Travel
Vienna Thinks It’s Better than You
And it might be right
Vienna seems to inspire superlatives.
It has been, by turns, the Greenest City in the World, The Smartest City in the World (in a techie urban-engineering sense), and perhaps most famously, The Most Liveable City in the World.
It is also The City of Music and The City of Dreams (after its connection to psychoanalysis). Plus, Vienna always makes a strong showing in the list of Europe’s Best Cities (currently Number 12). Austria itself is considered the third-safest country in the world, according to the Global Peace Index.
Who wouldn’t want to visit a place like that?
However, as you begin to look up these many superlatives, you may also run across a title that has dogged the Viennese for years: the capital has also been rated the Least Friendly City in the World toward foreigners.
Ouch.
East of West
My wife and I decided to spend her birthday in Vienna this year, not because it appeared on best-of (or worst-of) lists, but because it was a place she’d always…
