When the weather is fine, Vienna's residents shun city parks in favor of the Wienerwald (Vienna Woods), a wide arc of forested countryside that surrounds northwest and southwest Vienna. If you love parks, you'll find some magnificent ones in Vienna. Within the city limits are more than 4,000 acres of gardens and parks and no fewer than 770 sports fields and playgrounds. You can, of course, visit the grounds of Schönbrunn Park and Belvedere Park when you tour those palaces.
Tales of the Vienna Woods--The Vienna Woods (Wienerwald in German) weren't something Johann Strauss (II) dreamed up to enliven his musical tales told in waltz time. The Wienerwald is a delightful hilly landscape of gentle paths and trees that borders Vienna on the southwest and northwest. If you stroll through this area, a weekend playground for the Viennese, you'll be following in the footsteps of Strauss and Schubert. Beethoven, when his hearing was failing, claimed that the chirping birds, the trees, and leafy vineyards of the Wienerwald made it easier for him to compose.
A round-trip through the woods, a distance of some 50 miles (80km), takes about 3 1/2 hours by car. Even if you don't have a car, visiting the woods is relatively easy. Board tram no. 1 near the State Opera, going to Schottentor; there, switch to tram no. 38 (the same ticket is valid) going out to the village of Grinzing, home to the famous heurigen (wine taverns). If you can resist the heurigen, board bus no. 38A, which goes through the Wienerwald up the hill to Kahlenberg, on the northeasternmost spur of the Alps (1,585 ft./483m). The whole trip takes about 1 hour each way.
If the weather is fair and clear, from Kahlenberg you can see all the way to Hungary and Slovakia. At the top of the hill is the small Church of St. Joseph, where King John Sobieski of Poland stopped to pray before leading his troops to the defense of Vienna against the Turks. For one of the best views of Vienna, go to the right of the Kahlenberg restaurant. From the terrace you'll have a panoramic sweep, including the spires of St. Stephan's.
Many Austrian visitors from the country, a hardy lot, walk along a footpath to the suburbs of Nussdorf and Heiligenstadt. At Nussdorf, it's possible to take tram D back to the center of Vienna.
