Vienna Technological Museum

(click to enlarge) On Saturday we heard it would rain. Being a little skittish after the downpour last Saturday, we researched several places where we could take the kids and stay inside a few hours. We decided to come here even though we love Berlin's technological museum and I assumed that this would never even come close. It was magnificent in its own, Viennese way. The museum was begun in 1908 by Kaiser Franz Josef who donated the beginnings of the collection. It opened ten years later in 1918 in a huge beautiful building a short walk from the emperor's summer palace at Schonbrunn.
There were exhibits on transportation, the human body, taste, instruments, energy, television, steel and tons more that we didn't even get to. One downside is that the whole place is kept about 15 degrees too hot, which they claim is by design. Rob found that the instruments were tucked away in an air conditioned room. Inside that was a dark theatre where I watched excerpts of performances on all sorts of strange instruments like an "apfel regal" that resembles an accordion squished flat with a lot of golden pipes on top that look like the cheese curls who attack Mr. Lunt in The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything (sorry. If you haven't seen it that won't make sense. If you have, you know exactly what I mean. Guess I should have taken a picture).
Everybody had stayed up too late the night before. They were all crabby and complaining even though they were enjoying the museum and Joss was devolving toward a nap he wouldn't take, so I called a time out to the cafe. I had packed sandwiches, but I thought that perhaps a civilized meal might improve their outlooks. I don't know that it helped, but it was certainly good food -- we love the fact that even tourist attractions take food seriously here. I got Joss to sleep in his stroller and was able to enjoy some of the quieter parts of the museum. By three thirty, though, the kids were all worn out and we left the museum and walked to an uninspiring playground where the kids played happily for half an hour. We walked down by the summer palace on our way to the U-bahn home.