There’s almost always something going on at the Rathaus (City Hall) in Vienna.  We live very close by (I think, technically, it’s about 2 blocks from us, but you can also see it from our west-facing windows).  When we go for a walk or a run, we go right by, and we’ll often either drop by or just take a peek at whatever is going on, whether it’s a movie festival, ice skating or an elaborate market.

It’s one of my most favorite things about where we live in the city.  Most of these happenings at the Rathaus aren’t major enough to us that we’d make special plans to come into the city just to attend them, and even if we did, just the trouble of doing that would add a ton of pressure to be sure we made the experience worth the effort.  Since we live just down the street, though, we can put the kids in the stroller and walk over any time something looks interesting.  Sometime’s it’s really cool and we make an afternoon or an evening of it, sometimes it’s not our thing and we walk through and go to the playground instead.

This weekend, there’s a Styrian festival set up over there.  Styria is an Austrian state, located to the southwest of Vienna.  I frankly don’t know a lot about it except that it’s pretty rural and the best pumpkin seed pesto I ever ate came from there (good ham, too).  And apparently they make wine — probably 90% of the booths at the “Styrian Village” (basically a big market/festival) were selling wine.  We noticed the market yesterday when we went out for a walk, but we were in a hurry to get home and start movie night, so we went today instead.  We just took a leisurely stroll around the “village”, looking at everything, sharing a hamburger, watching intoxicated people polka to live accordion music and generally enjoying the very festive atmosphere.  B also got a balloon.  We had a great time.

We didn’t really “do” much, but we enjoyed being there.  I love living so close to things like that — it adds a lot of variety to our Vienna experience, without a lot of effort.  Perfect!