Strudel doodle

As you probably all know, Austria goes to the polls tomorrow, in an election which threatens to end the 13-year-old "grand coalition" between the centre-left Social Democrats and the centre-right People's Party, and plunge this most staid of European states into a period of unusual volatility.

In The Irish Times, we speak of little else. But it was in the latest issue of the Economist that I read of how, after years of consensus politics in Austria, "never has the outcome of election been harder to predict". And that "the possible permutations have Viennese coffee houses humming with even more speculation than usual".

Now, normally, I wouldn't question anything I read in the Economist. But it so happens that I was in several Viennese coffee houses - mostly in Vienna - recently, and I can report that there was very little humming going on, speculative or otherwise. My cholesterol levels were humming, after the first 20 or so cups of coffee; but that was about it.

I can also reveal the shocking truth that the Danube is not blue, an issue I'll return to later. But the main point is that I spent the best part of a week in the Austrian capital without realising there was an election campaign on. There were no posters; nor loudhailers blasting out election songs; nor people canvassing in the street (apart from one guy dressed as Mozart who, as far as I know, was offering a tour of the Opera House).

I was in Vienna partly on a family holiday with my wife and baby daughter, and partly on a fact-finding mission to investigate strudel quality in the major strudel-producing economies of central Europe. I investigated a lot of strudel during the holiday. But most of it was comfort eating, because with a baby in tow you can do none of the other things that people in Viennese coffee houses traditionally do - like playing chess, or reading a newspaper, or just sitting around, looking intellectual.

Especially not with a baby who, before we left, had developed a tendency to throw up meals in inverse proportion to Austria's tendency to throw up surprise election results. In such circumstances, in any confined public space, you tend to be on constant alert for a signal that means you have to grab the child and run outside. The tension is terrible: in the posher kind of cafe, you're clenching your buttocks so tight at times that if you had to get up in a hurry, you'd take the chair with you. (You're sharing too much - Ed.)

Despite this, we did manage to visit a lot of historic cafes in Vienna, without mishap: including one where Trotsky played chess over coffee (always the same with revolutionaries - chess and coffee, never any cake) and a place where Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms all used to eat.

We didn't visit Hitler's favourite cafe, on the other hand; because the woman at the door said it was closed, even though it was only 9 p.m. and a sign on the wall claimed it was open till 11. That's the level of humming that was going on in the coffee-houses of Vienna. But we did come across one burning issue in local cafe society: namely the matter of who invented sachertorte, the chocolate-and-apricot cake which is synonymous with the city.

The rival claimants are the Hotel Sacher Cafe (a very posh place where we sat very close to the door) and the equally elegant Cafe Demel. The original Herr Sacher - Metternich's cook - and the original Demel - the Hapsburgs' pastry chef - fought a long-running dispute over the cake's authorship. It was probably one of the issues dealt with on the margins of the Congress of Vienna in 1814; but it has never been settled, and each cafe still claims to make the original and best.

Which brings me back to politics. According to the Economist, the two mainstream parties in Austria are popularly known as the "reds and blacks"; whereas the extremist Freedom Party (or "Freedomites"), which is threatening a breakthrough, is associated with the colour blue. The magazine talks of a possible new "black and blue" alliance, but adds there is also a chance of the inclusion of the Greens in what would be known as a "traffic light" coalition.

Given that Austrians are so keen on colour-coding, therefore, my question is this: how could they have got it so wrong about the Danube? Which is as green as the Liffey, or I'm a Dutchman.

In know this, because we took the train all the way to Budapest (also on the Danube) and travelled back to Vienna by boat, even though the boat costs twice as much (I'm not complaining, I'm just planting the fact here to support an expense claim) and takes twice as long.

Also - colour aside - the Danube is not everything it's cracked up to be. It heads north out of the Hungarian capital before taking a sharp left at the so-called "Danube-bend", world-famous (in Hungary, anyway) for its beauty, with steep, wooded inclines and hilltop castles, and the works. After that, it gets a lot less interesting; and the nearer you get to Vienna the more the river starts to resemble traditional Austrian politics, with a grand coalition of a flat bank on the left-hand side, and another flat bank on the right.

By the time we got back to Vienna, I felt much the same about the Danube as I do about, for example, Bob Dylan's music; which is to say that the early stuff is the best, but you'd be better getting off somewhere around Gyor and continuing the journey by train (sorry, I just couldn't keep that Dylan analogy going).

But the consolation is that, based on extensive research, I can now say with some authority that the Danube is green. Thoroughly green. And whatever Strauss was on when he claimed otherwise wasn't on the menu in any of the cafes we visited.

Finally: on the issue of the cake, I must admit a slight leaning towards the Sacherites. But it's too close to call, really. And if either cafe is prepared to fund a period of further study, I'd like to stress that I'm still a floating voter.