Shelter from the storm
Vienna’s new cool, affordable Magdas hotel is staffed entirely by refugees
Refugees stream into Vienna’s Westbahnhof train station from Hungary, greeted by welcome banners. This week, a note posted in the station from the city of Vienna ended with a simple statement that is also a reassurance and a promise, “You are safe.” That’s step one. Five kilometres east across the city is a glimpse at what step two might look like.
Dinis, 29, sits behind the reception desk at the newly opened Magdas boutique hotel, answering the phone.
The hotel, with rates starting at $80 a night, is a real find in Vienna, where it can be tough to get a decent room for under $250. And as a result of the hotel’s unusual hiring policy, you can get directions to the opera house or advice on where to find the best schnitzel in 23 languages.
A converted old-age home, Magdas is pretty cool, with each room decorated differently with things like old-style alarm clocks, crocheted throw pillows and the hotel’s own brand of soap in refillable containers. Borrowable tablets are available at reception. The room I stayed in was big and sparse by design, with no television and an overhead light with a loopy white wire fabric-less shade and a built-in teak night stand. The whole place feels like the sort of hotel Mary Tyler Moore’s nun character might have spent a few months in while she figured herself out after falling in love with Elvis in Change of Habit: cool, austere, a little bit noble.
The hotel is run by Caritas Wien, the local chapter of a worldwide Catholic charity, and it is as much a political statement as it is an inexpensive hotel right next to the city’s Prater park. Magdas opened in February with the intention of employing only refugees and people with refugee histories, both to give them jobs, and to show the rest of Austria, which is on the front lines of the current global refugee crisis, that something can and should be done after those welcome banners have been rolled up and put away.
“The starting point was to build up a hotel where people from all over the world are coming,” says Caritas Vienna spokesman Martin Gantner. “They are guests, and they are welcomed by people who had to flee, who are refugees.”
In addition to being a political statement and an actual refuge — there are 25 refugee claimants under the age of 18 living at Magdas while their applications are processed — Gantner says that Caritas also wanted Magdas to be a symbol, and possibly an inspiration.
“When we talk about migration and asylum seekers, we always talk about crisis,” he says, “about too many people moving from their home and coming to Europe. And it’s always about problems. And all of a sudden there is coming up a project which is not about a problem, but about a solution. We see that we can handle it, there are other ways to handle topics like migration.”
Dinis escaped from the coup-ridden West African nation of Guinea-Bissau 10 years ago, smuggled aboard a ship, and after years of not being able to work in Europe, and then more years trying to convince employers that he was employable despite having that huge hole in his resume, he is one of 20 people from 14 countries, including Syria and Afghanistan, on staff at Magdas who arrived in Austria as refugees. He speaks seven languages and is, according to Gantner, the “best possible receptionist, because he can talk to so many people in their own language.”
Magdas is a perfect example of the serious role the hospitality and tourism industry can play. Cleaning rooms, carrying bags, busing tables at the early ’ 60s chic cafeteria, serving drinks at the Salon bar or, like Dinis, answering phones, are jobs almost anyone can do, regardless of how much or how little education or training they have in other fields. Folks who like the work and find they’re good at it can move up; for others, it can be an important stopgap, a way to make some money while trying to figure out a life in transition.
“What’s special as well is that we run the hotel like a social business,” Gantner says. It’s based on a concept developed by Amartya Sen, the Indian economist. It means that it has to be successful in economic terms, not dependent on donations. It’s not like charity. It’s a hotel like many others in town, but it’s run by refugees, and it works.”
It’s working so well, in fact, that Gantner has been fielding calls from entrepreneurs in Berlin and Amsterdam looking to replicate the Magdas model. With European and North American governments scrambling to respond to the sudden and enthusiastic worldwide interest in helping refugees, especially those from Syria, it’s a model that could end up working on a much larger scale.
Once you’d got your directions, or that schnitzel recommendation, you could also, if you wanted, talk to them about what brought them here. It’s a great way to try to understand the refugee crisis as something more than a headline.
‘There are other ways to handle topics like migration’