Austria: The concept of Home

Gasthaus Rebhuhn Berggasse 1090 Vienna

It had been a while, the memories had faded a bit, the taste of the food had long since vanished from the tongue, but the longing remained: to return to the Rebhuhn, to sit at one of the wooden tables in the back corner, to eat a Wiener schnitzel in Vienna. Is that still considered wanderlust or already homesickness? It doesn’t matter. It becomes clear that even the longest journey to the Rebhuhn is worth it when the waiter behind the counter says, “Mr. Peter, it’s great to have you back.”

Being on the road means opening yourself up to new things and surrendering to adventure.But adventure doesn’t fill up your stomach and usually makes you tired. Then the traveler needs a place of peace, a place of retreat, a home in a foreign land. In short, they need a local.

What makes a local a local is difficult to define; in that respect, it’s similar to a love affair. It’s about attraction, not necessarily about physical attractiveness. You have to feel accepted and at home. A local is an anchorage in the world’s swell.

You can find it anywhere. It could be a tearoom in Thailand, a rooftop bar in New York—or the Rebhuhn in Vienna, the “best pub in the ninth district,” as the Viennese say, and the Viennese don’t lie. Only if they have to . . . and they certainly don’t have to here.

“80 percent of my customers are regulars,” says Caroline Kargl, who has run the Rebhuhn for more than 20 years. She sits relaxed in the dining room overlooking plenty of wood, from the wall paneling to the bar to the tables and chairs, and even to the lamps, which, beyond any stylistic sense, are suspended from heavy beams on wrought-iron chains. It’s

always been this way, and that’s how it should stay, says the proprietor, say the guests.

Caroline Kargl is not only the proprietor, but also a psychotherapist with her own practice. The two professions are closely related, especially in Vienna. First, the hospitality industry is not just about physical well-being, but also about mental well-being - and second, the Rebhuhn is located on the famous Berggasse diagonally across from the

house where Sigmund Freud once lived and founded psychoanalysis until he had to flee the Nazis in 1938.

So, one can assume, even old Freud used to stop by the Rebhuhn. It has been here in the neighborhood since the beginning of the 20th century. Caroline Kargl’s parents ran the establishment from the early 1970s to the 1990s. She was born with it yet never wanted to be the proprietor. When she left for Berlin to work in the media, the inn was rented out. A few arguments and a court ruling later, however, her father called one day: “Caro, the place is ours again.”

She returned to breathe new life into the Rebhuhn. Initially, it was only open in the evenings for a few hours, just for friends. The idea: “We’re creating something like what we ourselves would want as guests,” she explains, “like an extended living room.” Word spread in Vienna and around the world, even reaching an Asian influencer who, for a while, attracted Korean honeymooners in considerable numbers to the Rebhuhn.

The Rebhuhn survived this too. Every wave ebbs, the sea remains. So, from anywhere in the world, people always gladly return to the Rebhuhn, their anchorage. And from the Rebhuhn, they set out into the world again, shored up.

Vienna, May 2025

Translation: Lisa Kremer