Culinary Vienna and the Wurst sausage fast food

Sitting at Sigmund Freud’s regular table at his favourite coffee house in Vienna you are a world away from the coffee bar craze that has swept the English High Street in the last 10 years. In England the coffee house culture is in its infancy. In Austria’s capital city it goes back generations and is a way of life. In the elegant wood panelled rooms of the Café Landtmann - the first coffee house to open in Vienna, in 1873 - I was served a melange in a classic white cup with a gold handle by a waiter in a dinner suite just as I would have been in Freud’s day. Over the decades Landtmann’s has attracted the rich and the famous - from Marlena Dietrich to Hilary Clinton - and still does today. But it’s only one of numerous coffee houses in Vienna. Right in the heart of the city lies one of the busiest of them all, the Café Sacher. But here it’s the cake more than the coffee that’s the big attraction. Every day people queue up outside to get a table so they can sample the world famous Sacher- Torte which was created by 16-year-old apprentice chef Franz Sacher in 1832 and made his family a fortune. Even today the original recipe is kept in a safe at the Hotel Sacher and only the cake produced there can legally be called “original”.

A visit to Vienna isn’t complete without sampling the rich chocolate cake with its layer of apricot jam.

So sitting beneath the elegant glass chandeliers of the café I tucked into a slice - not quite a snip at nearly £7. But there is more to Vienna than just coffee and cakes. If you are looking for a European city break that’s a good alternative to Paris and Rome head for the city of the Hapsburg dynasty, for spectacular architecture, fascinating history, Mozart’s music and world famous horses.

And now low cost carrier Eurowings is operating a daily service at budget prices direct from Birmingham with brand new aircraft it’s easy to get there.

It’s a city that offers a nice blend of culture and casual. A city where people are friendly and you feel safe walking the streets.

It’s also a relatively compact city and has an excellent public transport system making getting around easy.

One useful tip is to invest in a Vienna City Card (€24.90 for 72 hours) which not only gives you a discount on almost all the major attractions but gives you unlimited use of the metro, trams, buses and trains - and you‘ll need them.

If you are a royalist a visit to the Hofburg Imperial Palace is a must. It’s Vienna’s equivalent of Buckingham Palace and dominates one part of the city. The winter palace of the Hapsburgs is stunningly beautiful with its giant courtyards and classical statues but it’s also vast, housing everything from a huge complex of museums to the world famous Spanish Ridding School.In fact while walking around the palace I looked into a courtyard to find half a dozen white Lipizzaner horses starring back at me from their stables. Every day you can watch them as they cross from the stables to the training hall. And while you can buy tickets for the spectacular shows you can also buy tickets for the training sessions which incorporate some show scenes and are cheaper. Time restraints meant we had chance to visit just one museum and we opted for the Imperial Treasury where the crown jewels are kept, giving us chance to see the breathtaking Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire. Not far from the Palace is the world famous Vienna Opera House. But if you can’t get a ticket or can’t afford the prices the nice thing is that there are times when you can get free seats outside to watch the performance on a giant video screen. In this city where Mozart made his name ticket sellers in colourful period costumes and wigs stand outside the opera house daily offering seats to concerts in smaller venues within the city.

Mozart moved to Vienna when he was in his early twenties, and while he lived in some 13 different locations you can now visit the apartment near the city’s cathedral where he lived at the height of his fame. The spacious multi-room, first floor apartment isn’t furnished but an audio presentation brings the composer’s world to life as you wander around. Eating out in Vienna can be as expensive or reasonable as you like. While it’s perceived as a pricey city I found it was packed with value-for-money eateries. If you want a wide choice in one place check out the Naschmarkt - a culinary kaleidoscope of restaurants of every cuisine in an outside setting where €10-12 will buy you hearty lunch. And if you are in downtown Vienna check out Lugeck - anyone will direct you to the restaurant - for superb traditional Austrian food in a picturesque building. When they are in a hurry the locals tend to opt for wurst, a large sausage served sliced up on a plastic plate with a slice of bread and squeeze of mustard and tomato sauce. Fast food from a pavement stall to keep you going. So, when in Rome, sorry Vienna...

We joined the daily queue and tucked in. Not bad if you are pushed for time. But while fast food is the order of some days it’s also nice to do things in style. And the Sofitel Vienna Stephansdom Hotel where we stayed allowed us to do just that.

This stunning avant-garde hotel has a lot of claims to fame but I will always remember it for its spectacular Loft restaurant on the 18th floor with its 360 degree, eight-metre high glass windows. I don’t think I will ever forget enjoying breakfast each morning with an unsurpassed view over the whole of Vienna. You can clearly pick out all the major sights from St Stephen’s Cathedral in one direction to the giant ferris wheel featured in the Third Man film in the other. At the base of the hotel boats run along the Danube Canal.

And the nice thing is this hotel is just a few minutes walk from the city centre. All bedrooms and suites are totally white, totally black or totally grey from the walls to the floors, from the ceiling to the furniture. This is a hotel unlike any other. Perhaps that’s why actor Sean Penn is a regular. Or perhaps like me he has just fallen in love with Vienna.

Factbox

Eurowings flies four times per week from Birmingham to Vienna with prices from £49 each way. For more information on Eurowings see

https://www.eurowings.com/en/booking/offers/flights-from/GB/BHX/to/AT/VIE.html

Rooms at the Sofitel Vienna Stephansdom Hotel start from £200 per night. For more information go to

www.sofitel-vienna-stephansdom.com

For further information on Vienna go to