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Vienna at last. We first visited Austria 26 years ago but didn’t get this far east. The camping ground was great - with a washing machine finally!!!! So the first thing we did was wash clothes. Then travelled into the centre by train and underground. Very efficient and clean. The underground trains run at 5 minute intervals and the trains every 20 minutes or so - meaning very little waiting around. First stop was the Museum of Medical History. We had forgotten how much of our medical history was based around Vienna. They had info and instruments etc from a large number of historical figures. Freud, Semmelveis, Bilroth, Wertheim and lots of others. The second half of the exhibitions was an amazing collection of wax anatomical models. These were amazingly detailed - based on various dissections of arms, legs etc and whole bodies. Some were in odd poses and most with skin completely removed, but one woman who had her thorax and abdomen opened demonstrating various organs had her hair done nicely and was still wearing her pearls. All of these models were made 250 years ago and they were very clear - better that most dissections that we had.
Kunsthaus
Vien - Hundertwasser Museum and house. Hundertwasser came to live in NXZ, designed the toilets in Kawakawa, which are now such a tourist attraction, and eventually was buried in NZ. He was an artist and architect in Vienna and had a museum here which was exhibiting his paintings and the building itself was designed by him. The floor goes up and down, there are lots of colourful tiles and mosaics and lots of large columns with beaded bits on them. His paintings were bright with strong use of colour and lines - surreal images. He had a number of houses that he has designed here along the same lines as the toilet. One was a power station - it started off the usual rectangular design in grey concrete and he changed it so that there was a gold coloured bulge in the chimney, ad all the corners are rounded and covered in colourful tiles. We saw a picture of it in the museum and then when we were coming home in the train we went right by it. It looks really great.
Alison finally managed to get in a little shopping - about 15 minutes worth, then on to the
Mozart Museum. This was mainly narrative and music via an audioguide, while we wandered around one of the apartments that he lived in for 3 years and where he wrote the Marriage of Figaro, Magic Flute, Don Giovanni and others. He was a gambler and lived it up while he had the money, he loved playing billiards and cards, and having parties. At the same time the house must have been full of music as he wrote, and played and also taught music, and supported a child prodigy who would have been playing as well. This bit of Vienna is unchanged so we could look out his window and see the same buildings and view that he would have 230 years ago.
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