The city wakes and other Vienna, Austria General Tips

Favorite Thing: Getting up very early and taking a walk through the waking streets of Vienna is a real pleasure. In summer the air is fresh and cool (in summer it can get very hot later in the day); feet that are tired from the previous day's sight-seeing have regained their spring; shop keepers are opening shutters and setting up displays; the first fiakers are heading for their stand by the Stephandsdom; the smell of fresh baking wafts out of a doorway as you pass; inside the Stephansdom there are only attendees at an early Mass and the odd visitor like you instead of the hordes of tourists and their guides who will fill the place later in the day. Down at pavement level the narrow streets will be in full shade but the morning light will be catching the tops of the buildings, showing up their varying rooflines; it's a good time for photos with few people around and softer light ... and by the time you get back to your hotel you'll have worked up an appetite for a breakfast that will set you up for another day.


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Favorite Thing: Bratislava is very cheap but you need to have the right currency for some things - museum entries for example - our friendly graduate of the Rosa Krebs School of Charm at the Prelate's Palace made that perfectly clear. If you are in Bratislava at the weekend when the banks are closed, the Tesco store has an exchange office that will be open - and the girl there was delightful.

The unit of currency is the koruna. At the time of writing (October 2006) the exchange rate is approximately 30 koruna = us$1.

Don't change too much, you will find you will almost certainly have money left over at the end of the day. We changed $80 between four of us and even after we'd bought lunch and some beers, icecreams, coffee and a pile of nuts and dried fruit, visited the Prelate's Palace, left money in a donation box at the Cathedral, caught trams and paid for our train tickets back to Vienna, we still had money left over. We could have bought a trinket or two from the souvenir booths near the Town Hall, or caught one of the jolly open-topped red tourist buses around the city I suppose, but even then I think we wouldn't have spent it all.


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Favorite Thing: How could any movie buff come to Vienna and not recall Carol Reed's classic thriller, ''The Third Man"? Any number of films have been shot in Vienna since Reed broke new ground by moving his film out of the studio and onto the the city's street but none have assumed the cult status of Reed's masterpiece or become an integral part of the city's persona. WWII had been over for four years when filming began and Vienna was still an occupied city, divided between the 4 allied powers. Whilst the city had not been totally destroyed by the war, there were more than enough damaged buildings and rubble-strewn streets still waiting to be restored for Reed to create the tension and suspense that pervades the film and virtually turn the city itself into a character in its own right.

For anyone who hasn't seen it, or those who want to see it whilst they are in the city, the film - redigitised and restored - the Burgkino (Opernring 19) screens the film at least a couple of times each week. Real fans can take a guided tour or find their own way around the various locations with a good map.


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