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Austria
Beautiful autumn colours in the Stadtpark and Schonbrunn, great museums and art galleries for when it rains, an excellent zoo for the kids and animal lovers, many lovely cafes for coffee, a cake and a rest!
Film-lovers cannot miss ‘The Third Man’ Guided Walk in Vienna. This unique tour will trace the steps of Orson Welles (as Harry Lime) and Joseph Cotten (as Holly Martins) and will take you to most of the film locations in central Vienna, put the movie in a historical context and tell you curiosities about the filming, Orson Welles and the locations themselves. It will even take you to a special location where the film’s famous soundtrack is played by a scitar player, creating a truly special atmosphere. ‘The Third Man’ was shot on location all over the Austrian capital and this walk will give you a great insight of the locations of this classic film and what it was like to live in post-war Vienna. This guided walk was created by Dr. Brigitte Timmermann, the founder of Vienna Walks & Talks and it runs Mondays and Fridays at 4:00.
www.drittemanntour.at/en/index.html
Mondays and Fridays at 4:00pm.
The tour starts at: U4 Station Stadtpark, Exit Johannesgasse.
Time: 2 to 2.5 hours
Magistrat der Stadt Wien, Wien Kanal
+43 1 4000 3033
Google map: bit.ly/GT8Jg8
Vienna’s Naschmarkt is more than an antique market. It is a mixture of Austrian traditions, antique dealers, fleamarket and food stalls. Located by two beautiful art deco houses built by Viennese Jugendstil architect Otto Wagner it runs every Saturday and it dates back to the 16th Century. Here you will find antique dealers selling everything from old postcards, books, militaria, porcelain, Austrian glassware, gramophones dating back to the 1900s and old dolls to stalls set up by Easter European sellers who come to Vienna for the weekend to sell vintage clothes, bric-a-brac, exotic goods and curios. The market has a very vibrant atmosphere where Austrians and tourists alike soak up the rich diversity of stalls looking for that special find. By the end of the day stallholders lower their prices considerably (sometimes as low as 50 cents of a Euro) and right before closing time sellers even offer some items for free.
www.wienernaschmarkt.eu/index.html
(+43) 1 270 21 56
Google map: bit.ly/Hmzvuy
Opening times:
Flea Market: 6:30 am to 4pm every Saturday
Food Stalls: Mon-Sat 6am- 6pm
Favourite restaurant of notoriously well-fed and well-drunk Vienna Mayor Michael Häupl as well as his predecessor the late Helmut Zilk. Whenever I'm home, I go to this place at least twice, it's really great, and filled with locals. The food is traditional Viennese/Austrian, the Schnitzel is delicious. In fact I have never been disappointed and have eaten myself up and down the menu. It's also got an excellent wide-ranging selection of (mostly Austrian) wine, with knowledgeable, friendly waiters eager to give you tips. A main dish tends to cost €13-19.
I can't wait to go back!
Drahtgasse 2 1010 Vienna, Austria
+43(0)1 5335889
Google map: bit.ly/x7cHjX
If you fancy a break from Austrian cuisine, or even if you don't, go here - it's fantastic. There's a huge enclosed garden which is lovely and shady on a sunny day. There's Austrian and Turkish beer. And there's a huge menu with a staggering range of Turkish food. As an added bonus (well, I thought so) all the dishes which are usually made with lamb - koftes, shish kebabs etc - were veal-based instead. The prices are excellent too. And everything comes with mountains of bread.
Brunnengasse 67, 1160, Vienna
+43(0)1 4059173
www.kent-restaurant.at
Google map: bit.ly/m9K833
A traditional Viennese cafe on the Ring, with cake, main meals, wine and beer - but also live piano music for most of the day. The portions are generous and the food is excellent. They also do great breakfasts.
www.cafe-schwarzenberg.at
Kärntner Ring 17, 1010 Wien
+43 (1) 512 89 98
Google map: bit.ly/jfkz5d
This place is just wonderful - peaceful and perfect in just about every way you could ask of a bed and breakfast!
Excellent and responsive service from the owners before you arrive.
Clear instructions on how to get to the property. Fantastic room accomodation which is immaculately clean. Exciting and varied breakfasts served with quiet friendly service (the best homemade muesli I ever had.)
Life lived with a Viennese family - at its best.
Five minutes walk, at most, from the metro (come down the stairs at the very far end of the platform, go out the left door, down a path, turn right, second on the left) and then only nine minutes to the city center.
One of the most comfortable beds I have ever slept on.
Schlenthergasse 17
1220 Wien
www.therooms.at
00436644316830
Google map: tinyurl.com/yakacyr
The food was creatively and skillfully prepared without being unnecessarily fussy; the ingredients were intensely flavorful; the kitchen in Mr. Bauer's hands was clearly superbly trained in the classics while not being afraid to exercise its creative flair! The service for our table of six was warm and very polite without being intrusive. The small restaurant (~ 30 seats) with its simple but warm decor provided for a very cozy ambience. I also ate very well at RieGi and Osterreicher im MAK, but Restaurant Bauer stands out and easily joins its rank among other one Michelin-starred restaurants I have dined at elsewhere in Europe. A truly memorable experience!
Walter Bauer Restaurant: Sonnenfelsgasse 17, +43 (1) 5129871
Google map: tinyurl.com/y97zmm5
The Alte Backstube is another excellent restaurant in the historic Josefstadt area of Vienna offering classic and traditional Viennese cuisine. The restaurant is set well back from the street in a seventeenth century building and its atmosphere is pleasingly intimate and removed from the bustle of the city.
The prices are reasonable, the wines and beers include very good Austrian varieties, the service is friendly, helpful and prompt, and above all the food is outstanding. Highly recommended.
Alte Backstube (Angela Handler), Josefstadt, 1080 Wien. Tel. 01/406 1101.
www.backstube.at
Google map: tinyurl.com/ykv9w43
These two great buildings contain wonderful art collections. The Albertina has been thoroughly refurbished in recent years and now offers the Batliner Collection, great paintings from Monet to Picasso, which are on permanent loan to the museum, in addition to its own great collection. The Batliner is a very comprehensive collection and each piece is of the highest quality.
The Palais Liechtenstein shows the collection of the Princes of Liechtenstein, brought together over five or so centuries and, in many instances paintings bought directly from the artists themselves - that's class! This collection is very rich in Seventeenth century work, especially that of Rubens and Van Dyke.
The Albertina is at Albertinaplatz 1, 1010 Wien, a short distance from the Opera House, so any of the trams travelling around the Ring will drop you there.
www.albertina.at
Google map: tinyurl.com/ykoxuur
The Palais Liechtenstein is at Furstengasse 1, Wien. www.liechtensteinmuseum.at
Not closely served by the U-bahn, but a short walk from the Franz Josefs Bahnhof (S-bahn).
Google map: tinyurl.com/yzep4qc
The Natural History Museum, which was opened in 1889, is one of two enormous and beautiful buildings which face one another across gardens in the city centre - the other is the Art History Museum.
The staircase is very grand and Italy must have been emptied of all its marble to create this building. The view from the cafeteria on the (main) first floor, down through a circular eye some 20 feet across to the entrance hall far below is both spectacular and scary. There is a net drawn tightly across this space presumably to stop people throwing cakes down onto elderly American tourists just entering the building.
On the day I visited the museum there was a delightful half-scale air balloon tethered in the stairwell midway between the floors which added to the sense of enjoyment and well-being one should feel in such a wonderful place.
The collections include geology, natural history, anthropology and archaeology. There are said to be 20 million exhibits here. One of the most famous is the tiny but very sexy Venus of Willendorf, a mysterious and magical female figure from the Upper Palaeolithic period.
As with all museums these days, the place was teeming with children and young people (followed by anxious or exhausted teachers), but that is as it should be. The place is being used as a treasure house, which is precisely what it is.
Naturhistorisches Museum, Burgring 7, Vienna. Take any of the trams travelling around the Ring, the circular street which forms the city centre - you can't miss the museum. It offers good disabled access, there are excellent lifts to all floors, and the audio guide is highly worthwhile. Excellent too are the museums shops.
www.nhm-wien.ac.at
Google map: tinyurl.com/yfzazrv
This is an excellent restaurant where the decor is early Twentieth century Bohemian and the cuisine, likewise, hails from Prague, with a hint of Old Hapsburg Vienna.
The restaurant has an intimate atmosphere and you will do well to book a table beforehand. My son and I dropped in on a freezing Monday evening, and Zur Bohmischen Kuchl was nearly full with, I may say, local people from Josefstadt - a very good indicator of the quality of the food and drink.
At the end of our meal we were introduced to a liqueur from Prague called Becherovka. Wags describe it as tasting like cinnamon-flavoured kerosene! No, it was much better (and perhaps more powerful) than that. An excellent finale to a great meal.
Zur Bohmischen Kuchl, 1080 Wien, Schlosselgasse 18. Tel+43-(0)1-402 57 31
Google map: tinyurl.com/yg98dgp
When I first visted Vienna some twenty years ago I found it somewhat staid and dull. Perhaps I had been unduly influenced by what I had heard and read about the place. The well-travelled visitor regarded Berlin as THE place to go, not Vienna.
Whatever the case, on a recent visit I found Vienna to be lively, well supplied with a range of good bars and restaurants, hotels at various price levels, an excellent public transport system, and offering an enviable number of world-class museums and galleries. There appeared to be a good number of young people there, in contrast to the view expressed in some guide books that the city is dominated in numbers by the very old.
For example, the Natural History Museum has a special Darwin exhibition on at the moment, and the day I went it was full of enthusiastic young people of all ages, noisy, busy, keen. They were allowed to use cameras and phones and were photographing themselves among the exhibits, even handling the woolly mammoth (I don't think it was real). Some indeed were sliding down the marble staircase which in this building is as high as Beachy Head - I don't think that was allowed, but no-one appeared to be rushing to stop them! So, not so staid as the former reputation...
Vienna, capital of Austria. www.wien.info
The Vienna Card offers 72 hours travel on the city's transport network, including buses, trams, S and U-bahns. It also offers reduced rates on some commercial tour buses and trams, and reduced prices on entry to the city's many museums and galleries. A set of coupons comes with the Vienna Card booklet offering discounts on a range of shops, restaurants and bars. At 18.5 euros, (in 2009, up to March 2010) the Card is very good value for three whole days in Vienna. Don't forget to validate it by punching the card when you first get on the bus, tram or whatever. It is not valid until you do.
The Vienna Card (Wien-Karte) is available online before you travel. Or, when you get there, at your hotel or from Tourist Info, Albertinaplatz (Corner Maysedergasse), Vienna. www.wien.info
In the film The Third Man, shot on location in Vienna in 1949, we see Harry Lime, played by Orson Welles, hiding in the doorway to Anna Schmidt's apartment. This doorway is located at: Schreyvogelgasse, by the Vienna University and the Liebenberg monument.
Schreyvogelgasse, by the University and the Liebenberg monument below the Molker-Bastei.
In the film The Third Man, shot in Vienna in 1919, Harry Lime, played by Orson Welles, is run over by a street carriage outside his apartment. This location is 5 Josefsplatz, next to the Hofburg Palace and the Lipizzaner Museum. The square displays a statue of Emperor Josef II on a horse, and this statue is referred to by the porter elsewhere in the film. The front of Harry Lime's apartment is right opposite the statue.
5 Josefplatz, Vienna. Next to the Hofburg Palace, the Austrian National Library and the Lipizzaner Horse Museum.
In the film Before Sunrise, shot entirely in Vienna, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpi go to a record store where they flick through records and listen to some in a small booth at the end of the store. The store still exists and is called Teuchtler. It sells rare and old records and still has the listening booth at the end of the store. The store is tiny inside and has a very antique feel about it.
Teuchtler Schallplaten handlung Record store is located at: 10 Windmuhlgasse, off Mariahilfer Strasse, the most commercial street in Vienna.
vienna.unlike.net/locations/200378-Teuchtler
In the film Before Sunrise, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpi visit the Friedhof der Namenlosen (The Cemetery of the Nameless). This is a very beautiful, tiny cemetery in the outskirts of Vienna where the bodies of people drowned in the Danube and those who were unable to be identified are buried. Every year, the local fishing club on the first Sunday off after All Souls' Day, hold a memorial service and build a raft with wreaths and flowers to give it to the Danube. This is to recall the water floating corpses.
The cemetery is located on the outskirts of Vienna, on the way to the airport. In order to get there follow these directions: 1.Get the Subway (u-bahn): U3 direction Simmering. Depart from Stephansplatz and get off at Enkplatz
2.Catch bus 76 A at Enkplatz (Krausegasse) Direction: Zinnergasse/Kaiserebersdorfer Straße. Get off at Alberner Hafen.
3.Walk from here. Follow the directions to the Friedhof der Namenlosen (it is about 45 min. walk on a straight line). The cemetery is behind an industrial estate with very high grey tower blocks.
www.friedhof-der-namenlosen.at
The Vienna State Opera is the former Imperial Opera. Performances are very lavish. Swan Lake was fantastic! There were international ballet soloists. The opera orchestra consists of members of the Vienna Philharmonic, which was many times voted the best orchestra in the world. We had good seats and enjoyed a great evening!
Tickets for certain performances are bit of a problem. We found tickets for Swan Lake from www.concertvienna.com
A collection of massive round brick gasometer towers converted into a vibrant complex of homes, offices, shopping and entertainment facilities including Vienna archives.
One of the most memorable architectural sites anywhere - threatening, exciting, historic, futuristic. Think Metropolis...
Ubahn station Gasometer, south east Vienna.
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