Scenes of Vienna

“Tirol isch lei oans, isch a Landl a kloans, isch a schians, is a feins, und des Landl is meins.” – “Tyrol is unique; small perhaps, but beautiful and fine; and it is my country.” And no, I did not hear this at a football game in Tyrol or a Tiroler Schützen parade. It was on the U4. 

It didn’t really dawn on me until recently, after living in Vienna off and on for a decade, just how deeply seriously the Viennese take their musical legacy. In fact, it isn’t that it is taken seriously, but it is so much a part of life here that it takes on a series of forms, some imbued with a mordant sense of humor, which after all is quite Viennese. 

I was sitting on the tram at Westbahnhof waiting for it to leave, when I looked at the departure time screen and realized I would be sitting there for 20 minutes unless I wanted to walk ... some sort of delay or other.

Bored with Sudoku on my cell phone, I looked out the window. Standing outside the Tabak, dressed in U.S. Army garb and smoking a cigarette was a man moonwalking. 

“Do you mind me asking what you’re doing?” I say to Susanne Elend, as she whacks the trunk of a 30 metre high tree with a rubber mallet, over and over. “Not at all,” she replies, without a pause. “I get asked that a lot.”

Living in London, the Viennese Kaffeehaus is one of the things I miss the most. There’s nothing quite like it, with its perfect balance of cosiness and space that creates a bubble of privacy in a public setting. Unfortunately quiet moments like that simply don’t exist in this vast and busy metropolis.

Starting off in a foreign country has its quirks.

I was just thinking what a boring sod I was becoming, girlfriend, work, colleagues, that sort of thing, when “Something spectacular is coming to Vienna” landed in my inbox. It was a “VIP” invitation to the newest club in town. The place was called “Alpha”: the daring candour admirable, I thought at the time, in admitting such a commonplace pretension.

“But we’re on the VIP list,” the girl protested, the black points of her eyes locked accusingly onto the doorman through the night.

Young girls in flowing gowns on the U-Bahn, men in tails strolling along the sidewalk, and the sound of waltzes in the air: It’s ball season in Vienna. Prepping for a ball isn’t just dolling up for any Saturday evening. First you need tickets, then dancing lessons, then a gown, tuxedo or tails, shoes with a leather sole, and a special hairstyle. But don’t despair, here you’ll find the necessary gear for an unforgettable night.

Highlights & Tickets 

Austrian cinema is best known internationally for the directors, rather, than the films, it has fostered. Men like Alexander Korda, Michael Curtiz, Fritz Lang, and Billy Wilder all hailed from the Austro-Hungarian Empire – but politics meant they found fame elsewhere.

The bells are ringing at the Ägidiuskirche, where Joseph Haydn´s body was laid to rest two hundred years ago.  The father of Viennese classicism spent his final years in an apartment on today’s Haydngasse, rooming with his parrot, who, as legend has it, called him “Papa Haydn”.  If he were still alive today, the famous compos