December 2018

....(hopefully) not just for "the Christmas Child" or "Santa Claus".
On the first Sunday of Advent, our unique Hotel AUSTRIA - ADVENT WREATH will once again dominate our breakfast room!

Ms VEHIDA, Ms DONA and Mr RICHARD were once again very busy creating our very special Advent Wreath, in time for the first Advent Sunday! With a diameter of TWO (!) metres around the fountain in our breakfast room, you will find none like it in all of Vienna.
Have you already sniffed the FRAGRANCE of the green fir branches?

The first candle is already lit!
Let yourself be enchanted by the pre-Christmas season and our Advent Wreath...

As a start - Mr SASA spent many hours on the ladder to install our LIGHT CHAIN left and right from the hotel entrance.

A few days later, Ms DONA put up beautiful CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS throughout the house!

And then - our ladies sat down together,for hours on end in order to bake DELICIOUS CHRISTMAS COOKIES!

Ms DONA, Ms KHOON, Ms SLAVICA, Ms SONJA, Ms VEHIDA and many others!

On the 24th of December, EVERY ONE of our GUESTS will receive a full plate of HOME-MADE Hotel AUSTRIA CHRISTMAS COOKIES!!

At the change of year, the whole of Vienna is given over to partying and dancing. The New Year’s Eve Trail in the Old City is the highlight. A great ambience can be enjoyed as much at a gala dinner or festive ball as it can at a concert, the opera, in a hip club or a sophisticated bar.

Superb exhibitions and a dazzling array of events, concerts, operas, operettas and the hit musicals "Bodyguard" and "I am from Austria" promise a New Year's Eve program brimming with excitement throughout the day and night.
On December 31, Vienna's old citycenter transforms into a giant party zone: From 2 p.m. in the afternoon to 2 a.m. the following morning, top entertainment is guaranteed by the New Year's Eve Trail in the city center, at City Hall Square and in the Prater. Along the New Year's Eve Trail, dozens of gastronomes serve you punch and culinary treats. Numerous areas provided entertainment with show programs, waltzes, operetta, rock, pop, DJ lines and hit music. The classical area on Graben is a popular fixture. Vienna's dance schools offer crash waltz dancing courses here during the afternoon and transform Graben into an idyllic open-air ballroom. A large firework display will be held on City Hall Square and in the Prater at midnight.
A unique New Year's atmosphere can also be enjoyed on a boat trip along the Danube, at the New Year’s Eve Ball at the Hofburg Vienna (Imperial Palace) and at New Year galas held in City Hall and the city's leading hotels. The "Majestic Imperator", a a luxurious imperial, invites everyone to go on an exclusive ride into the new year, while "Die Fledermaus" by Johann Strauss is performed in time-honored tradition at the Vienna State Opera and also broadcast live on the outdoor screen.
New Year's Day in Vienna will be greeted in classic fashion with a morning "hangover cure" brunch - featuring a live broadcast of the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert on a big screen - in front of City Hall (from 10 a.m.)

Details for New Year's Eve Trail  www.wien-event.at

A hundred years after the founding of the First Republic, the new House of Austrian History on Heldenplatz casts light on our country's eventful history after 1918.

Exactly a hundred years after the founding of the First Republic on November 12, 1918, the House of Austrian History opens in Vienna. It is housed in the Neue Burg on Heldenplatz. On a total area of 1,800 m², it vividly depicts the creation of Austria, from the Habsburg monarchy, through the First Republic, annexation to the Third Reich and founding of the Second Republic down to the present day.

The opening exhibition entitled "Aufbruch ins Ungewisse - Österreich seit 1918" (Departure into the Unknown - Austria since 1918) illuminates the contradictory Austrian century in seven themed sections: The founding years of the Republic from 1918 to 1921 are focused on, as are the National Socialist terror, the emergence and change of Austrian consciousness, and the economic miracle after the Second World War. - All topics are presented in a comprehensible and appealing way with the aid of state-of-the-art exhibition technologically. Prominent exhibits include the government bench from the large session hall of the Parliament building as well as the "imperial box curtain", which was also discovered in Parliament in 2017. The historical showpiece designed by the architect Theophil Hansen decorated the box provided for Emperor Franz Joseph in the government building.

The House of Austrian History sees itself as a discussion forum and aims at stimulating debate on the ambivalences of Austrian history in a European and international context. The museum wants to look not only backward but also forward and examine the impact of the past on our present and future.

House of Austrian History
Hofburg,Heldenplatz, 1010 Wien
https://www.hdgoe.at

What happens when the multi-award winning US filmmaker Wes Anderson and his partner Juman Malouf curate an exhibition in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna? - Spitzmaus Mummy in a Coffin and other Treasures!

Cult director Wes Anderson ("The Grand Budapest Hotel", "The Darjeeling Limited", "The Royal Tenenbaums") loves traveling through Europe by train. And has a passion for old things. So he gladly accepted the invitation of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna (KHM) to browse its collection for a unique show together with his partner, costume designer and author Juman Malouf. For two whole years, both of them battled their way through more than four million paintings, art objects and works in the museum's storerooms and selected their favorites. The result is an exhibition that is slightly different from what can normally be seen at the KHM.

The show "Spitzmaus Mummy in a Coffin and other Treasures" presents over 400 unusual objects, many of which are being exhibited for the first time. In addition to the shrew coffin that gives the exhibition its title, these include ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, paintings by old masters, a selection of objects from the Kunstkammer and Schatzkammer, the Theater Museum and Ambras Castle near Innsbruck. In any case, the coming together and arrangement of these treasures gives a hint of the unbelievable abundance and density, history and complexity of the KHM's collections.

Spitzmaus Mummy in a Coffin and other Treasures – Wes Anderson and Juman Malouf, 6.11.2018–28.4.2019
www.khm.at

The Judenplatz Museum and the House of Music join the ranks of well-wishers by putting on two special exhibitions to celebrate the 100th birthday and exceptional talent of Leonard Bernstein.

Leonard Bernstein was considered to be one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century. As the music director of the New York Philharmonic, he shaped the musical self-confidence of the USA. His own compositions encompassed every genre and ranged from the musical "West Side Story" to the opera "A Quiet Place". The charismatic unconventional thinker, who was born the son of Russian immigrants in Massachusetts in 1918, would have turned 100 years old this year. To mark the occasion, the Judenplatz Museum focuses on his relationship with Vienna as the city of music in its exhibition "Leonard Bernstein. A New Yorker in Vienna", looks at his Jewish roots, and also honors him as a political person. Presented alongside one of the maestro's original tailcoats are photographs, video clips and acoustic contributions. And the House of Music dedicates the new cabinet exhibition "Embracing Music - Leonard Bernstein at 100" to the exceptional artist.

Leonard Bernstein had a lifelong relationship with Vienna. He came here repeatedly from 1966 until his death in 1990, mostly for his collaboration with the Vienna Philharmonic. As a Jew, Bernstein had an ambivalent relationship with this city. In a letter to his parents in March 1966, 21 years after the end of the Shoa, he wrote, "I am enjoying Vienna enormously - as much as a Jew can. The place is full of sad memories and one has to deal with so many ex-Nazis (and possibly those who are still Nazis); and you can never be sure whether one of those shouting bravo wouldn't have simply shot you dead 25 years ago. But it is better to forgive and, if possible, even to forget. […] Your Wiener Schnitzel Lenny."

Leonard Bernstein. Ein New Yorker in Wien, 17.10.2018-28.4.2019
www.jmw.at

Things get hot in the MuseumsQuartier - even on the coldest of winter days. This is thanks to the special punch creations, live concerts, DJ sounds and all sorts of action in November and December.

The MuseumsQuartier in Vienna is a popular meeting place, not just in summer. For "Winter at MQ", the courtyard turns into an atmospheric winter location. Unusual punch specialties to warm up with are poured in walk-in design objects called MQbis. LED cubes illuminate the MQbis and together with the sparkling trees and artistic light projections on the façades create a unique atmosphere. The "Winter Race" is held in the pond of the MuseumsQuartier - with remote-controlled cars. Visitors can also go curling on two lanes and play micro-extreme bowling, a mix of bowling, billiards and golf.

During "Winter at MQ", DJs provide warming sounds with a varied mix of music on Tuesday and Wednesday. The "MQ Hofmusik" opens its doors for concerts every Thursday. At the opening on November 8, the band "Gewürztraminer und gemischter Satz" gives a live concert in the MQ courtyard at 7.00 pm.

Those looking for Christmas gifts will find what they're looking for at the WinterWAMP design market on the MQ forecourt. Different designers present their products here on a weekly basis. And from November 30 to December 2, there's the chance to browse for gifts in the WeihnachtsQuartier, where designers offer interiors, ceramics, glass, fashion, jewelry and accessories for sale.

Winter 9.11.-23.12.2018

Mo-Fr 16-23 Uhr, Sa & So 13-23 Uhr
www.mqw.at/winter
Free entrance

With their exhibition project "Beauty", Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh supply a multimedial plea in the MAK for the desire for beauty.

Beauty was and still is somewhat negatively portrayed in the discourse on design throughout almost the entire 20th and 21st centuries. The graphic designers Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh counter this antipathy with impressive arguments and make beauty something to experience as a central, functional aspect of appealing design. The exhibition occupies the entire MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art. A mix of installations specially produced for the exhibition and examples of product design, city planning, architecture and graphic design animates visitors to see, smell and touch in the MAK Hall of Columns, the MAK Design Laboratory, the MAK Gallery, the MAK Kunstblättersaal and the MAK Collection of Contemporary Art. Supported by findings from the field of psychological aesthetics, Sagmeister and Walsh offer evidence that beautifully designed works stimulate human perception and thus function better.

Around 70 groups of objects will be set up, arranged into the six exhibition topics "What is beauty?", "The history of beauty", "In the eye of the beholder", "Experiencing beauty", "Transforming beauty" and "The beauty archive". The heart of the exhibition is the "Sensory Room", a sensually presented White Cube designed in collaboration with Swarovski. The outer skin of this installation was created in the MAK Design Laboratory in close cooperation with the creative team at Swarovski: Thousands of Swarovski crystals sparkle in an ornament designed by Sagmeister and Walsh and lend the room a special magic. Inside, the visitors - wrapped in fog - are met by the constantly changing colors of sunset. Smells perceived as "beautiful", such as citrus, and a carpet of sound of the Malaysian swamp frog's songs, provide an incomparable way to experience beauty. And the spectacular "Fog Screen", on which projections are played, stages the main entrance to the MAK on Stubenring and raises the central question upon stepping inside the museum: "What is beauty?"

Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty, 24.10.2018-31.3.2019
www.mak.at