Number One in Quality

VIENNA, AUSTRIA As I leave Vienna for Cologne, I ponder how Mercer Consulting rated Vienna number one in quality of life. Certainly they weren't considering the needs of the roving anthropologist who insists that everything be centrally located; train station, hotels, old town, from whence to explore the city's environs. Vienna falls far short of these criteria. There are four major train stations: Westbahnhof, Sudbahnhof, Meidling, and Simmering. None is near the center of town and each an important arrival/departure point depending on where you're coming from and where you want to go, which poses a problem on deciding where to stay when your future travel plans are uncertain. To be sure, Vienna is a beautiful city steaming with cultural opportunities; concerts, theater, art galleries, museums, and historical sites, but would I rate it above San Francisco (ranked 37 ) - never. San Francisco is the second ranked US city after Honolulu (ranked 35). Can they be serious? I can only suspect that it must have been Vienna's Mercer office who conducted the survey and after that drew cities out of a hat.

Germany on the Move

The Austrian Arrow to Cologne had very good in-flight service, fresh salad and a glass of wine, along with a newspaper of your choice. I chose Die Zeit and read an article on how the German economy is growing as fast as China’s (7.8% vs. 8.0%) compared with the US projected growth rate of 2.4%. The article quotes Paul Krugman as praising Germany’s financial crisis management. I had to read that two, three, times to make sure I got it right – Paul Krugman praising Germany's conservative economic management, huh? Yep, that’s right.