I stepped off a train here three decades ago and have been finding my way back ever since. Some cities seem to encapsulate a feeling, a mood, and while Vienna may forever be immortalised in a certain glacial hit of the 1980s, there’s also a 1970s Billy Joel song of the same name that feels more apt. “Slow down, you’re doing fine,” goes the refrain, “you can afford to lose a day or two.” This is a city where it’s easy to slow down, take your time. In the romantic film Before Sunrise, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy meet on a train and alight in Vienna, shooting the breeze and meandering the streets until dawn. Rarely crowded, it has space to think; the potential for chance encounters. And while some cities clear out in summer, leaving the door open for visitors to close, Vienna is always itself.
Church of MariahilfJérôme Galland
I’ve done a lot of meandering here myself, sometimes with violin and contraltos providing an accidental soundtrack as I pass beneath open windows. Some Polaroids: in the winter, snow crisping the old rooftops like kuchen, skating the frozen pathways of the town hall with my young son. Sprawled in black tie after a classical ball, shoes as shiny as eels, devouring hot dogs and Champagne at 4am. Dangling my legs over the Donaukanal, with a beer to hand, sunshine on the graffitied walls. One time, on my way to the Leopold museum, I squeeze through a street choir from Beijing, all dressed in pink and singing “Edelweiss”. For a coffee, a bentwood chair in ’60s time capsule Café Korb, its waiters reliably indifferent, watched over by portraits of its owner, the redoubtable actress Susanne Widl; for schnitzel, Glacis Beisl, submerged in foliage just yards from the upcycled Habsburg pomp of the MuseumsQuartier.
Vienna City HallJérôme Galland
croissant at Ährnst bakeryJérôme Galland
Usually topping the polls for quality of life, Vienna seems to actually like the people who live in it. Which other city installs misting posts to cool its summer streets or names its avenues after women to correct the gender imbalance? A new waterfront is emerging on Danube Island at Pier 22, lido-style with ladders for swimming – in the summer everyone makes for the water like coots, diving into the Old Danube lake from pedalos, feet oozing in the mud, the urban skyline smudged with reeds. “Everything just works so well,” my friend Philip tells me. “The classical tradition can hang heavy, and sometimes I wish my city was a little more fast-moving, but then… I can afford to live with my boyfriend in a high-ceilinged 19th-century apartment not far from the centre of town.”