Citytrip Vienna, Austria
July 2015






Day 3
Monday, July 20th


Mariahilfer Straße is the city′s longest and most lively shopping street. It will be worth your while to explore the side streets in the 6th and 7th districts. This is where many out-of-the-ordinary shops and outlets have sprung up recently.

Almost all major department stores can be found here selling clothes, leather goods, furniture and accessories, books and stationery. Hidden away between these big stores there are tiny shops selling all kind of fun stuff. Pleasant street cafes offer a welcome break from shopping where you can rest your tired feet while sampling some of the famous Viennese "Gemütlichkeit".

The reputation as a shopping area is mostly constrained to the inner section, which is well-connected with the U3 subway line. The outer section can be explored by tram, but lacks the high density of shopping centres with international brands that the inner section is famous for. On the other hand, the outer section is well-known for illegal street prostitution. The inner section is the border between the districts Mariahilf and Neubau.

"Freiwilliger Durchgang" is a pretty funny term because literally translated this would mean "walk through voluntarily". In fact this is very old German language, so the actual meaning is slightly different from that: In the early 19th-century more and more houses were built in Vienna so that people had to walk around blocks. Here it must be said that the typical Viennese is lazy. So the owner of buildings that were connected by their courtyards voluntarily allowed pedestrians to take a shortcut through their property.

Nowadays there are only a few of those hidden "time machines" left in Vienna. Why time machine? Those alleyways are now considered precious architectural heritage and are therefore listed buildings. You can enter one of these connecting passages on shopping street Mariahilferstraße 45, this one you can walk down until you get to the Naschmarkt.



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Haus des Meeres, The Flak Tower Esterhazypark 5

Haus des Meeres:
The Flak Tower Esterhazypark 5



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Haus des Meeres, The Flak Tower Esterhazypark 5

Haus des Meeres:
The Flak Tower Esterhazypark 5



The Flak Towers are enormous concrete towers that are very visible at several spots all over Vienna. "FLAK" stands for "Flug Abwehr Kanone" and was a program of the Nazis to protect cities and residential areas from air raids with bombs. Their construction was planned in September 1942 and Vienna was the third city after Berlin and Hamburg that got them.

The Flak Towers fulfilled two purposes: They held cannons and spotlights that should fight airplanes from the ground; and they were important bunkers with an autonomous electricity, air and water supply system. They always come in pairs, comprising of one large tower and a slightly smaller one.

The Flak towers of Vienna are used for different purposes. The one in the Esterhazypark houses the "Haus des Meeres", a private zoo and aquarium. The pair in the Arenberg Park is used by the Museum für Angewandte Kunst as a depot and open to the public for a few hours on Sundays. The pair in the Augarten is used party as storage space, but essentially empty.

The towers were built between the winter of 1942 and autumn 1944. By the time they were finished, aircraft technology had advanced and so the cannons of the Flak towers did not reach most of the bomber units anymore. However, the Viennese gratefully accepted the Flak towers' use as bunkers and bomb shelters. They could take up many thousand people during air raids.

Today, the Flak towers are preserved for their historical, but also for their (subtle) aesthetic value. One architect called them "20th century city walls" and thus, recommended to protect them. As of 2008, there are no serious plans to destroy the towers and only few to incorporate them into modern buildings. It seems that at least for the next few decades, the Flak towers will remain mostly as they are.



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Volkstheater

Volkstheater



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MUMOK

MUMOK



Volkstheater in Vienna (roughly translated as "People's Theatre") was founded in 1889 by request of the citizens of Vienna, amongst them the dramatist Ludwig Anzengruber and the furniture manufacturer Thonet, in order to offer a popular counter weight to the Hofburgtheater. It was erected according to designs by Ferdinand Fellner and Hermann Helmer, who attempted to reconcile their plans with historicism. It is located in Neubau, the seventh district of Vienna.

The founders of this stage had a theatrical stage in mind, in order to expose wider circles of the population of Vienna to classical and modern literature whilst staging these next to more traditional plays. The theatre follows this tradition even today. New productions of the classics are always in the pipeline along with regular reinterpretations of works by Ferdinand Raimund and Johann Nestroy and many new plays and reruns. Special attention is given to Austrian playwrights of old and new.

The MUMOK is the largest museum in Central Europe for art since modernism. It makes the various aspects of the international and Austrian avant-garde accessible to everyone interested in the arts. The striking dark grey cuboid structure clad in basalt stone in the middle of the Museums Quartiers Wien houses an unusual collection featuring important works from Classic Modernism, Pop Art, Fluxus, and Viennese Actionism to present-day film and media art.

From Pablo Picasso to Andy Warhol and Franz West, the collection and special exhibitions represent a blend of tradition and experiment, past and present. The mumok kino explores film in the context of visual art. A broad range of educational programs for adults and children ages four and up, a library, the mumok café, and the mumok shop complete the range of offerings for visitors.

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Schwechat train station, and CAT train

Schwechat train station,
and CAT train



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Schwechat train station, and CAT train

Schwechat train station,
and CAT train



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Vienna Airport, Schwechat

Vienna Airport, Schwechat



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Vienna Airport, Schwechat

Vienna Airport, Schwechat













and welcome!




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Mariahilfer Strasse

Mariahilfer Strasse



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Mariahilfer Strasse

Mariahilfer Strasse



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Raimundhof

Raimundhof



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Raimundhof

Raimundhof



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Stephans Dom

Stephans Dom



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Stephans Dom

Stephans Dom



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Rathausplatz

Rathausplatz