Our motto: More than you’ll ever want to know. And then some.
Our time in Vienna is coming to an end, and we’re focussed on the next stage of our invasion of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire: Trieste, the old port of the Empire.
Here are some highlights from our last two days exploring Vienna as pedestrians. In which we (1) visit the Museum of Natural History (F&M); (2) visit the Imperial Furniture Collection (J&J2); (3) attend an anti-WHO rally, at risk to life and limb; and (4) do some serious pastry research. A bonus gallery of interesting graphics will be added if there’s enough time.
J&I are scrambling to pack all our belongings for an early flight to Venice, which turned out to the easiest (least expensive; most direct) way for us to get to Trieste. F&J2 are packed for their flight midday, returning to Vancouver after their adventures. So I’ll keep this short(ish), hoping to post before departure.
The Museum of Natural History
Walking though the actual centre of Vienna, within the ring roads, towards the Museum quarter, you really start to see the city as a city-sized museum in its own right, the exhibits full-scale buildings, rather than a city containing museums. Everywhere you look are fantastic examples of Imperial architecture, the Hofburg (above) particularly impressive as F&I approached it from the north (the street leading us in that direction was lined with high-end retailers, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and their ilk; reminiscent of Vancouver’s Robson Street, though that lacks the gilding and the Belle Époque architecture). On every side we passed chunks of verdigrised bronze, statues commemorating this famous general or mathematician or royal figure. We pass through a large demonstration, which I’ll talk a bit about below.
The Museum of Natural History was amazing, two floors of exhibits, thirty-nine well-organized rooms. Cabinets in oak; vitrines filled with taxidermied specimens of every life form the earth offers; glass containers filled with preservative, in which we could see the pale and soggy carcasses of fish and reptiles. Enormous insect models; flensed skeletons of various vertebrates. Beautiful birds, posed as if for formal portraits. Marvels of every description!
We visited on a Sunday, so there were families everywhere. The animatronic dinosaur was a great attraction for the younger folk.
The highlight for me was the small room dedicated to Venus, the original Venus of Willendorf figurine, 30,000 years old, which we’d seen a large reproduction of when we cycled through Willendorf days ago.
The Imperial Furniture Collection
The Js (J plus J2) decided that they’d rather visit the Imperial Furniture Collection. Unfortunately I have only these two photos to show, contributed by J; you’ll have to extrapolate from these to imagine the entire Collection:
Anti-WHO demonstration
These two videos, and a still of F talking with a demonstrator, will give a sense. As far as I could determine they were protesting an upcoming agreement which would give (they claimed) the WHO, rather than individual nations, the power to declare pandemics and mandate vaccines, masks etc. It was all about “freedom”. Later: this web page seems to describe their position (and no, this is definitely not intended as a show of support).
Pastries!
We’ve been neglecting our pastry research, due to the many distractions of High Culture. To make up for it, this gallery:
Graphic design
Some great visuals that caught my eye, from visits to (1) a thrift store across from the Sigmund Freud Museum; and (2) a comic shop.
Danube to Dalmatia 
Not sure I will sleep tonight after the spider section – will try to self-soothe with the torte images. I also was curious as to how they figured out that Homo Heidelbergensis wore glasses…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Rusted frames found amidst the bones?
LikeLike