Schnitz & Giggles

[S2E2] Danube Flood Dilemma Meets Vienna's Island Ingenuity

• edelwisecrackers • Season 2 • Episode 2

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Can a river shape the destiny of a city? Discover how Vienna's relationship with the Danube has influenced its history and future as we explore the city’s battle against the river's unpredictable nature. Join us for a deep dive into the recent heavy rains and unprecedented flooding that have rocked the region. We trace the Danube’s journey from a Roman Empire border to a modern engineering marvel designed to safeguard Vienna, revealing the advancements and setbacks in flood control along the way.

Next, we journey through the evolution of Vienna's flood protection systems, from the devastating floods of the 16th to 18th centuries to the transformative 1870s. Learn about the pivotal construction of the "Neue Donau" and "Donauinsel" in the 1970s and 1980s, which reshaped the city's landscape and fortified its defenses against the river. In this episode, expect a comedic twist as we receive a surprise call from Spruce Wayne, adding a light-hearted touch to our serious discussion on flood management.

Finally, explore the dual purpose of the Donauinsel—a critical flood control measure that doubles as a beloved recreational haven. Discover how Vienna masterfully blends functionality with leisure, offering everything from beach volleyball courts to barbecue spots. Just stay alert once you stumble across three distinctive letters . . .

We also touch on how the city efficiently handled recent disasters, including park closures and public transportation challenges. Tune in for an engaging and informative episode that highlights Vienna’s commitment to safety and its resilience in the face of natural calamities.

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Mr. Giggles:

Oh, guten hallo and welcome back to the Schnitz and Giggles podcast. I'm Michael, I'm Lucas and we've had some weather here in good old Wien.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Whether you believe it or not.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah weather or not, oh, here we go.

Dr. Schnitzel:

We're off to a bad start already, yeah maybe we'll redo this.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, we've had some pretty heavy days of rain, or so we're.

Mr. Giggles:

We're really dated on this episode, so you know exactly when we're recording this but four or five days of pretty much consistent water from falling from the sky what rain is, and so we thought we would go with the flow hey and talk a little bit about the good and the bad parts of flooding in vienna and the surrounding areas yeah, it actually gives a pretty cool opportunity to talk about a pretty interesting feature that maybe goes unnoticed in the city the way the city has responded to the presence of a of a river. Right, what river could that be? So, as many of you might know, uh, and if you don't know now you know the city of Vienna is built on the Danube.

Dr. Schnitzel:

It's built on the Danube. It's built near the Danube, like.

Mr. Giggles:

Venice, on the shores of the Danube. Okay, that's more precise. Known as the Donau in German. Exactly, yeah, and pretty unique river. It's a pretty long river. I think it has the most world capitals situated on it.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Yeah, it starts off in Germany and then goes all the way to the Black Sea and passes through lots of capital cities like Budapest or Bratislava.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah.

Dr. Schnitzel:

And Vienna.

Mr. Giggles:

And Vienna, yeah.

Dr. Schnitzel:

And maybe some more.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, probably a couple more.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Yeah, but it's one of the largest rivers in Europe.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, probably a couple more, yeah, but it's one of the largest rivers in Europe, yeah, so obviously historically settlements started on the shores of rivers and I think Vienna is kind of unique in that the river was kind of wild in the early days of the settlement. Not a lot of control through this area, like one big river became a lot of little rivers and in very marshy, marshy, marshy it's a nice word, sure?

Mr. Giggles:

yeah, let's use it more often well, okay, when we talk about rivers and marshes and we'll describe things as marshy, we've had, you know, as mentioned, a lot of rain. When there's a lot of rain, uh, throughout region, it can flow into rivers and create higher levels than normal.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Yeah, the sad part of the whole story is that it has been one of the biggest and worst floods that Austria has ever witnessed, and a couple of people even lost their lives. The rain was coming and the rivers coming so fast that some of them even couldn't even leave their houses.

Mr. Giggles:

I think I read like four or five times the normal expected amount of rain for this month fell within four days.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Right Within a couple of days they had maybe more than one month of rain. It was incredible, especially now it's September, pretty warm. So the week before there was more like a warning of wildfires Don't go into the forest and start a fire because it's so dry and then a week later they had warnings for for avalanches, because it cooled down so quickly that lots of the rain turned into snow and there's no lots of snow on the mountains yeah, the quick change, I think, in the weather was something that took a lot of people by surprise.

Mr. Giggles:

Obviously, right, just two weeks ago people were swimming in the in the donau and and enjoying nice warm weather and then just a week later, you know, having warnings to stay as far away from the river as you can and and a lot of the places specifically outside of vienna that I think really experience the brunt of the flooding and entire towns along the river that are flooded with a couple meters worth of water and people not being prepared for it. And it kind of surprising people, some sad stories yeah, sad stories.

Dr. Schnitzel:

However, most of the people were in some ways prepared, but not prepared for as much of what happened. They've been really good at preparing those flood control plans in the last couple of years and decades, because it's not the first flood that we ever had, but the sheer amount of water that came down the mountains and from the skies was something that they couldn't even prepare for in many ways. And northern Austria was hit the worst and even, like the Czech Republic's, going all to Eastern Europe, like Poland and down to Romania, lots of these places were flooded and severe damages were reported from all these areas.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, I think along those lines. It's kind of a cool opportunity to talk about even what these plans and things that the city of Vienna has done over the previous decades to really change the landscape.

Mr. Giggles:

It did, yeah, did yeah yeah, quite literally, some of the the work that they did with the flood control channel and and everything else has really, you know, if you were to time travel back, even 150, 200 years ago, the entire landscape of the city would be very unfamiliar, right, especially when it comes to to the side of the river that we're on.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Yeah, the other side, the wrong side of the river, yeah, the side opposite the oldest part of of the city, exactly but before you go there, let's travel back even more farther, just um, just just to give our audience an idea of the meaning of the river danube in history, because, as you know, the roman Empire had its borders pretty far stretched out.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah.

Dr. Schnitzel:

And one of the main border lines of the Roman Empire was the Danube. Yeah, so north of the Danube, the side that we're currently on recording, this was the country of the barbarians.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, appropriately enough. That's where we're recording.

Dr. Schnitzel:

And the civilized world was just on the other side of the river, correct?

Mr. Giggles:

We don't go there very often.

Dr. Schnitzel:

The Roman Empire ended with a daniel and it was just such a great borderline because of the fact that most of the times it's really hard to cross that river if there's no bridges out there, which there weren't any bridges back then. So that was just great as a protection from either side from from any enemies. You can even see the enemies coming if they were attempted to come across the river yeah, the main flow of the donau is quite impressive.

Mr. Giggles:

I mean, it's pretty wide in most spots and I I don't know what the actual depth is.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Perhaps we have that in some of our research, but fairly deep river that would, yeah, just very difficult to get across usually, I think it's around five meters at least, or six, something like that in vienna, because the river bed might be deeper at other places of, of course, along the whole river. So the Romans were pretty smart people, as we all know, and they found a spot where they could build a fort that was sort of safe from flooding, and when they built that they called that not the only, of course, but one of them they built along the river was called Vindobona, which is the original cell of today's Vienna. It used to be a Roman town.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, and there's still quite a bit of evidence of that established community still here today, exactly Some really cool spots that you can go check out, which might be a whole different podcast.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Yeah, because if you, just start digging in the ancient areas in the inner city, they usually dig up some Roman stuff, some Roman house or some Roman plates, pots, jewelry. They find all kinds of things in the grounds from 2000 years ago. So the Romans left a mark on Vienna and the inner city that we now call the first district. That was pretty much protected from floods all through the centuries, because that's a very good. It was built on a very solid foundation and the Danube never really came up there, except maybe like not severe flooding. It's not like the saint stephen's church was flooded, uh, but then you.

Mr. Giggles:

So it's not that bad well, certainly the geography of the city of vienna. I mean, it's kind of hard to tell now when you're within the city, but it is raised up there's hills on the on the, I guess, the south side of the of the river and right it flattens off on the north side pretty quickly exactly you don't.

Mr. Giggles:

You don't see it as much because of, yeah, of the all the buildings, the buildings that when you're walking around and you're taking the tram, yeah, and if you realize well, if you ride your bike, you might notice oh, this is uphill. Oh my, yeah, there's quite a bit of quite a bit of uphill and downhill. Yeah, the city.

Dr. Schnitzel:

But as the city expanded and this is what you were already referring to especially in the last 100, 150 years, the state grew and grew, and to the west and the south it wasn't a big problem, because it just goes up towards the hills and the forests.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, but you get farther away from the river.

Dr. Schnitzel:

That's true.

Mr. Giggles:

However, they also tried to settle in the northern parts, where the Danube was, and that was really a risky undertaking, because sometimes you might not see your house anymore because it's gone the deeper, more navigatable, navigatable, uh, portions of the river that was used for for shipments of goods in in trade and things like that, and on the other side of that is where it really turned into kind of a mess of smaller rivers and marsh and swamp type area.

Mr. Giggles:

So I I know that at some point in one of the darker moments of Austrian history where it might have been Leopold kicked out, kind of the first kicking Jews out of, the city moved them into what is now the second district, which is now just like any other part of the city and is still even it's Leopoldstadt, but that's where he kicked them out to and forced them to live in what was just very dangerous area. Kind of a bad place to try to establish a settlement.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Yeah, that's where today's the Prata area is.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Where you have the amusement park and the giant Ferris wheel. Really nice places these days, yeah, but back in the day.

Mr. Giggles:

A place where people want to live and where a lot of construction is happening now and a lot of increased development. But to look back at the pictures of a few hundred years, ago or the paintings, I guess, describing that place as nothing like what it is today. So how'd that happen?

Dr. Schnitzel:

Well, I'm glad you're asking.

Mr. Giggles:

The water didn't just go away.

Dr. Schnitzel:

No, the river.

Mr. Giggles:

I mean, I guess the water did kind of go away, but not on its own, not naturally.

Dr. Schnitzel:

With the river. The water always goes away, but it always comes back to well science. Well, in the end it's all water under the bridge isn't it All right, let's continue. Let's continue so you could all pull that up in like history books.

Dr. Schnitzel:

We don't have to go into all the details in the sure there were major floods, you know, in the 16th century and 17th century, 18th century, but what really was a game changer was in the 1870s there was another big flood and the people of vienna said we need to do something, something severe like we have to make, like make a severe change to the whole, the whole topology of vienna yeah we have to change the river the way it flows.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Yeah, they created some channels and what you call the donor canal is basically one of the one remaining original. We call them side arms. That was part of the original danube and they tried to make it flow through the city quicker and kind of give it a channel to build.

Mr. Giggles:

Build it up so that it's more controlled. Put the walls up a little bit so that it doesn't overflow as easily.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Yeah, so they tried to secure the shores and everything and that was quite the improvement. So there were even more flood threats despite this regulation. That happened in the 1870s and they were thinking about it for a long time and actually took them until the 1970s.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Yeah, after there was some really bad floods in. They were thinking about it for a long time and actually took them into the 1970s. Yeah, uh, after there was there were some really bad floods in the 1950s, I think. So they said we have to build an even better system because at that point the, the river is still.

Mr. Giggles:

You know, they have the, the donau canal and they have some control of the river. It's still yeah but the main river right out quite a bit into the north side of the riverbanks and still not a lot of control over where the water is going. So much yeah.

Dr. Schnitzel:

So what they did is they declared some part of the land next to the Danube, like on the northern part, just as floodland.

Mr. Giggles:

Like a floodplain. Like a floodplain, yes.

Dr. Schnitzel:

And so that was a good idea, but still wasn't enough, yeah.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah.

Dr. Schnitzel:

And so someone saw a rising opportunity here, and before the waters are brought to rise again, they say what about if we dig basically a huge trench throughout the whole city, like all the way from the north to the south, and not only stop there, but anything we dig up, we pile it up?

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, the dirt's got to go somewhere.

Dr. Schnitzel:

The dirt's going to go somewhere and we're going to use it again and make a big, big, big dam that will protect us, and so that's what they just did, starting in the 1970s, going into the 1980s. So if you look at the map of Vienna right now, you will see there's. If you see the labeling, you see the Donau, and then there's actually a second river. It's called Neue Donau. The Neue Donau is now the original part. That was just floodplains, but they took everything out and the little land strip in between is called today the Donauinsel, which translates as Danube Island.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Some people have said they were very creative with doing all these things, but not creative with the labeling. So it's like what do you call this? You call it island, call it island, yeah, and we call this this new trench. What is it? It's the new daniel. It's a new daniel, it's a no, I don't know. And they cut off some of the old channels as well, which is now now referred to as the altar don't know, yeah, so the altar don't know is a very nice place to swim in. Uh, in the, in the warm season, as well, as the noia donor, you can also go swimming there. You shouldn't go swimming in the actual daniel, because it will take you all the way to bratislava in a couple of minutes, even if you're a good swimmer.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah.

Dr. Schnitzel:

So you should respect what even the ancient Romans were still respecting back in the day.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, absolutely the forces of nature. How this project that was very much an infrastructure project, something to just almost in some ways an approach to make the city more livable in a survival way, created kind of one of the now pretty significant landmark within the city that's used by its people and by tourists alike.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Yes, that's really. I really like that part of the story of Vienna, because it's one part is the necessity and the danger and it has led to having created one of the really beautiful parts of Vienna that weren't there originally. So you have this, the noidona, this, this parallel, artificial channel yeah that they would.

Dr. Schnitzel:

when, like when the rain comes, uh, as it just did recently, they just open up all the gates and the overflow from the danube goes into that side channel and therefore the the Danube that goes through Vienna does not. Yeah, so they didn't just dig out a trench.

Mr. Giggles:

They constructed some big gates, dam type of things on either end where they can release water if there's too much and increase the flow if there's too much in the main channel of the river. So it was really a pretty impressive project. Right, when you really look at I mean you look at it now and it looks pretty natural it's like yeah, why not? Like yeah, it looks like this was always here, it was always here, but it. But it really was a pretty impressive feat of human engineering to dig all that out and create a whole new landmass, uh, within the city yeah, I mean some call it.

Dr. Schnitzel:

It's one of europe's most advanced flood protection systems, so many other cities should have done something like that hey, this is weird, we're getting a call wait, I know hello hey, hey guys oh, hi it's your. It's your old buddy spruce spruce, spruce, wayne, you're calling us, yeah how are you guys doing? Yeah, well, we're doing fine.

Mr. Giggles:

We're just talking about some things in like in vienna, vienna, the danube flooding yeah, yeah, I just heard you say that it's the most impressive flood control project in all of europe well, I said it's one of them well, I think you were just saying that to to kind of hedge your bets so I mean, what are you implying? Well, I don't know if you remember from my last call, but I live in the netherlands oh yeah, oh yeah you know where?

Mr. Giggles:

uh, where the grocery store chain was developed oh yeah, the famous one yeah, we know a little bit about floods here in the netherlands what do you know about floods? Come on I mean we're. Our entire country is below sea level okay, that's a good point. I don't know if you've ever heard a story about a little boy who saved the Netherlands by sticking his finger in one of the levees. You ever heard that?

Dr. Schnitzel:

story. No, but I'm not sure where this story is going.

Mr. Giggles:

I'm a little concerned now. That was me. Oh, it was you. Yeah, that was my entry into superhero mode.

Dr. Schnitzel:

You saved the Netherlands.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, I was part of it. I stuck my finger in a hole. It wasn't that big of a deal just one finger yeah, I saw the water leaking through, and so I decided to stick my finger in great I mean that that seems pretty impressive right if you save the whole country. I mean that yeah, man, I didn't. I didn't dig a hole, I didn't dig a trench yeah, that's what we did in vienna I sacrificed my body.

Dr. Schnitzel:

So do you still have that finger?

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, I pulled it back out.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Oh, very smart.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, somebody came in with a sandbag. They were able to put it up there.

Dr. Schnitzel:

So you're saying your fingers are as thick as sandbags? I mean, I asked Bruce Wayne. Well, you seem to have special skills.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, so I guess what you guys have done in Vienna is pretty cool too. I just wanted to let the listeners know that you know there are some pretty other cool flood control projects that have happened in Europe. It's not all about you.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Well, thanks for pointing it out. I mean, we weren't saying it was the only nice project.

Mr. Giggles:

No, that's what I. I heard your tone. Okay, okay well, you know, I I have my ways. Have you been bugging our, our studio? Yeah, you guys have made it kind of hard. You keep moving studios around. But I am spruce wayne. All right, we're gonna go now, all right. Just you know, don't forget us. I'm sorry, spruce, but this is a podcast about living in austria, so I'm sorry if we're not mentioning everything about the netherlands but it's good to hear from the Netherlands.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Yeah, alright.

Mr. Giggles:

See you guys later, alright, bye, bye-bye. Good talking to you folks, alright, well, we may need to keep moving in our studio.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Yeah, we're going on one side of the Danube and the other side of the Danube.

Mr. Giggles:

We've been moving back and forth and still yeah, we try to try to switch it up a little bit. I didn't realize that he was had such an intricate listening network yeah, I don't know, do we have to go? To transylvania, to yeah, don't say where we might go, yeah I'm just trying to receive him yeah, yeah, we'll go all the way he seems like a great detective yeah, obviously I mean it's a human story of man versus nature trying to control the places you're in and what I was before.

Mr. Giggles:

We're still confused with this call here. Yeah, but before how do we catch back on how before?

Dr. Schnitzel:

spruce called. I was making this big, big intro about how beautiful that part of the other side of the coin is, like the one is the dangerous and the life-threatening flood protection program. Right, let me rephrase it the flood protection program is not life threatening but, you know what it's? Because the life-threatening part, its purpose, its purpose is to protect life. Okay, yeah, I'm still confused with this car.

Mr. Giggles:

I'm so good old spruce called rude wayne, that one's so great thanks for laughing, though that was nice there's actually a soccer player.

Dr. Schnitzel:

It's called rude nistelroy, oh that's right, yeah, he used to play for a long time so rude is actually a dutch name yeah, rude all right, we're getting off track. We're getting off track here so, not so.

Mr. Giggles:

not only did it serve to save people's lives, but but now you have it's a 21 kilometer long island. Yeah.

Dr. Schnitzel:

And that's easy to ride your bike on because it's super flat all the way through. Yeah, it's interesting.

Mr. Giggles:

It's a good description or a good example I think of, like that Austrian blend of like serious get a job done, but also the enjoying of life and nature and having this multi-use and not just putting apartments up on it or making it into another part of the city, but really protecting it and creating an outdoor space for people to enjoy.

Dr. Schnitzel:

I think what you're getting at is quite spot on with the Viennese and the Austrian mindset is, when we build things, we just don't want to build stuff, but then we look at it and we need to make this beautiful too. When we build things, we just don't want to build stuff, but then we look at it and we need to make this beautiful too, and so the Donauinsel is really a really nice recreational space where I mean thousands of people go there every year you could just go there for a swim for free.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah.

Dr. Schnitzel:

And they put up stuff like beach volleyball and all kinds of playgrounds.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, the Donauinsel really rivals the Prater in that way as being a centralized location where people can enjoy the out outdoors, in the middle of the city right so within really from most parts of the city, within a half an hour you can be in the water yeah, you can be there. You could be riding your bike along the shores of the river on a pretty well-maintained path and there's lots of little swimming docks spread out along the along the place.

Dr. Schnitzel:

There's even spots where you can barbecue yeah, little grill plots. Did you know that, even like when you have to sign up for one of those spots for certain time slots? Oh, do you? But if you do, the city of vienna will actually provide you with some firewood is that right?

Mr. Giggles:

well, I'm learning something here like.

Dr. Schnitzel:

I'll be there on saturday, whatever the date is. Yes, 10 o'clock. Give you wood. They actually would even give you wood, at least they used to. I don't know if they changed that, but a couple of years ago it was still in place, I thought they were just kind of available.

Mr. Giggles:

first come, first serve.

Dr. Schnitzel:

You just show up and if there's one, you can reserve one of these spots, and they wanted to use those spots and not any kind of place anywhere. Yeah, put up some, some safe locations where you can actually make, make some fire, and then they will support you doing that. And that that's not not only the woods, but the whole island, is one of the reasons why vienna comes out top every year with the quality of living because, like you just said, it just takes a couple minutes and you can be.

Dr. Schnitzel:

You can literally be on an island yeah you have a beach vacation before you go back to the office. You can go there during a lunch break if you like yeah, it's certainly a.

Mr. Giggles:

As much as I love it, it's a poor substitute for actually being on a real beach I mean you as a californian.

Dr. Schnitzel:

I understand what you're saying here, but it is.

Mr. Giggles:

It is a substitute. There has certainly been uh uh, some moments where it has it scratched that itch of being near a body of water, which I like to be yeah yeah, and certainly the accessibility of it and the amount of places that are along the shoreline where you can post up, you know, you throw down your towel and have a nice gentle swim, either in the Alta Donau or the Noia Donau or just right there on the Donau Insel.

Mr. Giggles:

There's plenty of spots Like it's never going to be a point where it's so crowded. There are places that will get super crowded, but there's. There's always a spot where you can find access to the water and and not have to pay a thing right, that's the best thing.

Dr. Schnitzel:

It's completely for free and there are two spots where there's two u-ban stops, at the u6 and u1, so those places, of course, but will be slightly more crowded because it's close to all the public transportation. But if you just keep on walking a couple meters, maybe a kilometer, it will get less and less frequent that you have other people.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, I think I've appreciated what it seems like the city has really been focusing on in recent years along the Neudeau now, with the Copa up and all the all the pop-up restaurants that are there during the summer and they they just did a big project this last year with a bunch of uh like platforms, uh right along the river, uh on the dono unsel side, where there's just a lot of places where it's not just going along and finding a spot at the river like they're creating nice flat areas, comfortable areas for people to enjoy it's.

Dr. Schnitzel:

It's nice to see the city invest in those there's one word of warning that I still need to mention concerning the donor island okay because that always throws off any tourists or people moving here to vienna I think I know where you're going with this. Yeah, because if you ever watch out for those three letters, if, if you ever see in German FKK, so FKK. Fkk means Freikörperkultur and simply translates to it's just a nude beach. That's what it is. We just have a very long fancy term for it Freikörperkultur.

Mr. Giggles:

It has to be official.

Dr. Schnitzel:

It sounds very fancy word. I mean, you have to travel down the islands for quite some time before you get there. It's supposed to be a little closed off, but don't be surprised if you see some people who are just enjoying nature as natural as it can get.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, but we don't want to mislead people too much. There are many spots, if you're walking around the Donau, that you might find people who are in various states of of undress, of clothing. Yeah, that's that's true.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Yes, that's probably the european thing about it, right, but in that area specifically, they have this place declared for them, but they might not be just a lot more. There's a lot more. There's a lot more.

Mr. Giggles:

Everybody is is this way yes, yeah, but it's. It's a good warning, I'd say for, especially for for americans who are on tour or who are, you know, moving here maybe and and wanting to just go out for a nice afternoon swim, and you might not be used to seeing various parts of people's bodies exposed.

Dr. Schnitzel:

And before you get the wrong idea in many ways you don't want to see it because it is not like aesthetically, like not everyone looks like Schwarzenegger. It's always a bit of a shock everyone looks like schwarzenegger.

Mr. Giggles:

It's always a bit of a shock but it can be very off-putting to the american sensibility, where you know those things are frowned upon public nudity and such and it's culturally very less frowned upon or at least less bothered less bothered here over here, that's certainly something to be aware of you know if you're bothered by that you might even see some of it in public swimming pools yeah some, some people are just not very.

Dr. Schnitzel:

They don't really care as much, they just want to have a nice tan.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Maybe grant them a nice tan, I guess.

Mr. Giggles:

But yeah, it's just a good reminder. This week, I think of just control the river and maintain the riverbanks and have the water going in a nice clean way. Sometimes nature is indeed more powerful than what we try to put up, because I mean the banks of the Donau, both the Neue and Alte Donau, maybe not the Alte Donau so much because it has less flow coming through. Yeah, there's no real flow, but certainly the main flow of the river was overflowing its banks in many spots.

Dr. Schnitzel:

I mean down at along the banks of the Neue Donau, at Kopa Beach like all the places where the restaurants were placed just a couple of weeks ago was now completely underwater, right, but Vienna did not really have to report any casualties. The worst casualties or the worst uh effects of the flood in vienna was because of trees that have fallen over because of the whole rain and storm, or like branches, being glad you brought that up so just a description of how, how great the services are in the city.

Mr. Giggles:

There was a tree just near our house, on the corner that, because I guess of the saturated water, the tree just fell over like the root ball and everything. It just tipped over and was there and I walked past it in the morning at some point, maybe 10 o'clock, got home just after lunch 1, 1.30 or so the tree was already cut up and gone. Lunch 1, 130 or so the tree was already cut up and gone, like they. Yes, and when I walked past it I guess it most likely maybe fallen, fallen over sometime in the evening, there was a, you know, caution tape around it so people wouldn't, you know, wouldn't get too close to this fallen tree or whatever. So conceivably within 12 hours of this tree falling, it was chopped up and removed. It's incredible.

Dr. Schnitzel:

This city. I mean this city. You have to consider that there are about 2 million people living here and nobody has died, even though there was the worst flood in ages now or ever, it seems, for some parts and the worst thing that happened is that some people got injured because of those trees, and now Vienna closed all the parks and there are more like a thousand public parks in vienna.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Yeah, they all have tape around them, and the city of vienna has just committed to check every single tree in every single park, and there's, I heard, there's more than 400 000 trees in those thousand plus parks, there's lots of parks. There's lots of parks, yes, uh, and huge parks sometimes yeah so they had to check, like all of schoenbrunn and everything. So it's amazing that vienna said, okay, we won't uh risk the safety of our citizens, we're not going to open up those parks until we have checked every single branch of every single tree and all the roots, and on the ground, if it's safe to open up again.

Dr. Schnitzel:

And so that's how dedicated vienna is concerning the quality of life and the safety of its people.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, the commitment to public safety is obviously pretty high here and, yeah, it is pretty incredible and obviously it's super tragic and sad. You know the stories that you hear outside of the city of people who you know who lost their lives because of you know the effects of the flood, whatever that looked like. But, as you said, to have a big city with a lot of drainage channels, a lot of areas that could overflow and did that are within pretty heavily populated areas of the city, and to just have property damage and really the worst thing to come out of this within the city, of course, is that some of the U-Bahn lines have been shut down.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Yeah right, Between a couple of stations.

Mr. Giggles:

Exactly. You know where they were. Just too, you know there's. They're too close to the river. Obviously, the U6 basically runs through a drainage culvert, so it makes sense that you can't necessarily have the train running. But yeah, some basements were flooded.

Dr. Schnitzel:

And of course, property was damaged, but people are still alive. Yeah, think that's another part of the same coin, when we we've been addressing this a bit and I think we should talk more about the whole idea of people correcting each other in austria and in vienna like what a shimp.

Dr. Schnitzel:

But they use the schimpfen, yeah, when they kind of tell you to to act, uh, according to the standards and to the laws and everything. In the end, really, this is because we love the order here and the order in the end really protects life. So the fact that we have registered every single tree in vienna we know how many trees there are, somebody knows, I don't know but uh, there's people like just in charge for all these things where in other countries, you know, there's, there's a park out there, there's some trees out there, and nobody cares about, like, the well-being of the of the nature and the trees over there. So this is really where vienna is. Sometimes I even I as a viennese I feel it's over the top, like with all those regulations and there's a law for everything and it's just so on.

Mr. Giggles:

every tree in the broader has a, has an identification, stuff like that. Yeah, like every single tree has a number attached to it and you can call up and say, hey, tree number 5029 looks a little leany right now and they'll send somebody out, right.

Dr. Schnitzel:

You need an actual permit to cut down a tree even. And then there's some people might even come from the state of Vienna and look at the tree before and say, okay, well, you can cut it down now because it's sick or dead or something.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, which obviously a lot of people kind of can bristle against that type of control over individual freedoms. But that overall tendency to correct and follow the order is also a very, very personally driven motivation, because life is good for most people when people follow the established ways of doing things.

Dr. Schnitzel:

You know, that is something that comes out in the day-to-day interactions here in the city and that's kind of the irony of the law, how law can create more freedom, how more rules can create freedom, because you have the freedom now to go to the donor insel or go back to a park, once they open up again, right, and just enjoy the beauty of the city because of all the regulations that had been there in the first place. And we don't like rules usually like we just we tend to rebel against, especially when I think this is a stupid rule, but somehow it makes sense and somehow this makes the city the best city of all the entire world.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, absolutely, even Spruce.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Wayne might have to agree.

Mr. Giggles:

I don't know he seems fairly disagreeable. Yeah, so if you're in Vienna, you come to Vienna. You may see it in a tourist book, something about the the donau insel um yeah, take some time to take a look, take a nice little walk.

Mr. Giggles:

If you're here during the nice time of the year, it's a nice place to to enjoy a little picnic, right um, you might come across a. There seems to be, especially during the summer months. There's always something happening, whether it's a big festival type concert, smaller little pop-up stages, volleyball tournaments I even forgot that.

Dr. Schnitzel:

The donna insel fest, that's one of the biggest things. It's one of the largest festivals, open air festivals in europe. Yeah, that happens every year in vienna at the donna insel, and they have international acts coming there. It's all again. It's all free of charge, yeah, yeah, you don't have to pay a thing just to see some great artists uh, local and international ones, and it's huge, like there's every year. They have like a it's one weekend, as I think they have one or two million people every year just visiting from outside and yeah, there's so much space.

Mr. Giggles:

So when you consider a 21 kilometer long island, and it's not super wide, but it but it certainly has spaces to fit these types of people, and the city uses it to increase the quality of life and let visitors to the city enjoy a unique part of city life Right and even if you happen to visit during the cold season, I mean you can still go for a walk there and walk by the river. Yeah, absolutely. It's still a place where people are riding their bikes and and running and walking all year long.

Mr. Giggles:

Yeah, all times of the year, yeah except when there's a flood, they actually shut, uh like they close off the access points for your own safety again yeah, although it seemed like like you could still be on the island, they just, they just kind of shut down like any any stairways or pathways that took you closer to the shore so even in, you know, protecting public safety.

Mr. Giggles:

You know it might. It might have just been easier for them to to just put up barriers at the stops and at the bridges where you can get onto the island, but they still wanted, uh, the people to enjoy it's still possible to access it if you really want to. That's true yeah, all right. Well, now the the weather has started getting nicer. I'm not sure if it's good enough for a for a swim in the donau, but could rent a boat float around the alta donau.

Dr. Schnitzel:

It's a favorite thing of our family to do yeah, well, I hope, all after all this talk about thought protection, you're pumped hopefully you haven't drifted away and stopped listening.

Mr. Giggles:

Hopefully you're overflowing with joy, overflowing with joy Listening to the current of our conversations.

Dr. Schnitzel:

As we moved our way.

Mr. Giggles:

As we flowed through the topic.

Dr. Schnitzel:

To topic. Right, you have any more for me?

Mr. Giggles:

I'm working on them. They're just not floating to the surface.

Dr. Schnitzel:

Hey, all right, guten bye-bye. I guess it is guten bye-bye. This didn't end well.

Mr. Giggles:

Oh, that didn't end well.

Dr. Schnitzel:

That didn't end great. You think so. Let's see what Spruce Wayne has to say about that All right, guten, bye-bye.

People on this episode

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Lukas Marsak (Dr. Schnitzel)

Host
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Michael Johnstone (Mr. Giggles)

Host