While most of us would rather not relive 2020, we can at least look back and laugh at it.
When we looked back on this one, we couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the absurdity that we thought 2019 had been a bad year.
Ok, this is a typical new year’s resolution in Vienna, so nothing bizarre here.
This was published at the beginning of when everything went to sh**.
Remember February and March? It seems so long ago now.
Published during the first lockdown when the whole lockdown concept was still feeling like something we’d only have to overcome for a short time.
This was when spring was showing up in the city and Stadtpark, Augarten and other parks around the city were packed with people as we were all finding it hard to resist going outdoors.
The ripples…ok, the wave caused by events happening in the US were felt in Vienna and 100s of thousands of people took to the streets in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Then everybody went to Hallstatt for their summer holidays.
Then, in an effort to lift everybody’s moods, Wiener Linien announced it had installed air conditioning in all of the carriages on the U6 U-Bahn line. It was a big deal.
Still summer and we were all conflicted on the question – holiday in Austria or say ‘f*** it!’ and head to Italy.
Yep, this was, and still is, a thing.
Thanks to Trump and Dominic Thiem, in the space of one week, Vienna became famous as a forest city and a place where awesome tennis players live.
Just when everybody thought the worst of it for 2020 had been delivered, Vienna was shocked by a terrorist attack. It rocked the peaceful city, with many feeling as if it had been a personal attack. The ‘Schleich di, du oaschloch’ line that was yelled out of the window by a witness of the attack by the terrorist became a line that expressed the common fear and anger felt by the people of Vienna. It was later criticised for its aggressive nature.
After a surge in Corona virus cases in the country, Vienna went into a 2nd lockdown, and hasn’t left it since.
Then the infamous Austrian town of Fucking changed its name to Fugging.
And the city had, what seemed like, an eternity of cloudy, grey days. It was kind of suitable considering the year we’ve all had.
And then we got to reminisce those concert-going days for a moment when lining up to get a Corona test as part of the city’s mass testing initiative.
And they banned Christmas markets and any stand selling Punsch and Glühwein around the city, so people got creative.