Vienna 13th May 2013

Today was a bit of a let-down... I made my way to the Viennese Jewish Community archive on Seitenstettengasse, which happened to be the site of the Stadttemple I wandered my way to on Friday, but the man in charge of the archive is on vacation this week and I couldn't go in. The building is only open Monday through Wednesday, so I could not have gone in even if I had gone Friday. An unfortunate string of circumstances. I will have to do with the Grubers as I did with Opa's family: email for information when I am home.

Afterward I spoke with a helpful police officer who pointed me to the Vienna City Library in the Rathaus (the city hall, essentially). I made my way there on the subway and spent about an hour and a half looking through record books from the time period of Opa's life in the city. I did not expect too much of great value (it is a small library), and everything was in German (naturally), but it was interesting to see even just the stylistic changes in the city directories, etc., that occurred in the late 1930s... Pictures of Hitler and his ministers and Austrian Nazi counterparts are scatted throughout, along with swastikas and the German eagle, and even the writing often changes to the ornate Fraktur typescript that the Nazi regime first promoted as "Aryan" and later banned as "Jewish."

I wasn't able to find the Najmans in the city directory, but many factors worked against me in that pursuit: the nearly illegible font, my rudimentary (at best) knowledge of German, particularly the specialized legalese German used for the record books I examined, etc.

After I spent some time in the library I went to a market and bought ingredients to try my hand at cooking alone for the first time. It went surprisingly well, and I learned several things: a bit of garlic goes a long way, and you have to take the purple skin off, too; and if you cook sliced sausage long enough it curls into a little bowl shape, great for holding whatever it is you're eating with them. And of course, I saved a good deal of money eating this way!

Later I will cook again and pack my things. My train tomorrow leaves at 06:52 from the Westbahnhof and I'm going to get there with more leeway this time so I don't have another close call like I did in Amsterdam!

Auf Wiedersehen!