Author Archives: larrysicular

Vienna is not huge. It is a substantial city, and it is a capital city, with about 2 million inhabitants, and about 2.6 million in its metropolitan area.  It has a long history, combining remnants of Imperial Majesty with established …

Aunt Dora, our grandmother’s sister,  is someone we never knew.  We did not know her because she was unable to get out of Austria.   While preparing our Austrian citizenship applications, our lawyers hired an archivist to  document evidence that our …

Before World War II, my maternal grandparents owned an Auskocherei and then a Gasthaus in the Ottakring district of Vienna. About the first restaurant, my uncle wrote: “My family’s little restaurant offered some specialties once in a while.  My father …

March 12, 2022 “Among the so-called neurotics of our day there are a good many who in other ages would not have been neurotic—that is divided against themselves.  If they had lived in a period and in a milieu in …

March 4, 2022 I flew into Vienna on Wednesday, and today, briefly, I felt that I was out of my mind to have come.  I have some old, inherited fear. . . But the move is temporary, and it feels …

This morning (Sunday, June 6), I searched the  StreetEasy website for real estate in Manhattan and found 282 cooperative and condominium apartment listings on the Upper West Side, priced from $3 to $10 million.  Most buyers would not look across …

Donna Olshan and Emily Chen, at Olshan Realty, have been carefully tracking contracts signed, at $4 million or more, on a weekly and monthly basis since 2011.  Contracts are an important measure of current market activity, sales to not usually …

In the Manhattan housing market,  sale volume has dropped, but there are deals, a revival since the market was legally re-opened in late June.  This could be in temporary jeopardy this winter, as we retreat indoors and face a second …