Jessica Spiegel

‘Casual luxury’ may at first sound contradictory. Luxurious fine dining seems doomed to humorless waiters, stiff interiors and uninventive – if experienced – cooks and kitchens. Especially in Vienna, where tradition often takes precedence over originality, one may have become accustomed to the charm of the haughty tuxedo-clad waiters of Kaffeehäuser and consider eccentricity to be found elsewhere.

Walking down the tree-lined Ausstellungsstraße cutting through Vienna’s 2nd District, you might be too repulsed by the gaudiness of the neighboring Wurstelprater amusement park to think of fine dining. Multi-colored lights of the Giant Wheels and haunted houses flash high above the newly built Admiral Casino standing in all its kitschy glory at the beginning of the street – not to mention the giant pig that houses a Bankomat machine near the underground station a bit further down.

As the fifth largest car producer in Europe, the Czech Republic’s economy relies heavily on the auto industry. Czech auto manufacturer Škoda Auto, a pride of Czech manufacturing since the Habsburg Empire, was a key contributor to the country’s recent economic boom following the 2004 accession to the EU, when GDP grew as much as six per cent per year. Before the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, the Czech auto industry had grown faster than any other in Central and Eastern Europe.

An author of candor and consequence like Ruth Klüger deserves a revisit in the pages of The Vienna Review: The Austrian-born Holocaust survivor had returned to Vienna nearly half a year after our coverage of the Ein Stadt, Ein Buch celebration, where she and her book Weiter Leben were the guests of honor.

An author of candor and consequence like Ruth Klüger deserves a revisit in the pages of The Vienna Review: The Austrian-born Holocaust survivor had returned to Vienna nearly half a year after our coverage of the Ein Stadt, Ein Buch celebration,

where she and her book Weiter Leben were the guests of honor.

Still Alive, a memoir based on Klüger’s experiences

Manfred Nowak has dedicated his career to human rights. Currently acting as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, a professor of Constitutional Law and Human Rights at the University of Vienna, director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Human Rights, the human rights lawyer is one of Austria’s leading human rights advocates.