Otherness

People often comment that the shopping areas of Vienna (including the rather smart Mariahilferstrasse and even the Kärntner Strasse) look somewhat old-fashioned.

Not having succumbed to 1970s brutish city centre redevelopment as is the case of most British cities, Vienna remains largely untouched. Its smart shop fronts gleam as brightly as the things on sale inside (be they expensive artifacts or glorious bits of golden plasticy tat).

One thing I have noticed since we arrived in February is how few global retail outlets are present here. The ubiquity of some of these shops make any city somehow interchangeable with any other. Not that I have been searching for something "essential" to Vienna since we have been here (I could look in the direction of the Fiaker rides around the city centre or the Spanish Riding School displays for that), it was rather just something that struck me immediately as "different" or even "foreign" about Vienna which took me a long time to work out why.

Some of the usual (and other, not so usual) suspects are present here, including:

• Body Shop
• Crabtree & Evelyn
• Esprit
• Foot Locker
• H&M
• KFC
• Macdonalds
• Starbucks
  
• Zara

The presence of multiple Starbucks shops in the alleged coffee capital of Europe, seems particularly provocative. They seem ever popular though.