and people sit on wooden benches. From there, you can reach the Schötenring in the city center in just thirteen minutes by tram, or take the local train and metro very quickly and comfortably wherever you want to go.
Before the trip, I once again checked the latest rules for entering Austria related to the covid 19 virus pandemic: "sinofarm", with which my father was vaccinated, is recognized, "sputnik ve", with which I was vaccinated three times, is not recognized; for crossing the border, apart from a certificate of vaccination with one of the vaccines recognized in Austria, i.e. of all Western countries, an antigenic or PI-SI-AR test or a confirmation of having been infected with the corona virus is required; to stay in a pub in Vienna, even in the garden, it is mandatory to have a digital green vaccination certificate or a negative p-si-ar test not older than 48 hours, in the city of Vienna an antigen test is not enough.
I accompanied my father who was invited to a literary evening on the occasion of his latest novel published in German Corona in Bechenwald, he should have read from novels along the way hineni, published last year, because the presentation of that book was canceled due to the corona lockdown. At the last minute, I remembered to ask the Austrian Society for Literature to send me an official invitation as well. The host did so immediately and in the letter mentioned in one paragraph the literary association's cooperation with an Austrian federal ministry. That, it will turn out, was of crucial importance.
HUNGARIANS DEFINITELY DON'T LIKE US
The weather was nice, everything went smoothly, we crossed the Serbian border in a few minutes, entered no man's land, stood in one of the three columns and that was it. After two hours we were still standing in the same place. No one moved. I thought that the Hungarians had closed the border for who knows what, I searched the internet, I didn't find any topographical information. After three and a half hours and a few minutes, we finally reached the Hungarian customs officer. “Do you have anything to report?” “No.” “Cigarettes, alcohol?” “No.” “Open the trunk.” I do. “What do you have in your suitcase?” “Nothing.” The customs officer looks at me with open suspicion. “Open the suitcase.” I do. He rummages through the suitcase. He opens the back door, looks, searches, leaves. No one asked us about vaccines, green certificates, pandemic certificates of any kind. Hungarian customs officers are only interested in migrants, cigarettes and alcohol. I guess both drugs and weapons.
The procedure, once we got to customs, was quick and professional. I have never been able to figure out why there is always a wait for hours at the Hungarian border when entering from Serbia, even when objectively there is no crowd. Although this is always the case when I cross the border. It will be that the Hungarians simply don't like us and that's why they mistreat us. As one of my friends said, we are honored that we were once the West for them.
YOU CAN'T GO TO AUSTRIA
There was no traffic on the highway through Hungary. The ring road around Budapest has been expanded to three lanes, we pass without any stoppage. Near the small town of Đer, near the border with Austria, we were already in a restaurant in our minds. It was getting dark and I had a vision of veal schnitzel with fries and salad. I had breakfast at seven.
The border between the two Schengen member states of the EU is in principle open, under normal circumstances the Austrian border police disinterestedly observe vehicles passing by without stopping, only occasionally stopping a van if they suspect that dark-skinned, illegal migrants are hiding in it. Austrians know that few people get through Orbán's barbed wire.
This time it was not like that. Suddenly, another line of vehicles in front of us. But at least he is moving little by little. Not everything stands hopelessly like in front of the Hungarian living wall. After about half an hour to forty-five minutes, we reach two beardless Austrian border policemen with long barrels. "Good evening." "Good evening." "Passports, please." I give the passports. "Do you have a vaccination certificate?" I show the digital green certificate in my father's name on my mobile phone, "sinofarm" twice, "Pfizer" once. “Okay.” I show him my digital, negative p-ai-ar test. "You can't enter Austria with a p-si-ar test, you have to have a vaccination certificate," says the beardless of the two bearded policemen. "But, on the Austrian government portal, it says that a negative p-si-ar test is also possible," I say. "Not anymore," he says. In desperation, I try with my triple "sputnik". "We don't admit that," he says expectantly, "please step aside, your father can pass, you can't."
I look at him in disbelief. I remember that literary official invitation. I take it significantly out of my bag, hand it to the policeman confidently and say, emphasizing every word, that we are coming at the invitation of the Government of Austria. I just didn't say that Chancellor Sebastian Kurz invited us personally. An Austrian policeman begins to spell out that call with a stamp. About halfway through, where some federal ministry is mentioned, he stops reading, hands me the paper back, and says, "Okay." I start the car and we finally enter Austria.
I later found out that without a vaccination certificate valid in Austria, I would have to register at the border and go to quarantine. And Chancellor Kurz, on whom I wanted to play a bluff, resigned two days later due to accusations that he directly participated in or was responsible for the criminal offense of corruption and abuse of office.
DIGITAL RITUALS
In the end, we arrived from Belgrade to the Viennese hotel in ten hours. We are debating what to do if they don't let me into the hotel, whether I will be the collateral damage of a new cold war. Who is to blame if I didn't get vaccinated with Pfizer or AstraZeneca, but with Putin's vaccine. It is a new world in which we move.
No one alive is wearing a protective mask in the hotel lobby. Not even the receptionists wear them. They ask us about the reservation and whether we have a certificate of revaccination. Of course we have. I show my dad's digital certificate again on my mobile first. The friendly receptionist looks at the tiny pdf until it is unreadable and says thank you. This time I don't explain anything and nonchalantly show my certificate that says "sputnik ve" three times. She looks again and thanks again. We get the key to the apartment.
By the end of our stay in every pub it was the same. As an experiment, I alternately showed either my father's certificate on which it is written that the one it refers to was born in 1929, or mine with the Russian vaccine. The waiters would seemingly read carefully what was written and then ask me what I wanted to drink. In fact, nobody looked at anything, it was just a matter of sticking to the ritual called "I ask you for a digital certificate of revaccination, and you show me something that looks like it". At the same time, I also had a negative PI-SI-AR test.
Already seriously hungry, we decide to go to a Chinese restaurant just around the corner. Because of my experience at the border, and since I was told that they check digital vaccination certificates in Viennese bars, I enter the restaurant with some confusion. The room is almost empty, only three people are sitting at one table. We sit at the table, a Chinese waiter approaches. What do we want to drink? Let's order a large beer. The waiter leaves. He is not interested in vaccines.
GOVERNMENT CRISIS IN THE AGE OF CORONA
It is warm in Vienna, the sun is shining. As I sit in the bar across the street from the hotel, I am overwhelmed by the normality that surrounds me. From a distance, the images from Pink seem unreal. I ask myself for the umpteenth time how it is possible that these characters are in power in Serbia, that they shower people with paranoid, insane, malicious, malicious, lying nonsense. A set of caricatures in the theater of the absurd in scenes so unreal, they should be comical.
Austrians also have their own worries. The main topic in the daily newspapers that I read one after another is that Chancellor Sebastian Kurz used taxpayers' money for personal promotion (see box). His friend in the Ministry of Finance seems to have paid a tabloid to write affirmatively about young Kurtz, to publish fake public opinion polls and thus help him take power in the country. But they were caught in it, Kurtz's friend was stupid enough not to properly delete thousands of chats in which they have been plotting over the years. I read how the Prosecutor's Office for the Economy and Corruption is searching the chancellor's apartment and office, threatening him with up to ten years in prison. The lawsuit also includes media owners who received money to report not in the public interest, but in the personal interest of Sebastian Kurz. It is a criminal act.
I read all that jealous of the country where state institutions function. When I think of Serbia, it's almost funny to me that such a fuss was made because of some advertisements in the newspaper, because of a sum of around one million euros. Well, the man did not trade weapons illegally, produce illegal opiates, evade taxes or launder money through secret accounts in offshore destinations! What would happen if the State Prosecutor of Serbia ordered a search of Telekom? Investigated how pinks and informers are financed?
FREE TESTING: Mariahilfer Street in Vienna
I'm going to the center of Vienna. Everyone wears masks on the tram. I didn't see anyone without a mask in the shops either. In several places, I see points where antigen and p-si-ar tests are performed free of charge. In the old Viennese tavern Ritter in Mariahilferstrasse, the waiter doesn't care if I have a revaccination certificate or not. I check how many Austrians have been revaccinated - 61,5 percent. Not very great. I eat excellent potato soup.
The next day, we are going to have an early dinner with Austrian friends at a Croatian fish restaurant in 7. becirk. Along with the fantastic grouper and Kutjevac graševina, of course the topic is Chancellor Kurtz, who was caught in the embezzlement of taxpayers' money. On the one hand, it is true that Austria has the reputation of a country that is far from being foreign to corruption, on the other hand, it seems that the judicial authorities this time are not at all interested in whether their actions lead to a crisis of the government and instability of the state. The law is the law, if you're stupid enough to get caught. Rule of law before stabilocracy.
EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE
Our friends are real Viennese. One of them sees in Kurac a reflection of everything negative in Austria. He was a member of the Communist Party in his youth, he retired as a tax advisor, according to the principle: whoever is not a communist in his youth has no heart, whoever remains a communist in his old age has no sense. The second is a Catholic bishop, he is not happy that it turned out that Kurtz is not exactly what he appeared to be, but he supports the action of the prosecution. A row is a row. The two went to the same school.
We hear a story about Austria that they are both proud of. In the mid-1990s, a girl escaped from Tuzla with her family to Vienna. They were running away from the war. The girl quickly learned German, was a good student, enrolled in law and was a good student. She joined the Green Party, which of course stands for the fight to preserve the environment, but also for the humane treatment of migrants and European values, a little more than other political parties in Austria. From 2017 to 2020, she was a member of the federal parliament. From January 2021, at the age of 36, Minister of Justice of the Republic of Austria. For our friends, Alma Zadić embodies everything positive in Austria.
Our friend, a former communist, brought us fresh figs from his garden on the edge of Vienna as a gift. I can't believe that figs grow in Vienna, even in the middle of October. I try one, it's as sweet as if it was picked in August on the Adriatic. I think that if a sweet fig is born in Vienna in the middle of October, anything is possible. Even if the Serbian prosecutor's office, following the example of the Austrian one, initiates an investigation into the manner of financing and reporting of the Serbian media, and it would be said that there are plenty of grounds and indications for that. Not to mention Krušik or Jovanjica on this occasion.
Sebastian Kurtz was born in 1986. He became the State Secretary in the Ministry of Internal Affairs at the age of 25, a member of the Federal Parliament on the list of the People's Party at the age of 27. He became the head of the party and chancellor of Austria at the age of 31. Previously, he reformed, some would say modernized, the conservative, somewhat dusty People's Party. Having come to its head by blitzkrieg, he changed the party color from black to turquoise, centralized the party and subordinated it to himself. He showed that he understands political marketing very well. He went to the elections with the slogan "Sebastian Kurz - the new People's Party". The party, like its new boss, began to appear young, energetic and unscrupulous. Privreda liked the young chancellor, just like many Austrians.
In 2017, Kurz formed a coalition government with the ultra-right Freedom Party. Two years later, the "Ibiza" affair rocked his first government. Videos have emerged showing Kurz's vice-chancellor and head of the libertarians, Hans-Christian Strache, in a villa in Ibiza with a young, attractive woman, who presents herself as a relative of a Russian oligarch, hatching a plan to use her money to buy media that would promote the ideology of the libertarians. and Strache himself. It was assessed as "willingness to corruption", circumventing the law for the sake of illegal party financing and political influence on the media. The first Kurtz government falls on this affair.
In January 2021, Kurz forms a government with the Greens, a party diametrically opposed to the right-wing libertarians. It shows that he puts power before ideology. The Greens get the Ministry of Justice, the minister becomes Alma Zadić, who as a ten-year-old girl escaped with her family from war-torn Bosnia. She vows that she will not allow politics to influence the judiciary. After information that was interpreted as a well-founded suspicion that Chancellor Kurtz is involved in corrupt activities, she gives an order to the Prosecutor's Office for Economy and Corruption to investigate possible criminal acts of Sebastian Kurtz. The court issues an order to search the chancellor's apartment and office, as well as the offices of the People's Party headquarters. The investigation, among other things, reveals thousands of messages that Kurz exchanged with his confidant Thomas Schmid, in which they conspire to get Kurtz to first become the head of the party, and then become chancellor. Schmidt thought he had deleted the messages on the phone, but communications technology inspectors discovered them.
The indictment, written on more than 100 pages, accuses Kurz that Schmid, with his blessing from the position of Secretary General of the Ministry of Finance, paid for advertisements in certain media with taxpayers' money - in the amount of 1,2 million euros - so that in return they would write affirmatively about Kurc and published fake public opinion polls that portray Kurc as the nation's favorite and the most popular politician, which helped him to be elected the head of the People's Party, and then to become chancellor. According to the accusation, Kurac faces a sentence of 10 years in prison.
After the indictment was filed, the Greens are demanding his resignation. Kurtz initially refuses, the party formations stand by their leader, a government crisis ensues. A vote of confidence in Kurc is scheduled for October 11 in the parliament. The Greens are adamant, the government would fall, there would be early elections, and Kurcu's rating began to decline. Two evenings before that, on October 9, Kurtz appeared in front of the TV cameras and resigned in chosen words, presenting his position as a sacrifice for the sake of the stability of the state, as a withdrawal from the office of chancellor until the court process is completed. Nevertheless, the MP remains at the head of the party and promises not to invoke parliamentary immunity. The new chancellor becomes Kurtz's close associate and friend, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aleksandar Schallenberg. Through him, Kurtz could continue to rule from the shadows and try to politically influence the judicial process. The Greens agree to that political compromise. The investigation against Kurac is ongoing.
photo: ap photo
