Bassel Al Khaled - Solstice Quarter

I let go of the rails and close my eyes. As I fall backwards I feel my heart plunge into relief. I land on a soft bed next to a large floor-to-ceiling window. Through it I see people basking in sunlight in the slim but elongated triangular-shaped Helmut-Zilk Park, a green space created specifically for the new city project Sonnwendviertel. I've been returning to this neighborhood for several years now. It's only as I lay in this bed that I feel returned to my comfort zone. Every other moment I live outside it. Perhaps I must reevaluate my own definition for this term, perhaps the discomfort I live in is my very own solace.

The Sonnwendviertel, literally "Solstice Quarter", is a social project started around 2012 in Vienna's 10th district. Projects like these are created with the goal of providing community-oriented housing with shared spaces and rooms that bring people together - think swimming pools, community kitchens, kids' playrooms, small libraries, gym facilities, and more. The idea is to give people the opportunity to create and to interact with other members of the neighborhood. On paper, and possibly in an architecture school visit through the mini-district, it all looks incredibly utopian and deeply community-centered. But in reality, the exclusionary mentality embedded within many locals' approach to an outsider joining their tight-knit circles is difficult to erase even with efforts like these. The spaces are still absolutely used, but different social groups, i.e. different ethnic classes, share it at different times in essence to avoid coming in contact. Like prey and predator drinking at the same oasis. You then have this sense of discomfort at all times, a feeling of non-belonging, a sense that this whole thing was designed without me us mind. Like when I invited my friends over to the shared library room in my building and we sat there playing board games until a lady came in with her child and asked us whether we lived in the building - how we had gotten in. Too bad we look clearly non-Austrian; Or the time a woman hurried to close the entrance door to the building behind her because she thought I looked like I didn't live there, instead of kindly holding the door open for me. In instances like these I can only sigh at the fact that I need to carry around my keys to prove that I live there to people who thought it was their moral duty to police who was coming in and out. "You don't live here - I have never seen you here before!" one lady yelled at me in the elevator as she commanded me to leave the building in my sixth year of living there. My sole mistake was asking her who I had to email to get an additional key as I was tired of sharing mine with my brother. Showing her my keys didn't help - "how did you get these? if you really live here then what apartment are you in?" I would not tell her - who knows what she would do with that information - I just asked her to forget it and let the elevator door close so I could go home. Almost ironic that her baby in the stroller gave me the biggest innocent smile he could give me before she started yelling.

I have a love and hate relationship with this city. It's no secret I've had many terrible experiences here. Experiences that are by no means unique to mine, but abundant in Vienna's own story. Number one in quality of life for over ten years in a row - but also a top contender for most unfriendly locals towards outsiders. It's a city that has never allowed me to feel at home - one that always made sure I remembered that I was always, in their eyes, an Ausländer, a foreigner. From the political slogans hanging everywhere on my way to school, from the attitude I was always given, from the treatment I received from my teachers in school. I always was a foreigner, always will be. I was blessed with the option of moving, of moving elsewhere when I felt it was too much to bear. But what about all those who were born and raised there, who had known nothing else?

And yet on my most recent trip here, I was looking forward to step foot in this old room of mine. This place full of irreplaceable memories and irreplaceable nostalgia. It's as I lay here in silence that it hits me - never have I heard this place be this quiet. Not to say that this apartment was ever really an assault on the senses, but it was nevertheless lively enough to always hear something going on. Be it my father's footsteps as he went door-to-door checking in on us with a bowl of fruits or snacks he'd offer; be it my younger siblings playing around with their toys as they retold stories inspired by the Arabic-dubbed Spacetoon cartoons they watched; be it my two sisters next door teasing each other and laughing loud enough for me to hear it through the walls; be it the TV running in the living room as either a movie or the Playstation ran; be it my sister Lynn playing music in the piano room; or perhaps my mom helping one of us with our schoolwork and assignments as she never failed to be there for us. I now lay here and close my eyes as I try to imagine all these sounds once again but all I hear are the voices and laughter that run free outside my window. I shouldn't be here, not at this time of year at least. Not all alone.

If you often hear me talking negatively about Vienna, know that it is not my entire truth. I owe so many of my happiest memories to my days there. I went to four different schools during my stay of eight years and each one was a completely different world, a completely different life. My fondest memories are from my time at Laaerberg, where I made some of my longest lasting friendships. Somehow during my time in Vienna, I managed to surround myself with people that I occupy a space in my heart today. Every time I revisit this city, it's precisely these people that make me enjoy my stay. People who make time in their busy schedules I no longer occupy a place within, to sit down with me and make me feel like maybe I should never have left. "When will you come back?" is always the last question they ask as I bid them farewell at the end of my visit. I spend my time here running around the city seeing these pockets of precious people who have never failed to make me feel like, despite all my experiences, I was loved and welcomed with open arms.

You leave a bittersweet taste in my mouth, dear Vienna, and I wish we could have had a better relationship together but we simply don’t seem to be good for each other. I’ll still come to check up on you every now and then; perhaps we’ll have changed until then. Perhaps things will be different between us then.