Music in Vienna

If you are a massive music fan, there are a lot of options for you in Vienna. Whether you like classical music, jazz, rock, metal, or pop, you are sure to find a venue that will cater to you, and they’re all within easy reach from your hotel or zimmer.

Classical music, of course, has a major influence in Vienna. The Vienna State Opera offers performances 300 days of the year on a wide variety of themes, albeit based on opera or ballets. In addition, the Vienna Musikverein and the Vienna Konzerthaus both offer a wide range of classical music, including concerts, musicals, and recitals.

If you prefer something a little more modern, there are a wide variety of clubs and other venues within the city. One of the biggest venues is the U4 club, which has seen the likes of Prince, Nirvana, and Grace Jones. If you're feeling brave, you can check out the Jenseits Café & Dance. This former brothel generally focuses on funk and soul with a little bit of jazz thrown in. If you're in the mood for a wide variety of music, the Prater Dome offer something for everyone. Vienna's largest disco offers a wide range of music, from dance, trance, and garage to R&B, salsa, and Latino – all in the same venue.

No city would be complete without its jazz clubs. One of our favorite clubs to visit is Jazzland, which is Vienna's oldest jazz club. Hidden underneath a church, this club has managed to attract numerous famous jazz musicians, from Big Joe Williams to Ray Brown. The food is pretty decent too. Another place to visit would be Porgy and Bess. This unique club has musicians from around the world visiting it, including some more unusual ensembles. A recent concert featured jazz musicians from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. If you just fancy a very nice dinner with some jazz in the background, go to the Albertina Passage, which is based in the Vienna State Opera.

If you fancy doing a bit of dancing, you can practice your samba or salsa in Vienna's Latino clubs. Floridita is a great place to experience the delights of Cuba, and El Dorado's cozy atmosphere is a perfect place to learn a little bit about Latin America's dances.

Finding these clubs is generally easy, but be sure to check out what is open by asking around. Some of the smaller clubs are well worth a visit, so ask your friendly Austrian hotel staff for details.

I Want to Ride My Bicycle: Cycling in Vienna

Vienna is incredibly bicycle-friendly city. It has around thousand miles of bicycle tracks, which are very useful when getting from A to B. In addition, it also has a free city bicycle scheme, although the word free is not completely accurate. There are some great Austrian zimmers that are bicycle friendly too.

The city's bicycle scheme allows you to hire a bike at an extremely low rate. The first hour is free, the next hour is a euro, the third hour is charged at two euros, and anything between four and 120 hours is charged at four euros an hour. It is worth mentioning that this is per cycling session. Therefore, if you use the service for a half hour trip and return it, you will not get charged no matter how many trips like this you make. The journey begins when you remove the citybike from its slot and ends when you plug it back into a slot, even if this is at a different station. You will need either a debit card or a citybike tourist card, which can be rented from your hotel. Make sure you ask about it. There may be a small fee of around two euros a day to hire a citybike tourist card.

There are approximately 80 public rental stations in Vienna, and the terminals are normally located near major transportation routes, such as tram, bus, and rail stations, and near major tourist areas, such as the Imperial Palace and the Ringstrasse. 

It is also worth checking out the guided cycle tours in Vienna. Most of these run between 1 May and 31 October, and there is often a nominal charge for these. For more information, it's worth going to the tourist information center at Albertinaplatz. Alternatively, your pension may have more information.

If the rain started coming down, you can always do a little traveling underground. We don't mean, of course, that you start tunneling like a mole. The Viennese Metro allows bicycles on it after the morning rush hour, which generally ends at 9 AM on weekdays, until 3 PM. Trains after 6:30 PM also allow bicycles. Saturdays and Sundays are generally unrestricted.

Cycling in Vienna is a fantastic opportunity that's not to be missed. The ease of cycling makes this one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world. The free bicycle scheme is a great way for tourists to get around Vienna, and it keeps you fit, too!

The Schönbrunn Palace

When most Austrians want to build a hunting lodge, they generally build a small shack somewhere up in the mountains. If you're lucky, it will have a well where you can draw water, and some of them will even have a wood-burning stove. When an emperor decides to build a hunting lodge, he tends to go a little overboard. The Schönbrunn Palace is not your typical Austrian place to stay.

The trouble is with the the Schönbrunn Palace, no matter how nice your Austrian hotel is, it will look distinctly shabby after you visit this exhibition of magnificence. There is a reason this palace is a UNESCO world heritage site, and it is also Austria's top tourist destination.

It started off as a place for the holy Roman emperors to stay in the summer. In typical Imperial style, the holy Roman Emperor of the time, Maximilian II, booted off the previous owner and took over his mansion. He ordered a large section of the area fence, and he used it as a hunting area. Over the centuries, orangeries, gardens, and mazes were added to the palace grounds. No self-respecting Emperor would be without some sort of Roman decoration, and the Roman ruin was created in 1778.

When you choose to go there, as I am confident you will when you visit Vienna, join a tour to learn more about the palace. There are also concerts throughout the year featuring the music of Mozart and his contemporaries. It's open all year round usually between 8:30 AM and 5:30 PM, although it closes a little earlier in winter and stays open a little later in summer.

We found that spring was the best time to visit the gardens, as most of the flowers and trees were blooming at that time. The scent was absolutely incredible, although if you suffer from hay fever that might sound like torture. Try to get there early, as the crowd will build up towards the middle of the day, and take a look at its website before you visit to check what is going on. In addition, the latest pricing information will be on that site.

To get from your hotel to the palace, it's usually best to take the underground, so look for Schönbrunn Station. Alternatively, you can take bus 10A and ask for the Schönbrunn Palace. Trams also offer a good way to get there, and the 10 and 58 will drop you straight in front of the palace.

Hi Ho Silver! The Spanish Riding School

Horses? Check. People in fancy uniforms? Check. A beautiful venue in Vienna? Oh yeah. It can only be the Spanish Riding School. Last person I talked to about this school of dressage assumed it was in Madrid or somewhere similar. Fortunately, it is in a much nicer location—central Vienna, right by the Hoffburg. The best hotels in Austria are in this area, so you might even get one overlooking this gorgeous piece of architecture.

So, if you love horses, it’s a fantastic place to visit. Avoid July and August, though, because the 70-odd horses there are taken to the nearby summer stables to relax. At any other time of year, you can watch some of the training sessions, as well as the performances. Book early, though, because tickets are extremely popular.

The Spanish Riding School is the oldest of its kind in the world, dating back to around the 1570s. The school as we know it was built in the 1730s, and it was designed to train horses for war. The Spanish part of the name comes from the Spanish horses that were bred to create the Lipizzan breed of horses. Other than that, it has nothing to do with the Spanish.

Fortunately for us, the Spanish riding school opened its gates for the paying public in 1918. This was because it needed a bit of cash after the First World War. The performances proved to be extremely popular, and they continue on today.

So, what can you expect from one of the performances? Generally, a performance will start with the youngest horses that are just beginning training. They'll demonstrate the basics that they have been taught, and then move on to allow the more experienced horses to perform. These experienced horses will perform an Olympic-standard routine. The next part of the performance shows how the training progresses. You'll see how they are trained to do jumps, tricks, and other stunts. This offers a fascinating insight into how professional horses are trained, and it is a sight that will delight any horse lover.

You will notice that most of the riders do not have stirrups. This just serves to demonstrate the rider’s prowess with the horses. The final quadrille is one of the most difficult in the world to perform, and these riders perform it flawlessly.

If you're in Vienna, and you want to see some truly astounding moves, you can forget the local nightclubs or your hotel bar—the Spanish riding school offers an exhibition of beauty, grace, and glamour.

Turn the Heating On, Darling

It is rather chilly in Austria at the moment. Snow is currently on the ground in most places, and it'll probably stay there for another month. However, there are some great signs of recovery from the winter months. First, it is starting to rain rather than snow. This means the weather is warming up, and although the ice on our hotel room window will be there for a little longer, we can see that spring is just around the corner.

With two thirds of Austria being mountainous, the weather in Austria is quite hard to predict. However, there are several things you can be sure of. November to March in Austria is rather cold. You will want to bring a spare blanket, particularly if you are staying in a city hotel. Austrian hotels are used to cold weather, but sometimes it's good to have an extra layer of warmth.

In April, it starts to warm up. You may be able to get away with wearing just a T-shirt on some days. The average temperature stays around 9 °C, or 49 °F. May is one of the best months to go cycling in Austria, as the temperature is warm without being too hot, staying around 14 °C or 58 °F.

June to September are the hotter months, with average temperatures around 20 °C or 68 °F in July and August. This is by no means too hot, and it's easy to go hiking or biking even in the middle of summer. Just make sure you have plenty of water with you to stay well hydrated.

The summer months are great for exploring cities such as Vienna, Salzburg, and Graz. Because June is normally rather wet, depending on where you are, it's always good to be prepared for a little damp weather. You can always reenact scenes from Singin' in the Rain is it starts to pour down. Of course, strangers will look at you as though you're mad.

September is a great month thanks to the various beer festivals and the run up to harvest. While it is still warm enough to go outside in a T-shirt, you'll probably want a lightweight coat for the evenings. Of course, the amount of food available at the local farmers markets means you probably won't want to move too far at the end of each day.

Whatever time of year it is, though, you need a great place to stay. Whether you want little zimmer in the middle of the Alps, a pension in Salzburg, or hotel in Vienna, why not pop over to our sister site to get a great deal.