About me:

Today I live and work in Vienna, but my origins are in the surrounding Vienna Woods, more precisely in the well-known village of Mayerling. There, my father owned a hotel restaurant which used to be used for lunch stops by numerous tourist buses on their excursions to the Viennese forest. My mother worked (and still works) as a tour guide. From my earliest childhood I got therefore acquainted to tourism, and so it is not at all astonishing that I stayed loyal to this business.

After having absolved the tour guide formation at the WIFI (Institute of economic promotion) in Vienna from 1999 to 2001 and having passed the official tour guide exam in March 2002, I started to work as an independent tour guide in April 2002 and joined the Vienna Guide Association and the working group "Walks in Vienna". Ever since, I am offering a large sightseeing program in Vienna and its surroundings. Besides the classical bus tours and city walks, my program contains customized topic walks, school tours and ghost walks.

Among my special topics you will find music and dance (I worked as a dancing instructor for several years and I play horn in various orchestras), Surrealism (I am offering tours through the Dalí exhibition since 1998) and chiropterology (the study of bats - I am actually working on a university research project about bats in central Europe).

Stylistically, I try to find the right balance between historical accuracy and interesting presentation, but if you ask me whether I prefer reciting dates and names or telling amusing anecdotes, I must admit that in this case I will certainly tend to entertaining my audience instead of annoying them with useless heaps of information. I am convinced that any guided tour should mainly try to make its guests enjoy themselves - but nevertheless I am always ready to answer any detailed question that might be asked.

I hope that you will soon be able to judge the quality of my tours yourselves and I am looking forward to meet you!

Alexander Ehrlich - Your city guide to Vienna, Austria