So there I was, in the world’s most livable city, on a fine spring evening, in excellent company, listening to one of my all-time indie crushes and feeling deeply miserable. Not just any kind of misery, but an existential dread that bends one into a tortured Egon Schiele silhouette, sends one onto the couch of…
Category: Austria
Barlove: Viennese Coffee and Cigarettes. Still.
It was one of those very rare moments when I was loitering on a street in Vienna without the actual and definite purpose of going into a coffee house, which altered, and somewhat unnatural state was caused by my having just left Café Phil about half an hour before. But, as we have learned from…
Barlove: Café Phil Vienna
Borges once said that he always imagined Paradise as a library, and he was right, only you can go one better, and picture it as a coffee house with books, or a bookstore with coffee, depends on how you look at it. And breakfast, because if it’s done right, no matter at what hour, breakfast…
Sunlight through the Snowstorm: Vienna’s Kirche am Steinhof
I have often sung the praise of the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s concert (Neujahrskonzert der Wiener Philharmoniker, a little gratuitous German never hurt anyone), which might seem odd for someone who is otherwise rather unattuned to classical music. Waltzes are however an exception, melodic and lightweight enough for the silly, familiar from Tom and Jerry…
A Very Short Viennese Dictionary
Blue Danube. Actually, not to be seen during 90% of Viennese day trips, because, unlike in Budapest or Belgrade, where the Danube steals centre stage, in Vienna it flows off the main axis of the city in decidedly sleepy and unspectacular suburbs. Thus, an unassuming but fundamental presence, like air and taxes. Grosser Brauner and…
Best of 2016- Travels
Besides being a retrospective of where we’ve traveled to in these past twelve months, this will also try to be one of those useful travel advice posts, just in case any of you decides to follow in our footsteps in the twelve months to come. Sightseeing. It’s probably a common place, but if you’re in…
Vienna Beyond Christmas
I have already entertained people with the ‘arrival in Hauptbahnhof’ drama this summer, but there is no escape from it yet, for this was the first time it was actually inflicted on me. Objectively though there’s nothing wrong with disembarking in Vienna’s shiny new central station: metro line 1 takes you to the very centre…
Barlove: Kaffemik
As per their website Kaffemik is a Greenlandic word (obviously), which stands for a traditional open house get together, where coffee is served. Presumably plenty of it, since staying awake through the eternal darkness of Greenlandic winters is probably not for the faint hearted. My first association though was with the Romanian word mic, spelled…
Barlove: Café Central Vienna
Last time I visited Vienna it was on an absolutely ridiculously glorious spring day- incidentally, my birthday, so I could hereby venture into claims of controlling the weather, only then it would be somewhat hard to explain the infernally cold drizzle which greeted it on other occasions. And speaking of infernally cold drizzle, that’s what…
Wienerwald is More Than a Forest
Some weeks ago I happened to find out that the Budapest railjet now arrives to Vienna’s Hauptbahnof instead of good old Westbahnhof- of course it does make sense to have international trains go to the central station of a capital city, but I could not help feeling stabbed in the back by Vienna’s careless…
Pocket Diary Budapest 