Graz (in Styria) is equivalent or even a hint better. people in the Bundesländer (= not from the capital Vienna) have a bit different attitude towards many things: they are used to go relatively far for anything (job, friends, ...), so they are more mobile and thus you can have a gig in salzburg, styria, upper austria, whereever, and still you will find many people from almost all Bundesländer there. but Viennese people are spoiled, they are used to be served anything in their town... - - anyway, Graz is one town that has a very similar if not better scene (though "scene" means people from a radius of like 100km
)
this summer were insanely many underground gigs and one-day fests. usually there's almost nothing going on because of the big festivals in germany; but this summer was different.
as for this world/folk summit: there were some this year, in different towns. do you mean a specific one?
vienna does have some nice sides, yes
of course, depends on what YOU find "nice".
i find the fact that there's really many green areas in and especially around vienna, very pleasant. there's many parks (those where you can actually feel unobserved), and outside the city-borders you have the "wienerwald" which is a national park (very vast area with hills for hiking and also rock climbing; ruins and little castles as well; nature-adventure areas, etc.)
the inner city and the "business-districts" are of typical modern european style. still, you find many older buildings, that contribute to a certain charm.
for example: i work in a pharmaceutical company, and the building is of old style with ornaments and all that stuff. vis-a-vis, a new apartment-block is built up right now and it's a typical modern building: no ornaments, just plain concrete, modern doors, modern all. boring in one word =) --- both right next to the american embassy
some hundred meters away, you have an apartment block which apparently was built VERY long ago, and in the background you see a building that was designed by Hundertwasser (if this name rings a bell)
vis-a-vis you have a main train station which includes much glass in its architecture. - still, somehow it all fits together, surprisingly....
the outer districts look almost like a suburb, and thus the borders to Lower Austria are very fluent.
when you're in the inner city (1st district) in the evening - especially at weekends - you have all kinds of weird and kinky sites and people running round there =)
oh and the tramways are from the 60ies
a good part of these old trams were replaced by modern trams, but there's enough old trams still doing their daily job. (the new ones are HELL in summer. and i mean hot as h e l l . sauna temperatures, cos there's only very small windows and much glass; don't ask me why they built them ...)
as for metal: the best is Escape-Metalcorner
then Graffiti (more a heavy metal, power metal club; other styles too, but the emphasis is on the first two.). the Graffiti is located directly in a very sophisticated shopping street
so you have very elegant and stuck-up people walking around there in the evening (window shopping) or people going to the opera or theatres or other "cultivated" places. and right in between nice&clean places, there is ONE WOODEN DOOR, READING "GRAFFITI" above it and scary people, all dressed in black and leather and boots and men with long hair are hanging out there with beer bottles in their hands, laughing and talking about stuff that the average passenger just cannot sort out
there's some other metal places as well, but they are more oriented on more successful metal-styles, if you understand...
gig locations: for underground gigs, the ZU-GA-BE ("encore") is
the place these days. in the same club you have a jazz-bar as well, and it's built like a labyrinth.
when you go to the WC, you can hear both: jazz on one ear and metal on the other
(if gigs are happening right then)
generally, i'd say vienna has many opposites and this is good
still i prefer going to some underground fest in another Bundesland, because people seem to be more easy-going and the attitude is different a bit, too
