What a challenging hypothesis

Another glorious day in Vienna, apart from the weather, which makes Invercargill's look positively settled. It jumped from gale force cold winds to still and warm, then back again, faster than I could change cellphones. Still there's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing, and I had plenty of that.

The day started with Jean and I repeating our trek from the previous day past the Hauptbahnhof, Karlskirche, the Opera House and then turning left to visit the incredible Hofburg. It seems that Austrians didn't do small scale, not when they had an empire anyway. The Hofburg is so large it makes the word colossal feel self-conscious. We had a good wander around the buildings marvelling at the intricate detail and how difficult it must have been to get a WiFi signal to all parts of the residence. Well I wondered that, Jean just admired the marvellous stonework and estimated the double glazing cost.

After pondering both of these age old questions we decided to bite the bullet and visit one of the museums. Being a student of the globe I opted for the Weltuseum Wien. Now although in English that sounds like a history of people's swollen bits, in German it means 'World museum' and it was predictably impressive. It seems that Austrians were quite the wanderers and collectors back in the day and brought many artifacts back with them. Whether this was ethical is questionable, especially when I got to the room devoted to the Pacific. I heard it before I entered, a haka pounding out full throttle. They had the prow of a waka, some patu and mere, a korowai and other Maori artifacts. However the bit which unsettled me was the section where they questioned the ethics of collecting human remains. The museum used to have many of these, including Maori heads. To their credit in 2015 they returned these via Te Papa to the descendants in New Zealand and this was documented as part of the exhibition.

After leaving the Weltmuseum we sauntered through the museum quarter for an hour or so and left feeling immediately intellectually ripped. I don't want to boast, but it's quite possible after that knowledge power workout that we are now what the locals would term 'ubermensch'.
Finally we decided we could do no more and started the hike back to the hotel. This took a little longer than expected as we had been drawn deeper into the heart of Vienna city centre and the walk back was a vigorous 4 to 5 k. Whatever the true distance it's true that by the end of it Jean's dogs were barking and we had racked up 29 thousand steps for the day on my Fitbit.

Right now we are lounging in the OBB (Austrian Railways) business class lounge waiting to board our overnight sleeper train to Rome.

Tomorrow it's Viva Italia and Forza Juve!Read more