Maybe it wasn’t included in my Eurail pass, or maybe I just knew so little about the greatness of the Austro-Hungarian empire that I didn’t realize what I was missing. So when a good friend took a job as a professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, I was only too thrilled to visit her. Besides taking full advantage of the extremely plentiful and amazing art (from Klimt and Schiele to Gelatin), classical music (Mozart any day of the week) and cuisine (schnitzel and strudel), we spent a lot of time in the neighborhood around Schleifmuhlgasse in the fourth district, an area made up of a variety of old, new and just plain cool places.
There are art galleries, one of the best of which is Georg Kargl Fine Arts, which shows interesting, established international artists. We found a great vintage shop (always a favorite destination for me) called Flo Vintage Nostalgische Mode, where they had old Dior mixed in with turn-of-the-century lace at decent prices, and an amazing video store (yes, they still exist in some places!) called Alphaville where one totally trusts the choices of the employees. Next to that was a great design store called Rauminhalt. We had lunch at an old establishment around the corner favored by the locals called Gasthaust Ubl.
Then there were the alternative spaces like Ve.sch and Kiosk. I was most impressed with Kiosk, a sausage stand serving beer and wine with the best currywurst in the city. It’s open 11 a.m. to 4 a.m. and hosts a killer DJ program headed by dj3volt. It was also having an art show, “Nähe” (Nearness), curated by Stefan Strobl with the students from the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. All in a space about 500 square feet.