ABSTRACT
Vienna since the Middle Ages has been a city capable of assimilating all kinds of foreigners. This ability to assimilate strangers forms a curious contrast to its periods of hostility towards foreigners and to its constant feeling of xenophobia. Vienna has become—not only as far as its speed is concerned—quite a typical middle-sized European city. Even it Vienna is moving at a typical contemporary speed, it has a problem with its own modernity. Certainly one cannot simply equate "modernization" with "Americanization," but there is something in the city which one could call "resistance against modernization." If "Americanization" means one doesn't go to a movie house but to a multiplex, where it smells like freshly roasted popcorn and where orange juice is being whirled about in a giant plastic box above the counter, Vienna is Americanized. If "Americanization" means that the city doesn't roll up its boardwalks at ten o'clock at night anymore, then Vienna is definitely Americanized.
