A Football Fan's Guide To Vienna

Austria
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Vienna

Robert Easton

Arriving late in the evening I found that my hotel was right in Vienna's seedy red light district.

I dropped off my bags, negotiated my way past the three friendly and charming ladies hanging around outside the Eros Centre ('Wie geht's?' 'No thanks!'), resisted the temptations of the Kabinsex cubicles next to the main road, and set off for a stroll towards the city centre.

Vienna is renowned as a city of culture, and even I couldn't help feeling a little impressed as I sat in the Rathausplatz (town hall square), classical music soaring out from speakers, beautiful Gothic architecture all around, and a half moon against a starry sky.

A perfect setting to chew on a cheese-stuffed sausage and down a few cheap glasses of Radler, a Pilsner beer mixed 50/50 with lemon lime soda.

On the bus from Prague, Viennese architecture student Tine had that Euro 2008 meant only one thing for Austrians: embarrassment on the pitch. I set off the next morning for a look at the Vienna's Ernst Happel Stadium, which will host the final of Euro 2008.

The stadium is outside of the city centre, not far from the Danube River, where locals like to go swimming in the hot summer months. To get to the stadium I took the underground to Wien Nord, and a tram the rest of the way.

As I neared the stadium I became more and more suspicious. Why was there so much English language signage so long before the European Championships? When I arrived my worst fears were confirmed: Robbie Williams was in town, and he had taken over the stadium for a weekend of concerts.

I tried every trick in the book to get in, inadvertently convincing some very sceptical security people that I was some kind of Robbie-crazed stalker in the process, but in the end I had to settle with looking from the outside.

Next was an obligatory peek at a few of Vienna's most famous sights – the stupendous St Stephen's Cathedral, a couple of Imperial Palaces (The Schönbrunn and The Hofburg) and the Art History Museum.

Later on, after a couple of Zipfers (Austrian lager, slightly fizzy, slightly malty, very drinkable) and an Edelweiss Weizenbier, (a white beer with a slightly questionable smell but a beautiful, sweet refreshing taste), I got talking to a few locals in a bar near the Gürtel, the ringroad where you find most of Vienna's best pubs, bars and the red light district.

They looked forward to the European Championships with a great deal more enthusiasm than Tine, although not with much more optimism.

Ulf, a sixty-year-old Viennese with a fine head of mad professor hair, told me he had been supporting Germany in the World Cup, because Germany had done so much for Europe, since the end of World War II anyway.

He received a mild rebuke for this from Renata, who told him that Austrians shouldn't support Germany, because already enough foreigners think the two countries are the same place.

Renata commented with a laugh that co-hosts Switzerland were possibly the only people on earth 'stranger than the Austrians'.

She remembered having previously thought the Swiss somewhat strait-laced, until she went there at a festival time, during which all the girls in the bar worked naked for six straight weeks, only to put their clothes back on as if nothing had happened the moment the festival ended.

Earlier in the day Tine had suggested I might find Viennese waiters a little unfriendly and may be confused by the people's dark and morbid sense of humour, but all the Viennese I met were perfectly amiable.

I asked Anna, who came from the Tyrol countryside, why the Viennese had such an undeserved reputation. She explained that they deliberately cultivated the image so that they seemed more deep and intellectual to the people in the provinces. Actually, she explained, 'they're just noisy, and they really like to get drunk'.

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Schonbrunn Palace, Vienna	National History Museum, Vienna

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