Electrician in Josefstadt, 1080 Wien.

Josefstadt is Vienna's smallest district at a little over one square kilometre, and three in four of its buildings date from before 1919. On Lange Gasse, the house Zur heiligen Dreifaltigkeit, now the Alte Backstube, survives from the baroque suburb that Josefstadt once was, and Lenaugasse, a whole street from the Vormärz before 1848, is protected as an ensemble. In Breitenfeld, between Alser Straße, Florianigasse and Hernalser Gürtel, the streets still follow the layout of the Biedermeier period. Between 1865 and 1885 came the tenements, their façades taking their cue from the Ringstraße with factory-made baroque and Renaissance ornament. On Hamerlingplatz, laid out on the site of the demolished Josefstadt barracks, stand apartment buildings from the early twentieth century, some with Secession-style decoration. On top of that come twelve council estates (Gemeindebau), among them the Ludo-Hartmann-Hof on Albertgasse from the twenties and the post-war buildings in Pfeilgasse and Kochgasse and on Albertplatz.

Inside the flats that means consumer units in the hallway that several generations have worked on, often still with screw-in fuses and no RCD, ceiling points set in stucco in rooms more than three metres high, and kitchen cabling from the days before the dishwasher and the induction hob. Right at the top are the new attic flats on the Gründerzeit buildings, where usually all that is missing is lights, a dimmer or an extra socket. Half the flats in the eighth are let privately, so we clear any work on the rising main with the Hausverwaltung before the appointment. Between the Gürtel and the Zweierlinie the call-out costs what it costs everywhere in Vienna, 69 € once per visit.