But I Want To Wear The Armour

---

Thought I’d do a typical tourist thing so I got going early and got my ticket for the Lipizzaner stallions “training with music”. The show is on tour at the moment so it was the younger horses, who were mostly grey still though a couple were pretty close to white. You could see how much better the older ones were, doing the walk backwards things, sideways and the other stuff they do. Despite many announcements about not taking photos some idiots still had their flashes going. At least I had the brains to turn the flash off and hide in the corner 😉

From here I walked across to the other side and a tour of the Kaiserapartments, Sisi museum and stupid dinner services, which luckily the audio tour let you skip so I ditched the endless collections of dinner plates and shit. Next stop was the Sisi museum about Elisabeth and how she was portrayed in death very differently to how she was in real life - boring, so I skipped to the apartments, which were much the same as Schonbrun but definitely better than dinner plates. Interesting how Franz Joseph put on all the airs for dealing with heads of state and others when it was official business, but in private preferred a much more subdued environment. Also he had to ring a bell when he wanted to go and visit his wife who lived in different rooms to him further along the building. Also interesting was how changes were made to the rooms as current trends changed, like the addition of a toilet.

~
Speaking of toilets, they are a bit different to home. They have a ledge that your shit lands on and when you flush it washes it off the ledge and away. Try doing a huge turd and it nearly piles up to your date. And sitting there in the air it releases so much more lovely smell.

~
This countryside in Hungary looks just like you see in WW2 movies, surprised they have cars and things lol. Or maybe it is just the poor people living near the railway?
~
Next I went to the weapons and armour museum, which I loved. Room after room of different suits of armour and mediaeval weapons with the audio tour giving some interesting insights, like one particular suit cost the equivalent of 12 years high court official salary. You can also see the progression in styles and technology, from open helmet to closed, basic armour to fluted, engraved, and then eventually bulletproof - some with dents made by shots.

One thing that they could add to it that would make it better would be a suit you could try on to see what it was like to wear a suit of armour and fight in it. Two suits would be even better, so you could whack each other with sticks lol. When I mentioned this to the lady working there she just looked at me with a puzzled look on her face and asked “Why? They are heavy and get smelly - and why would you want to hit each other? You could hurt yourself”. She just didn’t get it even after trying to explain it to her several times.

The building itself was magnificent, all marble, big long staircases. It was the first half of an ambitious project for new apartments for the emperor but the second half was canned because of the huge cost - hence the Helenplatz at the Hofburg where the second half was to be built but instead is now a grassy park for locals to bring their dogs for a run and a shit. In the same building was the Ephesus museum, with lots of stuff excavated from the Ephesus including the Parthian Frieze. For people not into ancient history it might be a bit boring but I enjoyed it.

By now it was 3pm and I wanted some pics of the Stephansdom in daylight, so I headed over there. Very hard to take pics of the outside of the whole building because it is so tall and there isn’t much space to step back and get it all in frame. I was too late to go into the catacombs or up the tower, but made good use of my mini tripod and took plenty of pics of the inside. A very impressive place - if we had churches like this in Australia I’m sure more people would go to church because it feels like a special place.

Back to Ulli’s then out that night with some friends of hers for a few drinks and games of pool. The pool was unspectacular but enjoyable, then we went next door to a Mexican-style bar for some more drinks, and all of a sudden two girls come out and dance Brazilian Carnival-style. In a Mexican bar? I think I was the only one that had a problem with that. They were a bit too skinny for my liking but they really got into it and shook what they had 😉

Off to Hungary tomorrow and now I’m actually a little bit wary of losing stuff in Romania. Ulli told me about a couchsurfer she had who got mugged there and they took his whole backpack. I don’t mind losing some stuff like clothes as they can be replaced under insurance, but things like photos and this diary would concern me more.

---