You don’t have to be psychic to be aware of the ghosts in Vienna, nor do you need to be a witch to feel the magic in the dark time of the city’s  year.  The time between All Souls Day and Christmas in Austria’s capital city is marked by Catholic holidays but steeped in Pagan tradition and sentiment.

I first came to Vienna as an Au-Pair and later returned as an English teacher.  Of all the cities I have been lucky enough to visit in my travels, it is the one I have returned to most often and it probably feels more like my spiritual home than any other place I have lived in.  So let me take take you on a journey through Vienna’s Autumn and Winter, starting in the cemetery and taking in some of the darker ambiance and sites of the city that are often left out of the guidebooks.

There are many cemeteries in Vienna but the “Zentralfriedhof is by far the biggest.  In fact it is the second biggest cemetery in Europe and covers an area as large as a medium sized town.  It is the final resting place of over three million souls, more than the total number of people who actually ‘live’ in present day Vienna.  You could easily spend a  whole day wondering around the avenues and allies of this graveyard without seeing the whole place and, as well as being a resting place for the dead, it is an oasis of nature that is full of wildlife.  In parts it seems like a forest with rows of trees between each line of grave stones.  The branches and bushes are full of birds and squirrels and you may even be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a deer.

I can think of few better ways to immerse yourself in the ambiance of Samhain than to visit the Zentralfriedhof on November 1st, All Saints Day in the Christian calender.  The Viennese can appear quite sophisticated and secular but they do take their national and religious traditions seriously.  On 1st November the Zenralfriedhof is bursting with people visiting the graves of their deceased family members and of the many famous personalities who lived in or were associated with Vienna.  Large groups of families and friends jostle with each other along the busier walkways placing candles and stones on the graves of those they honor while  feasting on roasted chestnuts as they walk solemnly but not glumly along.  I doubt if “The Day Of The Dead” is celebrated with more gusto anywhere in the world outside Mexico.

I usually begin my tour of the Zentralfriedhof at the graves of the famous musicians near the Dr Karl Lueger  Church in the center of the cemetery.  Here you can visit the graves and monuments of the great composers such as Beethoven, Brahms,  Schubert and the Strauss family; all of whom did much to place Vienna firmly at the center of the musical world. They still hold balls and concerts in Vienna, classical music is a big part of the city’s soul.  But it is not only classical music, there is a thriving alternative and independent modern music scene.  My friends and I usually pay a visit to one of the city’s more recently departed musicians.  Falco, of “Rock Me Amadeus” fame, was one of Austria’s few internationally famous rock stars and certainly seems to have lead the archetypal rock star life and early death.  Just as with Elvis, there are those who claim he isn’t really dead; or at least that he is “undead”.

After visiting the famous graves it is nice to leave the crowds behind and head for the quieter parts of the cemetery. I usually spend a while in the small but peaceful Buddhist section before walking through the older Catholic and Protestant areas of the graveyard.  By now the sun is sinking quickly in the sky, casting golden beams of light through the forest of trees that line most of the cemetery.  I walk over a carpet of fallen Autumn leaves which rustle and crunch beneath my feet.  There are few other people around now, my friends and I speak quietly trying to imagine the lives of the people whose stories are encapsulated on the tombstones and, apart from our own voices and foot-falls, the only other sounds come from bird-song and the damp breeze whispering through the trees.

Finally we arrive in the saddest corner of the Zentralfriedhof, the old Jewish cemetery.  Although it has been repaired and renovated in recent years,  much of this section was destroyed or vandalized during the time of the Nazis and some of what remains is still broken and overgrown.  It is a vivid reminder of the darkest stain on Vienna’s history, a city which was once home to one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe.  There is still a small Jewish district in Vienna, but it is a pale shadow of the community which used to thrive there. By this time my friends and I are usually alone, the sky is now quite dark and the air distinctly cold, but we take our time here, silently lost in our own thoughts.  It is usually here, on black broken headstones where Hebrew inscriptions are half hidden by dark green creepers,  that my friends and I light our candles and place our stones.

The best way to finish a walk around the Zentralfriedhof is to go for a meal across the street at the Schloss Concordia. The service is not particularly fast or friendly but the Wienner Schnitzels are huge and the ambiance is unique.  There are no electric lights here, everything is lit by candles.  Large mirrors decorate two of the walls so that in the dark smoky atmosphere the interior space is spookily deceptive.  In the misty darkness the restaurant seems to stretch into infinity and more than half the people who appear to be there are just reflections; or ghosts maybe… All of which seems to underline one of Vienna’s special characteristics; life and death are never far apart here.  The ghosts of the past and the souls of the present flirt with each other all the time.

Autumn in Vienna tends to be short; by the time December has arrived there is often snow on the ground and the city is already in the icy grip of winter.  And on December 5th, the devil comes to town.

The Krampus is a demonic creature who torments children and sometimes adults too.  His role is that of an anti-Santa or anti-St Nicholas.  While St Nicholas visits the good children of Austria on 6th December and gives presents, The Krampus visits naughty children on the 5th and issues dire warnings and punishments. Although The Krampus is more a tradition of rural Austria, he does visit Vienna as well.  At the very least people receive Krampus cards in the post which poetically detail their sins and failings of the past year and issue ominous threats of punishment.  Traditionally, young men dress up as the Krampus  (in wooden masks, sheep’s skin and horns) and roam the streets frightening children and sometimes chasing young men women with rusty chains and bells.  If caught by The Krampus you might be beaten up or birched.  Of course in modern times Krampus day is celebrated with a sense of fun; but those enacting the Krampus have gone overboard enough times that there is a real sense of threat.  I have myself been chased by a Krampus and it was a genuinely scary experience.

If all that I have said so far sounds rather dark and forbidding it’s because that’s the way it is.  There is a dark trait that runs through the city and the people who live there.  The guilt and sadness of the city’s past is as real as the splendor of it’s architecture.  You have to understand that before you can really fall in love with the place and understand why in so many other ways the city and it’s people celebrate the finer things of life. It is a city of historic grandeur that was once the capital of a large, influential empire but is now a bit too big for the small modern state of Austria.  At various times it has been compared with the splendor of Paris and the decadence of Berlin.  It has been the global center of art, theater and music but it has also been party to some of the darkest crimes and excesses of the twentieth century.  The ghosts of Vienna speak of great pleasures and great pains.   The modern Viennese carry all of this heritage on their shoulders and the ghosts from their past are never far away. This is also, after all, the city of Freud.  Perhaps that is the reason that while the Viennese have a Germanic work ethic and sense of organization, they have a very Southern European lust for life. What they earn they spend on socializing and patronizing the arts. They enjoy good food and wine and they tend to smoke a lot.  They also have a very matter of fact attitude to sex.  Their flirtations with the darkness remind them that life is fragile and temporary and thus all the more beautiful and worthy of celebrating.

The remainder of the advent and Christmas season in Vienna follows a traditional central European pattern. There is more emphasis on tradition and less commercialism than you will find in Britain or America. Overall, the atmosphere is very conducive to those of us who celebrate Yule and there does seem to be an awareness and acceptance that Christian and Pagan traditions are very much entwined.

There is nothing better on an freezing cold advent evening than to visit one of the traditional Christmas Markets and warm yourself with some Punch or Mulled wine.  There are several Christmas markets throughout the city, all of them full of fairy lights,  hand-made seasonal gifts, the smell of spicy food and drink and general festive cheer.  The most famous and busiest can be found in front of the impressive Gothic Rathaus (city hall),  where an ice rink is installed during the winter and all the trees in the surrounding Rathaus Park are decorated with huge Christmas decorations and lights.

My personal favorite Christmas Market is in the  bohemian district of Spittelberg, a maze of tiny cobbled streets where the buildings have been restored to their original eighteenth and nineteenth century baroque style.  This is a left wing district and center of arts and crafts; and in December it is teaming with people huddled round the Punch stands.  Punch comes in many fruity varieties and each stand has it’s own specialties.  Mulled wine, beer and non alcoholic drinks are usually available too and there are plenty of seasonal snacks.  The busiest night in Spittelberg (and the rest of Vienna) is New Year’s Eve, or “Silvester” as it is known locally.  Tourists from the rest of Austria and all over Europe flock to Vienna for this spectacular night on which there are live entertainments all over the city, parties on every corner and the flash and bang of fireworks exploding every few seconds.  The streets of Spittelberg are so crowded that even in temperatures well below zero you don’t feel cold; this may of course have something to do with the copious amounts of alcohol you are likely to have consumed!  Just after midnight there is one special piece of Austrian magic to usher in the New Year.   The crescendo of firework explosions subsides and all over the city the air is filled with the strains of the “Blue Danube Waltz”.  In the narrow streets of Spittelberg, and throughout the city, people begin to dance the waltz with their friends, their families, their lovers or whoever happens to be standing close to them.  After that, the parties continue well into the morning.

These then are my personal highlights of Vienna in the darker months.  Spring and Summer are hot and bright but I think it is in the colder months that the soul of the city is most exposed.  Vienna is like the Crone, a wise and enigmatic old lady full of enchantments and secrets.  But just beneath the craggy exterior there still beats the heart of the nurturing mother and the flirtatious maiden.  It is the sum of these parts that makes her whole.  So it is that Vienna can cast a powerful spell on those she touches.

Cassie Wren

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About Cassie:    For a living I teach and promote English courses all over Europe.
I’m interested in music, art and politics. I like going to gigs, traveling, writing, hanging out, carrying things around and generally misbehaving.
I’m a very eclectic witch and my spiritual path is influenced by a mixture of Wicca, Taoism and Ancient Egyptian spirituality.  I am an empath and some people have said I am scarily psychic. I have been a member of Mystic Wicks for five and a half years.

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