I will be glad to show you round Vienna as I have lived here for a long time and know a lot about its history .
Vienna City is an exciting and entertaining place, if you have beautiful company and appreciate elegance !
Vienna has its own, inimitable style , a mixture of preserved charming traditions, that Viennese
have been taking care of through centuries with the dynamics of our modern life tempo.
The capital of Austria is an ancient city - a historical and architectural monument in itself, the center
of cultural, musical and theatre life in Europe with a plenty of theaters, museums and music halls.
I will be also trivial, when mention that this wonderful City has always been a bridge between East and West,
so there is a mixture of cultures, Western European and Eastern European traditions, which enriched each
other and influence restaurant culture, architecture and a Viennese character .
Architectural ensembles of Vienna have become the symbols of European Architecture and its legend.
Vienna State Opera, Belvedere with its splendid parks, Schoenbrunn, the resident of Austrian Royalty ,
which doesn't yield to French Versal in its Beauty and Viennese own Charm. In spring and summer it is
lost in tulips and fabulous flowers. Airy Stephensdom, a huge building, but when you look at it,
you can feel,... just breath,... and it will get wings and will rise into the skies,
so light and elegant it is..... The building of Parliament.... I can continue this list endlessly, but it's always better to see all its beauties.
Vienna nightlife character is not as colorful and flamboyant as the one London has, or New York, or Moscow and Paris. But first of all, when you have me besides you, I think you will not have an urgency of looking for nightlife entertainments, as I am wonderful dancer and in our private moments will be glad to be a strip dancer... ))
Though there are several nice night clubs, very elegant and joyful, as well as there is quite a number of strip clubs, go-go bars.
Cafe Central. Part of the Palais Ferstel complex, the Cafe Central is one of Vienna's more famous cafes, its full authenticity blemished only by complete restoration in recent years. In its prime (before World War I), the cafe was "home" to some of the most famous literary figures of the day, who dined, socialized, worked, and even received mail here. The denizens of the Central favored political argument; indeed, their heated discussions became so well known that in October 1917, when Austria's foreign secretary was informed of the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, he dismissed the report with a facetious reference to a well-known local Marxist, the chess-loving (and presumably harmless) "Herr Bronstein from the Cafe Central." The remark was to become famous all over Austria, for Herr Bronstein had disappeared and was about to resurface in Russia bearing a new name: Leon Trotsky. Today things are a good deal more yuppified: the coffee now comes with a little chocolate biscuit and is overpriced, and the pianist is more likely to play Sinatra ballads than Strauss. But no matter how crowded the cafe may become, you can linger as long as you like over a single cup of coffee and a newspaper from the huge international selection provided. Across the street at Herrengasse 17 is the Cafe Central Konditorei, an excellent pastry and confectionery shop associated with the cafe.
The Freyung. Naglergasse, at its curved end, flows into Heidenschuss, which in turn leads down a slight incline from Am Hof to one of Vienna's most prominent squares, the Freyung, meaning "freeing." The square was so named because for many centuries the monks at the adjacent Schottenhof had the privilege of offering sanctuary for three days. In the center of the square stands the allegorical Austria Fountain (1845), notable because its Bavarian designer, one Ludwig Schwanthaler, had the statues cast in Munich and then supposedly filled them with cigars to be smuggled into Vienna for black-market sale. Around the sides of the square are some of Vienna's greatest patrician residences, including the Ferstel, Harrach, and Kinsky palaces.
Judenplatz Museum. In what was once the old Jewish ghetto, construction workers discovered the remains of a 13th-century synagogue while di ging for a new parking garage. Simon Wiesenthal (a former Vienna
resident) helped to turn it into a museum dedicated to the Austrian Jews who died in World War II. Marking the outside is a concrete cube whose faces are casts of library shelves, signifying Jewish love of learning, designed by Rachel Whiteread. Downstairs are three exhibition rooms devoted to medieval Jewish life and the synagogue excavations. Also in Judenplatz is a statue of the 18th-century playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, erected after World War II.
Palais Ferstel. At Freyung 2 stands the Palais Ferstel, which is not a palace at all but a commercial shop-and-office complex designed in 1856 and named for its architect, Heinrich Ferstel. The facade is Italianate in style, harking back in its 19th-century way to the Florentine palazzi of the early Renaissance. The interior is unashamedly eclectic: vaguely Romanesque in feel and Gothic in decoration, with here and there a bit of Renaissance or Baroque sculpted detail thrown in for good measure. Such eclecticism is sometimes dismissed as mindlessly derivative, but here the architectural details are so respectfully and inventively combined that the interior becomes a pleasure to explore. The 19th-century stock-exchange rooms upstairs are now gloriously restored and used for conferences, concerts, and balls.
Schottenhof. Found on the Freyung square and designed by Joseph Kornhiiusel in a different style from his Fleischmarkt tower, the Schottenhof is a shaded courtyard. The facade typifies the change that came over Viennese architecture during the Biedermeier era (1815-48). The Viennese, according to the traditional view, were at the time so relieved to be rid of the upheavals of the Napoleonic Wars that they accepted without protest the iron-handed repression of Prince Metternich, chancellor of Austria, and retreated into a cozy and complacent domesticity. Restraint also ruled in architecture; Baroque license was rejected in favor of a new and historically "correct" style that was far more controlled and reserved. Kornhiiuselled the way in establishing this trend in Vienna; his Schottenhof facade is all sober organization and frank repetition. But in its marriage of strong and delicate forces it still pulls off the great Viennese-waltz trick of successfully merging seemingly antithetical characteristics.
