Vienna Calling

I'm really not sure what this song is about. So I'll post my best guess in hopes that someone will be inspired by how stupid I am to tell me the real meaning. :)

I think Falco is flippantly comparing one bad night to the darkest days in Viennese history (the alarm and emergency stuff don't seem to make sense otherwise), to make the point that no matter how bad things might get, he could never leave Vienna. I think the second verse is the key.

Read one way, it's about his night. It started off well. He ditched his friends for some foreign girls (American Marilyn and French Yvonne instead of Austrian Maria and Eva). There was a classic movie and/or a small joint, and then dancing… And then he somehow he lost track of time, and of the girls. (This being Falco, I'd guess at least coke and alcohol were involved in that.)

The girls are gone, the dancing has stopped. A few timezones west, In Tucson, or even Toronto, clubs are still open and girls are still dancing. But here in Vienna it's 4:45, and everything is closed (and he's probably out of drugs and coming down). He's so lonely that he's calling the international operator just to hear a female voice, even though she's probably somewhere like Rio or Tokyo and he'll never see her.

Read another way, it's about Vienna in the 1930s. As Vienna took over from Paris as the cosmopolitan city of Europe, it was filled with glamorous foreign women and international cinema, and everything was bright and glorious. And then came the Februarkämpfe ("the alarm is red, Vienna in emergency").

The clericalist/fascist Ständestaat regime that followed turned Vienna dreary and oppressive, including (among much more serious things that are less relevant to the lonely, girl-crazy narrator) shutting down the dance halls and chasing out the foreigners. And 4:45 is when Himmler crossed into Austria 4 years later to begin implementing the Anschluss, which made things even worse. Over in Tucson and Toronto, people were free. The Great Depression was even lifting, and girls were out dancing and playing like the 20s again. But not in Vienna. That's even worse than his own night!

But even if he'd been alive in those times, he never could have left Vienna. Vienna knows him up and down, like no other place ever could.

So he certainly can't leave in 1985, even if he had a bad night and ended up alone.

The (?) is: Womit spielen kleine Mädchen heute hier und dort und da? Ob in Tucson, Arizona; Toronto, Canada.

I\'m not really sure what the 210 thing is about - googling it says this calling code only covers San Antonio, Texas, and they got it in 1992. One other thing I want to say is the song is quite delightful but a lot of one-hit wonder makers seem to conveniently forget it, despite it hitting the top twenty in many countries, and making it to #18 in the USA in 1985.