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Eastern Austrian states join Vienna in extending Easter lockdown until April 11th

Lower Austria and Burgenland will join Vienna and extend its Easter lockdown until April 11th, due to a "critical" situation in the east of Austria.

Published: 31 March 2021 19:51 CEST

Austrian Hungarian border

Joe Klamar / AFP

Please note: this has since been extended again. Click here for more information.

The extension of the lockdown was announced by Lower Austrian Governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner on Wednesday, Wiener Zeitung reports, after Austria’s Ministry of Health was unable to introduce a nationwide strategy for all federal states and the proposal to introduce retail tests was blocked.

She said in the meantime the situation in the eastern states had become “critical”.

READ MORE: Vienna’s lockdown to be extended to April 11th

Burgenland Governor Hans Peter Doskozil also called on the federal and state governments to meet and come up with a unified strategy for the coronavirus pandemic, broadcaster ORF reports.

The Lower Austrian governor said “extensive testing” was the most efficient means in the fight against the pandemic, and had already worked in the Lower Austrian districts of Neunkirchen, Wiener Neustadt Land and in the city of Wiener Neustadt.

Now in Lower Austria, Waidhofen ad Ybbs and the Scheibbs district are facing exit restrictions as they have had a seven-day incidence above 400 for almost a week, the Wiener Zeitung newspaper reports. The Melk district is also almost at the level to trigger restrictions at 393.9.

Generally, once an area has a seven day incidence of 400 for a week, quarantine measures are taken and a negative coronavirus test is needed to leave.

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Could be wurst: Vienna sausage stands push for UN recognition

The owners of 15 stands in the Austrian capital have formed a lobbying group and applied last week to have the “Vienna sausage stand culture” inscribed as intangible cultural heritage by the UN agency.

“We want to create a kind of quality seal for Vienna sausage stands,” said 36-year-old Patrick Tondl, one of the association’s founders whose family owns Leo’s Wuerstelstand — Vienna’s oldest operating sausage stand.

“At the sausage stand, everyone is the same… No matter if you’re a top banker who earns hundreds of thousands of euros or if you have to scrape together the last euros to buy a sausage… You meet here, you can talk to everyone,” he adds.

High inflation driving consumers looking for affordable meals, plus a new wave of vendors with updated flavours, have helped keep the stands busy.

Tondl’s great-grandfather started their business in the late 1920s, pulling a cart behind him and selling sausages at night.

The family’s customers have included former chancellor Bruno Kreisky, recalls Vera Tondl, 67, who runs the shop together with her son Patrick.

Leo’s is one of about 180 sausage stands in Vienna today, out of a total of about 300 food stands, selling fast food at fixed locations and open until the early hours, according to the city’s economic chamber.

Whereas the number of stands has remained similar over the last decade, more than a third have changed from selling sausages to kebabs, pizza and noodles, a spokesman for the chamber told AFP.

‘Momentum’

But sausage stands have seen a “mini boom” in customer numbers recently, according to Patrick Tondl.

Many have been drawn back to the stands by high inflation, where a meal can be had for less than 10 euros ($11) with lower overheads than restaurants.

New stand operators have also brought a “bit of momentum”, said Tondl, bringing the likes of organic vegetarian sausages with kimchi.

Tourists are already drawn in droves.

“When you come to Austria, it’s what you want to try,” 28-year-old Australian tourist Sam Bowden told AFP.

The cultural legacy of Vienna’s sausages is far-reaching, including the use of the term “wiener” for sausages in the United States, which is believed to have derived from the German name for Vienna, Wien.

However Sebastian Hackenschmidt, who has published a photo book on the stands, said the legacy of the “Vienna phenomena” is more complex.

He says that for many in multicultural Vienna, the sausage stands hold little appeal — equally for the growing number of vegetarians — and their universal appeal is something of a “myth”.

“Vienna is a city in great flux… With the influx of people, cultural customs are also changing,” Hackenschmidt told AFP.

Some 40 percent of Vienna’s two million inhabitants were born outside the country, where the anti-immigrant far-right looks set to top September national polls for the first time.

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