Two strangers meet on a train from Budapest. He's an American with one night in Vienna before a morning flight. She's a French student. They get off the train together, and for the rest of the film they simply walk and talk, all night, both knowing the sun will end it. That's Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise, from 1995, with Ethan Hawke as Jesse and Julie Delpy as Céline, and the story is set on 16 June, Bloomsday. This is an unofficial film walk, not made with or endorsed by the filmmakers or the studio. It follows their night in the film's order, from the church steps at dusk to the Albertina terrace near dawn, and two afternoon places along the way are told as flashbacks. It's one of our self-guided walking tours, about 6 kilometers from Maria am Gestade to the Albertina. And it works best the way the film does: with someone beside you. So slow down. Let the stretches between stops be for talking, and think of me as a third voice who only speaks up at the corners.

Before you set off

The walking adds up to about 85 minutes, but give it two and a half hours, because the point is to dawdle. Start in the late afternoon and the second half falls after dark, as it does in the film. Schwedenplatz, on the U1 and U4, is a short walk from the first stop, and Karlsplatz and Oper, on the U1, U2 and U4, are right beside the last. There are steps: the steep flight up to the church, the stepped lane of Mölker Steig, the steps by the canal, and the terrace at the end. The record shop is closed on Sundays and its listed weekday hours vary from source to source, so check before you go if you want to step inside. Café Sperl closes on Sundays in July and August. Several of the film's places are far from this line: the Westbahnhof, the Zollamtssteg footbridge, the Prater wheel, the Cemetery of the Nameless, Kleines Café and the Arena bar. You'll hear their scenes on the way; save them for detours. Spittelberg's lanes are where people live, so keep voices low late at night.

Maria am Gestade

You're at the foot of a steep flight of steps, the Marienstiege, rising to a Gothic church on a raised spot. Look up at the tower. It's 56 meters tall, and its top is a crown of openwork stone, lacy enough to see the sky through.

By the time Jesse and Céline climb these steps in the evening, they've already had a whole afternoon, so let's catch up. On the train from Budapest there's a husband arguing in the carriage, and he's played by Hanno Pöschl, the owner of Kleines Café, a place we'll come back to in a minute. In Vienna they step off at the Westbahnhof. On the Zollamtssteg, a footbridge over the Wien river, they meet two actors and hear about their play. They ride a tram around the Ring. They head out to the Cemetery of the Nameless in Simmering. Then comes their first kiss, up on the giant wheel at the Prater, the Riesenrad. After that they meet a palm reader in Kleines Café, on Franziskanerplatz. She was played by the Austrian actress Erni Mangold, and the café, with its interior by the architect Hermann Czech, is still open. Two afternoon moments are missing from that list, a record shop and a stroll between museums. We'll walk to both later and rewind the film at each.

Then they come here. One small secret: the inside shots were filmed in a different church. These steps are the real thing, and they're famous twice, because they also appear in The Third Man, from 1949.

The church is far older than either film. Its choir dates from around 1332 to 1350. The foundation stone of the nave was laid in 1394, the nave was finished in 1414, and the tower went up between 1419 and 1428. Am Gestade means on the riverbank. It stood on the steep bank of a former arm of the Danube, and for a long time it was the church of the fishermen and boatmen.

That river arm is gone, but a channel of the Danube still runs a few minutes north, and on its bank a stranger is waiting to offer them a poem. Walk north, down to the Danube Canal, and cross to the far bank, the Leopoldstadt side. Look for a small pavilion by Otto Wagner. About eight minutes.

Danube Canal (the poet)

The Danube Canal lit up at night, Vienna

You're on the Leopoldstadt bank of the Danube Canal, looking across the water to Schottenring. Beside you is the Schützenhaus, a little building by Otto Wagner, put up between 1904 and 1908 to house the movable parts of a weir. Since 2011 it's been a restaurant. The steps down toward the water now have a safety railing.

On these steps a street poet makes them an offer. Give him a word, any word, and he'll write them a poem with it. They give him milkshake. Of all the words in two languages, milkshake. And he does. The poem is called Delusion Angel, and it was written for the film by a real poet, David Jewell. I won't read it to you. It's his, and it's better heard in the film. One thing to set straight: people often say the poet sat by the Danube. He didn't. This is the canal, a channel of the river that runs past the old center.

Scenes like this one feel so loose that people assume they were made up on the spot. They weren't. Julie Delpy has called the film heavily rehearsed, and she has said that every overlapping line was scripted. The screenplay is credited to Linklater and Kim Krizan. How much the two actors rewrote is disputed. Delpy said in 2016 that she and Hawke had basically rewritten all of it, and Krizan disputed that in 2019. They aren't credited on this film. On the two sequels, they are.

So here's a game for the next stretch. Each of you picks one word for the other, the stranger the better, and see what you can make of it before the next stop. No rhyming required.

From the poet, the film takes them to a pinball bar called Arena, far to the southeast at Baumgasse 80. Look sharp in that scene: Linklater himself appears in it. Then they drift through the old streets. Cross back over the canal and head southwest past Schottenring toward the Schottentor and the Mölkerbastei. About thirteen minutes.

Mölker Steig

You're on Mölker Steig, a stepped lane that drops from the Mölkerbastei down to Schreyvogelgasse. Walk down slowly. At the bottom, find Schreyvogelgasse 8 and look at its doorway. That's where Harry Lime first appears in The Third Man. That old film keeps crossing this one tonight.

In Before Sunrise this is simply a night stroll through old streets after the bar. Nothing big happens here, and that's the charm. The film is made of in-between minutes like these.

This is a good place to tell you where the idea came from. People sometimes say the film is a true story about a couple who met on a train. It isn't quite. In the fall of 1989, in Philadelphia, Linklater met a woman named Amy Lehrhaupt in a toy shop, and the two of them spent the night walking and talking. That night inspired this film, moved to Vienna and handed to two fictional strangers. Hold on to her name. We'll come back to her at the end.

The film itself was shot here in the summer of 1994. Picture Hawke and Delpy on steps like these, every line rehearsed until it sounded as if it had only just occurred to them.

Now a question for the two of you, in the spirit of the night. What's something you'd tell a stranger more easily than a friend? You don't have to answer out loud. But it's the question this whole film runs on.

Now the film rewinds to the afternoon. Make your way down to the Ring and follow it south, keeping the old center on your left, until two huge museums face each other across a garden square. About twelve minutes.