Cafe vienna
They taught each other, jammed together, and spent a lot of time in Habsburg palaces. (Maria Theresa played a mean double bass.) Composers such as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and Mahler gravitated to this music-friendly environment. The Habsburg emperors of the 17th and 18th centuries were not only generous supporters of music but fine musicians themselves. Vienna may have lost its political clout, but culturally and historically, this city of Freud, Brahms, a gaggle of Strausses, Maria Theresa's many children, and a dynasty of Holy Roman emperors is right up there with Paris, London, and Rome.ÄȘs far back as the 12th century, Vienna was a mecca for musicians, both secular (troubadours) and sacred. Sharing coffee and cake with Viennese aristocracy who lived as if Vienna was an eastern Paris and as if calories didn't count, I was seeing the soul of Vienna - a city in love with life. "Dogs are the preferred child," she said, startling her friends into pearl-rattling stitches. I asked Loni about Austria's low birthrate. The average Viennese mother has 1.3 children and the population is down to 1.6 million. Today Vienna is a "head without a body" - an elegant capital ruling tiny Austria. Then Austria started, then lost World War I and, with it, her far-flung holdings. In 1900, Vienna's 2.25 million inhabitants made it the world's fifth-largest city (after New York, London, Paris, and Berlin). My grandparents are Hungarian." Pointing to her friends, she said, "And Gosha's are Polish, Gabi's are Romanian, and I don't even know what hers are."ÄŻor 600 years Vienna was the head of the once-grand Habsburg Empire. "We are a mix of the old Habsburg Empire. "A true Viennese is not Austrian, but a cocktail," Loni said, wiping the brown icing from her smile. Loni, the elegant white-haired ringleader, answered my questions about Austria. They were buzzing with excitement about the opera they were about to see - even bursting into occasional bits of arias. Luckily a coffee-party of older ladies, who fit right in with the smoked mirrors and chandeliers, made me feel welcome at their table. Munching Europe's most famous chocolate cake - the Sachertorte - in CafĂ©Â Sacher, across from Europe's finest opera house, I felt underdressed in well-worn khakis and Rockports.