Vienna On The Verge

I first fell in love with Vienna as a kid listening to records with my father at our house in Long Island. Dad put on an old 78 of tenor Richard Tauber, the great star of 1930s operetta. Tauber’s black and white photo on the cover exuded a bygone era of mitteleuropean glamour: top hat, white tails and a gleaming monocle, pinched over one eye like a diamond-appraiser’s loupe. I was drawn to the image’s nostalgia, just as I laughed, even as a child, at its camp gestalt. Once Tauber began to sing, I was swept away by the melodies, most of them composed by Johann Strauss, “the Waltz King.” The music, in three-quarter time, called to me in a profound way, as if I’d heard it before and been waiting for it ever since. Vienna was indeed, as Tauber crooned, “The City of My Dreams.”

But by the time I was old enough to actually get there, friends had persuaded me that Vienna was a ghost town, a boring Eastern European backwater. After the Iron Curtain was created, Vienna’s significance as a crossroads diminished and the heyday of the Austro-Hungarian empire became a faint memory. “It’s nothing but old people, an expensive rest home for cranky Austrians,” a well-heeled traveler warned. But when the Iron Curtain came down, Vienna, like much of Eastern Europe, was shaken up by a frenzy of modernization and an influx of young people. It is a completely different city today, on the verge of being a vital and influential world capital again.

Arriving in Vienna by train, after a week in Budapest, I was struck by how stylish and attractive its citizens were. Where were all the fat old ladies with blue hair eating Sacher torte? The men in trachten and feathered hats, getting snippy with tourists? Everyone I met was genuinely friendly and helpful. Many were swathed in Prada or Gucci, wearing sleek black pants and sweaters. The atmosphere felt vigorously fresh and cosmopolitan, as Western in spirit as London or New York, despite the gothic spires and baroque palaces. The streets were spotless, an asset that felt less totalitarian, than eco-consciously au courant. There are countless concerts, operas, ballets and exhibits at every venue. When Vienna feels like celebrating, it’s a municipal tour de force.

I checked into a charming pension, Hotel Altstadt, located within strolling distance of the famous circular boulevard, the Ringstrasse, in the heart of town. I had expected cool, continental comfort, but the rooms in Altstadt were chic, too, and fairly priced. The neighborhood hummed with agile SoHo types, darting in and out of galleries, boutiques and minimalistic bistros. The energy was contagious, inspiring me to crisscross the metropolis in a four-day whirlwind of unabashed sightseeing.

My first stop after the stately opera house, the Staatsoper (where I took in a cutting edge, non-traditional staging of Von Weber’s Der Freischutz), was Sigmund Freud’s apartment at Berggasse 19. Here his anxious clients climbed a flight of stairs to his office and poured out their civilized discontents as he sat at his curio-cluttered desk. The rooms were emptied when Freud fled to England during the Second World War, but they’ve been restored as a museum, featuring photos of the original interiors and home movies of his last years.

The juxtaposition of old and new Vienna could not have been more pronounced than in the presence of a popular gay bar and restaurant, Café Berg, just a few doors up from Freud’s flat. Adjacent to Lowenherz, the city’s gay and lesbian bookstore, Café Berg caters to a hep, X-gen set, and is busy all day. The bartender uncannily popped in a CD of the “Hi-Fi Nightingale,” Caterina Valente (another of my father’s favorites), as background music just as I arrived. Poets, gym gods and tattooed artists with buzz-cuts tapped at their laptops, chain-smoked potent cigarettes and gossiped loudly about politics or the latest Hollywood flicks. The waiter handed me a copy of Bussi, the local bar rag, with an intricate map, which led me on a wild spree later that night to a gaggle of gay and gay-friendly bars and nightclubs. At midnight, I landed in Beverly Hills Boys, an all-male Folies Bergere with go-go studs in g-strings and zaftig drag queens. A lapdancer named Doman joined me at my table and immediately ordered a $400 bottle of Champagne. I managed to escape with a sizable tip before the cork was popped.

Vienna is a marvelously contained city. One can easily visit all the main museums in a weekend. I spent an afternoon at the fabled Schonbrunn Palace, built as a summer home for Empress Maria Theresa (Marie Antoinette’s mom). Its ocher facade glows in the setting sun and is best seen from a magnificent architectural folly, the Gloriette, set atop a hill in the surrounding gardens. The high baroque Belvedere Palace is the unlikely home of Gustav Klimt’s sensual masterpiece, “The Kiss,” which has to be experienced in the flesh to be fully appreciated. I skipped the Spanish Riding School and Vienna Boys Choir, both tourist sell-outs, and roamed the sumptuous halls of the Kunsthistorisches (Fine Arts) Museum, eyeing its Brueghels, Raphaels and Vermeers. After scouring the fashionable shops around Stephansdom, the main cathedral, I slipped into Café Hawelka, a dingy, smoky den riddled with students and affluent bohemians craving a melange, the Viennese café au lait. I felt so at home, I went back twice that day.

Other must-sees include the Kaisergruft, a spooky crypt below the Kapuzinerkirche, where imperial corpses lie in sculpted tombs; the bar at the five-star Bristol Hotel; the Vienna Woods and weingartens; and the Secession Pavilion, the supreme example of Jugendstil architecture. If I’d had more time, I would have jogged through the Prater, the city park and site of the Riesanrad, the 200-feet-high Ferris wheel featured in Orson Welles’ The Third Man. But I was too busy at Demel’s, gorging on its killer desserts.

In four days, I had “done” Vienna, but never felt done-in. I waltzed my way through its timeless wonders. It’s a city that far exceeds expectations and deserves a second look. Next time, I’ll bring my monocle.