No whining in Vienna

There are 7 billion people in the world and just 1.7 million of them live in Vienna. The place is absolutely crawling with stately buildings and museums. In the Kunsthistoriches Museum there is a coin collection going back to 600 BC. Some of the most ancient are Ionian (Greek), stunning to behold. Interestingly, the oldest coins are made of quite thick chunks of metal while many of the more modern ones are terribly thin. This is an age old tradition, reducing the metal content as much as possible and relying increasingly on the faith of the market to accord value to the currency in circulation. As we know, this has often led to dislocations. Ironically, although Greece is one of the oldest coin users it is now going through an intense financial crisis which is wiping out huge chunks of wealth. In the meantime Austria chugs along. Real GDP per capita is up 42% since 1990, a lot more than France or Germany and way more than Italy. Pedestrians obey pedestrian lights, motorists are cautious and polite. We felt a bit guilty crossing the street when the red man was flashing! The public gardens are slightly unkempt, not as Teutonically manicured as their English counterparts. The QSL is from an FM station - Blue Danube Radio - heard on a flight across Europe in 2000. In those days if you asked permission from the flight deck you were allowed to listen to ground FM stations on the radio. I used to track the flight's course this way and occasionally write to stations heard. Here is a link to the coin collection:  http://www.khm.at/en/collections/coin-cabinet/