Dr. Johannes M. “Mike” Gruenwald is convinced he was born “in the wrong country.” That wrong country was Austria. But Gruenwald, an orthopedic trauma surgeon at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, has rectified the error: He’s now a citizen of the United States. 

He chucked Vienna for Little Rock? Yes he did, after colleague and recruiter Dr. John L. VanderSchilden grilled a one-and-a-half-inch-thick sirloin steak for him. But that’s VanderSchilden’s story. Gruenwald’s is this: Vienna is for tourists. Little Rock is for real people. 

The friendliness of the people here is not a learned response to encourage tourism — as Gruenwald said it is in Vienna. “You know what is fake and what is the real thing,” he said. “We’re getting the real thing here every day.” 

At one time, the doctor said, “If you had told me I would end up as an American citizen I would have told you you are crazy.” Now, he even likes the food here — though it took “some time to get used to” and puts people “in a different metabolic state.” 

He likes Little Rock professionally, as well — likes the fact that when he arrived in 1989 there was a computer on his desk, something he’d been unsuccessfully begging for in his hospital in Vienna. (Socialized medicine, he said, “was not much fun, for the patient but even less for the physician.”) Other hospitals have tried to lure Gruenwald away from UAMS and Little Rock, but “it’s not possible because of the overall package on the job and outside is unbeatable.” 

Gruenwald lives in West Little Rock with his wife and four children. The schools his children attend “are clearly better than what we see in a European setting.” (His “outside” includes his view of the Milky Way from here; Gruenwald is an amateur astronomer.)There, he’s close to Lake Maumelle, where he likes to sail in a small boat he restored himself. “Why do I like this? I know it’s a manmade reservoir, but it gives you the impression of a totally undisturbed shoreline.” In Vienna, he said, all the lakeshore properties are “bought by rich folks, there’s no access, and you see little condos and villas,” never undeveloped woods. Arkansas feels “wilder” to him.  

Vienna has its world-famous culture, but its opera and music performances are “typically events put on by foreigners for foreigners. ... When I look at our symphony here, there are folks on the stage that could have been my patients.” 

So yes, Vienna has the Philharmonic orchestra. But, Gruenwald said, “Cultural deprivation is in your own head.” 

— Leslie Newell Peacock