Vienna calling: Following that call are debaters from all over the international debating circuit. From Friday to Sunday, the Austrian capital will see speakers and judges flocking in from the Netherlands, Ukraine, Greece, Slovenia, Germany, Turkey, Romania, Serbia, England, Ireland, Russia, Croatia, Macedonia, France, Kosovo and the USA. The all assemble at the first Vienna IV ever to be held by Debattierklub Wien (DKW). Six prelims will be staged at Vienna’s University of Economics and Business with seven-minute speeches. The format is British Parliamentary Style (BPS), language of debate is English. The final will be held in the Festsaal of Hauptuniversität which participants of last year’s ZEIT DEBATTE Wien might still remember. As honorary patron of the Vienna IV serves Barbara Prammer, president of Austria’s national parliament, as Leonhard Weese, DKW president, told Achte Minute.

The Viennese org comm have assembled a chief adjudication team of internationally renowned debaters: Isabelle Loewe (Debattierclub Bonn, EUDC winner 2006, ESL), Manos Moschopoulos (Greece, current EUDC finalist, ESL) and Maja Cimerman (Slovenia, WUDC finalist 2011, ESL). Among the independent judges are Derek Lande (Ireland, CA at Worlds 2009), Michael Shapira (Israel, WUDC winner 2001, ESL), Filip Dobranic (Slovenia, currently EUDC winner, ESL) and Gudrun Lux (Debattierclub Johannes Gutenberg Mainz, German Debating Championship winner 2007 and German Debating Championship’s CA 2009 and 2011). 48 teams were accepted who are lucky to meet three judges in every room.

Vienna awaits its visitors with culinary specialties: You should definitely enjoy a glass of wine in a “beisl”, a locale plenty with Viennese characters (the author of this highly recommends a glas of Grüner Veltliner or three), or a “mélange” in a coffee house accompanied by “buchteln”, a sweet dough made of yeast (apart from the fact that the author’s mother makes the best “buchteln” in the world one may easily recommend the ones at Café Hawelka). DKW welcomes the participants with a legendary Viennese Schnitzel on Friday night.

If you suffer from last-minute sorrows about how to get around in Vienna, visit the Vienna IV homepage: There you may find advice on how to get to the hostel, where to park your car and how to use rent-a-bikes in Vienna.

For those not coming to the Vienna IV: Please check in at Achte Minute regularly. We will keep you updated here and via Twitter. The hashtag to look out for is #VIV11.

apf / sol