Chris Zielinski:
CLASS OF 1968
American International High SchoolClass of 1968
Vienna,
Chris's Story
Life
Born in the UK, I came to Vienna aged 11 after five years in New York. Leaving behind my beloved rock collection (asbestos from a back lot in the Queens, garnets from the bowels of a Manhattan skyscraper), That was duty travel in those days  a leisurely week on the Atlantic mingling with movie stars, playing ping-pong with the sons of a millionaire, watching Elvis in Blue Hawaii, learning how to cha-cha with my mother, and ordering gut-busting meals every day from hand-painted menus. I sailed with my parents Cabin Class on the Cristoforo Colombo. We threaded the Straits of Gibraltar to Naples, debarqued and boarded a train, arriving in Vienna on dark January night in 1961.
Back in Old Europe! The Vienna I remember in those days was barely post-War. The people seemed xenophobic and hostile (early on, I remember being ejected from a tram by the conductor to the full approval of a baying mob of passengers because I hadnÂt ceded my seat to an old lady). Everybody seemed to stink of garlic, even (especially) in the morning. My sunlit existence in Parkway Village (which makes me remember New York as a green and pleasant place, weirdly enough) seemed a world away from these cold, slushy streets.
Of course, the universe righted itself as I got used to the way things worked in Vienna. I started learning German by seeing as many spaghetti westerns as possible in the local cinema (as well as repeatedly sitting through the Sound of Music and various Vincent Price horror films at the school). Klaus Kinski always seemed to feature as an insane, hair-triggered, blue-eyed killer; Django reliably let the boy get burned at stake rather than divulge where heÂd hidden the gold. Great, merciless stuff, told in a language of biblical simplicity (and thus easy to pick up).
In my teens, I thought Vienna was old-fashioned and stuffy, especially when people jeered openly at our long hair and hippie garb. Nevertheless, I fell in love with the town. Such secret treats as Mam...Expand for more
a HawelkaÂs midnight Wuchteln and the Serbische Bohnensuppe at the Schwartzspanier Cafe (both, alas, now gone) laid down their digestive claims. My memory is populated by long summer days playing poker at various swimming pools, stoned rambles through Turkenschanz Park, loco locomotion in bumper cars and go karts at the Prater, and sedate afternoons reading the papers among the Hapsburg formality of the Landtmann cafe which merged seamlessly with head-banging nights in discos like Voom-Voom and The Atrium. (Spiegel?)
AIS gave me many of my current friends, an education and a black sweatshirt (I was to wear it during my political days at university, claiming that ÂAIS stood for ÂAnarchist International Society  forgetting that the whole point about anarchists was that they didnÂt really form societies). I left the school in 1964 to head to England as a boarder  a serious mistake I never really got over. Nevertheless, I came back to Vienna every holiday, every summer  up to five months a year throughout the next 7 years, staying in touch with friends at AIS as I moved from the school in Hampshire to university in Scotland (St Andrews), and eventually came back to do my first job at UNIDO.
The rest can be told in fast forward: in 1972, I married Diana (who I met in Vienna), moved to Geneva as a translator and editor, went back to the UK to do my Masters, and later started a PhD at the London School of Economics (I still owe them a thesis). We then returned to Vienna again for a year at UNIDO, spent 4 years at FAO/Rome, 4 in WHO/New Delhi, another 4 in Rome, 6 with WHO in Egypt, 3 running a copyright organization in the UK, and since August 02, IÂve been working with WHO in Geneva (leaving the UK after separating from Diana -I carried her back out over the threshold of the ex-family home on what would have been our 30th anniversary). We have two boys: Seb (24) is also working in Geneva, while Zac (20) is studying in England at the University of Kent.
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