“The vintner, if sound in mind, goes around his vines seventeen times a year.” Old farming rule of thumb, valid to this day. The word Heurigen has long been part of the vocabulary of tourism in Vienna – no sightseeing visit to the Read More
As someone once put it: the streets of Vienna, are not only paved with stones but with history. A great part of the charm of the city consists in the way it transforms “history” into the “good old times during the empire.” This Read More
Vienna is an ideal-typical European city similar to Barcelona, London, Milan, Paris or Rome, but unlike the others it is very compact and easy to negotiate. Vienna is referred to by many as a unique onion, with each of the urban layers surrounding Read More
You enter through a simple doorway. You proceed through a hall, until – suddenly – you feel you have stepped onto a stage, or onto a broad plain after passing through a narrow gorge. You have a sense of space and depth and, Read More
As you pass through the gate of Vienna’s St. Marx Cemetery in the Third District in spring, it’s possible a peacock will greet you with a gravelly squawk from its perch on a lichen-encrusted tombstone near the entrance. The beauty of this most Read More
When Arthur Schnitzler was sixteen years old, his physician father discovered the boy had visited a house of ill repute. He did not lecture him, but required him to read through a tome about venereal diseases, filled with grisly illustrations. This lesson did Read More
In 1997, the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO put Austria’s Hallstatt-Dachstein-Salzkammergut region on its list of Cultural Heritage Sites for special protection. Hallstatt, one of Austria’s oldest settlements, as well as one of its prettiest, is home to the oldest salt mine in Read More
A special exhibition of Vienna’s 250 year old Schoenbrunn zoo opened last spring in the Natural History Museum and will continue until the end of October. Established in 1752 by the Holy Roman Emperor Franz Stephan von Lorraine (1708-1765), husband of Habsburg Empress Read More
