Vienna

Vienna is a city of dreams. As no other, she parades transitoriness and her proper past. The Habsburg Empire has long disappeared, but its metropolis still cherishes the old dream of splendour and glory. The pompous façades and cobbled alleyways, the countless ancient monuments and the mish-mash of peoples -–many inhabitants hail from East-European countries – make the past come alive again. Not as an oppressive burden, but rather as a melody from bygone days which now pervades the air again, a medley of Viennese waltzes, the Radetzky March and a Bruckner symphony. In Vienna, particularly in the First District, the air really seems to swing. Apart from nostalgic baroque, however, one also discovers contemporary architecture extending its tentacles in the form of glass-and-chromium buildings, right into the heart of the city, to the Stephansplatz, where the cathedral’s spire points skywards like giant stalagmite. Visitors climbing to the top are rewarded with a view of Vienna reaching far into the surrounding countryside in an ascending panorama. On the outskirts of Vienna a new district called Donau-City is being constructed by architects inspired not so much by baroque criteria as by the skyline of places such as Frankfurt and Chicago. At one time, marvelous Vienna was capital of the powerful Habsburg empire. The slow decline of the Habsburgs, capped by World War I, brought an end to Vienna's robust political prominence. The city's famed artistic expression, developed over centuries, has survived. With a melange of architecture reflecting Roman, Medieval, Gothic, Baroque, Rococo and Art Deco influences, always with the intent to impress, Vienna both inspires and delights its welcomed visitors. Winter and summer palaces, impressive monuments, circling boulevards and specific architectural treasures are interspersed with genteel gardens, innumerable fountains and nearby woodland parks.The sophisticated Viennese have, for centuries, lovingly held onto many cultural pleasures - most notably music - to help endure times of political uncertainty. Over the years, the greatest classical composers, Austrian or otherwise, graced Vienna with their presence and compositions. Grand opera houses and concert venues are entwined into the city landscape. In 1820, the Strauss dynasty introduced the waltz, a music and dance that swept people off their feet in more than ways than one. Considered scandalous for its time, a waltz melody is, for the present day visitor, a common accompaniment as one takes in the city's many charms: the luxurious cadence of passers-by, the meditative atmosphere of a Viennese coffeehouse, the melodic flavors of the incomparable Sacher Torte . . . in a world more and more defined by the rush of modern living, Vienna invites you to slow down, linger and in this way truly enjoy its incomparable pleasures. Modern Viennese art, fashion and ‘scene’ are impressive, yet form merely one facet of the spectrum. After the fall of the Iron Curtain which for so long cast a dark shadow over the western world, Vienna is once more located in the middle of Central Europe. The city has become a junction connecting the continent’s eastern and western parts, a role it already fulfilled once when an empire of 53 million citizens was governed from here. At present, however, political power is no longer involved, but rather cultural stimuli and lifestyle. Vienna has become a ‘definer of style’ again. Many of the numerous museums and cultural institutions are truly exemplary and make Austria into one of the most important cultural centres in Europe. A visit to Vienna is like a stroll through the past, for almost nowhere else is history so close at hand. In the innumerable coffee-houses, often fitted with antique furniture, newspapers are provided free to the customers, a mixture of romantics and managerial types clutching an art-tourist guidebook or holding a mobile phone to their ear, typify the real ‘Viennese hodge-podge’.