Diving in the Donau: Prater Unser

Das Grätzl – your neighborhood or community, a smaller and less top-down way of dividing up the city than the Bezirk system – is incredibly important to Austrians. It’s one way of making a city of 1.8 million people feel smaller and less anomic, and it’s rare for Austrians to move out of their district to another, more foreign part of the city.

For students, of course, the situation is somewhat different. Our lives are centered around the places where we go to Uni, where we have our Praktika (internships), and the Studentenlokals we frequent, rather than the life of the Grätzl we happen to find ourselves in. Last semester, I lived in the 6. Bezirk, which was incredibly convenient for a student. My late-night commutes home from the Gürtel weren’t long or complicated, and I lived close enough to Mariahilferstraße to buy anything I wanted. But I can’t say I was especially impressed by the Bezirk – Mariahilf – itself. Its dominant feature is Mariahilferstraße, which is great for shopping, but doesn’t really lend itself to a neighborly feel.

The 2. Bezirk, where I live now, on the other hand, is a place I could see myself building a long-term relationship with. It’s the Brooklyn of Wien – a diverse place across the river with its own scene but still more residential character. I really enjoyed people-watching today in the Augarten, for example, just one of the large parks in the area, where Turkish families picknicked on the lawn as a Hasidic Jewish father and son rode by on their bicycles, all the while a group of old Italian men argued loudly about each point in their bocce game. The Augarten isn’t my favorite park in the city in terms of beauty – that honor belongs to Stadtpark, the urban oasis right off the Ring in the 1. Bezirk – but it’s certainly one of the most interesting, and I’m glad to live just a three-minute walk away from its gates.