This week’s pick is The Magic Room by Dino Lenny and Doorly in the Dino Lenny and Seth Troxler Re-Edit. Inside the room, worries vanish, money loses its charge and the only currency left is respect. It begins to sound less like a party and more like a utopia. “Why can’t we all just live together like this?” he asks, knowing full well why we cannot. The song does not offer an answer. It simply documents the fact that, for a few hours at a time, we seem capable of returning to that state. The melancholy in the song is that he knows when he leaves the room the feeling will end.

In many ways, the track also reads as a love letter to a truly good party, the kind that dissolves ego, roles and the running commentary in your head. The song is so convincing that it admittedly justifies why certain nights deserve to stay on your roster. It also inevitably raises the question of where else we still allow ourselves to disappear so completely. For me, Skiing manages it (admittedly I am writing this from Lech), Surfing does it too (if you can make it to Tamraght or Lembongan which are not exactly short flights from Vienna). Back in Vienna it happens by getting lost in learning something new, sometimes by losing entire hours to cooking with excellent music playing, sometimes in those late-night conversations with friends that end with you all in tears from laughter. But if all else fails the Grelle Forelle Christmas party next Saturday night remains a dependable place to reach Utopia agian.

This week’s Creators Thursday is shaped around Eleonore Stifter’s view of hosting, which she describes as “50 percent hospitality, 50 percent theatre, and 10 percent worrying whether the bread is still warm.” Her writing on the subject makes a compelling case that a dinner table is never just a table. As she puts it, “Vienna’s history is basically a kitchen story,” a place where ideas, arguments and art have always taken shape between candle wax and crumbs.

The workshop takes that spirit and translates it into something practical for modern December: how to plan a dinner without stress, how to create an atmosphere rather than a performance, and how to style a table that feels personal instead of perfect. A creative, calm entry into hosting season.

The MAK is showing excerpts from the Helmut Lang Archive, revisiting the years when one of the most important designers of all time was inventing the modern silhouette: clean, reduced, impossibly well-tailored pieces that still shape how we dress. And then, at the height of his influence, he walked away. A few years later, when a fire damaged part of his New York archive, Lang reportedly shredded the rest - around 6,000 garments from across his career - and transformed the fragments into sculpture. “I shredded all pieces with neither remorse nor preference,” he said. It was a final refusal to drag anything out, and proof that leaving at your peak is an incredibly sexy move.

The exhibition follows that same logic. Instead of garments, it presents large-scale, multimedia installations drawn from the MAK holdings and Lang’s own materials, offering insight into how he thought rather than what he produced. Long before the industry caught up, Lang was merging architecture, digital culture, experimental branding and collaborations with artists into a single practice. He streamed a runway show online in 1998 - a gesture that looked eccentric then and inevitable now. A look at a designer who always stayed ahead by knowing exactly when to stop.

When and where? Opening is on Tuesday 9th of December, 7-10pm at MAK Museum of Applied Arts.

percent discount along the way for orders over €160. This week belongs to Austria, with a deep dive into bottles by Weninger, Preisinger, Heinrich, Beck, Gindl, Zillinger and others. What makes the guide especially usable is how they organise it by real December scenarios rather than by grape alone. Under “Generational Conflict,” they address the annual dilemma of finding wines you love that your relatives, in-laws and sceptics will also enjoy. Natural wine, not too cloudy, not too bland either. “Friendsmas,” on the other hand, frames Christmas as a party for good company and the fun-loving part of the family, where nothing is taken too seriously.

They also offer a refreshingly pragmatic guide to how wine should actually be consumed in the holiday period. Moritz advises the following:

Stressless tipsy, that's how Christmas should be!

On the 9th, Salzi is hosting a coffee cupping with Röast Coffee, an event dedicated to the very serious business of paying very close attention to the caffeine you ingest. Cupping is how roasters evaluate beans: you smell the dry grounds, break the aromatic crust, then taste each brew with a spoon while learning the vocabulary behind the flavours you already recognise. Extremely useful for the moments when a third wave café asks you to choose between five roasts, or your local coffee dealer presents you with what feels like an encyclopaedia of options.

Where: Salzi, Hollandstraße 10, 1020 Wien
When: Tuesday the 9th of December

I visited ceramicist Teresa Berger in her studio this week, right as she was packing pieces for a showroom in the first district. There is something special about catching an artist mid-transition.

Teresa told me her work changed completely during COVID when she was studying in the Netherlands. The lack of physical classes forced her to rethink how she builds things. Moving from two dimensions into three expanded what she thought was possible. Her early pieces were full of undersea creatures and shells. Over time the shapes became more abstract, more fluid, almost as if they were melting back into themselves.

We ended up talking about Vienna too. She thinks the city has shifted dramatically in the few years, becoming far more exciting, and that she had to leave it for a while to really see that. There is a new energy here, she said. More people trying things, more experimentation across art, new media and hospitality. It takes the original Viennese a moment to adjust, but most people agree the shake-up has been good for the city.

The new people she connects with since returning tend to be internationals or the ones who have stepped outside Vienna at some point, because they return with a wider frame of reference and a curiosity about how things could evolve. It was not a criticism of anyone who stayed, just an observation that travel and distance can shift perspective, the same way working with clay teaches you how form changes under pressure and time.

Of course, she also sees the flip side of this acceleration. While a lot of the new openings are genuinely exciting, there is also a wave of places designed only for Instagram’s attention span. Her hope is that this moment of transformation is met with some care, so that the city’s new energy stays grounded in substance rather than aesthetics alone.

We went back to Miranda Bar this week. Completely unplanned. I walked past Esterházygasse, remembered when it was on the regular rotation years ago, and realised I had essentially abandoned a perfectly good bar in favor of whatever new thing Vienna threw at us. The irony is Miranda has only improved. The pastel interior is still giving “Miami, but tasteful”. The cocktails are as sharp as ever. The bartenders still have that humble confidence that comes from winning a handful of awards.

It made me think that not everything in this city needs to be new. Sometimes you can recycle an old favourite and it feels oddly luxurious. Consider this your permission slip to revisit somewhere you forgot existed. It might still be better than whatever just opened last Thursday.

Miranda Bar, Esterházygasse 12, 1060 Vienna

I discovered this particular Beluga at Loos Bar just after we picked up our first Espresso Martinis and stepped outside for a quick cigarette, where we fell into conversation with two men who mentioned very casually that they run a caviar brand based around the corner. We naturally declared our enthusiasm for the delicacy, at which point one of them announced we have good luck as they were coming from a tasting event with some reserved stock in tow and had only ducked into Loos for a quick drink on the way back to their office to return the extra tins. A cooler bag was produced, pearl spoons followed, and within moments we were enjoying on the pavement of the Kärntner Durchgang.

It paired unexpectedly well with the Espresso Martinis and somehow sampling so indulgent in such an unceremonious setting also paired well. The grains were creamy, saline, almost sweet, and gone far too quickly. We can recommend it wholeheartedly as a perfect December indulgence, preferably shared and preferably in an unexpected setting.

Starts from €114 for 30 grams.

We only wandered into the Naschmarkt pavilion for something unrelated, but a new wild-catch stall pulled us in almost immediately. It’s run by Alexander Moser, a third-generation fisherman from Lake Millstatt, selling whitefish, pike, catfish, tench, char and regional trout from his family’s lake-rights concession; he partnered with fellow Millstätter Tono Soravia to bring the project to Vienna, and they also prepare soup, sandwiches and house-cured fish. We started chatting with the team, and soon after Alex arrived - calm and confident - he explained to me that he wants to celebrate and educate us on Austrias wide variety of fish and lean into the seasonality. He went on mention, very lightly, that he has worked with both Steirereck and Mraz & Sohn, which, if you know Vienna’s restaurant landscape, tells you everything you need to know about the standard he’s operating at.

Turns out our visit was perfect timing: I was still figuring out what to cook for friends I’d invited for dinner that evening. Alex hand-picked a variety of trout for me - and then, unbelievably generously, gave me a full, step-by-step guide on how to prepare them. Pro tip: it’s much simpler than you think - but to get the full recipe and inside hints, you’ll have to go and talk to Alex yourself.

If you’re wondering what to cook for your next dinner invite: this stall is worth a detour. Fresh, local, wild - and with advice as good as the catch itself.

The Markethalle is located at the Kettenbrückengasse end of Naschmarkt.

Last week we suggested replacing workouts with WeBorn’s guided sweating, because who are we to recommend anything more intense in December. This week the logic continues, but Taiga Day Spa shifts the tone further. Where WeBorn feels structured and social, Taiga is much darker, more atmospheric - the kind of place where you stop speaking in full sentences. The lights are low, the air smells of pine and cedar, and the heat settles around you in a way that feels almost conspiratorial.

The birch-steam rituals, the soft benches, the quiet intervals between heat and cold - everything encourages you to slow down, think less, breathe differently. It’s the closest thing Vienna has to a cocoon, and if you go with someone, it becomes a conversation not through words but through the shared world you fall into together for an hour or so.

Only at the end does reality reappear: a three-hour session at Taiga starts around €150 per person, with more elaborate rituals available if you’re in the mood to disappear even further this December.

Where: Taiga Spa, Helferstorferstraße 6, 1010 Wien

Literature

If you’re ready to be reflective, The Future of Nostalgia by Svetlana Boym is a good companion. First published in 2001, it explores nostalgia not simply as a longing for the past but as a way of thinking about time itself, including the moments we have not yet lived. Boym treats longing as a space where memory and imagination overlap, where we rehearse futures while sorting through what we value now.

One of her passages lands especially well at the end of the year:

“How to begin again? How to be happy, to invent ourselves, shedding the inertia of the past? How to experience life and life alone, ‘that dark, driving, insatiable power that lusts after itself?’ These were the questions that bothered the moderns. Happiness, and not merely a longing for it, meant forgetfulness and a new perception of time.”

December has a particular way of making that idea feel relevant, with its mix of endings, expectations and the accounting we all do with ourselves. It is an intelligent read that opens up more space than it fills, which is exactly what this part of the year tends to require.

And that’s all we have for you this time - wishing you all open hearts, great friends and a very, very good week ahead.

See you next Sunday,

R

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.