Vienna grew up within reach of the Danube River (Donau in German). In the 16th Century, a canal was carved off the main flow of the river in order to bring transport ships right into the heart of the city. Today, the 17 kilometer Donaukanal is not so much for transport as for recreation and environmental well-being in the city center. Here, the Monkey rests by a new pedestrian bridge across the Danube Canal. A few blocks beyond the apartment blocks you see here, the lazy expanse of Vienna's immense central park—the Prater—begins.

The Monkey poses for one of the essential Austrian photos, a shot with Vienna's signature ferris wheel, the Riesenrad. Built in 1897, the towering 65-meter-tall giant wheel was erected to celebrate 50 years of Emperor Franz Joseph's rule. Located in the Prater—Vienna's vast central park—the Riesenrad was badly damaged during World War II, but reopened in 1945. It featured prominently in an unforgettable scene in Carol Reed's 1953 film noir masterpiece, The Third Man, with Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles. James Bond also found his way to the Riesenrad in 1986's The Living Daylights.

The slowly revolving Riesenrad's classic cabins and panoramic vistas continue to make it a popular Viennese attraction, despite the advent of faster, flashier rides in the amusement park around its base.

The Monkey pauses for a photo by the Donaukanal that channels the Danube's waters through central Vienna. Across the canal lies the headquarters of OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Its eleven current members are Algeria, Indonesia, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. The group sets production quotas and prices for crude oil, and pumps about 40 percent of the world's oil while controlling some 75 percent of the known oil reserves. This has led to accusations that OPEC is little more than a cartel, despite the fact that a number of major oil producers like Russia, Mexico, and Colombia are not members.

The Monkey's considered opinion is that OPEC is much less of a cartel than some far more familiar (and, importantly, Western-owned) cartels that never get derided for their stranglehold on supply. Take the petroleum refinery and delivery cartel known as the Seven Sisters (Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Gulf, Shell, Texaco, and British Petroleum), who at their peak controlled 90 percent of the world's oil supply via ownership of all crucial pipelines. The Seven Sisters merged and bought out and bankrupted each other down to five siblings that make a mockery of antitrust while yielding ever greater profits. The same is true of the media conglomerates (Sony, AOL/TimeWarner, News Corp., Disney, GE, AT&T, Liberty, Viacom, Vivendi Universal, Bertelsmann), who dominate global media, shoving their fingers in everyone's pie and echo-chambering their opinions into everyone's mouths. In the Monkey's estimation, a better perception of OPEC is to regard it as a cooperative of developing nations, and a reminder that poor countries also matter.

Vienna's Prater, anchored at one end by the Volksprater amusement park (seen here) but mostly consisting of wide-open green spaces, is the city's largest park. Once a royal hunting reserve, Emperor Joseph II opened the Prater to the public in 1766.

During his brief second visit to Vienna, the Monkey made sure to allot some time for a relaxed stroll through the Prater, something of a Viennese custom.

At Cafe Diglas II, one of Vienna's several inviting cafés, the Monkey enjoys a cup of the world's other black gold: coffee. The Viennese call such espresso-like portions a schwarzer. Another classic Viennese coffee variety is the melange, which is similar to the Italian cappuccino but not quite as milk-diluted.

The Monkey stops off for another coffee in yet another classic Vienna café, or konditorei. In this picture you can see the warm, cozy tone of the old coffee houses, which still allow one to while away the hours over a few ounces of coffee. Once the scene of heady conversations by the likes of Freud, Trotsky and a host of others who made late 19th Century Vienna the West's intellectual mecca, Vienna's classic cafés continue to serve as a sort of living-room-away-from-home for the Viennese. Challenged by tacky, soulless, corporate imports like Starbucks and even McCafe (by—you guessed it—McDonalds), Vienna's classic cafés are standing their ground and preserving their place in Austrian society.

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