I was born an only child in Vienna, Austria. My father found hours to sit by me by the library fire and tell fairy stories.

My parents genuinely loved Vienna, and in later years I learned from them why the city exerted a powerful hold on them and other Jews. My parents loved the dialect of Vienna, its cultural sophistication, and artistic values.

Bernstein was everywhere - Vienna, London - and everyone admired him. Of course he loved Boston, and he did so many great things at Tanglewood. He was the best example of what a conductor should be.

Some members of the Vienna Philharmonic convinced me to try Bruckner, which I have never done before. And that was interesting to me to have this experience with this orchestra, which knows the repertoire very well, and to be confronted with this knowledge, and to learn from them.

In some of the great cities of Europe - Paris, Vienna, Prague, and Brussels - tourists bored with life above ground can descend below. All these cities have sewer museums and tours, and all expose their underbelly willingly to the curious. But not London, arguably the home of the most splendid sewer network in Europe.

As a child, I grew up the son of German immigrant parents, so I grew up being teased and called 'Fritz' at school. When I married my wife and went to live in Vienna, I was teased for being a Brit.

In 1979, when I was toddler, the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and my whole family fled to Vienna, Virginia. Far from home, my parents were determined to raise my two sisters and me according to Afghan traditions.

You know, it's very clear, as one looks back on history again of the Cold War that, following the crisis in Cuba, following the Khrushchev - beating down of Jack Kennedy in Vienna, that President Kennedy believed that we had to join the battle for the Third World, and the next crisis that developed in that regards was Vietnam.

Like all young reporters - brilliant or hopelessly incompetent - I dreamed of the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent: prowling Vienna in a Burberry trench coat, speaking a dozen languages to dangerous women, narrowly escaping Sardinian bandits - the usual stuff that newspaper dreams are made of.

My idea was to go to Vienna to study conducting and perhaps play in an orchestra first, so I thought before I got to Vienna I could do with a little training in Paris.

I employ 20 people in Vienna. The other 130 coworkers are pilots and flight companions. The Overhead is limited with me. Reduces naturally the costs of my fliers.

For my Vienna is as different from what they call Vienna now as the quick is different from the dead.

I love throwing myself into a place or a period or a point of view. In 'Fledermaus,' I loved throwing myself into the world of Vienna at the turn of the century. It was a lot of fun.

I studied at a grammar school and later at the University of Vienna in the Faculty of Medicine.

If I speak of Vienna it must be in the past tense, as a man speaks of a woman he has loved and who is dead.

The Potemkin city of which I wish to speak here is none other than our dear Vienna herself.

Well I live in Vienna with my wife and son, and I teach in Hamburg, there will be no changes in that respect.

But I think what made me go into theater was seeing my mother onstage. The first thing she did was Mrs. Frank in 'The Diary of Anne Frank.' The second thing she did was a play about Freud called 'The Far Country.' She played a paralyzed woman in Vienna who goes to see Freud.

Vienna is the gate to Eastern Europe.

Vienna is a handsome, lively city, and pleases me exceedingly.