In a poem written in about the middle of the sixteenth century, Wolfgang Schmeltzl compares Vienna to Babel, because he says he hears people round him speaking Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, French, Turkish, Spanish, Bohemian, Slovenian, Italian, Hungarian, Dutch, Syrian, Croatian, Serbian, Polish and Chaldean. Certainly the Greek saying warns us that the poets tell us many lies and exaggerate, but all the same …