This is Vienna (a photo essay): The Grätzel named Gumpendorf - Vienna Würstelstand

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This is Vienna (a photo essay): The Grätzel named Gumpendorf

Today, follow me through the first Photo-Grätzel-Tour of ‘Steinbichler’s Wien’ in which I’ll be showing you around Gumpendorf, a village within the 6th district. This Viennese word, ‘Grätzel,’ is hard to explain as it possesses no clear definition. It refers to the city’s districts as being more like small self contained villages. At the heart of these small villages, or Grätzels, is always a church, a market place in front and the essential shops, like your grocers or your butcher surrounding it.

A Grätzel can also be a certain identity an area of the city holds, like the Karmeliterviertel or the Brunnenmarket. That’s the beauty of the Grätzel – they’re created by the people who live in them.

The Grätzel of Gumpendorf – Gumpen-what? Gumpendorf is a part of the 6th district, Mariahilf. A „Gumpe“ is an old word for mud hole and ‘dorf’ translates as village – the village at the mudhole. Not the most glamorous name for a settlement.

But those that live around the Mariahilf district know this name well and they refer to it as if it’s their local pub or living room – it’s familiar and well known for its personality. There are shops and institutions in the wider district that also use the name Gumpendorf, even if they are over one kilometer outside the old village center. As if they want to be part of whatever it is that makes Gumpendorf, Gumpendorf.

Seems that the name Mariahilf is related too much to Mariahilfer Straße, the largest Viennese shopping street. Gumpendorf is quite the opposite to that open-air-mall.

Gumpendorf is charismatic. It’s made up of a weird mixture of old and new, unusual and trendy shops. You can find an old and famous butchery (looking like it hasn’t changed since 1973!) with one of the hippest pizzerias in town on the other side the Grätzel’s artery, Gumpendorfer Straße.

You can discover small and intimate shops, where things are produced, repaired or sold. The chance for good conversation – about work, their life or just about the newest Grätzel-gossip – can be found here.

Look behind the facades of Gumpendorf and you’ll find backyards with lush green and tree-draped gardens that one wouldn’t expect in such a densely built-up part of a city.

An old factory behind a residential building can be found, often re-used by some protagonists of Vienna’s creative industry. These buildings speak of Mariahilf’s other life of the industrial times in the 1900 when smoking chimneys could be found on every corner. Nowadays, only two are left and are smokeless. Signs of a this city’s layers of life that has come and gone through the ages.

Life is laid-back in Vienna’s Gumpendorf. Walking through narrow and snug side streets, in its small shops or cafés, an hive of friendly and handsome people are to be found, contradicting the common idea of the grumpy Viennese. At least, this is my Gumpendorf…

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