A glass of Glühwein at 10am
Pete, Anastasia & Pete's Mum, Iris, visit Vienna — January 2026.
"Why is there no pigeon shit on these buildings?" asked Mother as we hung over the balcony on the roof of St Charles Church, quietly observing the array of nativity houses and Glühwein tents in a small basin below.
"I’m sure they do mother." I said with only a modicum of reassurance.
She had a point. The buildings in Vienna, either palatial or residential, can be quite uniformly dull from the outside. Especially on a cold winter's morning when the grey skies and the cream-hued blandness of it all seem to blend the sort of featureless manner that us Londoners aren't accustomed to. Surely some tag graffiti would be a welcome break from the endless beige-ness. Or as Mother points out, some tears and trails of pigeon shit to interrupt the lines of the buildings.
St. Charles Church, Vienna
A quick Google was in order to ascertain if Mother was onto something, and behold she was right. It turns out that Austrians are deliberately stingy with their feeding of pigeons, and the tiny rations are spiked with a contraception to manage the population. Meanwhile, the cold had pierced my resilience for wanting a breath of fresh air and a cool aerial photo for the INSTA. I was rueing my life choices for wearing the thinnest of nylon trousers in sub zero temperatures and I petitioned for mother, the wife and I to head back downstairs, and warm our spirits with a glass of Glühwein.
"But it's 10am?"
...exclaimed Anastasia. "Exactly they'll just be opening up." I added.
We scurried down the spiral staircases, feigning interest in the costumes of ancient religious garb and scoffed at the ghastly modernist light installation that obscured the beautiful biblical frescoes inside the dome.
The Glühwein was just the tonic, as was the second and even third. It was a modest little market compared to the grandiosity of the Winter Market at the Schönbrunn Palace or the Rathouse which boasted stalls selling chess craft, seemingly self-propelled glittery Christmas decorations and endless scented cedar balls which all women in my life have an irrational frenzy for.
(Back in London mid-Jan: Oh what is that gorgeous smell? Cedar Balls? Where do you find these? Austria Winter Markets? Are they still open? Harold book us on the next flight out to Austria and fetch the extra carry-on from the basement. No there's no time, the dogs will just have to fend for themselves, now hurry).
Modest yes, but far from inferior. After all, this one had a pen of pigs and goats next to the nativity play, which confused me somewhat as I watched the children play in the same straw and wondered how on earth this could pass any health and safety laws. That, and you didn't have to freeze your bollocks off in a queue for 20 minutes to get a hot mug of spicy alcohol.
Reluctantly, we left the market after deeming it socially unacceptable to be too pissed before noon, and trundled onto the Belvedere Palace; a historic building complex boasting 800 years of art history—with masterpieces by Klimt, Schiele, Funke, Messerschmidt and van Gogh.
It was a bitterly cold walk that was only punctuated when I took refuge with the wife and mother inside a tiny second hand book shop.
The man behind the counter seemed positively unperturbed at my rejoicing in finding a rare copy of You Only Live Twice, for the bargain price of five euros.
Austrian's are notorious for their cautious and stoic attitude to customer service. His face was sullen. His forehead gauged with the kind of wrinkles one would associate with a journeyman chef. The shopkeeper's eyes lit up for the moment of the trade, and then drooped the second the transaction was done. His hair was long and and wirey, and clung like velcro to the shoulders of his green city-tweed jacket. If Austrian men have hair, they tend to grow it beyond its natural means, and with it, their eyebrows. Wild and unkempt.
Finally we made it to the Belvedere. Inside the most famous of all Austrian paintings, The Kiss by Gustav Klimt, was fettered with tourists and narcissists clambering to get their photo in front of it. The selfie really has become the scourge of museums everywhere, especially those with the iconic tentpole attractions, be it the Mona Lisa in the Louvre or van Gogh's Sunflowers in the National Gallery. For me, The Kiss is simply pop art at best.
Klimt's far superior painting (in this armchair art critic's humble opinion) of Sonya Kipps in the pink feather dress, hangs opposite largely unmolested by visitors. Klimt himself was a notorious womanizer. Although he never married, Klimt had a great many lovers and is said to have fathered 14 children. But it seems if your talent out stretches your less than moral predilections, and indeed enough time has elapsed, people can easily decouple the artist from the womanising, and either forget all about it, or tend not to give a shit.
Gustav Klimt: Left, The Kiss (1907-1908) and right, Sonja Kipps (1898)
We ventured back into the centre and decided we'd follow in the footsteps of Ian Fleming, who recommended The Clock Museum in his travel memoir Thrilling Cities. After getting momentarily lost down the labyrinth of back-alleys and side streets, as well as pinning oneself to the wall on numerous occasions so as not to get run over by the horse and carts we eventually stumbled upon an unassuming building that was the Clock Museum. The doors were all shut and there was no sign of life inside. Before I even had time to suggest a return to the Glühwein tent the wife cried from round the corner...
"The museum is here!"
Naturally I had gotten the wrong unassuming building, and the Clock Museum was indeed squirreled away with not a single photo of a clock on the exteriors to promote its presence. Inside it was normal service resumed with a greyish gentleman at the front desk who seemed annoyed at my very presence. I purchased 3 tickets and broke some money down to use the lockers for bags and duffle coats. When I presented him the passage in Thrilling Cities that mentioned the Clock Museum this did nothing to dissuade his bored countenance. He informed me that he had never heard of Ian Fleming, and he had no idea what pornographic clock faces hidden in the vault in the museum Fleming was referring to in the book. I wanted to ask if he'd heard of James Bond, but decided to quit whilst I was considerably behind.
Up the winding concrete spiral staircase the journey of clocks begins. We were the only ones in the museum but being English, spoke in hushed tones and awed and cooed at the sound of chimes that serenade the hallways like we were watching a firework display.
The clocks were nothing short of spectacular, each with their own story and deserved place in the museum. From the clock one would hang over the bed, shaped like an oversized tennis ball with the dial face on its under belly so you could tell the time when you woke up, to the gallery of landscape paintings, each with a clock tower in them and yes, each clock tower had a physical clock mounted from the rear of the canvas to tell the time. Quite remarkable. It was from behind the clock I had so eagerly wished to see, that Nikolia, a museum volunteer emerged.
Although if I were being unkind, the clock despite its grandiosity couldn't quite eclipse his rather portly belly.
Clock Museum, Vienna
This clock, the astronomer clock that Fleming mentioned as the museum's piece de resistance, took centre stage in a room lined with what I would call Grandfather clocks although I'm sure there is a much more technical and accurate term. Nikolai smiled effusively and his enthusiasm for each and every clock which he didn't refer to as his children, but his smile and reverence certainly did, was infectious. We had a private tour, with no extra cost, thanks in part to being the only patrons in the museum but largely down to Nikolai's encyclopedic brain and indefatigable passion to weave a yarn.
We left after a couple of hours drenched in the sumptuous scent of horology. The wife was immediately inspired to buy several antique clocks on eBay which would await us on our return home.
Our elevated mood took a sharp turn for the morose over lunch at the Museum Cafe — the famed restaurant that Klimt and some other painter once popped in to take a crap — when the news started to filter in about the killings on Bondi Beach (Sydney, Australia). Not only that but the equally incomprehensible murders of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele. Particularly poignant as my wife and I had just watched This is Spinal Tap at the Prince Charles Theatre in London only a week before, and caught the excellent but without the hilarity sequel on the plane back from Florida a week before that.
The dour mood was further compounded by Herr Martin the head waiter. The only thing that looked more tired and forlorn was his brown suit, worn supposedly to distinguish himself from the other waiters. But only succeeded in making him look a down-on-his-luck bookmaker. When an altercation with the credit card payment arose, Herr Marten proved to be, and I don't pretend to use this word lightly, a magnificent ***t. Instead of pouring cold water on what was the most amicable of disagreements (too complicated and minuscule to get into here) he took the scorched-earth-Ripley approach igniting a flamethrower to a batch of Facehugger eggs.
Clearly the term, the customer is always right, was not only lost in translation, but a swear word to this pumped-up pathological nitwit. I let the wife and Herr Marten go several rounds before finally intervening, standing to my feet even and requesting to see Herr Marten's superior. Reluctantly, he slothed off and was replaced by the most timid of girls who couldn't have been older than 18, clutching a bunch of miscellaneous folders and files.
Oh God I sighed. They've rolled out the intern to kick this interminable affair even further into the long grass. Yet remarkably, the young girl full of sincerity and innocence, diffused the situation with the kind of customary aplomb and charm that endeared us tremendously. So much so we traded numbers with the promise that should we receive any further complications that she would be on hand personally to resolve them.
"So," I enquired to the young girl, "what exactly is Herr Marten's role here in the Cafe?"
"Herr Marten is just filling in, he is normally in the back room looking after the books." She candidly replied.
"Well if I can make a small suggestion. For the sake of the Cafe's stellar reputation, it might be an idea for the company to get Herr Marten off your books entirely. Failing that, relieve him of any future floor-walking duties, and should I see him outside of these premises, I will do my utmost to relieve him of his consciousness." Admittedly the last sentence was something I cooked in my mind later on as I played out the scenario countlessly channeling my Michael Caine Get Carter hard man alter ego.
It could be said the best thing about Vienna is leaving. Vienna Lounge at Terminal 1 in Vienna Airport is capacious, replete with fine wines (as fine as the Austrians can make that is) and thronged with high quality reproductions of Klimt's and Schiele’s self-portraits.
It's voted not just the best in Europe, but the overall global winner in the inaugural Priority Pass Excellence Awards. The awards consider over 1,500 lounges and travel experiences and are judged on 379,966 Priority Pass member ratings and reviews across a wide range of criteria, including quality of facilities, customer service, and overall the level of shit-faced-ness one can achieve in the one hour or so before boarding. They even have a Bloody Mary station set aside for this very purpose.
But the one thing the wife and I look forward to most when visiting the lounge, is not the strudel or the panoramic unobscured view of the airfield, but the chocolate bananas in the sweet Viennese cafe area. Whilst my low self-esteem and somewhat implacable moral core will only allow me to take a small handful of these sweets, the wife takes no shame in surreptitiously squirreling away bundles upon bundles of the addictive little buggers into her handbag. I'm particularly concerned about this kind of low-level thievery, not from a moral standpoint, nor the inevitable embarrassment of being caught, or associated, but the consequence of being black-balled from the most prestigious and haloed lounges in all of Europe.
Incidental Intelligence
Like Fleming, I shall too recommend the Blaue Bar and the Restaurant Rote Bar in the Sacher Hotel. The Blau Bar has several signature cocktails, one being the Sacher Martini which to my taste had too much of all kinds of syrupy stuff that shouldn't be anywhere near a Martini. And speaking of the sickly sweet, don't forget to ask a member of staff in the Rote Bar to explain the provenance of the Sacher Torte and watch closely as life drains from their eyes.
Restaurant Rote Bar at the Sacher Hotel, Vienna
Don't forget to wander the halls and upstairs lobby which are thronged with photos of celebrities that have frequented the hotel. Sadly there is none of Ian Fleming, though Nic Cage is pictured twice and Christopher Guest is explained as 'the husband of Jamie Lee Curtis.'
Upon every visit to Vienna we pay a visit to Ribs. An underground meat restaurant where you'll get to eat like a viking under a brick barrel-vaulted ceiling. The wife has specifically asked me not to mention that Mother asked to inspect the bottle of Acqua Panna before stating 'oh this should have plenty of body coming from the Tuscany region.' So I won't. But it was the heartiest laugh I had on the entire trip.
For Bond fans and fans of The 3rd Man, Prater Park is always worth exploring. This was my 2nd attempt to see the Schlosstheater in the Schönbrunn Palace, the stage for the concert Bond and Kara Milovy attended the opera performance. The first time they were shut although it was an impromptu visit. This time I had mistakenly booked a concert at the Orangery Theatre at the palace. These blasted rich bastards and their superfluous theatres.
About the author
Peter Brooker is the co-author of From Tailors With Love an Evolution of Menswear Through the Bond Films and is also Editor-in-Chief of From Tailors With Love, a blog, vlog and podcast dedicated to men’s costumes and cinematic style.
Above: Pete with his Wilde & Harte Osterley Safety Razor.
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