Rauchen!

I haven't posted to my Blog for some time and I really do need to let you all know about our trip back home to Australia, and our holidays in Belgium and in Malta but that will all have to wait as I have something I urgently need to get off my chest!

A LOT of people in Vienna smoke. And when we first got here in 2006 they could smoke pretty much anywhere they liked (except, thank God, on public transport). Sometime last year stricter rules were brought in to help bring Austria in line with general EU policies on smoking in public places. Now, all places that serve food must provide a non-smoking area. This often means two tables at the BACK of the restaurant (so that you have to walk through all the smoke) but in many cases it has prompted restaurants to go totally smoke free. Our local Italian and our favourite Thai are two cases in point.

So what's got me incensed right at the moment? Well, pull up a chair and let me tell you! On Friday I was walking through the DonauZentrum (or DZ, the shopping mall next to the kids' school) and I saw the big signs that said that all areas of the DZ are now smoke free - fantastic you say, but wait! Right next to this very large sign is a cafe in the middle of the mall - so no walls around it - and every single person sitting at the tables was smoking - and they are allowed to smoke there! How's that for craziness? I remain flabbergasted that 'all areas are smoke free' except for the cafes and eateries scattered throughout the mall where it's business as usual for smokers and their victims!

I would have taken a photo of the non-smoking sign with the smokers sitting next to it but there is another sign in the DZ which says that you can't take any photos inside the mall unless you want to be deported to the Gulags - I think that's what it says but my German isn't really good enough to be sure!