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Vienna to open restaurants, hotels and events on May 19th

After some doubts, Vienna has announced it will participate in the nationwide plan to open restaurants, hotels, sporting and cultural events from May 19th.

Published: 6 May 2021 16:45 CEST

Vienna to open restaurants, hotels and events on May 19th

A visitor walks past removed chairs at the 'Orient Accident' restaurant at Naschmarkt market in Vienna, Austria (Photo by JOE KLAMAR / AFP)

Vienna Mayor Michael Ludwig said on Thursday that the state was taking a risk in reopening, but was doing so with full confidence in its testing regime.

“On May 19th, we will reopen the cultural institutions in Vienna that are particularly close to my heart and also reopen the sports facilities in accordance with federal guidelines, as well as the hotel and catering trade,” Ludwig said.

Ludwig urged Viennese to proceed with caution, but said the city-state had adopted the “gold standard” in testing in order to identify and isolate the spread of the virus.

In addition to restaurants, hotels, sports facilities and cultural establishments opening up again on May 19th, face-to-face lessons will also start up again at schools in Vienna on May 17th.

Ludwig had previously questioned the plan, saying he wanted to find some “middle ground” between the nationwide plan and his desire to open up more slowly.

“So it will certainly be a middle ground, combining the desire to open up with responsibility for the safety and health of the population,” said Ludwig.

“We want to take these steps carefully, intelligently and sustainably.”

READ MORE: Austria to relax coronavirus measures on May 19th

The decision will ensure that Vienna – Austria’s most populous state – will relax coronavirus measures at the same time as the rest of the country on May 19th.

Vorarlberg, where infection rates have been much lower, is the only state to have already relaxed some measures, having done so in mid-March.

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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.

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