Before coming to Vienna, I had the presupposition that it would be uptight, much more so than New York. And to be fair, there certainly are things about Vienna that are… For example, Vienna is very clean in comparison to NYC. The Viennese seem to be obsessed with polishing glass, they seem to love clean, white walls, and leaves are swept up as soon as they hit the ground. Another example is the rules for bicycling (or perhaps just the reinforcement of the rules) are considerably more uptight (I’ve already been pulled over four times for things like riding the wrong way down a one way street, compared to only once in my ten years in NYC).

But last night when my boyfriend Orien and I took a walk in the Second District and stumbled upon a playground park, open at night, full of potentially dangerous climbing structures, I was surprised.

The tower (Photo via Wikepedia)

A place like this would not exist in today’s NY. In NY they close and lock the parks at night. The park, called Venediger Au Park was not only open after dark, it was filled with obscured places to hang out, like mini towers with long slides and hammocks. It even had a zip-line and a legitimately perilous ropes course with many of its hurdles high above the ground. It was an amazing discovery.

The zip-line among other play things (Photo via www.wien.gv.at)

The ropes course (photo via Photo via www.wien.gv.at)

We took a stab at the fairly difficult climbing course and flew down the zip-line. All the while people were hanging out, drinking and carrying on around us. It was a beautiful sight.

Venediger Au Park is very easy to reach by public transport, you can take the U-Bahn line U2 to Prater Stern. Enjoy