Vienna, once the capital of an empire of which it was said that the sun never set over it, is now equally as important as the capital of a newly-invigorated Central Europe that bridges East with West.
Spending summer and winter in Vienna, one notices an entirely different, but equally vibrant, energy.  I’ve been spending time each year in Vienna since my youth.  In 2008, I was in Vienna for a week in June during the Euro 2008 football championship.  At the beginning of last year I returned to attend the …

The Wachau is an area of Austria that I have visited regularly since childhood.  It is a valley that runs along the Danube river for 33 km from Melk to Krems but today is the first time I viewed it from the Danube itself.  I left Krems on the Austria, one of several vessels from Brandner that run along the river and disembarked in Weißenkirchen one hour later.
A short walk along the Wachaustraße took us to the the main retail location for Wieser, a purveyor of local apricot marmalade (Marillenmarmalade) …

Join me as I embark upon a tour to the three main wine-growing regions of Austria.
I departed New York on 4 September via Austrian Airlines, coincidentally on the first day of ownership of the airline by Lufthansa.  Fortunately, not much has changed and hopefully, as the Austrian newspapers have written, it will simply be “red uniforms without red ink.”
The first order of business was to pick up a BMW Z4 sDrive23 from BMW of Austria and drive to Langenlois, where the beautiful new wine and spa resort  Loisium …

The Burgenland, Austria’s youngest Bundesland or state, shares the Neusiedler See, Austria’s largest lake, with Hungary. Eisenstadt (Kismarton), its capital, was the seat of the Eszterházy Hungarian noble family and Joseph Haydn lived there as Hofkapellmeister under Esterházy patronage. 2009 is the Hadyn-Jahr (Haydn Year) in honor of the 200th anniversary of the composer´s death. This area was once referred to as “German-speaking western Hungary”.

The Wachau region along the Danube (Donau) river in Niederösterreich (Lower Austria), namely the village of Dürnstein as well as Stift Melk have become destinations for visitors.
Dürnstein is where Richard Löwenherz (Richard the Lionhearted) was held captive during the Crusades and you can visit the ruins atop a hill today. It is also a wonderful place to bike ride, enjoy good Austrian wine (Grüner Veltliner, for example), and excellent Austrian cuisine. Stift Melk is one of the world’s most famous and beautiful monastic sites.
In many parts of the Wachau, you …

Austria borders Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. Modern Austria dates back to the ninth century, when the name “Ostarrichi” (Old High German for “Eastern Territory”) was first used in an official document.
The country is known the world over for its music: Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn, Mozart, and Strauß (father and son) are some of the more prominent names of composers but Austria has more recent musical exports including Falco …

Vienna is Austria´s capital and has a population of ca. 1.7 million (2.3 million within the metropolitan area). It is also one of nine Federal States of Austria, the largest city in Austria, and its cultural and commercial center. It has the tenth largest population in the EU and was rated 2nd in quality of living by Mercer.
Vienna traces its origins back to 500 B.C.E. and was a Roman frontier city, known as Vindobona (“good wine”), guarding the Roman Empire against Germanic tribes to the north.  It was the capital …