Vienna

Vienna’s green wavelengths

The Prater park, the Vienna woods and the Lobau: Vienna is green no matter which way you look. Fifty percent of the Austrian capital is made up of green spaces and in 2010 the city received the accolade of having the best quality of living worldwide from the international Mercer study. It isn’t just in internationally orientated events in the city centre like Danube Day that we see Vienna riding a green wave. Instead it is also clear in the town’s most hidden corners: some city-dwellers grow cannabis quite legally, others opt for a car-free life, and others still go back to nature and live in caravan communities. Five European reporters got to the bottom of Vienna’s green lifestyle as part of cafebabel.com’s monthly editorial project Green Europe on the Ground (Image: (cc) M'sieur Rico/ Flickr)

• Read the special edition Vienna’s green wavelengths
• Vienna and the lords of the Danube
• AKW Lobau: Vienna caravan communities away from it all
• Cannabis legalisation: shopping for reality in Vienna

Austrian blood stirs

To welcome our new cafebabel.com local team in Vienna, we have a look at this tiny country which has become big in the international news thanks to the trial of incest father Joseph Fritzl and the sudden death of Europe’s most popular right wing politician, Jorg Haider. But Austria is also the country that has just won its case for banning GM crops against the European commission, that gives 16-year-olds the right to vote and that has the lowest unemployment rate in Europe (4%), after the Netherlands

• Read the special edition Austrian blood stirs
• No skilled labour in Austria? In Hungary, Csorna hangs in there
• Voting aged 16: are the Austrians Europe's most mature?
• Austria’s ban on cultivating genetically modified sweetcorn
• Film review Austria: The Bone Man is rootsy, rank and riotous
• Austrian tabloids make global headlines with Joseph Fritzl, incest father
• The Bone Man’s Josef Hader & Wolfgang Murnberger: ‘Intelligent nastiness is our speciality’

Cinema: Persepolis hits the UK

Released on 25 April in an English-dubbed version, a review of Franco-Iranian artist Marjane Satrapi's Oscar-nominated animation of a girl displaced in Vienna

by jens wiesner // 25/04/08

vienna, religion, middle east, art spiegelman, men and women, discrimination, tehran

Interrail for the future

Spanning north to south, stretching east to west: travelling in Europe as of 2020 will be easier and faster thanks to the upcoming Trans-European Transport Network (TEN)

by sergio nava // 08/06/07

vienna, switzerland, bratislava, germany, warsaw, environment, economy

Masks and carnival, immortal combination

The masked festivities of Venice and Vienna have increasingly become commodified as tourist attractions. Amidst European celebrations, masks have lost their social function

by joshua craze // 16/02/07

vienna, venezia, society, culture, europe

Austria - after the Mozart marathon

Last year, on January 27, Mozart Year opened with much celebration. Have we learned anything about the musical genius?

by Annamaria Szanto @ // 26/01/07

vienna, music, communism, europe, austria