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The Austrian Tourist Office can provide you all the general information you will need. Questions concerning travel tips, accommodation, culture, weather reports and more will be answered by the helpful staff.

At the Vienna Tourist Office you can pick up leaflets on the city’s sights and cultural events as well as on accommodation and guided tours.

For general information visit www.austriatourism.at. The website of the Vienna Tourist Board also contains information for blind visitors (www.info.wien.at). Other useful websites are given below.

Falter, die Wiener Stadtzeitung (The Vienna City Newspaper) gives an excellent and comprehensive insight of what’s going on in Vienna. It is available at any news-agent. Even if you don’t speak German, the listings are easy to follow.

The monthly brochure Wien-Programm offers an excellent overview of what Vienna has to offer. The listings include virtually every event in the city, ranging from festivals to concerts, from theatre and opera performances to sport events and markets. You can pick it up for free in travel agencies, tourist offices and ticket offices.

There is only one English-language newspaper, Austria Today , which is also available on the Internet (www.austriatoday.at) (see p136).

If you want to explore Vienna on foot you can join a variety of topical guided tours. Choose to follow in the footsteps of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, take a tour through the old city or Jewish Vienna or descend to underground Vienna (see pp62–3).

Several companies do bus tours to Vienna’s most famous sights. As in many other European cities there is also a hopon-hop-off bus circling the most famous landmarks, allowing you enough time to stay at whichever sight you like most.

Exploring Vienna on a bike is a good alternative if you want to see the sights from a relaxed perspective. Several companies, such as Pedal Power and Bike and Guide, offer guided bike tours of two to three hours, held each year in spring and summer.

Boat trips regularly head off from Vienna along the Wachau Valley. Alternatively trips the other way head to Bratislava (1 hour) and Budapest (4 hours). All ships have restaurants and sundecks. A number of themed cruises are also available.