Vienna: Horses, Carriages for Hire Lend Grand City Ambience
Horse Ta es
by Candice C. Dunnigan

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

This autumn I found myself on the back of a native Haflinger pony for three days and then a large, sleek European trotter, riding 80 miles in Lichtenau, a corner of the world in northern Austria. Rural, oh yes, and “out of the way,” indeed. It was the kind of place where there was no telephone - anywhere - or a money machine, or a convenience store. But every house in every village grew geraniums and marigolds, and they all enjoyed a working garden, a fruit tree, and chickens in the yard.

The Czech border was closer than Petoskey is to Mackinac Island. But unlike Northern Michigan in the fall, there were no tourists traveling about. Obergrunbrach is not a destination resort, full of the gilded. In fact, for me, it was just three riders on the little rural roads with the farmers. What a treat, and what a wonderful place to ride. There were vast, open, and well-drained fields to gallop in (seemingly minus the sly rabbit holes lurking in the boggy greens of Ireland). The forests were dark, and trimmed pines towered 70 feet above. There were deep pine-scented descents on needle-strewn trails to fast babbling brooks banked with mosses and ferns. Everything was quiet. People would stop, stare, smile, nod, and go back to their farming. Horses’ hooves, the falling leaves, and the windfall fruits were the only noisemakers.

Candi and Brian Dunnigan on a pair of Haflingers during their trip to Austria. They took a three-day horse ride in Lichtenau.

Perhaps the most spectacular sights were the running stags and riding through a 300-acre golden beech forest that looked like a movie set. The most frightening aspect of the trek was the possibility of coming face to face with one of the many wild boar that roam the woods.

Here is one of the many “fiakar” carriages that the Dunnigans came upon by surprise in Vienna, near Burgtheater, during their trip to Austria. A fiakar refers both to an elegant two-horse coach and the driver-for-hire.

Like all good things, the ride ended too quickly. But my husband, Brian, and I had planned extra days in Vienna following the trek. I’m glad we did. I don’t speak German, yet. I tried. Austrians were nice, even the city sophisticates. Naturally, we had forgotten a travel dictionary, but I was armed with self-confidence. After all, I knew horse basics in German, and Brian had about 40 odd nouns and verbs from all those World War II movies and his “Germanic map Curator/

sprech” to his credit.

Since I seldom tend to be far from anything equine, I smiled broadly when I stepped fresh from the Ubahn (underground) station in Vienna and I came face to face with two horses in harness, a carriage, and a man in a derby, who asked in very good English, “Would you care to go for a carriage ride?”

To my amazement and delight, they were all around me - horses and carriages for hire. Gee, just like guess where? As it turns out, the horse business in Vienna is as synonymous to that city as gondolas are to Venice.

On Mackinac, the carriage trade (from the late 1880s to the late 1940s) was often referred to as the hacks, taken from hackney - not the breed of horse, but meaning “for hire.” The term had much the same literal meaning as cab and cabbie, the slang reference for a carriage, Cabriolets, and its driver. In Vienna, the term is Fiaker. A fiakar is reference both to an elegant two-horse coach and the driver for hire.

Like Mackinac, the fiakar trade these days is aimed at the tourists, the young at heart, the romantic, and those who want to see the central core of the Baroque grand city in style. The hey-day for Viennese fiakers was from the 1860s until the 1910s. Then, Vienna was under the imperial auspices of Emperor Franz Joseph, and all of his metropolitan grandeur. At that time, these carriages, like those of Mackinac, were the only means of taxi conveyance in the city, and they were of the utmost in importance.

As the trolleys, busses, and underground systems of the 1900s gained popularity and modernized the city zones of Vienna, they linked one metropolitan section to the other, thus the fiakers centralized in concentration around the old sections of St. Stephan’s Cathedral, Michaelesplaztz Square, the Hoffburg Quarter, Grand Opera, the core of the old city, and the area of the opulent Schonbrunn palace, some six miles away.

These fiakers and their trade have survived not only World War I and II, but the Cold War and the end of the 20th century. Today there are still close to 200 independent owners and operators of private carriage tours in the city. Unlike Mackinac, they’ve never incorporated, but like Mackinac, many of these are generational businesses even as far as the carriages and horse lineages. What was once the most practical method of taxi transport, however, has become the most expensive way in which to travel a short distance.

The term fiaker actually comes from Paris, not Vienna. It originated in 1622, when a publican in the Rue St. Fiacre rented out lovely coaches for city travel and tours. The Viennese soon adopted the idea, and there it stayed. On any given day in the off-season, at least 50 fiakers will be on the streets; in the summer, this can quadruple to accommodate passengers, mainly tourists, who are in Vienna for their first visit. Sound familiar?

Like Mackinac, these drivers and coaches dominate the streets in certain areas. They lend the “equine” charm or “grand city” ambience that is lacking in London or Athens, evoking a similar feeling for many on Mackinac. In Vienna, the fiaker coaches are gleaming, in colors of green, rose, red, blue, yellow, and even pink. They hold a maximum of four to a coach. Many of the horses are leggy Hungarian or Bavarian Warm Bloods and Lipizzaner. They’re spotless and quite lovely. The drivers are more or less clad in the timeless hack men’s costume of checked or striped trousers, crumpled velvet jacket, white shirt, and derby hat.

Yet, Caveat Emptor, buyer do beware, as unlike Mackinac, the fares are across the board. One man’s tour hour may not be equal to the fiaker standing in wait in front of or behind him. The same goes for the sights in his tour. Used as a taxi service, be prepared to pay and pay dearly.

As with Mackinac, these horse-drawn vehicles have caused complaints and have been credited for adding to city congestion. For me, however, they were a delight to behold, to watch, and to enjoy. Expensive, but special, yes, like the extra whipped cream and swirls on the exotic cup of coffee I could only experience there, in Vienna.

Candice Dunnigan is an active member of the American Equestrian Association, the Waterloo Hunt, and the Mackinac Island Horsemen’s Association. Seasonally she resides at Donnybrook and Easterly Cottage.