HandS Travel

We started off the day by speaking with some people with Chicago who were lost as we walked toward the Sigmund Freud Museum.  Apparently, we are not only locals, but we may be from Canada too.  They thought we were Canadians based on Henry’s wannabe Canadian accent.  Trying to get in the museum was also interesting.  A few American families stood at the door with us, trying to figure out why the sign which says “Open Daily 9:30-5″ meant that it wasn’t open.  After walking around stupid for a few more minutes, another smart American finally read the door which read in English, “Push button to open door.”  This was Freud’s first psychological test…not really, but Henry thought that once we got up to the museum that we would find a TV making fun of us trying to get in the door.  The museum was very interesting as it depicted Freud’s life in his residence and place of work in the early 1900s.  Freud is known for interpreting dreams and creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis for treating psychopathology.  He also was one of the 1st researchers into cerebral palsy.  We saw his collection of antiques, original desk chair, books, birth certificate, and mirror.  Sheila accidentally sat in one of the antique chairs…good thing it didn’t break!  Henry noticed that almost all pictures of Freud involved him holding a cigar; he didn’t give up smoking until late in his life after he got jaw cancer and had to get gum prosthetic, he gave his leftovers to his son.  This was also our first experience in a household that had been raided by SS troops during WWII.  Four of Freud’s sisters died in Nazi concentration camps; his one brother fled to Vienna and another sister to the U.S.

Our next destination was the Uhremuseum (clock museum).  We saw cuckoo, grandfather, about any clock you could imagine, watches, and pictures with small clocks in them where a clock would have been drawn.  We were amazed at the small gears, their precision, and how many of them were still working after 300+ years.  And to top it off, the museum was FREE on Sundays, the day we visited!  We then walked by the university and City Hall which was called the Rathaus.  Again, Sheila pronounced it exactly as it is written while Henry corrected me with a German flair.  Apparently, the Germans actually pronounce it like you would in English.  The next part of our day was probably the best, minus the bit about being too full from delicious food.  Sheila had read rave reviews about Cafe Einstein near the university, with coincidingly cheap prices, a giant mural of Einstein on the wall upstairs, and a real (we think?) tree growing in the middle of the restaurant/bar.  A guy at the restaurant walked in and saw Sheila’s food and asked “what’s that?” with a smile on his face.  I showed him where it was on the menu since it looked like he might have been Italian and not sure if he knew English.  We kept the menus to translate for our next restaurant experience.  We each had sandwiches, Henry’s called Ingenious Toast and Sheila’s Beergarden Toast.  Simply delicious.  They weren’t actually shaped like sandwiches since they were open-faced.  Another great addition were the chips that the waiter recommended.  He said they tasted like Pringles and boy was he right – except they were much better and homemade.  As we left, Sheila commented, “Good food is just so delicious!”

More touring took us along “Ring Street,” which was a group of government buildings built in the 18th century when a Parliament building was needed and museums were built, etc.  Hofburg Palace reminded us of the Trocadero buildings in Paris.  We didn’t go in to the complex, a group of museums, but took many amazing pictures and saw hundreds of horse carriages there and throughout the rest of the city.  Next on our Googledoc agenda was the catacombs at the Stephansdom church.  Thankfully the tour was in both English and German and turned out to be on of the highlights of our trip so far.  We first walked underground to see stone caskets of bishops from the past 300 years and then old containers holding organs of special priests.  Three different body part sets are stored in three different churches across the city and the Stephansdom just happened to get the heart, stomach, etc.  This area had been renovated recently so there was adequate lighting and ceiling covers, but the next part felt truly medieval – brick passageways, cobwebs, a few bulbs of lighting every 40 feet or so, etc.  We saw a white stone casket that the first builders of the church found 1500 years ago on the church site.  They don’t know who is buried, only a relative date of burial.  The final three rooms held bones from the plague when bodies were just dumped in piles 300 years ago.  Another 3-foot hole led to about 40,000 more dead bodies from Viennese citizens who couldn’t afford a proper gravesite.  The smell became so bad at one point that masses had to be cancelled and the hole was finally covered up.  When villagers ran out of room, they would clean bones to stack upon one another to save space.  Can you imagine that job?  Hope it paid well.

Since we had a few more hours before dinner reservations, we went to the Museum Quartier to pick one museum of about 5 to go to.  We chose the Natural History and it turned out to be very interesting.  Our favorite exhibits were rocks, pieces of meteorites, and specimens of birds, butterflies, and other animals.  The sheer size and the number of specimens and the beauty of the building was truly amazing.  Finally, we ate dinner at Immervoll, a small, authentic Austrian restaurant.  Good thing we had a reservation because many people were turned away.  Our reservation paper said “Shilo.”  The dirty smoke smell didn’t ruin our dinner of ravioli for Henry and for Sheila, a dish called “goulash” which we thought was like goulash in the U.S. but it is apparently meat in gravy.  We are not sure if it was veal or beef, but after googling veal and hearing from a friend who doesn’t eat it, we determined it is calf’s meat.  Yummy!  Goulash is on the menu in many restaurants and is one of the national dishes of Hungary.