YOUR view of football may be what shapes your feelings towards Scotland’s travelling Tartan Army. But before pigeon-holing the national club of international bar crawls, consider your view of musicals.

It’s now a folk tale. In 1996 the Austrian mayor of Vienna inspired one of the touring group’s anthems. Before a qualifying match between the two countries he predicted that the jovial Scots would “bring the sound of music” to his city.

Sure enough, ten years later, the Scots are still belting out ‘Doe a deer’ to confused international footballing audiences (at least in the matches we qualify for). I thought I’d continue this cultural collaboration. Sadly it turns out that the Julie Andrews classic is less renowned in modern Austria. I got a fair few confused looks when trying to share its song lyrics by the Danube.

It might also be that the young sun-soaked swimmers had other thoughts on their minds. Bottles of wine are just £2 here, after all, helped by the city’s surrounding vineyards. One couple I spoke to were more distracted than others. She’s leaving to travel across Canada in the morning, and he’s staying in Vienna.

While not so keen on singing, her parents – over from Germany to help in the move – took a shine to me and asked me to join them for dinner. I became a guinea pig in an English lesson, as we translate back and forward over their scrapbook of whisky distilleries. As a consolation, I’m happy with learning how to buy bread in German.

Away from the songs, there are other cultural parallels to translate.

Vienna, with its grand palaces and royal statues shares much with London in its appearance as an old imperial capital. The Austro-Hungarian version collapsed a while before the British equivalent, following Austria’s First World War defeat.

So now in palace grounds, where once the Habsburgs reigned, there are play parks, fountains and wee children building sandcastles. A statue of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart takes pride of place. Despite my regular requests, the same process hasn’t yet been implemented at its Buckingham Palace equivalent. Although I remain hopeful.

In Vienna the triumphant war memorials and bold architecture of the Kaiser’s time still dominate the squares. But they have become the signposts of a lost empire, and the palaces of a dead monarchy. Quickly afterwards came the birth pains of a new Austrian republic, and its calamitous first few decades, with war and Anschluss.

For those reasons, anti-fascist politics is a precious legacy here. Walk through Burggarten into Albertina-platz and you will find the Memorial against War and Fascism, in recognition of Austria’s “darkest hour”. The granite sculptures, made from the same stone carried by prisoners at Mauthausen concentration camp, sit directly upon the site where over 300 people were burned alive in a 1945 raid.

On my first night here I was taken to see a choir performance. The event commemorated workers from Turkey, Serbia and Croatia, who swelled Vienna’s population.

They sang of the Austrian and Spanish anti-fascist movements, holding placards of solidarity for the ongoing refugee crisis in Syria. Their bright red t-shirts contrasted sharply with the more formal reception next door, where the country’s culture minister met dignitaries among suits, wine, and canapés.

The descendants of one of the world’s great migrations danced around the venue, with footwork like ballerinas while wearing clothes more common in a student nightclub. The traditional dancing celebrates a tradition that faced prejudice on arrival. Some things, sadly, repeat.

The European politics of racism and migration, then and now, brings conflict. It is the main political struggle right now in Austria, played out through the presidential election. The socialist-green candidate, Van der Bellen, will face a re-run against the FPÖ’s Norbert Hofer, which shares its race-baiting and xenophobia with the most reactionary of European parties.

The stairwells of the student flats where I’m staying are emblazoned with Hofer’s crossed-out face. Liberal Vienna, with its youthful, diverse population, backed the progressive candidate, while rural Austria voted for the right-wing nationalist.

A similar pattern exists, like an early 20th century spectre, across much of Europe. Other young people by the river tell me they packed boxes of food for the thousands of Syrians who passed through Vienna on their way to Germany, but of course that generosity is not universal. Above government buildings the EU flag flies, a sign of European unity amid the fear of these current and past conflicts.

As I leave from the station an Englishman celebrates the “discipline” of Swiss national service, and the benefits of having a generation of armed men ready to wage war. I thought the purpose of European history was not to repeat its worst mistakes? That, across languages, we share songs not bullets? That we no longer need barbed wire along borders? There are some lessons we forget too quickly.