Get Yourself A Guide - Vienna

If you want to learn about the might of the Hapsburg Empire’s capital, Vienna, Gerhard Strassgschwandtner is your man (he’ll explain why the bit over there looks like it was lifted from Brussels, the bit over there looks it’s come from Greece). If you want to know about the whys and wherefores of the etiquette of a traditional Viennese coffee house, he’ll have the answers. He can even teach you how to waltz before attending one of the famous Viennese balls.

But his real passion is the classic movie The Third Man shot in the bomb-battered ruins of postwar Vienna in 1948. He and his wife run the private and fabulous Third Man Museum, a tribute to Graham Greene, Carol Reed, Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Anton Karas, Trevor Howard and … Harry Lime. You can even see the original zither on which Anton Karas composed and recorded the film’s famous “Third Man Theme” and listen to any of 400 recordings of it, from The Beatles to Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass. Most fascinating is a room dedicated to Harry Lime’s Vienna, which is full of original documents, food parcels and of course the screening room where you watch a sequence from the movie right in situ. Don’t miss this one!

Gerhard Strassgschwandtner. + 43 1 586 4872; www.3mpc.net/engllinks.htm

Third Man Museum, Pressgasse 25, 1040 Vienna, Austria. Open every Saturday 2 - 6 pm; http://www.thirdmanmuseum.com/