Vienna Is Ready To Roll Out The Rainbow Carpet Along Its Famed Boulevard For EuroPride 2019
by Heather Cassell
Rainbows will fill Vienna’s Ringstrasse as more than an estimated 200,000 people will parade through the Imperial City’s main boulevard to its Town Hall for EuroPride in June.
“Once a year this boulevard is ours,” said Andreas Brunner, a 56-year-old gay man who is one of the co-founders of the Rainbow Parade, about the event that takes over the Ringstrasse. “Face it. Here we are in our diversity from the Dykes on Bikes to half-naked dancing boys on trucks to lesbian groups drumming. That’s our colorful Pride.”
The Ringstrasse is the city’s famed boulevard that replaced the fortress that once circled the city.
This year is the second time Vienna will host EuroPride.
Nearly 20 years after Vienna first hosted EuroPride, the city is ready to welcome all of Europe and American friends to celebrate under the banner “Together & Proud” on June 1 to 16.
Celebrating Queer Europe
“I’m getting excited,” said Katherina Kacerovsky, CEO of Stonewall, GmbH, the organization that oversees the annual Rainbow Parade and Pride Village at Town Hall. “I love to connect people and bring completely different cultures people … together for fusion.”
That’s exactly what Katherina and her team is doing working with an estimated 12 different Pride organizers from around Europe to truly make the event a celebration of Europe’s LGBTQI community.
There will be more than 40 events during the first half of Pride Month offering something for everyone. The festivities range from family days at the Schönbrunn Zoo, Vienna’s zoo, and parks to a conference to a mass wedding at the 5-star Hotel Le Meridien to parties.
It will all lead up to the EuroPride Parade on June 15 and two Pride celebrations at the Pride Village and Pride Park.
The headliners weren’t announced by press time. Check the EuroPride Vienna website for the entertainment lineup.
In December 2017, the Austrian Constitutional Court legalized same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriages began on January 1 this year. However, it’s been a bittersweet victory. Austria’s conservative government limited marriages for binational couples to only those who come from countries where same-sex marriage is legal, Viennese activists said during a recent trip to Vienna.
The mass wedding will be both a celebration and a demonstration.
There will be a “focus on the fact that not everyone is allowed to marry. We still did not reach the goal with our government,” said Katherina, the 38-year old lesbian who was an international DJ for two decades when she took the helm of the organization.
“EuroPride, with its multifaceted program, is the perfect occasion to celebrate and explore a city that has emerged from being a hidden gem to becoming a hot spot for the LGBTQI community,” said Norbert Kettner, a 51-year-old gay man who is the director of the Vienna Tourist Board.
For the first-time ever the city’s tourism agency will have a truck in the EuroPride Parade on June 15, Tom Bachinger, a gay man who handles travel trade relations for the U.S. market for the Vienna Tourism Board told Girls That Roam.
LGBTQI Viennese are getting excited about the events that are a little more than a month away.
“Vienna is one of the most LGBT-friendly cities in the world,” said Ian Goudie, a gay man who formerly led Stonewall, GmbH and now works with one of the Vienna’s top gay bar and night club owners Richard Zanella. “Vienna is an absolutely beautiful city. It’s going to be an amazing event.”
Getting To Now
In 2001, Vienna hosted the European-wide LGBTQI Pride celebration only 5-years after the Austrian capital city hosted its first parade.
An estimated 25,000 Pridegoers attended the first parade in 1996, said Andreas, who was inspired by Stonewall 25 celebrations in New York two years earlier.
“Visibility was the main issue for us,” he said. “It still is.”
Andreas is now co-manager of QWIEN, Vienna’s LGBTQI archives and runs gay Vienna history tours.
EuroPride is “something that we should really celebrate,” said Peter Holzinger, a 44-year-old gay man who owns the fashion boutique shop Samstag Shop.
However, Peter said it was important to remind younger LGBTQIs “that someone had to fight for this right to live such a carefree and great life today.”
To commemorate the events of EuroPride and Stonewall 50 he has gathered 13 of the shop’s artists to design limited edition EuroPride and Stonewall 50 t-shirts.
He was inspired by t-shirts on display at the GLBT Historical Society Museum in San Francisco’s Castro District during a trip last year, he told me during one of the shop’s many exhibitions celebrating the launch of new designs by international queer artist and designer Jakob Lena Knebl.
Jakob’s works will also be exhibited at Vienna’s MUMOK during EuroPride, June 10 – 16.
The goal of the t-shirts is to honor the unity of the LGBTQI community in the “fight for the recognition of our rights and our culture,” Peter said in a statement sent to Girls That Roam.
The t-shirts will be unveiled at a special event at the shop on June 6.
EuroPridegoers will be able to get their own t-shirt at the shop, online, and at various locations during the festivities.
Heading to EuroPride
Get in with the gay Viennese way of life. Hanging out in the gay districts centered around the MuseumsQuartier, Mariahilfer Strasse, the main shopping street; and the famed Naschmarkt, the city’s largest open-air market filled with restaurants and shops in the tightly knitted together 4, 5, 6, and 7th districts.
Here is where gay and lesbian cafés, bars, restaurants, and shops as well as museums and high-end shopping along the Mariahilfer Strasse, bustle with its fabulousness.
Visitors know they are in the heart of Venna’s gay districts, the street lights signals outside the MuseumsQuartier on the Ringstrasse light up with same-sex couples when they cross the street.
My gay guide Niki König, 46, showed me all of the city’s gay hot spots as we walked through the trendy neighborhoods stopping in at Felixx Bar, one of the city’s best gay bars. Next month, the bar will also open during the daytime as a café serving coffee and cakes among its menu selections.
Goudie said readers who order a coffee and mention this article in the Bay Area Reporter (where it was originally published) will receive a free cake to celebrate EuroPride and the opening of the café.
Just a few blocks away, König pointed out one of his personal favorite spots, Marea Alta. A bar upstairs, downstairs it’s a night club that hosts a number of events where the city’s lesbian-feminists party.
Where To Eat
We then wound our way down to the Naschmarkt, where across the street one of the most popular cafes in Vienna, the historic Café Savoy.
The gay men playfully tease that only the men are left at the more than 120-year-old café that was once a straight pickup salon. The café is currently open during its expansion back to its original size since the 1950s. During the day, the café serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner and is popular among all locals and visitors. At night, the café turns into a popular queer hangout.
Other popular cafes around the city are lesbian-owned Fett+Zucker, feminist café Frauencafe (8, Lange Gasse 11) or one of the many other cafes that are queer-friendly.
Viennese love their eclectic cuisine which has evolved beyond the standard Viennese fare to a more international to farm-to-table flavor. I enjoyed exploring Vienna’s ever emerging restaurant scene dinging at LGBTQI favorites Labstelle, Wrenkh Wiener Kochsalon, Glacis Beisl, and 1500 Foodmakers. Glacis Beisl and 1500 Foodmakers offer late-night dinners.
When LGBTQI Viennese aren’t dining or imbibing coffee or wine from the vineyards that are on the outskirts of the city’s limits, they enjoy the great outdoors and bathing either beneath the sun or at the sauna.
One of queer Viennese favorite things to do during the spring, summer, and fall, I was repeatedly told, is to hang out at one of the two unofficial gay beaches on the Donauinsel, stroll or bike along the Danube River, or lounge about in one of the city’s many parks.
The Donauinsel is a small island in the middle of the Danube River and the Neue Donau.
Where To Sleep
I stayed in the heart of the MuseumsQuartier as a guest of 25Hours Hotel, a fun and trendy concept hotel that is very gay-friendly with its queer staff. The hotel is also hip and fun, with a California-Italian inspired restaurant, 1500 Foodmakers, and a rooftop bar, The Dachboden Loft; close to all the action and sites, and the perfect retreat after exploring the city and partying late into the night.
During my first time in Vienna, I stayed at the nearby artsy hotel the Altstadt Hotel.
EuroPride Vienna has also partnered with 12 other hotels to host guests.
How To Get There & Getting Around
Austrian Airlines offers nonstop flights from select U.S. airports, such as Los Angeles, to Vienna or one-stop flights on other airlines.
An inexpensive way to get to Vienna is to fly into Munich, Germany and take a four-and-a-half-hour train ride. I took Omio, formerly GoEuro. One-way train tickets start at around $50.
Getting around Vienna is easy. The city is very walkable, especially around the queer area.
Visitors can also get the Vienna Card, which provides unlimited transportation and discounts into museums and sites as well as at more than 210 restaurants and shops. The cards are available in 24, 48, and 72-hour passes. Remember to validate the cards at the machines in the metro station. The machines are easy to miss. They are conspicuous boxes located about 10-feet from the escalators. There are no gates on the escalators leading to the trains.
For more information, visit https://europride2019.at or www.wien.info/en/vienna-for/gay-lesbian.
Book your trip to Vienna with Girls That Roam Travel. Contact Heather Cassell at Girls That Roam Travel at 415-517-7239 or at .
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