Teresa Gruber

I have been a licensed Vienna guide since 2012, and before that I spent six years in Paris as a waitress, student and then assistant at an auction house, which is where my love of objects comes from. I grew up in the Josefstadt, the smallest district of Vienna, above a pharmacy my grandfather ran, and I still live two streets away. My working day starts in a coffeehouse, like my grandfather's did. I read the newspapers on their wooden holders, drink a Melange and watch the waiters in their black suits. Vienna is a city of rituals and quiet rules, and I think visitors enjoy it more when somebody explains them. My tours are about the Ringstraße, the coffeehouses and the painters of 1900, Klimt, Schiele and Kolo Moser. I am precise and I like a good story with a date attached to it. I play the cello in an amateur orchestra, badly, on Wednesday evenings. Today my sessions are live video walks through Vienna; you join from home, and I answer whatever you ask as we go.