October 26, 2005 | 12:30 pm

Kunst.
If there's one German word you need to know in Vienna, it's kunst for "art." Not just so that you keep your Kunsthalle and your Kunsthaus straight (they're both art galleries) but because kunst informs the city's sensibility and aspirations. "The hairdressers call themselves artists now," a Viennese friend had told me. In Vienna, even a fetish shop might see fit to contract a team of cutting-edge architects: Tiberius, which lays out its leather and metal in a black and white space designed by BEHF Architekten, is an aesthetic gift to sex shops everywhere. No plywood or cheap velvet in sight.

I had just checked into a hotel in Vienna's seventh district, the Falkensteiner am Schottenfeld, itself a minimalist oasis of soft neon and curvy blond wood. I chose to stay in the seventh district in part because an Austrian friend called it "the Soho of Vienna." Like all such analogies, this one shouldn't be taken too literally. But it's a lively neighborhood, lined on its busier streets with boutiques, furniture stores, restaurants, and private art galleries. Proceeding from north to south along Neubaugasse, I discovered: Etcetera, an excellent trove of secondhand clothes and shoes; A branch of Aida, the pink-hued, locally-beloved coffee-and-cake house; and Shu! a gallery-esque shrine to the latest footwear.

Also a Starbucks. The Viennese have looked askance at this intrusion no less than Romans or Parisians, but as one new friend noted, Starbucks has the benefit of luring pesky non-smokers away from the real cafes.

Books
As a sucker for bookstores, I had to step into the British Bookshop on Mariahilferstrasse. I picked up the optimistically-titled "One-Day German," a teach-yourself CD. Vienna is a good place for bookstore browsing generally. For Anglophones, in addition to three branches of the British Bookshop, there's the cozy and well-stocked Shakespeare & Co., at Sterngasse 2 in the first district. A number of bookstores specialize in art, architecture and design titles; one of the best is Prachner, in the Museumsquartier complex.

Uptown/Downtown
I took the excellent u-bahn, or subway, to Stephensplatz, where I stopped in at Viennese jeweler Frey Wille. I had just received an enamel-on-gold Frey Wille bracelet for my birthday, and I thought maybe I could build out the collection with some other striking item. There were plenty of impressive designs on display, encompassing cuff links and belt buckles in addition to jewelry. Alas, with bracelet prices hovering around 400 euros, I decided I would have to wait for more birthdays or another appropriate occasion.

Not so at the Saturday Flea Market, a short u-bahn ride away. This sprawling bazaar was unfolding in the bright fall sun below a row of stunning art deco facades. I needed nothing - except for an unusual pair of shades I spotted lying amongst an old woman's wares. They had giant lenses set in pink and blue frames, with a little art-deco droop at the corners. The old woman, who was Iranian, assured me in a sort of German-English-Farsi pidgin that the glasses were from Hollywood. With the deal sealed at four euros, she imparted the additional important information that her son was a petroleum engineer in Houston, Texas.

Crystal Empire
I'd been wondering what the deal was with Swarovski. Maker of glass menageries? Or jeweler to the über-fabulous? The Austrian crystal maker had, it seemed, undergone a Burberry-esque image transformation over the last couple of years. Luckily, this article in the International Herald Tribune, profiling Markus Langes-Swarovski, explains all. The company is a multi-headed hydra. It still does glass menageries and chandeliers, among them a light fixture designed, strangely enough, by Lenny Kravitz. But it also does jewelry and sells crystals to designers like Dior, Armani, and Dolce & Gabbana, who weave the glass confections into bags and belts. It also uses its glass-carving savvy to make optical instruments like telescopes.

I visited the two-story Swarovski store on Kartnerstrasse. It's a blinding crystal palace full of examples of gesamtkunstwerk, a word I learned in the article: A "Viennese turn-of-the century concept...describing the attempt to turn all objects of everyday life into a concerted work of art."