According to the ratings, Vienna has been recognized endlessly as the most comfortable city in the world to live in. A city where meeting a crown is much more difficult than a Turk, an Arab, an African American or a Russian tourist. Where in all the toilets in the central area there are turnstiles with the inscription 0.50 €, and even if you bought something in this place, this does not give the right to free entrance to the toilet. A city where all grocery stores close on Saturday at 7 pm and do not work all Sunday, so it feels like a Shabbat has arrived.
Vienna is the best city in the world to bum with homeless people in a Spar shop at a table in the ready-to-eat department: drink fruit serum for 60 cents in the neighborhood with a representative of the Vienna bottom in a felt hat pouring beer into a coffee cup.
Here, at the entrance to McDonald's, the atmosphere of a London pub reigns on Friday night. Only instead of men with beer mugs at the door are schoolchildren with phones, greedily clinging to the free network.
According to common beliefs, you were not in Vienna if you did not try the Sacher cake and the sausages from the Würstelstand kiosk. And I, of course, was not in this Vienna, because before you try the most expensive cake in the world (according to the latest data, almost 10 € per piece) in the most comfortable city in the world, you need to wait in line at the Sacher cafe, while waiting in a luxurious little the hall, suggestive of his own insignificance, will be free table. And one sausage at the Würstelstand kiosk costs like a whole package of the same sausages at the grocery store, and even a bun for 15 cents to boot.
I was in Vienna where beer and frankfurt sausages are served with goulash on tables with greasy tablecloths of burgundy color of gigantic poverty, and a check is written out by hand without specifying dishes. I was in a bakery, where by all the rules of coffee etiquette, a cup of coffee is served with a glass of water on a small tray and accompanied by a free branded cookie with a pronounced taste of palm oil.
To see Vienna from itself
To see Vienna from the heart, from a height of 136 meters, you need to go through 343 steps along the endless serpentine of hell. 343 steps, bringing him to the stage of enlightenment or hypertensive crisis. In the middle of the climb, you begin to lose the feeling of reality, looking at the endless segments of stairs, fanning to the right and up. The infinite monotony of steps in the infinite monotony of steps. Here I recall the dances of dervishes who, from a long whirl, fall into a trance. Trance climbing spiral staircase.
In fact, Vienna looks like a box of assorted chocolates: on the left is baroque with a Greek portico and Roman columns, on the right is classicism, next to the gothic, next to the opera house there is a sculpture of a pink hare dedicated to Dürer, and a little further away is modern, imitating wall panels stitched with nails. The density of architectural monuments in the center is approximately three houses and one church per person. From this abundance, emotional and informational glut comes very quickly, which you want to throw off, having left somewhere where there are no magnificent buildings at all. For example, in Döbling, on the way to which a fantastic waste incineration plant looks like a castle of the garbage queen.
When I come back to Vienna, I will live in this, 19th district. Among the cozy streets with two-story houses and private mansions. Near the hills planted with vineyards, where you can eat unreached sweet berries of different varieties and climb the path through the forest to a height of 450 meters, from which you can see a huge city with an island in the middle, the Danube with a dividing strip and forests with colorful foliage .