Museum Week Continues

I know I said I wasn’t much into museums and so you’d think that going to 10 on Saturday during the Long Night of the Museums would have been enough, but surprisingly…. no.  I went to one on Monday and today our class spent the day in another (which I’ll write about another day when I go through my 300 photos).

Do you remember that in my last post I said that there was 1 museum I couldn’t get into on Saturday because they’d given away their 800 spots for the night by 7pm?  Well, I decided to go on Monday with Donnalynne, one of my classmates.  The museum is called Time Travel, and it’s basically a trip through Vienna’s history, from the days of the dinosaurs, Romans, wars, etc. through until today – all presented in a very entertaining fashion in an old monastery around the corner from our school.  I have some pictures here (Note: these are iPhone photos – I say that apologetically 🙂 ), but they don’t include the best part, which was the 5D movie in a theater where the seats move and things brush against your legs while rats take over the streets during the plague part of the movie, and blasts of hot air hit the back of your head as bombs explode during the war.  Pretty cool!  The whole tour took about 50 minutes and also included inanimatronic-figures, various multimedia shows and sound and light effects.  I was entertained – a great way to learn about history.  One definite advantage of going on Monday was that we were only 4 visitors instead of the 42 max per group, which would have been the case during Museum Night.  I can’t imagine being in the bunker or many of the other stations with 41 other people blocking my view.  Instead, we really got to enjoy both the entertainment and the setting.

these moved and talked like in Harry Potter

The Royal Family took us through their history – this is Sisi

yup, that’s me

Mozart greeted us into the music chamber

these turning seats were part of the music chamber

After the war, where I lived was part of the US zone, but my school was in the international zone

in this movie, the flying horse carriage gave us great aerial views

down into what used to be the monastery wine cellar

After the Museum, we went for dinner in a non-smoking restaurant (I didn’t know those existed!!!) with Austrian cuisine and then walked the cobblestone streets exploring the passages (many of those who owned houses/ villas/ palaces downtown created throughways for pedestrians as it was too dangerous to walk in the streets with all the horse carts). Today, many of those remain. I’m not sure if the one we found was part of that, but today it is filled with boutiques, cafes and cool spots.  See for yourself.  I got home at 11pm, much past my regular bedtime, so I had to wake up with an alarm on Tuesday …. not fun.  I obviously did no homework that day.  Oh well…. it was worth it.