This intrepid young man is wearing traditional dress, as in lederhosen,
leather shorts!

Vienna, once the capital city of one of Europe's great empires, the Austro-Hungarian, with a population of 50 million at its peak, is now Austria's capital and federal capital of Austria's largest state. Austria has a population of nearly 9 million. Nevertheless, even if the majority citizens and territories have been lost, in Vienna, much of the riches acquired during its golden period including grand architecture, arts, music and, of course, its coffee culture have been retained. Vienna remains one of Europe's great cities to be visited.

Our's was a short 5 day, 4 night visit. There is easily enough to see to keep you fully occupied and we probably could have done with more time - especially as there are so many museums to cover. Nevetheless, we did our best, starting with the Big Bus red and blue routes to help ourselves get oriented, which is probably one of the very best ways for a tourist to get acquainted in a strange city. After this motor orientation, Vienna is very walkable, unless a horse drawn carriage tour is preferred.

Vienna is a low rise city and apart from the Vienna International Centre, colloquially known as UNO City, which is an office complex housing one of the UN's main global administrative centres, most of the buildings are araound 8 stories high. Much of the city was bombed flat during the second world war and has been rebuilt with one of the largest public housing projects in the world comprising of about 220,000 dwellings accomodating around 500,000, whereas the population numbers about 2.6 million in the metropolitan area.

The buildings from Austria's golden age are roccoco in style and whether a palace, public buildings or an appartment block are ornate. In contradiction, later public housing, built from the 1920s to house workers, can be be both gigantic and bland.