Looking for the Hollmann Beletage Hotel? Do we have the right address? you may ask yourself as you head down Köllnerhofgasse, a short street about five minutes walk from St Stephen’s Cathedral. You stop at the entrance to a grand old apartment building and enter a secret code which opens the heavy door. Once inside, your eyes wander around the cavernous hallway, which looks little changed from the late Imperial era. Contemporary residents pass you with suspicious, unfriendly glances. You begin to feel like you shouldn’t be in here. Then your gaze is drawn to a sign which is utterly at odds with its surroundings. It is bright orange, for one thing, and points you to an old-fashioned elevator. This way to the Hollmann Beletage.


One floor up, and you are in another world entirely, another time. The gloom of a fin de siecle apartment building has been replaced with a dazzling orange and white twenty first century hotel entrance. But the mystery continues. There is no one here. The imposing oak reception desk stands unattended. Behind the desk is a white wall with an large orange impression of the Prater Wheel (very Third Man). But we don’t need anyone. The key to our room is lying on the desk, left by a mysterious attendant. We pass empty table and comfortable chairs and an undisturbed bookcase and step into the room. It is entirely in keeping with the entrance: white walls, orange bed spreads and minimalist furniture. The relentless modernism doesn’t stop the Hollmann being very comfortable. Instead of the stiff, generic sofas and chairs you find so often in expensive hotels, there is a 21st century chaise longue by the window, a perfect spot to read your morning copy of Der Standard.



Make sure you don’t have your breakfast in the room. The best part of the Hollmann is still to come. The following morning, the place is suddenly filled with staff and other guests. We head into the small, chic dining room where two young Viennese cooks are making breakfast in front of an open kitchen. There are endless pastries and cold cuts available. But I would advise any guests to try the cooked options. We both had poached eggs cooked to order with a delicious mixture of herbs, a unique concoction which would put the bland offerings of many five star hotels to shame.


Vienna is looking beautiful on this shining October morning. The crowds are out in force in the main shopping streets around St Stephen’s. Like many other European cities, there are a number of those strange guys who paint themselves to look like statues and stand there all day to earn a few coins from bemused tourists. For some reason, Vienna’s old town seems to have more of these guys than anywhere else I have been to. I counted at least seven in a 300-metre stretch. You have to wonder how competitive they get with each other. Do they have demarcation zones? Does the Statue of Liberty get into a fight with Admiral Nelson if one gets too close to the other? And what kind of career choice is this? What has to happen to your life that you get to the point where the best option you have is to spray yourself with gold paint every morning to stand immobile for eight hours in front of giggling, mocking Spanish school kids?

We put these questions to the back of our minds and head for one of city’s true delights, a Viennese Kaffehaus. Cafe Demel is in Kohlmarkt, a smart shopping street next to the Hofburg. Make sure you head upstairs for the true Kaffeehaus experience. There will be a big queue, the staff are extremely eccentric, and and they will keep you waiting perhaps 15-20 minute for a table; but it is worth it. The highlight was Viennese ice cream which had so much liquor in it, I was feeling quite tipsy after a few mouthfuls. A government health warning follows: this should not be part of your daily, or even weekly, diet; but every so often it is a mind-blowing treat. I also had one of the best Irish coffees I have ever tasted at Cafe Demel.

We try to do high culture in Vienna, but all the big names are out of town. So we book a Mozart concert at the Musikverein Brahms Hall, in the full knowledge that this will be an evening of ‘light’ music designed for the happy-snappy tourist audience. Sure enough, the flashbulbs are popping like crazy as this small ensemble head on stage in their ‘authentic’ 18th-century costumes. Some of these guys look like they want to be anywhere else but here, which is probably no surprise as they must get fed up of repeating this stuff night after night. Well, it’s better than pretending you are a statue of Eros back in the main square - marginally. It isn't a bad concert - a lot better when the orchestra is joined by two lively singers, a tenor and a soprano, for a brisk run through some old favourites from the Magic Flute and the Marriage of Figaro, finishing with a spirited rendition of Papageno. 


It’s another beautiful morning the next day, Sunday. So we head out of town to the Schonbrunn, the summer palace of Empress Marie-Therese. I am very happy that we are here in October, as it takes us a good twenty minutes to get to the front of the visitor queue. I hate to think what it’s like in the middle of summer. Once inside, it is well worth the wait. The tour of the palace must rank as one of the best in Europe. The decor remains largely unchanged from the time of the Hapbsurg dynasty, the audio guide is excellent, and you get a real sense of what life was like at the Imperial court. Walking through the comparatively spartan quarters of Emperor Franz Joseph, you can almost convince yourself you are back in the 1890s, and half expect the old boy to come bounding into the room, in the middle of yet another crisis somewhere in his ramshackle Empire. Of course, everyone wants to know about his tragic and beautiful wife, the Empress Elizabeth, the Princess Diana of her day. I’m much more fascinated to be in the very room where the last Emperor, the disastrous Charles I, was forced to abdicate at the end of the Great War, the end of one giant calamity and the harbinger of another. Outside the palace, the Schonbrunn is surrounded by splendid gardens where you can spend a very pleasant day. Climb the hill to Marie Therese’s great monument and sit on the grass looking down on the palace and the city spread out behind it.



It’s Monday morning at the Hollman, and the staff have magically reappeared again. It’s time to go. This is my third trip to Vienna. I arrived feeling like I have been never been able to get close to the heart and soul of this beautiful city. Our weekend goes some way towards addressing that, but there is still a lot more that I would find out about Vienna. If you are thinking of visiting, there can’t be a better time than mid-autumn. The Hollman is great fun, and doesn't break the bank. We've already booked a weekend for 2008.