Vienna is the capital and largest city of Austria, and the Historic City Centre was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Vienna has hosted the Habsburg court for several centuries, first as the imperial see of the Holy Roman Empire, then the capital of the Austrian Empire and later of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This has tremendously influenced the culture that exists there today. Like Munich, its residents are formal, but with small doses of courtliness, polite forms of address and formal dress attire, the residents of Vienna tend to be equally modern and old-fashioned. Waiters address their customers with honorifics; a man who bumps into someone on the street is more than likely to implore his or her pardon with a small bow; tourists are treated as if they were a long-lost member of the royal family returning home. This luxurious treatment is one of the reasons that many people enjoy visiting Vienna.
The traditional Vienna is but one of the many façades of this city. Vienna is also a dynamic, young city, famous for its (electronic) music scene with independent labels, cult-status underground record stores, a vibrant club scene, multitudes of street performers and a government that seems overly obsessed with complicated paperwork. However, people are willing to go out of their way or bend the rules a little if they feel they can do someone a favor.