Expat Travel Mom

Vienna. A place we've always heard about, a place we've always read about, but for some reason, not a place that was ever on my bucket list of places to visit. This was the first stop on a trip that would take us into Croatia in the days that followed, but Vienna set the tone for everything else.

A Magical First Night

What a great start. Let me be clear. We were once again trying to chase snow (my kids really love it), and Christmas markets with this trip. Well...we got the Christmassy aspect! After dropping things off at the Airbnb, we made a beeline for where I there to be something fun for the teens. I had read about an ice skating rink that felt genuinely magical, with glühwein still being sold at the shed adjacent. The ice skating was everything I had read about and more. The pathways wove around trees, it was twinkle light lit, and casted an insanely magical feeling of Christmas. The only complaint my teens had was that there were some seriously fast skater who kinda wizzed by. I don't think it was allowed, but enforcement?  

Worn out and ready to warm up, we had dinner at Sigmund Freud's favorite café, Cafe Landtmann, before winding our way back through the streets to our insanely cute Airbnb. Vienna has a way of making its history feel like it's still happening around you, and that café was the first real taste of it.

A Day We Packed Completely Full

We fit everything into one single full day here, starting at Freud's actual former apartment at Berggasse 19, where he lived and worked for 47 years before fleeing Nazi-occupied Vienna in 1938, leaving behind the very couch that gave psychoanalysis its most famous image (it lives in London now). From there, St. Rupert's Church, widely considered Vienna's oldest, dating back to around 740 AD, tucked into one of the oldest corners of the city.

Next came the Spanish Riding School. It is the oldest classical riding academy in the world still operating in its original location, dating back to 1572. The Lipizzaner horses themselves are born dark, black or brown, and gradually turn white over four to ten years as they mature, a detail we had known from our trip to Slovenia. They're bred specifically for this kind of riding, at the Piber Federal Stud, and a horse can spend up to eight years in training before it's ready to perform! Incredible. The hall itself, the Winter Riding School, is a genuine architectural masterpiece on its own, a Baroque space completed in 1735 under Emperor Charles VI, tall white columns, glittering chandeliers, and a ceiling fresco that makes the whole room feel more like a palace ballroom than a training arena. In 2015, UNESCO recognized the entire tradition, the riding style itself, not just the building, as an Intangible Cultural Heritage. What we watched that day was Morgenarbeit, the morning training session, a quieter, more intimate look at years of daily practice between horse and rider, rather than the full formal gala performance.

Then St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna's great Gothic centerpiece, its roof alone one of the most recognizable in Europe. 

We walked and walked, as you do in most European cities, and ate and ate, as you do through most European cities, and enjoyed all the Christmas flare. I mean, the chandeliers were beautiful! We topped the day off with a Christmas market, this one at Prater Park, which comes complete with its own amusement park, lights, rides, and market stalls all tangled together. It wasn't cheap by any means, but we had some fun while there.

At this point in the trip, we rented a car and headed to Zagreb, before returning back to Vienna, so make sure to read that post as well!

A Rainy Last Day and a Concert

Our last day landed on Epiphany, a rainy one, with most things closed for the holiday (I had no idea...so poor planning on my part). So we did the thing that actually made sense: a classical concert, opera included, and ended the night back at Café Central, the same historic literary coffeehouse Freud himself used to frequent. Now, I wouldn't have expected my kids to be jumping up and down to spend the night at the concert and opera, but the number of times they looked over at me in awe...that was worth it. 

The girls spent the whole evening hoping for snow on our drive out the next morning, and they got it...even if only a sprinkling.

Vienna is a city that rewards walking, layer after layer of history sitting quietly on every street, waiting for you to notice it.