Scenes of Vienna

“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

U.S. citizens living abroad are required to file income tax returns. The United States is in fact the only industrialized country in the world that taxes its citizens’ income overseas. Now, in hopes of upping federal tax revenue, the IRS is heightening controls abroad.

Americans working abroad have long been protected, at least to some extent, by the  Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE), under which those who earn less than $92,900 (in 2011) are not required to pay income tax on their foreign-earned income. 

Imagine Linke Wienzeile 22 – a plain 1850s egg carton of a building – as a giant refrigerator with 24 magnetic letters you can rearrange to catch, or attack, the world’s fancy.

The doors of Vienna conceal many pleasant surprises: a Baroque courtyard, a fountain or a Renaissance arcade. Others, like those at Salztorgasse 6, reveal a history of nightmare, one that takes time to tell, and sometimes even longer to set in stone.