One feels that nightclub culture will always have an uphill battle in Vienna

Bach does not look too impressed with all the seasonal excitement - but then he has seen it all before of course - he has been hanging around in the hall for a while. But for the Viennese music at Christmas is a vital part of the celebrations - it is everywhere in the air.

An image of a conductor is painted on the side of the big wheel in the city's amusement park, brass bands of youths play Christmas carols in special Christmas street markets, the beggar outside the bank cash machine sings tenor and even the pricey shopping mall has a gifted concert pianist in residence.

Social occasion

At the State Opera House on Saturday night was a performance of La Boheme - Puccini's tragic opera which opens with hope on a Christmas Eve.

Opera is seen as so important an art form in the city that anyone can buy standing tickets at the back - and the cost is only $2. And it is a great social occasion.

The beggar outside the bank cash machine sings tenor

Where I stood, in the hot, high altitudes of the house, there were rows full of smart young people slyly stealing glances at one another. One feels that nightclub culture will always have an uphill battle in Vienna.

The audience is huge for music at Christmas. The famous Viennese coffee houses - legends like Cafe Demel from the 18th Century serve thousands of exquisite cakes and delicate pastries to people on their way to or from concerts.

Theoretically you are allowed to sit there all day long with just one cup of coffee, a complimentary glass of water and a selection of newspapers to while away the time.

Gingerbread house

Locals head for the stammtisch - the regulars' table. The speciality at this time of year is a model house made from gingerbread.

These are immaculately-crafted miniatures in food. Sometimes as wide as three or four feet across and two feet high, these houses have walls made of dark gingerbread, with cherries and nuts representing stones in the front walls.

Dried white sugar gives the impression of ice hanging off the house's windows and a dusting of coconut on the tiled gingerbread roof shows freshly fallen snow.

Lights decorate the Holocaust memorial too

Other specialities are the cake Stollen - which looks like a log from a tree covered in snow and tastes deliciously of bright marzipan and warming rum.

Of course, like Bach, the cafes serving these delicacies have seen quite a few Christmases - some of them rather bleak.

This year, the city of Vienna finally erected a monument to the 65,000 Austrian Jews who were killed in the Nazi Holocaust.

The monument is in Judenplatz - Jew Square. It is a bleak-looking concrete bunker - reminiscent of a giant tomb.

The detail around the outside of the monument is of rows and rows of books on shelves - telling, one supposes, the story of the murdered.

The oldest Jewish cemetery in Vienna

It is situated round the corner from one of Vienna's Christ-Kind - Christ Child - markets - a fairy-tale world where bright lights enthusiastically decorate barrels of Gluhwein - cheap red wine that has been spiced and heated.

Lights decorate the Holocaust memorial too - they are little red candles of remembrance.

It is quite quiet in Jew Square and there is not much through-traffic - even though the memorial's formal opening was reported round the world. In fact the receptionist at my well-resourced hotel looked confused when I asked where it was.

She had heard of something new opening she said, but couldn't quite remember where it was.

It was somehow reassuring that she eventually found it on the map.

Synagogue burned down

The Jewish festival of Chanukah is a few days before Christmas and last weekend we passed a house round the corner from the memorial where Jews were celebrating. But it is incongruous.

Just a year ago archaeologists in the city unearthed the remains of a synagogue which had been buried for nearly 600 years. It had remained hidden after old Vienna's aristocratic court had tried to forcibly convert Jews to Christianity around the year 1400.

There is a new wave of immigration into the city - not of Jews but of Muslims

When that attempt failed, some Jews were burned alive, the synagogue burned down in mysterious circumstances and groups of the least-educated in the community were put onto rudderless boats on the river Danube and floated off towards Hungary.

The synagogue was buried - and with it the scene of the crime.

After the second major purge of Jews in the city under Nazi rule 520 years later, only 5,000 Jewish people remained out of an original population of more than 200,000.

Today, though, there is a new wave of immigration into the city - not of Jews but of Muslims.

Our Egyptian taxi driver Mohammed said that mostly the Austrians were friendly towards him - only 20% weren't, he said - perhaps picking up the habit of precision from his hosts.

Mohammed won't be celebrating Christmas this year, but Ramadan finishes soon and there'll be a great feast in Vienna for that too.