Fodor's Vienna & the Danube Valley, 13th Edition: The Complete Guide with City Walks, Danube Drives, Castles and Cafes (Travel Guide)

Experienced and first-time travelers alike rely on Fodor's Gold Guides for rich, reliable coverage the world over.  Smart travel tips and important contact info make planning your trip a breeze, and detailed coverage of sights, accommodations, and restaurants give you the info you need to make your experience enriching and hassle-free.  If you only have room for one guide, this is the one for you. The best guide to Vienna & the Danube Valley, packed with essentials City-wide tours form Imperial Vienna's Habsburg palaces and the Ringstrasse to Freud's home and Jugendstil buildings Viennese delights: operas and symphonies, New Year's balls, Lippizaner stallions, shopping for fine arts and crafts Side trips to the Wienerwald, the Wine District, Mayerling Abbeys, castles, and Gothic towns around the Danube Valley Where to stay and eat, no matter what your budget Chic modern hotels, grand restored palaces, cozy pensions Great places for schnitzel, strudel, and Sacher torte -- world-class restaurants, coffeehouses, wine taverns Fresh, thorough, practical -- off and on the beaten path Costs, hours, descriptions, and tips by the thousands All reviews based on visits by savvy writer-residents 19 pages of maps -- and dozens of great features Important contacts, smart travel tips Fodor's Choice What's Where Pleasures & Pastimes Festivals Background essays German vocabulary and menu guide

This partial excerpt, from the Pleasures and Pastimes section, gives you a taste of what Vienna and the Danube Valley has to offer and the sights and scenes that make it a great place to visit.


Mozart Mania

Had you been in Innsbruck on August 13, 1993, you would have had a most graphic illustration of what music is to Austria. Suddenly all 23 church spires of the city started pealing away. It was a "city concert" for all the town's bells by the Spanish composer Llorenc Barber. It can happen in Austria: You're walking along thinking of nothing special, and you are suddenly hearing a concert, a recital, an orchestra rehearsing, a soprano going through her scales.


It's not only Mozart whose music pours from churches and concert halls, even from the instruments of street musicians -- it's music in general that seems to be the spiritual fuel of the country. Wherever you go in Austria, you'll be confronted with classical, jazz, pop, folk, techno, punk, you name it.


As for Vienna itself, no city can boast such a roster of fine composers and performers. From the huge Empire and beyond, they poured in in droves (assuming they were not born there) -- the better-known being Mozart (naturally), Beethoven, Schubert, Haydn, Johannes Brahms, Mahler, Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss the Younger (no relation), and Arnold Schönberg.


Schnitzels, Strudels, and Sacher tortes

Food in Austria is extremely varied. All the gastronomic traditions of the old Empire have left their mark here, so be prepared for genuine Hungarian pörkölt (what we call goulash) and lecsó (red pepper and tomato stew), and for heavenly Bohemian desserts. The palatschinken are originally Hungarian as well, thin pancakes that can be stuffed around chocolate, marmalade, or a farmer's-cheese stuffing (topfen). Serb cevapcici (kebabs) and rasnici also appear on menus with fair frequency, even in Austrian establishments, as does Serbische bohnensuppe, a mighty Serb bean soup.


The national gastronomy itself includes lean spareribs and heavy-caliber bread or potato dumplings (also a Bohemian legacy) mixed with bacon or liver or stuffed with anything from cracklings (grammel) to apricots (marillen). From western Austria comes Kaiserschmarrn, the "emperor's nonsense" eaten with cranberry jam. In some friendly country Heuriger in Lower Austria, you can try blood sausage; Blunz'n with mashed potatoes; or the standard Schweinsbraten, pork roast.


You need not go thirsty either on your travels. Austria has excellent water, which can be drunk from the tap or straight from the spring at times, and that, good brewers will tell you, makes for excellent beer. Murau in Styria has a top brewery, with a fine restaurant attached. Some swear by Vienna's own Ottakringer. All the orchards in the country also make for terrific fruit juices.


Austria's wines range from good to outstanding. Don't hesitate to ask waiters for advice, even in the simpler restaurants, and as with the food, go for the local wine, if possible. For a light, dry white wine, try the Grüner Veltliner.  The reds, too, are well represented, especially in Burgenland. Blauer Portugieser, Traminer, and Zweigelt tend to be on the lighter side. For a slightly heavier red, select a Blaufränkisch or Blauer Burgunder. A novelty, if you happen to be traveling around Heiligenbrunn in Burgenland, is the powerful Uhudler, made of ungrafted vines that originally came from the United States to make European vines resistant to devastating phylloxera.


Souvenirs, Austrian-Style

The court has vanished, but the Hoflieferanten (court suppliers) still maintain their name and at times the old-fashioned grace, slightly fawning touch, and lots of Gnä Frau and der Herr thrown in for good measure.


There are various types of souvenirs to take home and enjoy, of course: fine glassware from Riedel's in Kufstein (founded 1756); Swarowski crystal; ceramics from a variety of manufacturers, including Gmunder (from Traun near Salzburg); and Augarten porcelain, Europe's oldest china after Meissen. These wares are distributed throughout the country in large and loud shops in the pedestrian zones of Vienna, Salzburg, Graz, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, and so on. The same applies to traditional clothing: trachten, lederhosen, dirndls, and the like can be purchased at such places as Lanz (in Vienna and Salzburg), Giesswein (in Vienna). You may accidentally stumble over some treasures in small towns such as Tamsweg or Feldkirchen in Carinthia, or run across a farmer's market where honest-to-goodness handmade traditional clothing and ornamentations are being sold alongside sheep, boar, or deer skins, leatherware of all sorts, the best plum schnapps, and elderberry and wild raspberry syrups. As for pottery and crockery,
you may prefer to take home some of the cottage-industry ware from Stoob in Burgenland or a set of wooden plates that simply get better by the year.


Great Outdoors

Austria is one of the most participant-sport-minded countries in the world. Babies barely out of diapers practically learn to walk on skis. At a snowflake's notice, half the population takes to the slopes; in summer they all head for the lakes and rivers -- even to the Danube at Vienna -- or to go canoeing, rafting, canyoning, rock-climbing, mountain biking, or spelunking. Tennis is a standard fixture in the Austrian sports world, and golf is on the rise. But one of the great sports, again thanks to the mountains, is hiking, known as das Wandern.  This can mean anything from a leisurely stroll along the shores of Lake Fuschl to a major hike through the Karawanken in Carinthia lasting several days. Tourist offices inevitably have a Wanderkarte, a walking map, to help guide you on your way up, across, around, and down mountains. In fact, there are walking paths that crisscross the Alps, and if you are really a hot hiker, you can stay at refuges on the way and hardly ever come in contact with the "civilized"
world of the valleys. Even Vienna is surrounded and traversed by hiking paths: You can bring a special pad along distributed by the tourist office, and at specific sights you'll find a stamp. Bring enough stamps back to the tourist office, and you will receive a pin.