After a successful guided walk with GuruWalks in Berlin, I booked myself onto another walk in Vienna. The guide, Mario, was very good, telling us about the history of various buildings, statues, and squares — as well as telling us about how the current city functions.
I was fascinated to learn about the housing in Vienna. The local government owns about 25% of all housing. A small apartment costs about €300 per month! Mario, on arriving in Vienna to work at a university, found an apartment the following day! When he got married, it took two months to move to a bigger flat. Having two children, Mario applied for a bigger flat. This has taken longer but he will be moving into a new building next year when it’s finished.
Private companies are subsidised and charge about 12% more than the state. Rents are capped. This all sounds unbelievable given how many people struggle finding a decent place to rent in the UK and other parts of the world.
This policy, Mario thought, could be implemented elsewhere. However, in Vienna, it has taken over 70 years to get to the current state. In other countries, now, politicians wouldn’t have the patience or will for such a long-term project, even if building companies were willing.
Listening to Mario describing Vienna, I was struck by how much effort goes into making people’s lives better in small ways. Mario said people in Vienna are renowned for complaining. There is, for example, a “complaint” app! Wherever people are in Vienna, they can log a complaint about something public, upload photos, and see the status of their issue. The issues are visible to everyone, as are the photos (if they don’t contain sensitive information). Mario showed us the app with dots all over a Map of Vienna. Each dot represented the location of the complaint. If, for example, you were going to complain about a broken light near you or noise, you could look at the app to see if it’s been raised already.
Mario told a story of police trying to locate a man. His wife called them and gave them his number. However, the husband was confused and couldn’t give his location. Locating the man via his phone signal would require a court order, which would take some time and endanger him given his condition. So the police asked the man to carry out a simple action: honk his car horn! Sure enough, people reported the noise on the complaints app!
This story is probably untrue but a joke that illustrates a Viennese trait, which allows locals to nod and say, “Yes, that sounds like us.”
About 60% of people use public transport and there are now many more “cycle highways”. Vienna is consistently ranked as one of the best places to live in the world, having secured the top spot in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Ranking for 2024, 2019, and 2018, and in Mercer’s Quality of Living Survey for a decade until 2023. It placed second in 2024. I was beginning to see why.
My plan after the 2½-hour tour was to do a hike on the fringe of Vienna. I found the 11K City Hiking Trail 1 on a Vienna website.
However, it got a bit late to do the whole walk. Mario suggested that I take public transport to the peak then walk down. That would half the walk to about 6K, which was more realistic given the time available.
I got the metro and a bus to Kahlenberg, the small town at the half-way point. Then I started walking down. After reading some reviews, I opted for the clockwise route because, whilst descending, you had panoramic views of Vienna and the Danube river.
The walk is popular. Being a weekday, there were fewer people today. All the shops were shut. The region has many vineyards. So there’s plenty of wine to try during the walk, depending on when you go.
On the journey back, I had to change from tram to the metro. As I was walking, I saw this building.
It was on my list of things to see, which I’d forgotten about. Karl-Marx-Hof was built by a famous planner at the time, Karl Ehn. The building has featured in various films. It’s also one of the longest residential buildings in the world.
