Old Vienna seems to be feeling childlike

July 06, 2008|Antonia Malchik, Globe Correspondent

VIENNA - "You know you've lived in Vienna too long," an expat once told me, "when you start scowling at children having fun."

More than any other European capital, Vienna has always been a grown-up sort of place. Its attractions center around staid tradition and somber culture: music, coffeehouses, art. It was never a place that seemed to welcome kids.

But the city of Kaisers and opera has done an about-face. The historic center is packed with strollers. One of the city's most popular attractions, Schönbrunn Palace, is visited more for the world-class zoo on its grounds than the rooms of antique furniture inside. At the insistence of Vienna's mothers, shiny glass elevators have been installed in most U-Bahn (subway) stations. And many of the numerous swim-baths, once populated largely by people over 40 counting their laps, now try to attract families, with paddling pools for babies and diving boards for kids.

The changes aren't all on the surface. While there is more for children to do in Vienna, the underlying attitude toward them also has shifted.

In Café Diglas, one of the city's oldest coffeehouses, once standoffish waiters now wiggle chairs out of the way to make room for strollers and playfully wave their fingers to distract unhappy babies. Vienna's older grand dames used to reserve fearsome scowls for noisy children, but on a recent trip I twice had these respectable ladies poke strangers on trams and trains: "Let the mother and baby sit down," they commanded, and then spent the rest of the trip exchanging smiles with my 8-month-old son, John.

"Has it changed as much as I think it has," I kept asking friends, uncertain whether I was simply seeing the place with new eyes after a separation of 10 years and with a baby in tow.

"It's the European Union," one Austrian friend said. "The Viennese are finally realizing they have to change."

An American who's lived in the city for some 20 years had a simpler take. "Oh, it's definitely different," he said as we took our two infants for a walk. "All those old grumpy people died."

Whether it's the EU or simply a shift in population, Vienna has become one of the most welcoming cities in Europe for families.

It would have been easy to bypass a visit to Schönbrunn Palace, that Versailles-like pile belonging to long-gone empires. Who needs to see rooms full of fancy furniture and gold leaf?

That was before I talked to friends who live in the area with their toddlers. Just go for a walk on the grounds, they said. It's fun. Vienna? Fun? So we went. Schönbrunn's carriage-wide gravel paths that were built to impress Europe's elite now accommodate strollers.