Vienna is a wonderfully safe city. I feel pretty secure walking around the city on my own. That does not mean that I am careless. I make sure I observe my surrounding. I’m never in public with headphones in my ears (this is taking an important forewarning tool out of the equation). If I see someone looking shady I go in the other direction.
But even taking these precautions, I would not expose myself to the public in Los Angeles like I do in Vienna. When I try to explain to Austrians how dangerous Los Angeles really is, they cannot comprehend it. I have to roll up my sleeves and explain very specific stories to get them to understand about 10% of what I am talking about.
It goes something like this. Weekend news in LA. 20 people shot this weekend in a part of the city that is only 30 minutes away from where you live. Kidnapping. Theft by gunpoint. Rape.
Please note that this is in the space of 48 hours. As a native LA person, you shrug your shoulders and think, well, that was a typical weekend.
Just two weekends ago here in Vienna, an Austrian woman was telling me and my LA friend N a story of how her brother got mugged. N and I gasped in horror and immediately asked if her brother was okay. The Austrian said no, the muggers took her brother’s mobile. N and I paused for a moment. N asked, “Did the muggers beat your brother up?”
The Austrian answered no. I asked if anything else was taken. The Austrian answered no. The muggers just took the mobile and left her brother with his wallet.
N and I looked at each other and started to roar with laughter! “Darling,” I explained, “if your brother didn’t end up in the hospital fighting for his life, that wasn’t a mugging.”
Another example. I was sitting at work and my two Austrian co-workers were talking about how a child was kidnapped in a mall in Salzburg. They were horrified. This sort of thing doesn’t happen in Austria.
One of my co-workers said her mother would leave her as a young child in the car as her mother went shopping really quickly. I almost choked. You never leave a child alone for a split second in LA.
I raised an eyebrow and explained to my Austrian co-workers. “When driving on the freeway in LA, you see electric boards flashing ‘Kidnapper driving white Toyota license plate number 13noq9532’ What do you want, it happens?”
Dear Austrians. Please realize that in comparison to LA, you live in a fairy tale world of safety and security that I can only envy.
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