Under the Same Stars: Austria

but wise man once said why should we not all live in peace and harmony we look up at the same stars where our fellow passengers insane planet and we dwell beneath the same sky what matters at a long pitch road each individual endeavors to find the ultimate truth here is a young man he looks off on the same stars the same sky as you were not yours mine and his but who is this young man just who is he and why is he here today well I think he can tell you much better than I can good afternoon ladies and gentlemen my name is Paul singer and I thank you very much for letting me come to your home through a magic of television because I do believe whenever i or one of my European countryman has a chance on an opportunity to speak to you it will help to overcome and to strengthen the common bond and to get us to a goal which is our common goal which management Franklin described so beautifully as the pursuit of happiness I'm an Austrian and I'm coming from an average Austrian family that means my father he designs electric railroad locomotives my mother she's a head of the household although she doesn't want to admit it but she has the same duties and the same chores all a few housewives have that means she had to try to make ends meet and my sister she is a chemist and so is her husband and she has a darling little boy who is just as nice and just as much of a nuisance as small children are I went through a same educational process most of her children go through at home that means I started to go to grade school when it was about 6 years old and attained a great school for 4 years and afterwards I went to high school which we call a gymnasium or organizing which is a modernistic type of it I graduated after eight years and then I enrolled at the University of Vienna as journalism major well I was just about in a second semester when I found in my mail one of those famous or infamous letters which started out with greetings and told me that I was eligible for service in a German army since Hitler had moved into Austria in 1938 well I joined the Air Force and had to quit my studies at a time and went through all different pleasant and unpleasant experiences through the war mostly unpleasant ones which brought brought me to various European countries and also to Russia where I finally was wounded and lost a leg after the war I had one of my greatest thrills and one of my finest experiences when I met an American doctor dr. Walter a Heinlein who is surgeon and professor of surgery at still college he's a nasty au pair and he took some work over in Europe and you know our medical school in Vienna is still quite famous and has a good reputation all over the world I may mention a few things about this point which surprised me when I came here because I was surprised to find out that osteopath are having a hard time over here that means they have to fight for their reputation they have to fight against prejudice it amazed me because as depends are fully recognized in Europe and all the people I had a chance to meet over there of this profession had a very good standing and the treatment I experienced here in steel Hospital was a wonderful one so I think a country should be happy to have two groups highly successful groups the MDS and the Odie's that means the osteopath dr. Heinlein brought me to United States and he brought me to Drake University where I enrolled in journalism again to finish my college education when I came to the United States I had a good background on life in America because in Europe you hear quite a bit about it you form your opinion in a preschool age already and I have myself was an ardent player of cowboy and Indian games and of course I wanted to be an Indian myself all the time and run around with feathers in my hair and throwing knives and tomahawks and so I was quite prepared for my trip to the United States but seriously we also learn quite a bit about America in school and also after school by watching different newsreels and movies which I might say don't always convey the right impression because America certainly doesn't look like as Hollywood depicted time also the American army and here the information service branch helps very much to strengthen common bond between Europe and the United States today and also the American army helps to show Europeans that Americans are not millionaires only but are common people interested in the same fun and in the same kind of life as most of you for European people are well Austria to tell you a little bit about it it's just about the same size as Iowa it sounds surprising because Austria has a great history also its future is rather small it has been cut down to its present size after the first world war when we lost all our former parts of a hostile Hungarian Empire and were left with the present-day country population is about seven and a half million people and it also indicates the major trouble we have right now our country is simply overcrowded it reflects in all different fields are for daily life of course housing is the problem our capital Vienna for instance covers just about the same area as Des Moines does nevertheless it has a population of not quite 2 million people so you can see that it is impossible to build nice cottage homes as you find them over here but we have to live in apartment houses overcrowded and not always quite pleasant so we are in rather crowded situation nevertheless the people are happy and are carrying anuradha efficiently in spite of all different handicaps which have been brought about by the end of the Second World War when a country was partly occupied by the Russian forces which resulted in a kind of unpleasant situation I might say that we are more fortunate than adjournments our West Germany as you know has been divided completely separated into an eastern part and the western part which is divided by air time iron curtain at home a situation is different we have a curtain but I would call it if mr. Churchill will pardon my saying so a wooden curtain and not an iron curtain that means you can travel back and forth and the restrictions and difficulties are smaller ones than they are in other Russian occupied countries we are an extremely or extraordinary spot in as far as Oscar is just about the only place in the world where the two powers that means Western and Eastern powers are still getting along and I think it is made mainly on account of the fact that we had very very happy to have General Mark Clark who is a present high commander in a Far East in Japan as our first High Commissioner and Djalma Clark had a very firm and sound attitude towards Russian forces which resulted in better cooperation of those two powers at present but I'm not going to talk about politics only I might mention a few more things all of you have heard about the Blue Danube well and I'm afraid I have to disappoint you or rather badly because of Daniel and I've seen it quite quite often has never been blue but we say that people or people say that blue and German at least it means that somebody is slightly tipsy so they say even johann strauss composed the danube he must have been blue or tipsy because it is green or grey another thing which surprised me when I came here is the fact that people refer to those hot dogs as weenies well that's exactly the way we refer to our citizens of Vienna so I'm still a little embarrassed when I hear somebody ordering weenies and I still prefer to call them hot dogs myself another thing which I find in stores over here and which is slightly surprising is a Viennese bread I plan on buying such a loaf and to take it home because I never saw such Viennese bread in Vienna and myself otherwise I find America a wonderful country and especially American hospitality is still the world bewildering to me at home it is different people are and I hope my own countrymen will pardon me for saying so slightly hypocritical if they invite you for dinner it doesn't mean that you are supposed to show up and so I took the same attitude when I came here and it was amazed to find the people who are slightly offended when I didn't show up because demented so I can't say that American hospital is just wonderful and so is American culture I had a chance to attend and I eat a performance recently and the turnout was just as great as in a town which is famous for its music Vienna and performance was just as excellent as you could find at any place else to speak about America's role in Europe in the future I cannot tell you too much since I'm no fortune-teller of course but I can see that much that America is entitled an account of its position of car and account of its power through a leading at all in the world and although the nation itself has made the adjustment completely yet I'm sure it shouldn't take him too long it shouldn't take you too long to overcome some prejudice which is still in existence today and to assume the full responsibility which the United States deserve to speak a little bit about American educational system I think it is a very fine thing to see all this progressive education over here also there might be some points as relationship between teacher and student is concerned which might be slightly better in Europe also I think a combination of both systems might be the perfect solution and maybe we can work it out to come to a point where we could combine both of them to get the result which all of us want to get a almost perfect education as far as my own home country is concerned we had about 250 sessions concerning an Austin peace treaty which is not only a record but also a waste of time and we do hope that a new Russian policy will result in a better cooperation will bring us the treaty and the final peace we deserve and will give us possession of our natural resources and will give us a complete freedom but I also can assure you that many thousand American tourists have enjoyed Austrian hospitality and Austrian the beauty of Austin country so far and I also can assure you that they didn't find the slightest danger over there so if you have a chance come over and enjoy the Salzburg festivals which take place in August every year and bring your finest orchestras directors and opera singers to this town which happened to be mozart's birthplace as you know and you also will have a chance to visit more of a country and you'll find it in completely and thoroughly enjoyable with this wish to see all of you or many of you over there sometimes I may say goodbye for you may thank all of you for your kindness and all even my friends and I hope I may call on you my friends but I've met you in person or not thanks a lot and goodbye now you know who this young man is Paul singer from Austria country wants very far from our own United States now a few hours from our shores by air traffic and their shrinking world we have our differences we must learn to live with he with ours and we with his for our differences are really superficial Neath them all I all the things in which we are alike our needs our wants and our common human and so we asked you to remember well this young man from Austria fellow man who was a fellow traveler on the same planet lives under the same sky and looks up at the same stars as you and ah