If the week of reentry has you asking whether Vienna still holds, this is the music companion: “Home” by LCD Soundsystem, which also happens to be my favourite of their tracks. The opening starts with Murphy repeating “home” six times as if he is trying to locate the feeling. It fits those first days back when the city resumes its familiar pace, keys return to their place, and the calendar starts filling again. Murphy suggests shortly after: “Just do it right / Make it perfect and real / Because it’s everything / Though everything was never the deal”. It reads as a reminder that home is a decision: to live inside what’s real, now. Because ‘everything’ was never the deal, there’s nothing worth postponing.

“Home” was also written as the final track on This Is Happening, the record that was widely received as a kind of farewell chapter for LCD Soundsystem before the split they soon announced (before later regrouping). Murphy was in his late thirties when he wrote the song and many LCD fans read that ending as the closing referring to outgrowing the band’s party-era loop.

The song closes out with “If you’re afraid of what you need / Look around you, you’re surrounded / It won’t get any better / And so, goodnight.” We can only interpret what Murphy meant, of course, but the song’s logic is consistent. Most of us know what we need. It is usually only fear that delays it, until someone reminds you to look around and notice what and who are already holding you. Ending the song with “goodnight,” starkly states that the night is over, and that is exactly what allows the next phase to begin.

Predigten zum neuen Jahr 2026 (Sermons for the New Year 2026) is a cooperation with the Institute for Language Arts at the University of Applied Arts, developed within the course Predigten (Sermons), taught by Jennifer Gisela Weiss and Lydia Haider. The premise is happily un-subtle: “2025 war steinig, kalt und schlecht” (2025 was rocky, cold, and bad), and now we move toward “unsteinig, warm und gut” (un-rocky, warm, and good). In “13 Wahrheiten” (13 truths), they announce that the old rhetorics will disappear and “neue Reden” (new speeches) will be spoken.

It is taking place at Burgtheater im Kasino. What they promise is essentially a sermon-rave, whatever that means: “Räucherungen” (incense), “Orgeln” (organs, the instrument, not the body parts are you crazy?), “Gesänge” (chants), and the symbolic upgrade of water into Prosecco. Music comes from Die Heiligen Resistant (The Holy Resistant), Die Heilige Mutter Haider (The Holy Mother Haider), and Der Heilige Kenan Kokic (The Holy Kenan Kokic). The speakers arrive as an invented clergy lineup of saints, cardinals, prophets, and at least one “Hellseher Medium” (clairvoyant medium), which suggests the new year will be welcomed with conviction, excess, and a healthy disregard for subtlety.

Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value (OV with English subtitles) is set in Oslo, circling a generational family house. After their mother dies, sisters Nora and Agnes are pulled back toward their estranged father, Gustav, a filmmaker who returns with the plan to reclaim the home, and fold the family’s history into a new film. What follows is less a reunion than a careful excavation of what gets inherited when love was present but poorly spoken, and when “home” offers shelter, but it also keeps score

Showtimes & Where: Burg Kino, Opernring 19, 1010 Vienna
Mon 05.01.2026, 17:45
Tue 06.01.2026, 17:45
Wed 07.01.2026, 17:45
Thu 08.01.2026, 20:15

The Vienna culinary scene still seems to be emotionally hungover this week from carrying the weight it held for the city throughout December (fair enough). After weeks of events, festive menus, popups and kitchens running at full intensity, we did not come across any culinary events we could wholeheartedly recommend this week. And rather than forcing one, we bring you something you can turn into a weekly or fortnightly event on your own: batch-cooking beef bone broth.

Vegetarians, don’t kill me for this - there is a very good “bone” broth alternative too (though allegedly sans collagen) linked below.

Start by visiting your local butcher and asking for a mix of beef marrow bones and knuckle or joint bones (tell them it’s for broth and they will understand exactly what era you are entering). Give the bones a quick rinse at home, especially if there are any little bone shards. If you want an extra-clean broth, blanch them for 5 to 10 minutes first, drain, rinse, then proceed. Roast the bones in the oven until deeply browned, then transfer them to a large pot. Cover with cold water, add onion, garlic, a splash of apple cider vinegar, and optionally a few carrots or celery. Simmer gently for several hours, keeping the heat low and skimming occasionally. Strain, cool, and pour into ice cube trays. Once frozen, store the cubes in a zip-lock bag in the freezer.

This is one of the simplest, most effective health habits you can build in early January. Bone broth is rich in collagen, minerals, and amino acids that support digestion, joint health, and recovery, especially after the indulgence and disruption of the holiday season. Warming one or two cubes in the morning is a phenomenal way to start the day. And when the inevitable, periodic craving for a Frittatensuppe arrives, you can have one on the table in minutes.

Paul Schödl is the cousin of the Schödl winemaker siblings, and good taste clearly runs in the family. He opened Le Petit Jeudi in 2023 after his time at Mast Weinbistro, and the restaurant is built for long lunches and small plates. If you want the most interesting signal from the kitchen, order the Rinderonglet with Petersilienwurzel, Williamsbirne and Schwarzer Holler (Beef onglet with parsley root, Williams pear and black elderberry). Onglet is traditionally an inexpensive butcher’s cut, long undervalued and gatekept by the people who know what it can do. Treated properly, it becomes one of the most tender and flavourful parts of the animal, which is why chefs have always loved it even when “trendy” menus didn’t. It’s also having a small comeback now, slowly reappearing as more kitchens.

Café Kafka has become my personal shorthand for Vienna’s long game - and the art of returning - how time and distance from a place can completely reframe it. Opened in the postwar years in the 6th district, it has long been a stopping point for students, writers, and the city’s thinkers, reading newspapers, sketching in notebooks as well as general lingering. When I arrived in Vienna just over a decade ago (just having turned 21 with one suitcase) someone sent me to Kafka as an early orientation point - I walked in, took one look at the worn walls, the mismatched furniture, the (now I would say wonderfully) random mix of people, and did not understand the appeal.

The last time I sat here a few weeks ago, almost a decade later, I felt an overwhelming sense of love for Kafka, but also a sense of belonging. It is the art of returning in café form: the room has not changed much, but you have. I wrote a longer musing on Kafka and Vienna late last year.

FERAL Drinks is a small Italian producer from the Dolomites, built by a tiny team of brewers, scientists, and foragers who treat non-alcoholic drinks with the same seriousness usually reserved for wine. The point is exploration, leaving the well-trodden path and following nature into less obvious flavour territory, which you can taste in FERAL N° 5. Naturally sparkling and virtually sugar-free, it leads with citrus, then soft stone fruit (peach, apricot), held together by birch water and a line-up of botanical extracts that keep it dry and interesting.

It is an ideal drink for this first week back because it is thoughtful and unforced. There is no alcohol, but plenty of structure and terroir-like depth, so it still feels like a proper aperitif rather than a compromise. The label says it best: “This recipe does not have a name yet, like the things we do not notice… the wild, the out of place, the weeds, the feral,” which feels like a perfect January sentiment.

Details: Feral No. 5 (alcohol-free, <0.5%), 750ml, €25,90

After a December of saunas, cold dips, and massage permission slips, swimming at Amalienbad - partly because it is one of the most complete workouts, and partly because it is one of the most beautiful rooms to do it in. No mirrors, no music, no curated studio identity. It is also one of the best places to be alone with your mind at this time of year, when plans and goals for the months ahead are still forming and you need space to hear what you actually think before the calendar starts speaking for you.

Opened in 1926 and built during the Red Vienna era, it was designed as public infrastructure with an Art Deco interior with richly tiled surfaces. Switch up freestyle for backstroke for a moment and look up while you swim and you will get the best detail: the glass roof.

Where: Reumannpl. 23, 1100, Vienna

Literature

First published in 1968, “On Going Home” offers a useful counterpoint to some of the hard-to-name feelings that tend to surface after time away. And of course, not everyone can go to their childhood home, not everyone did this season, and for some, “home” is not a simple place to return to at all. In contrast to the way Murphy from LCD Soundsystem uses “home” as something you locate and choose in the present, Didion is writing about home in its most literal form: the childhood place that still contains a record of who you were at that time. She names something many of us recognise but rarely say out loud, the pressure that homecoming should feel only positive. In reality, it can bring up a wider mix of feelings, not necessarily negative, just layered. Home (to her) is not a feeling to summon on demand, but a set of facts: rooms, routines, old dynamics, and earlier versions of yourself that reassert themselves the moment you step back inside.

It is a particularly good read for the week of reentry because it gives you language for the after-effects, when you are back in your own city and still metabolising whatever came up, whether you travelled or stayed put. Two things can be true: you can be deeply grateful for time with people you love, and still feel the strange pull of familiar spaces and older versions of yourself.

Between this essay and our music pick of the week, the conclusion is quite optimistic. One reminds you that the past is real and still has a shape, embedded in routines, family dynamics, and the roles we slip into. The other reminds you that the present version of home is still yours to choose. Put together, they make a strong January principle: seeing things clearly is already a form of progress. It gives you something valuable on reentry, a little more agency in how you want to belong, and the encouragement to build a feeling of home, whatever that means to you, right where you are now.

And that’s all for this week. Wishing you an easy reentry, a sense of home where you are, and a 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.