Useful things for living in Vienna
(The below is my own personal opinion and view and is only provided for basic information purposes and should not be taken out of context, treated as professional advice nor seen as disparaging remarks . Names have been withheld in order to stop me being sued!)
Austrian Walls
You have a choice in Vienna. It’s either scarily soft and difficult or as hard as nails and difficult! If you take an old place it will probably be soft with random brickwork and dreadful plaster. If you choose a newer place you’ll probably find concrete walls with a thin skim of plaster on them. Both have their pluses and minuses. Old walls for instance are great sound insulators whereas concrete construction always has that hollow ring to it and carries sound like a tin drum. The other choice is the walls in one of the many renovated old buildings. In these you can find all sorts of wall construction with concrete patches in the middle of old brickwork where the layout has been changed.
Austrian Plaster
In the old apartments there’s a lot of plaster but not much holding it together. The plaster was cheaply made with very little bonding agent used and consequently it often lifts from its base structure, i.e, the wall it is meant to be attached to! It can be incredibly thick as well due to the discrepancies in the construction of the walls. There’s no English brickies here that’s for sure.
Another major problem is that they used a very coarse aggregate mix, cheap again, but this leads to small stones in the mix. So if you’re trying to drill into it and you hit a stone, due to the lack of bonding agent you will push the stone out of the way instead of shattering it. This leads to displacement and you end up with a very large untidy hole in the plaster as the stone shoves its way through the weak surrounding area.
What's in there then?
Please please try to ascertain what is in the wall before banging anything into it, especially a drill!
There are a great many regulations regarding where stuff should be inside walls but there are far more so called “Professionals” that don’t give a monkeys about such regulations. Concentrating instead on making their life easier, the work quicker and the job cheaper.
Just the other day I discovered four pipes and three cables where they shouldn’t have been in the space of four meters!
There’s no need to be paranoid, just be cautious. It can save a lot of stress, inconvenience and money. Not to mention frantic phone calls to very expensive “Professionals”.
Deliveries via a Second Party
Many of the local firms including very large multinationals (No names here!) use cheap local deliverers and they don’t really give a monkeys about your expensive and long awaited stuff. Please please check it carefully for all parts and especially damage. Pay particular attention to the corners of furniture packs if it’s flat pack stuff. The stairwells are long and hard in Vienna and the packs get heavy. No harm in putting things down with a “thump” to have a rest when it isn’t yours to worry about!
Moving In
Look at the stairwell BEFORE moving in begins. Is it recently decorated? Is there any damage? If there is then please take photos and make a note of it. It’s not much effort and can save a considerable amount of hassle when someone decides to make you liable for repairs that aren’t your responsibility. More than likely your removals men will use barrows for the boxed up stuff. They’re great but they have rubber tyres which pick up stones and the bottoms are usually metal which will play havoc with your nice shiny wooden flooring and your expensive tiles. Cover it up! Cardboard is enough although old lino or scrap carpet is better.
Moving Out
Please check your tenancy agreement as to how the property must be left in regard to decor and fittings. It’s a nasty surprise to get a large bill for the re-painting of your old place after you have moved out!
DIY Markets
I carry both! A pencil and paper and a mobile phone with a camera. It’s said a picture is worth a thousand words and when you don’t speak German very well its worth even more. Take a snap or draw it (even badly helps) and take it with you. So many Austrians speak even a little English it shames us English naturals but sometimes technical words are elusive or downright difficult and often twenty characters long! A picture of a washing machine and a picture of a tap on the wall in conjunction with the pantomime of attaching a hose to both would even work in Swahili! All you would need then is the length you need, which you diligently wrote down on the piece of paper with the pencil I mentioned earlier! Most places have a very good returns policy and don’t make it hard provided the items are unused, in their original packaging and you have your receipt. If you do seek help and get an unhelpful member of staff, don’t get the hump, go and try another. Most of the staff are great and if they can’t help will summon a colleague that can. A smile, a laugh and a “silly Auslander can’t speak Deutsch” attitude works wonders here.
Electrics
Try and make sure you’re fuse/trips board has been labeled up. It really saves a lot of time when you, or I, know which one is for what. The ring main system that the Brits are used to isn’t used here. Here it is based on a locality system. I.e. room by room (sometimes including adjacent ones) but having said that there isn’t a hard and fast rule. You can find your upstairs fridge going off with the downstairs toilet light trip if the routing was easier for the electrician!