Vienna: Plan the Trip from This Episode of Travel Man
- X
An Adventure in Vienna
Set your suitcases down in the Austrian capital and dive right into Viennese culture.
Richard Ayoade and Chris O'Dowd are reunited on screen, this time without the server room. In Series 2, Episode 1 of Travel Man, the two IT Crowd co-stars take on Vienna together, trading tech support for sausage stands, Sigmund Freud, and a descent into the city sewers. It's 48 hours done with dry efficiency and a fair amount of cake.
Vienna holds up well to this kind of treatment. The city is dense with history, food, film, and the quietly strange: the world's only dedicated Snow Globe Museum happens to be here, and Richard and Chris find it.
Sausages First, then Cake
Vienna's food culture operates at two distinct speeds: the fast stand and the long sit. The episode handles both. The sausage stand at Hoher Markt, Würstelstand am Hohen Markt, is one of the city's most central, an outdoor counter serving Käsekrainer and Burenwurst at any hour. It's not a tourist attraction dressed up as a local institution; it just is one.
The longer sit comes at Café Central on Herrengasse, one of Vienna's grand coffeehouses. Freud came here. Trotsky played chess here. The Melange is good and the Apfelstrudel is the version worth comparing everything else to. Richard and Chris work through wines and spirits alongside the cakes. Vienna does its own kind of aperitif culture, and the episode samples it broadly.
Richard Ayoade and Chris O'Dowd being served at Café Central, one of Vienna's grand 19th-century coffeehouses and a stop on their 48-hour itinerary.
Hot Rods, Horse Carts, and a Fairground
The city tour in this episode is done by hot rod, low-slung open-frame vehicles that cover the Ringstrasse and the inner city at speed. The Hot Rod City Tour runs 75-minute loops and covers ground efficiently, though efficiency isn't entirely the point.
The episode also takes in a horse and cart through the First District and a visit to Floating Islands at Auzinger, a pontoon setup on the Alte Donau that functions as more of a fairground-adjacent day out than a conventional amusement park.
The hot-rod city tour is one of the episode's more unusual ways to cover the Ringstrasse. Richard and Chris certainly make the most of it.
Two Strange Museums
The Snow Globe Museum does exactly what the name suggests and then goes considerably further. The collection runs to thousands of globes across dedicated sections for cities, scenes, and the genuinely peculiar. Chris O'Dowd, per the episode, breaks one. This is not a spoiler; it is the correct outcome for a person handling several thousand fragile objects in an enclosed space.
The Freud Museum is Freud's actual apartment and practice on Berggasse 19, where he worked from 1891 until he was forced out in 1938. The couch is a replica; most of his original furniture went with him to London. What remains is his library, his archaeological collection, and the rooms essentially as they were arranged. It's more interesting than a conventional house museum. The context is the entire twentieth century.
The Snow Globe Museum is exactly what it sounds like, and then some. Chris O'Dowd's visit did not end without incident...
The Third Man and the Sewers Below
The Third Man, directed by Carol Reed and released in 1949, was filmed largely on location in postwar Vienna. The chase sequence at the end, with Orson Welles as Harry Lime running through the city's sewer network, has become one of cinema's most enduring images. Vienna keeps the memory of it well maintained.
The Third Man walking tour moves through the Old Town, visiting original filming locations including Josefsplatz and several streetscapes that have barely changed since Reed's footage. The separate sewer tour, run by Wien Kanal from the Girardipark entrance at Karlsplatz, takes visitors down the original spiral staircase from the film into the cholera sewers built in the 1830s. Richard and Chris do both. You descend in a hard hat; the smell is apparently manageable.
Hotel Daniel
The episode stays at Hotel Daniel, a design-forward property in the 3rd district near the Belvedere and Stadtpark. It's known for its Airstream trailers in the courtyard, bookable if that appeals, and a terrace that works well in summer. It sits slightly away from the First District's intensity, which is not necessarily a disadvantage.
Plan the Trip
The episode squeezes a great deal into 48 hours, but this itinerary is built for 7 to 10 days with room to slow down. A morning at the Naschmarkt, an evening at the Staatsoper, or a day at the Kunsthistorisches Museum fit naturally around everything Richard and Chris have already mapped out. They move fast. You don't have to.
Click below to customize your Vienna trip →
An Adventure in Vienna
Set your suitcases down in the Austrian capital and dive right into Viennese culture.
- X
