VWW: Penzing Comedy Beisl Tour

West is the best!

Last year, we kicked off Vienna Walking Week in North Vienna, with a free party in bohemian Cafe Sperlhof. In summer 2021, we turn the dial anti-clockwise, and invite you all out to Wien West, for our opening social fest, to Hütteldorf.

This year, our opening concept is a walk, in a less-explored part of the city. Why is it that Viennese mostly look to green, nature space, when planning a walk, instead of exploring their own vierteln?

Part of the Vienna Walking Week project is to break out of the Sisi&Schnitzl cliches, and so we kick off our alternative tourism project with a banging bar tour, a comedy exploration of the real Wien. We were inspired by comedian Denice Bourbon's Meidling bar tour, for Vienna Design Week, and want to remix the format. Thanks to her for the concept.

This is a storytelling adventure, into Penzing.

Eugene is surprised that Viennese almost never describe living in South Wien, or Wien West. Londoners live in districts like Chelsea, Soho or Greenwich. But here, people live in numbers, like the 14th, which is a bit sad.

This is the tour where you can come closest to Euge and his ideas about the Walking Week, since we have time to sit and chat in each bar. We invite your suggestions, responses and joyous provocation. Which unusual locations should we visit next year, as part of our summer tour programme?

We can promise you there are some colourful, atmospheric and hip bars on the way.

If you divide Europe by the most popular kind of alcoholic drink, northwest Europe, from Czech Republic right up to Norway and Ireland, is beer. The southern lands are all about wine, from Portugal right across to Turkey. And in the east, schnapps dominates. But Wien is exactly where the three cultures meet, and so we have fine Marillen schnapps, Gruner Veltliner and Ottakringer Bier.

8 of the Gemeindebezirken outside of the so-called Guertel (which is not really like a belt) end in the letters -ing (Simmer-, Meidl-, Hietz-, Penz, Ottakr-, Waehr-, Doebl-, Lies-). So what do those three letters - ING - mean? Vorstadt, in Bayerisch Deutsch.

This is a green, sleepy, rich part of town, and of course it is the home to Rapid football club, Otto Wagner's Fuchs' Villa and the railway line to Innsbrueck and Switzerland. We want to show, in Walking Week, that every street is interesting, if you hear the stories, and meet the local characters.

Beisl is a Yiddish word meaning simple or home, and Eugene - whose parents are Irish - likes the earthy, unpretentious Wien of Wiener Lieder, Westgürtel, Dialekt, Würstlstandkultur, Donauinsel Nudity, Street art, Egon Schiele, Sigmund Freud, Gemeindebauten, MA 48, Michi Haeupl, Tschockerln, Falter, Cafe am Heumarkt, Erdberg Bus Station, Lugner City and Schwedenplatz.

Penzing and Hietzing were one district until the second world war.

Wir freuen uns sehr über die finanzielle Unterstützung der Wirtschaftsagentur Wien und über die Förderung von Wien Tourismus, der Mobilitätsagentur und diversen Mediengruppen (inklusiv ORF). Außerdem sind wir stolz, dass wir in die Initiative Reparatur der Zukunft aufgenommen wurden, eine Kooperation von Ö1, Forum Alpbach, Ars Electronica und Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien.