Warning: it doesn’t really exist.

Not a lot of Vienna stays open at night.  Many times we walked past restaurants and grocery stores that closed early.  Luckily we were staying in the 4th quarter, which had a couple of bars around that area that stayed open past 8pm.  The 3 of us were sort-of night-owls, so we spent most of our nights wandering around the city, in the dark, looking for something that was open or could be photographed.

We wandered past the Opera House; took a horse-drawn carriage past St Stephen’s Cathedral (for the record, it is impossible to take a non-blurry photo while in a horse-drawn carriage going across cobble-stone streets); meandered around Secession Hall; and many other places that I’m too tired to look up.

And then we found a fountain!

But it wasn’t just any fountain…

I can’t remember how many different colours there were, but I took pictures of red, blue, green and purple.  The fountain is called Hochstrahlbrunnen (high jet fountain), and it’s located in Schwarzenbergplatz.  Behind the fountain is Denkmal der Roten Armee (Red Army Memorial, known to the locals as Russendenkmal – Russian memorial).  The memorial was built by the soviet army who occupied that a sector of Vienna until 1955.

I don’t know much about the memorial, but here’s some more info about the crazy fountain:

Three hundred and sixty-five small jets at the edge of the basin, one for each day in the year, surround seven islands with jets symbolizing the seven days of the week. Twelve larger jets represent the months of the year, twenty-four more represent the hours of the day and thirty other jets account for the days in the month. The largest, central jet represents the year.

Pretty cool.

But enough about water – let’s get to the food!  Late at night you’re going to feel like having a snack, and because you’re in Vienna you’ll want to snack on cake (I’m assuming you all feel that way).

While we were wandering around we came across Cafe Mozart, which was miraculously open.  Aside from 2 others, we were the only people inside the cafe after dark.  But that was okay since it meant we had the cake (and the wait staff) to ourselves!

Delicious cake…

 

With a little cappuccino on the side.

I can think of worse snacks.