February 28, 2012
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Leichter Regen (which sounds so cool)
But it really just means “light rain,” which is what we had all day. And Libby and Rachel failed to pack any footwear for rain. Hence, we predict head colds quite soon.
So, what does one do on a rainy day in Vienna? We slept in, had breakfast, jinked about online, and headed to the museum we were going to go to yesterday. I believe if I were to say it in English it would be Kuhn’s Historical Museum. Maybe? I do like a good art and artifact museum, and despite the kids not wanting them, I got the whole family the telephone-like audio guides in English and turned them loose. Poor R felt rather sickly, so after an hour when Michael and Libby had finished their whirlwind tour, I let them all go back to the hotel for a few hours.
So I got to tour all by myself. The tour started in the Egyptian period.
I need my Rosetta Stone!
This stone carving still had almost all of the original colors on it. Quite neat!
I guess for some reason I didn’t realize that many mummy cases were made of painted wood. Why did I assume they were all made of stone? But speaking of things made of stone, here is Toe-zymandius. King of Kings.
This is a hippo. (duh) But, it is not a cute, children’s toy. Hippos, to the Egyptians, were evil and horrid and trampled crops and people. So they’d make hippos for the gods and have hippo killings to keep the balance of good and evil in check.
I still think it is rather cute, though.
(Sing this like Batman)
Nah, nah, nah, nah, Nah, nah, nah, nah CAT MUMMY!
Then, we moved into the Greek section. I have seen lots of marble statues carved, and I am always amazed that someone could make something so pretty with a chunk of stone. I have trouble even in Play-doh. Guess that is why no one will ever put my work in a museum. Okay, now I’m laughing at what they could put in a museum that I’d make. I think it would have to involve paper plates and crayons. Oh, yes! Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! (got to keep that Shelley theme going…)
Compare to the marble bust of Marcus Aurelius. Close, eh?
I forgot to mention that this museum was just as beautiful as the one we saw yesterday. I found out that the two buildings were designed and meant to be museums from the start, so they mimicked the architecture inside them.
Upstairs in the museum was an art gallery. There was a special display featuring Gustav Klimt. I decided that I like his stuff. It reminds me of Maxfield Parrish’s stuff. I realize that most people would know Klimt and not Parrish, but hey… Do you like his stuff?
I enjoyed this picture, though, a great deal. It is a close up of a bigger painting. It just reminded me of lots of little kids I know. (And I’m not naming any names!)
The final thing I saw was a bunch of dark ages treasures people just randomly found in Austria. “Some random shepherd came across this… Some farmer plowed his field and found this…” The only thing I ever dug up in my yard was the cable for the television.
I liked this little glass thing that someone dug up because they look like to glasses-wearing nerds. They didn’t have glasses-wearing nerds in the 700′s did they?
Thus ends my museum tour. Do you want to know what happened after? I am sure you’ll find out, as I plan to start writing another entry right now–”The Entry in which Mary Celebrates The Sound of Music in a Gastronomical Fashion.”
