An Icky Rainy Day

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We got off to a bit of a slow start this morning, the beds were really comfortable. We had a nice breakfast, and we made our own lunch to take with us today. Our first stop was to get the Vienna Card, which allows us 3 days of unlimited transportation and discounts at certain museums and events. In order to get the card we had to go to the train station, instead of taking the tube there we decided to walk.

Once we got our passes we took a few minutes to look through the booklet that comes with it to see what we wanted to do. We decided that it would be interesting to visit Das Foltermuseum (the torture museum). The booklet tells you what transportation takes you near the site and the street name. Of course that doesn't help when you can't find the street on your map. We knew the general area of the museum but not specifically where it was. So we did what any man would do, we picked a direction and started walking. We walked to the museumsquartier, it wasn't there, but there were some lovey old buildings that housed other museums. We did eventually find the museum.

Toture has been around for a very long time. The musum wasn't bad, it had some figures to demonstrate different types of commonly used torture back in the 1700s. Many of them are ones that most people have heard of, the guillotine, the stocks, thumbscrews. There were a few interesting one such as the fishwives' fiddle - if two women often argued they would be put into a stockade that forced them to face each other. There were no real unique devices of torture on display.

After expanding our minds there we went back to the room to get our rain coats because the weather was not being very co-operative. It was a first really rainy day on our trip! It was getting a bit late but we went back to the city center and saw stephansdom. We came back to go to the grocery store...but it was closed. It was very sad. We ended up getting bubble tea's and coming back to the room for ham sandwiches. Tomorrow we are going to have to go to the grocery store a bit earlier. I keep forgeting that Europeans still shut down on the weekends especially Sunday.

As an interesting aside, there is a painting in our room that I was looking at yesterday 'The Kiss' by Gustav Klimt. Today when we were in the city center we passed a petit point shop and that was one of the designs in the window. We commented on how it was the same picture as the one in our room. When I opened google today it turns out that it is Gustav Klimt's 150th birthday and google made their logo off that painting.

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Photos

Museum Quartier
The Natural History Museum.

Spiked Chair
The spiked chair, also know as the ‘witch chair’ or ‘ram’ was used to intimidate victims. Historical reports show that a fire could also be lit underneath to heat the studs. Instruments like this were frequently used for show and were rarely used.

Fishwives's Fiddle
Some inventive forms of punishment. Although would this actually stop the two woman from arguing with each other?

Market Pillory
This pillory was designed to allow more than one person to be punished at a time. (There is room for three). This was often on a raised platform to allow the public a better view and to save them from unintentional contact with the delinquents.

The Flute
This was used to humiliate people. The instruments, usually trombones and flutes were made of wood, brass or iron, with an iron hoop at the top that went around the neck. The person’s fingers were places as though on finger-holes and screwed down. This punishment was for musicians who played badly. No busking until you were really good!

Stephans Dom
It is actually quite a large and impressive church, it is just hard to get back far enough to take a picture of the whole thing.