Red Cross Blogs

Water way to see Austria

By Claire Durham
May 15, 2009 at 4:29 pm

Sometimes I look at my life and wonder how I end up in the situations I find myself in. Karma? Kismet? Serendipity? These days it’s often down to this amazing Movement that I work for which has some magical ability to make me sign up to do things I would ordinarily find myself running away from and so this is how I ended up in Austria purifying water from a duck pond and only dreaming of eating Sachertorte.

As an Aquarian and a spa bunny, I’m quite a fan of H₂O but this is the first time I got to understand how much time and effort (and money) go into producing clear, clean drinkable water. It is thanks to the Austrian Red Cross (ARC) that I now have an appreciation of this. I also have to thank the ARC and particularly the Austrian water and sanitation specialised water emergency response unit for showing me the alternative delights of Austria many of which are not featured in the Lonely Planet guidebook and through the fortunes of serendipity or a good search engine I am now able to share with you. So in no particularly order here is my list of the top five alternative Austrian must dos.

1. Accommodation

Now some people coming to Austria would plan to stay in Hotel Sacher which offers tradition, luxury, style and charm but what would you say to lodgings which can also be described not only as an “exclusive location” with a “wide array of impressive sights” but can also boast panoramic views of the open countryside? Ladies and gentlemen I give you the Stockerau recycling yard. Okay okay so the impressive sights are vast mounds of twisted, broken scrap metal, or broken plastic chairs and discarded bottles. However we were in the open countryside with beautiful fresh air scented by nature, and scented by something far less pleasant when the wind was blowing in the opposite direction! The gentle whirring of the wind turbines lulled us to sleep before the raucous fighting of the local birds overhead signalled the start of another day. For all intents and purposes we had been provided with the perfect ‘disaster zone’ for the training simulation exercise.

2. Water

Austria has a lot of water and it comes in all directions. There are 628 rivers in Austria, I’ll challenge you to name them all! I’ll start with the Danube. It was also raining quite heavily for at least half of my trip. All water in Austria is drinkable, except the duck pond at the Stockerau recycling yard. Although personally daunted by this challenge, the WatSan ERU team had no such qualms and got stuck in. Within no time a pump had been set up and was merrily pumping black and bubbly water into one of the three collapsible 8,000 litre tanks. The first stage was to add chlorine to kill off all the bugs and living things. Then chemicals are added to make the muck clump together and sink to the bottom. Carbon is added to bind the chemicals and finally the water is filtered and re-chlorinated and it’s ready to drink. Hopefully that description doesn’t have my old science teacher weeping into his tea but without blinding you with science that’s how it’s done. Within six hours we had clean drinkable water available from a tap stand, which is all the more impressive when you consider that this is normally being done in the hours and days after a large-scale disaster.

3. Food and drink

Café Bendl is an experience not to be missed. If cafes can have parentage then its mother would be a Viennese coffee shop and its father would be an English pub. If that doesn’t entice you to seek it out then perhaps its menu of typical Austrian ‘pre-cooked and frozen’ food microwaved to near nuclear temperatures might. Sample all hot main dishes such as Erdäpfelgulasch or Eiernockerl for the bargain price of €4.60. I have been reliably informed that they do a mean mulled wine in the winter months!

4. People

I was welcomed with open arms, hot coffee and very often a home-cooked dinner by the people in Austria. The working language on the training was German, so once I’d used by my extensive vocabulary (ja, OK, Guten Morgen and Danke, but some blame must lie with my school who rejected my request to join the German class and instead forced me to do home economics!) I was reliant on those around me to kindly translate. Thankfully most people seemed to be bilingual which proved to be very handy. They also proved to be excellent cooks. You can’t ask for more than that can you?

5. Sights

Obviously with the focus of the trip being the training there was limited time for sightseeing but a must in Vienna in St Stephen’s cathedral. The highlight for me and my host Johanna being the guided tour into the catacombs. Despite hovering around the signpost at the appointed hour and willing others to go with us through telepathy we failed to muster up the required five people that was a minimum for the tour. We offered to pay for the additional two places but were told that it wasn’t a matter of money but one of ‘security’. Between us, Jo and I have attended a number of security trainings and been deployed to places including Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia and Afghanistan but apparently the crypt of the cathedral is too unsafe for us. We left baffled and disappointed, but in true ERU style we refused to be defeated and sauntered off to find another catacomb that was open for business.

So now I’m back in London and I’m looking back at my trip and smiling. The horrors of not showering for three days are forgotten, by me anyhow, those who were unfortunate enough to come in contact with my unwashed self with a hint of eau de rubbish may be understandably less forgiving.

I have developed a passion for water treatment and an appreciation that of the hard work that goes in to producing water in the field for the people we are helping and ourselves. When you find out that a person needs 20 litres of water a day and it costs about $20 a litre to produce you realise how much you take for granted just being able to turn on a tap in your bathroom at home.

And in case you were wondering, I did finally get a piece of Sachertorte at the Sacher café in Vienna airport and I can thoroughly recommend it!

© Claire Durham/BRC

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Tags: Austrian Red Cross, disaster, emergency response, ERU, International Federation, Stockerau, training, water and sanitation

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Emergencies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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