Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

VIENNA

IN PICTURES: the best outdoor pools in Vienna

Summer is almost here, and the pool season has started in Vienna. Here are six of the city's best ones that you should definitely visit.

Published: 23 May 2024 14:03 CEST
Updated: 26 May 2024 17:44 CEST
IN PICTURES: the best outdoor pools in Vienna
Vienna has a lot of public pools where you can enjoy swimming during the warmer months. Press/MA 44

Schönbrunner Bad

If you want to enjoy swimming in green nature and maybe combine it with a visit to Schönbrunn castle and gardens, this is the place to go.

The main pool is 50 meters long and offers space for both people who want to do sport swimming and those who want to swim more relaxed. Besides the sports swimming pool, the place also offers a kids pool, a beach volleyball court, and a small fitness studio.

READ ALSO: The German language you need for summer in Austria

If you want to relax, you can enjoy the sun terrace, which also offers shade, or the indoor rest areas.

The pool is open from 8:30 am to 9 pm during the summer months, and a standard daily entry costs €19, since this swimming pool is a private one and does not belong to the city. 

You can book your entry online here. 

 
 
 
 
 
View this post on Instagram
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by Schönbrunnerbad (@schoenbrunnerbad)

Schafbergbad 

This is one of the city’s most popular public pools, offering great facilities and amazing views over the city. It is located on a hill on the outskirts of Währing.

The sports swimming pool is 50 metres long, and in the area you will also find a children’s pool with water slides and play areas, a volleyball court, table tennis court, a kiosk where you can eat, and a small fitness studio.

The pool is open from 9 am to 7:30 pm during the week and it opens at 8 am on weekends and holidays.

The standard price for a daily ticket for an adult is €7.60.

You can read more about the pool here. 

READ MORE: 4 beautiful lakes you can easily reach from Vienna by public transport

Krapfenwaldbad 

This public pool from the city offers espectaular views over Vienna from its hilly location in Ottakring.

Here you can enjoy swimming in a 50-metre-long pool, play volleyball or table tennis, or just lie outside in one of the adjustable sun chairs. There is, of course, also a swimming pool for children, a smaller fitness studio, and other facilities.

The standard price for a daily ticket for an adult is €7.60, and you can read more about the place here.

The pool is open from 9 am to 7:30 pm during the week. On weekends and holidays it opens at 8 am.

 
 
 
 
 
View this post on Instagram
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by Wien | Vienna (@vienna)

Strandbad Gänsehäufel

Since the beginning of the 20th century, this has been one of Vienna’s most popular public bathing spots.

This beach bath is located on the Danube Island, and you can choose between enjoying some of the area’s natural beaches at the shore of the Danube or their pools.

The area also offers a water slide, mini golf establishment, beach volleyball court, table tennis tables, and much more.

The facilities are open from 9 am to 7:30 pm during the week and it opens at 8 am on weekends and holidays. A standard daily ticket for an adult costs €7.60.

Read more about what they are offering here. 

READ ALSO: Where in and around Vienna can I pick strawberries?

Kongressbad

Kongressbad is one of the city’s oldest public swimming pools. It takes you back in time with its facility buildings from the end of the 1920s, although of course modernised, so do not worry.

Here you can enjoy sport swimming, an adventure pool, a waterslide, a football court, volleyball courts, or why not a buffet in the restaurant.

Kongressbad is open from 9 am to 7:30 pm during the week and it opens at 8 am on weekends and holidays. The standard price for a daily ticket for an adult costs €7.60, and you can read more about what Kongressbad has to offer here. 

 
 
 
 
 
View this post on Instagram
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by Sophie Tromp (@trompsophie)

Neuwaldegger Bad

Neuwaldegger Bad is a private and family-owned swimming area, located right on the edge of the forest in Neuwaldegg, on the outskirts of Hernals

The swimming pool is large and divided into two parts, one for swimming and one for playing. The area also offers volleyball courts, table tennis tables, and a huge green space for picnics and sunbathing.

A specialty of the place is the restaurant, where the owner prepares home-cooked meals.

The area is open daily from 9 am to 6:30 pm, and a daily entry ticket for an adult costs €19.50.

Read more about the swimming pool here. 

READ NEXT: 10 exciting events in Vienna this June

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

VIENNA

Could be wurst: Vienna sausage stands push for UN recognition

From top bankers and politicians to students and factory workers, Vienna's popular sausage stands heaving with bratwurst and meaty delicacies are a longstanding cultural legacy they hope to have recognised by UNESCO.

Published: 23 June 2024 08:31 CEST
Could be wurst: Vienna sausage stands push for UN recognition

The owners of 15 stands in the Austrian capital have formed a lobbying group and applied last week to have the “Vienna sausage stand culture” inscribed as intangible cultural heritage by the UN agency.

“We want to create a kind of quality seal for Vienna sausage stands,” said 36-year-old Patrick Tondl, one of the association’s founders whose family owns Leo’s Wuerstelstand — Vienna’s oldest operating sausage stand.

“At the sausage stand, everyone is the same… No matter if you’re a top banker who earns hundreds of thousands of euros or if you have to scrape together the last euros to buy a sausage… You meet here, you can talk to everyone,” he adds.

High inflation driving consumers looking for affordable meals, plus a new wave of vendors with updated flavours, have helped keep the stands busy.

Tondl’s great-grandfather started their business in the late 1920s, pulling a cart behind him and selling sausages at night.

The family’s customers have included former chancellor Bruno Kreisky, recalls Vera Tondl, 67, who runs the shop together with her son Patrick.

Leo’s is one of about 180 sausage stands in Vienna today, out of a total of about 300 food stands, selling fast food at fixed locations and open until the early hours, according to the city’s economic chamber.

Whereas the number of stands has remained similar over the last decade, more than a third have changed from selling sausages to kebabs, pizza and noodles, a spokesman for the chamber told AFP.

‘Momentum’

But sausage stands have seen a “mini boom” in customer numbers recently, according to Patrick Tondl.

Many have been drawn back to the stands by high inflation, where a meal can be had for less than 10 euros ($11) with lower overheads than restaurants.

New stand operators have also brought a “bit of momentum”, said Tondl, bringing the likes of organic vegetarian sausages with kimchi.

Tourists are already drawn in droves.

“When you come to Austria, it’s what you want to try,” 28-year-old Australian tourist Sam Bowden told AFP.

The cultural legacy of Vienna’s sausages is far-reaching, including the use of the term “wiener” for sausages in the United States, which is believed to have derived from the German name for Vienna, Wien.

However Sebastian Hackenschmidt, who has published a photo book on the stands, said the legacy of the “Vienna phenomena” is more complex.

He says that for many in multicultural Vienna, the sausage stands hold little appeal — equally for the growing number of vegetarians — and their universal appeal is something of a “myth”.

“Vienna is a city in great flux… With the influx of people, cultural customs are also changing,” Hackenschmidt told AFP.

Some 40 percent of Vienna’s two million inhabitants were born outside the country, where the anti-immigrant far-right looks set to top September national polls for the first time.

SHOW COMMENTS