One of my blog readers is Viennese. He makes a lot of great comments on my blog. I thought it was a good idea to add the view point of someone who is truly Viennese. Be the voice of the Viennese to balance out mine a bit. He responded to my post Fears of an Expat with the below.
hi!
first: i think you meet/ask the wrong people 
)
2nd: i am more or less genuine Viennese (parts of the last 5 generations on mother & father-side are from Vienna 
)) i guess i can give you some info about viennese thinking from my view:
the crankiness is mainly a protection for the Viennese – if you expect the worst you got a good chance of being positively surprised. the crankiness is on the outside – mostly but not on the inside! and with the right ‘Schmäh’ you usually can see the inside as you might know, Viennese always try to avoid aggressiveness and confrontations – this is where they use the “Wiener Charme” to work arround (I guess this is one reason why Vienna is quite nonviolent compared to other cites.) they always like to talk it out at a Heurigen or Kaffeehaus (or compensate it with crankiness).
Also business is done not in office, but on a small table at the
Heurigen. As Metternich said “Der Balkan beginnt am Rennweg”! that
might also be the reason why one can bargain for mostly everything in Vienna – if you know how )
And sometimes it is just some kind of mental relaxing, if you don’t have to be always happy.
this are very general views! of course there are a lot of different, nice and unnice, people in vienna, but you can find this “melange” everywhere …
PS: most expats I know, are quiet happy here – they adopted (parts of) the viennese lifestyle, which works quiet well (as ‘viennese’ is a mixture of a lot of cultures & lifestyles )
Thanks for forwarding me to the frontpage!