How to see Vienna on a budget
Vienna city view by Anja Osenberg (CC0 1.0)
Vienna is well-known as a pretty expensive city in which to live. But even as a tourist, you might want to plan your trip before going there, so you don’t squander your whole holiday budget in a couple of days.
Museums and more
If you are a culture aficionado, the best thing to do is to visit the museum quarter (Museumsquartier, or MQ for short) near the centre of the city. There you have a huge variety of exhibitions, from art, to history, and even biology. Also, the old town with the emblematic St. Stephen’s Cathedral (Stephansdom), is not far. When you walk there, you will pass by the People’s Garden (Volksgarten), a pleasant and popular park. Plus, walking between these attractions has already saved you the money you’d have spent on transport.
If you do plan on going sightseeing and using public transport, you might want to look into getting a Vienna Card. It offers you discounts on all the available transport, such as the metro, buses, trams as well as points of interests, museums, and much more.
Cheap accommodation
In Austria, hotels and hostels are not as cheap as in other countries. However, even the comparatively very cheap hotels and hostels offer good value and quality, and you still get rooms of high standard. Comparing prices always pays off and there is a great number of websites for finding and booking hostels, e.g. budgetplaces.com. As an even cheaper alternative, you can visit websites such as Airbnb and Wimdu, where you will find lots of nice flats to share for some days, and of course couchsurfing is always an option.
Other ways to save money in Vienna
If you already have a somewhat respectable knowledge of German, there are other, let’s say interesting, ways to save money in Vienna.
If you want to go out in Vienna, and save as much money as possible, go to powerhour.at to find out about the cheapest places to drink. You can filter your results according to the type of drink, the region of Austria (in this case Vienna, of course) and the date you want to go out on.
If you want to go on a shopping trip and like designer clothes and shoes, check out diestadtspionin.at (“the female city spy”). There you can find a variety of bargains, among them sales in designer outlets. For food shopping, use meinkauf.at (“my purchase”), where you can find cheap deals offered by different supermarkets all over the city.
If you like to read (in German), go to one of the open bookcases. It is a kind of open library where you can take a book you like and leave one you have already read and don’t need anymore.
Last but not least, if you like ecological, seasonal fruits and nuts, check out mundraub.org. It gives you a map of all the fruit and nut trees that don’t belong to anyone in Vienna. It’s a fun way to explore the city and, on top of that, you can harvest your own fresh fruits!
