Viennese whirl: a Christmas break in Vienna
Yet nobody in the café blinks an eye. The girl is one of the post-concert crowd in Café Sacher, an ornate kaffeehaus opposite the Vienna State Opera. Elderly women in fur hats spoon cream into hot chocolate, young couples share strudel and cigarettes. A bow-tied waiter named Fritz ushers us to a table and brings us goulash, tut-tutting the ornamental girl as she walks out into the icy darkness without a coat.
In London I usually cringe before the coloured lights as December comes around, but in Vienna I'm a Christmas convert. It's no surprise to find that the snow globe was first patented here. The city's passion for Christmas makes Dickens seem subtle on the subject. Grimacing gingerbread men stare out of bakeries, old-world porcelain dolls with green velvet dresses cluster at the windows of toy shops and everywhere you look snow globes of miniature Viennese landmarks are trapped in perpetual storms, Kazinform has learnt from the Guardian.
Here you can revel in winter, from the Christmas markets of December to the great balls of January. More than 300 balls are thrown during the season, including the Opera Ball and the Bonbon Ball, a reminder of how after the defeat of Napoleon this city was the diplomatic and entertainment centre of the world. Frosty-breathed choirs sing in market stalls and if you wake up early on a Sunday you can walk through deserted streets to hear the Vienna Boys' Choir at the Hofburg Chapel, part of the network of courtyards and arches that forms the Hofburg Quarter. The area began as a small city fortress and grew into an elaborate palace, each generation adding new façades and gardens until the Habsburg family fell from power in 1918. The choir sings Paternoster and high mass is performed under gothic-canopied niches and stained glass windows. My favourite moment of the weekend is stepping out of the chapel and finding a harpist wrapped in furs playing to an empty courtyard.
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