It’s rare to hear nostalgia so alive and vivid - even if it isn’t technically your nostalgia. No GDM feels like it’s a small portal. You can almost place yourself on a night out in the early 80s where you are sure you would have thrived.

And to get you further in the mood, the YouTube comments are basically a tiny oral history of club culture. Right at the top: “I was 16.. 1982… walked into a club called the Crystal Goblet in Shrewsbury, UK, and this was playing. Totally blew me away… What a track!” Scroll further and you get: “I was a cloak room attendant at Blitz club in London 1980 and this was one of my faves. I used to spend more time on that dance floor than hanging out with coats.” and further “Speakeasy night at The Stowaway nightclub in Newport, probably around 82. Dark, pumping, and a healthy mix of students, punks and Newport's gay community. What a tune. Unforgettable.”,

Led by Bella Levin, co-founder of HEIMAT, this session is part of the one-month Edara × Skergeth pop-up - a curated space shaped by Julia Skergeth and Angelina Gergenreder, featuring fashion, objects, art, and coffee. Every Thursday brings a different creative workshop, and this week is all about personal style - not the trend-driven kind, but the version shaped by taste, instinct, and the life you actually live. Bella walks through how to build your own references and why cultivating an eye matters more than following whatever the algorithm thinks you should wear.

After that, the evening shifts into a relaxed Styling Lab with coats, bags, and accessories, with Julia and Angelina bringing in pieces from their own labels to explore silhouette, texture, and function. It’s straightforward, hands-on: come as you are, try a few things, discover what feels right. Snacks included.

Only 8 spots available.

Alex Franz Zehetbauer’s An Evening with is a surreal piano-bar performance that moves between song, choreography and quiet absurdity. He shifts registers with unsettling ease: a lullaby one minute, something closer to cabaret the next, occasionally using the piano in ways its builders did not intend. The result is intimate, strange and oddly absorbing, an evening that feels both familiar and slightly off-center.

When: 28 November 2025, brut nordwest

Vernissage: Breaking and Entering - Exhibition at AG18 Gallery

HEIMAT Muse, Julia Harrauer, returns to AG18 inviting Rubén Ezequiel Löwy. He explores Breaking and Entering, a term historically defined in Anglo-American common law as a two-part act: the dismantling of a barrier (breaking) and the subsequent decision to cross a threshold (entering). These two levels - physical and psychological - shape the conceptual framework of the exhibition.

Löwy translates this dual structure into the spatial environment of the gallery, extending it across both showroom spaces. His installations examine how objects operate within regimes of mechanical reproduction, revealing paradoxical relations of security, authenticity, and ambiguous legal status. Moving between clarity and uncertainty, function and illusion, the works expose underlying structures, habitual delusions, and the systemic rules that subtly govern everyday experience.

When: Tuesday, 25 November 2025, 6-9pm, AG18 SPOTLIGHT & SHOWROOM, Annagasse 18, 1010 Vienna

Preiss Fine Arts is giving December exactly what it needs: punsch, art, and a graceful escape from the Christmas-market queues. And yes, we know it’s technically still November but as Elenore wrote in this weeks article “because we live in the age of perpetual acceleration, December doesn’t even bother waiting for its turn in the calendar anymore”. Every Friday from 14:00 to 18:00, the gallery hosts Punsch & Design, their weekly pre-holiday ritual - led by HEIMAT Muse Sophie Hollerweger - which already guarantees the punsch will be both good and strong and plentiful.

And since we know you all promised you’d start shopping for gifts earlier this year, Sophie has curated a small selection of sculptural objects and artful pieces that make much better presents than anything you’d find while standing in line for Glühwein at Rathaus. It’s festive, warm, and far more pleasant than elbowing your way through a market stall.

Where: Bauermarkt 14, 1010 Vienna, Austria

When: Every Friday from 14:00 to 18:00

The Austrian premiere of Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland at Theater an der Wien last Monday reminded us once again that opera in Vienna has a very special talent: it can make half the audience fall in love and send the other half marching out before the first aria even lands. As the centerpiece of Wien Modern, it arrives exactly as promised - absolutely nothing about it is traditional.

The music is wild, disorienting, sometimes brilliant, sometimes baffling; you really do feel like we’ve all followed Alice straight into an acoustic rabbit hole. But the staging? That’s where the magic sits. It’s visually razor-sharp, meticulously designed, and easily the true star of the evening.

The White Rabbit shows up looking like a fever dream somewhere between Karl Lagerfeld and Andy Warhol, and the Caterpillar - communicating exclusively via bass clarinet and dressed as though it escaped from the 2019 Moncler x Pierpaolo Piccioli collaboration — is somehow ridiculous and perfect all at once. We didn’t adore every musical choice, but we also couldn’t look away.

When: Performances run until November 26 if you want to see Vienna at its most delightfully experimental.

Vienna’s favourite daytime rave returns, calmly proving that good electronic music can also be enjoyed influence of simply caffeine. By 12:00, CUPRA City Garage will be filled with people who’ve decided that a steady beats and a steady caffeine intake make an excellent Saturday pairing.

Alÿf, Marko Kontakt, Apairofbrows, and Paul Galbur take the decks for the morning slot. Presale is recommended; at the door it’s 16 EUR, which is practically the going rate for staying warm in November anyway.

We stopped by Charles Ingvar’s studio on a Thursday afternoon because giving you the story from the press kit felt too generic for our HEIMAT readers. The intention was to snap a few pics and learn a bit more from the founder Billy - however shortly after 3pm we were making our way through his line up - ending with a Sichuan Bitter Spritz that felt like a forbidden fruit for slightly before 5pm on a Thursday.

Somewhere in between the tastings and two quick cigarette breaks he gave us the stories that never made it into that press kit we mentioned earlier - how he came to Vienna in the middle of a lockdown to visit his partner and, in that classic Viennese “Bleib halt da” manner, never left. How he grew up in Sweden hearing tales of his father and grandfather illigally distilling spirits because alcohol in Sweden has long been heavily regulated and expensive, thanks to strict state controls meant to keep the nation on its best behavior. So natürlich they found a loophole.

How, as a teenager, he scoured his grandparents’ house, convinced the secret still was hiding somewhere out back. How illicit distillers stoped firmly with the older generations. Allegedly. And how, on a trip with friends, the answer to what he truly wanted to do was overwhelmingly obvious. Make spirits. The engineering job suddenly never had the same appeal and there was no going back.

His Gin and Limoncello are both sublime, but if you want something genuinely singular, go straight for the Sichuan Bitter. We tried it with sparkling water, ginger syrup and fresh lemon juice. He told us to add a twist of burnt lemon rind.

Of course he has a website, but we recommend the old school way: pop by his 1st district showroom, say hello, and pick up a few bottles for the festive season.

Opening hours are Wednesday (11–17), Thursday (12–18), and Friday (11–17), though it’s always smart to check Google Maps or his Instagram for the most up to date info. And if your motivation or your time is lacking, ordering online geht sich auch aus.

We stumbled across this tiny, unassuming shop on the Wollzeile completely by accident, the sort of place you’d miss if you blinked at the wrong moment. But something about it pulled us in, maybe the shelves stacked with wheels of cheese, maybe the “wir wissen eh, was gut ist” energy radiating from within.

Inside stood a very composed gentleman behind an impressive landscape of wheels and wedges. In true HEIMAT fashion, we asked for the stärkste Käse they had - one strong enough to bring on a spiritual moment, or at minimum a clear view of Switzerland.

He didn’t even blink at the request. Instead, he gave a tiny nod (almost priestly), and reached for L’Etiva , shaved off a thin slice and handed it to me with the pride of a man who knows this cheese is about to improve your evening. We attempted to return that same priestly nod, bought a generous wedge, and enjoyed it with a friend partnered with a crisp glass of white wine wine, and some Feigensenf exactly fifteen minutes later. The taste hit like a small Alpine revelation: bold, nutty, a little wild.

Where: Wollzeile 15, 1010 Wien, Austria Do check out their website - it’s fun.

If you’re on the hunt for your first Christmas presents - the kind that look effortlessly thoughtful without requiring any actual effort - Im Fundus in 1060 is your new best friend. A treasure-chest of vintage whimsy and beautifully aged furniture, it’s full of pieces with more personality than most dinner guests.

Think: Mid-Century lamps, porcelain that feels inherited (in a good way), and curiosities you’ll swear were made just for that one impossible-to-shop-for friend. Go for the gifts, stay for the thrill of finding something you absolutely didn’t need… and now can’t live without.

Where: Otto Bauer Gasse 14, 1060 Wien

Muses

This week we visited Ines Kaufmann, armed with a bottle of Claus Preisinger’s Puzta Libre and a bag of truffle chips, which is basically the most HEIMAT way to start an artist visit. She walked us through her universe - hundreds of artworks lining her hallways and living room in a very nonchalant style. Her practice moves between painting, performance, and video, exploring the messy, funny, tender space between eroticism and self-discovery.

Of course we had to check out the view: a full 360 degrees over Vienna, featuring one enormous red crane planted directly blocking the view of the Stephansdom. The cathedral’s spire appeared behind the crane with the energy of “eh klar, stellt’s euch ruhig vor mich”.

Somewhere between the art, the wine, and the crane blocking centuries of architecture, we came up with a few ideas for how to introduce you to Ines’ work in a personal setting - stay tuned.

This week’s read is again attributed to HEIMAT Muse Dominikas Cinnauskas, who still carries that old-world elegance of pulling a book from his library, handing it to you, and saying it reminded him of you - which is impossibly cool, deeply flattering, and honestly something we should all do for each other more often.

The book is Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s The Futurist Cookbook, a 1930s creation that sits somewhere between manifesto, performance art, and culinary mischief. It proposes dishes like “Aerofood,” where diners eat while a fan blows their hair back, or meals that must be consumed without speaking, without cutlery, and occasionally without reason. It’s outrageous, theatrical, and delightfully unserious. In other words: the perfect read while you’re finalising your December Christmas dinner parties - a reminder that food doesn’t have to behave, and neither do you.

Ruby Arabella Wallen tracks the city’s pulse, observes its culture and characters, and works with a small circle of her personal muses to create you a weekly Sunday Dispatch - your blueprint to the week ahead in Vienna.