BREXIT TOUR

Brexit is one of the key developments this year. No country has ever left the European Union, and all eyes will be on Britain and its disengagement from the trade, travel, political and cultural commitments it has with Brussels. Nobody knows when it will happen, or even if it will happen. But the schedule is still somewhere between mid-April and late-May 2019. Let’s see.

As a dedicated European, but also a Brit, space and place co-founder Eugene Quinn has a special interest in this subject. What happens next will affect him and millions of others – Europeans living in UK and British people who live across the Union.

To mark this bizarre and sad event, Eugene will make a tour looking at the dialogue between Great Britain and Vienna. We will visit British art and architecture, look at pubs, football, media and some people from the island who have made a new life in Central Europe.

Perhaps the most visible British exports are pop music and the English language. Films like Third Man present an outsider’s view of Vienna, and helped to romanticise this city in the Anglosphere. FM4 employs 14 British moderators and DJs.

We will also discuss how the EU changes without any influence from London. Global players like Banksy, Adele or Harry Potter help to present a certain kind of youthful cool. Which country will step up to take the place of these iconic figures?

Humour is also a notable British export. Which other EU nation can provide the kind of clowny behaviour we see in the photograph above?

UK has been responsible for much innovation with global consequences, from the industrial revolution and trains, Parliamentary democracy and electricity, to telephones and the internet. Will Europe miss that? Or does the EU have a brighter, more unified future without the irritating British, refusing to join in with the Brussels party? Bye bye Britain!

Eugene understands this walk to be some kind of therapy, where he can show that not all Brits are as cynical or uninformed as our Government about what Europe means, and the rich vitality that comes from migration, diversity, curiosity and cross-cultural engagement. And some people are treating this tour as a demonstration to show that we want more Europe, not less.

Tour language: English (of course – most Brits speak only one language and this is part of the problem in terms of a lack of understanding of the Euro perspective).

Meeting point: outside the Freud Museum, 9., Berggasse 19 (U2/4 Schottenring). The Freud family legacy in London is astonishing, and not so well-known in Vienna.

Time: 17:00 on Thursday 28 March. The tour will end in a pub, of course.

Due to extra demand, we will make a second tour on Saturday 30 March, at 10:30am

Tour leader: Eugene Quinn

Cost: €5. No registration possible. Just be there on time.