K: Night at the Museum

The other day I was reading in the Books about a really fun thing that Vienna does every year. What they do is, for one night in October, keep the museums open from 6 PM - 1AM. You buy one ticket for about 12euro and you can see as many museums as you get to in that time frame, with free transport around the city. This sounds like a great idea to me, I think it's so fun! So I told Eric that we should definitely do that. "We should pick the ones we want to see and map out our route and really make the most of this night. It sounds like so much fun."

Turns out, that night was tonight. After the disaster evening of trying so hard to get to conference, we were pretty tired. After the 10 minutes we caught of conference was over, we stood and talked with a couple of people from our ward. We talked with one couple, Krista and Jason, and she told us all about Night at the Museums, and how they went to it and loved it last year. I was a little upset hearing all this, because this was something I really was looking forward to this month, and had no idea it would be the very first day of October. I thought I had time to plan. She told us about the Museums of Natural History and Art History (which are actually these two identical buildings we've walked past a million times) and how wonderful those ones were to see. They also talked about another couple little ones they saw that were fun too. I was really jealous. 

After we walked outside, they were headed to the one and only grocery in the city that's open til 9pm. We were planning a picnic for in between tomorrow's sessions, so we went with them to get some groceries we forgot to get earlier today. After all that it was just after 9pm or so when we said our goodbyes and Krista asked "so are you guys headed to the museums now then?". Hmmm we hadn't really thought about that. I guess they are open til 1am, that still gives us a good 4 hours. "Why yes, I guess we are."

Waking to the train station Eric and I talked a bit about it. We don't have to get up early tomorrow for church, since it doesn't start until 11. We're both feeling okay, not tired yet. The price of one ticket is worth is even if we just see the Natural and Art History Museums right next to each other. We'll want to see both of those eventually anyway. So we headed over there for our late night adventure. 

We started our excursion with the Naturhistoriches Museum Wien (The Museum of Natural History, Vienna). We paid our 12euros each and got our tickets and a cool little book with maps and small descriptions of each museum in Vienna. One ticket, 660 Museums. I can't believe we live in a city with 660 museums and we haven't been to one yet. This museum was the one we spent the most time in. We lost track of some time seeing what there was to see in here. Even just the building itself was incredible to see. Here's some stuff we saw at this museum. 

Next we headed across the courtyard to the Kunsthistoriches Museum (The Museum of Art History). Eric and I aren't super artsy people. We both have some creative thoughts running through our minds when we need or want them. We can both work well with our hands, and have each created things with our hands before. What I mean is, we aren't super appreciative of statues of naked men, or paintings of naked women; things which basically define the history of art. Other than the absolutely gorgeous decor and architecture of the lobby and main stair case, naked things is just about all there was to see. We walked through for a while trying to find something we were interested in seeing. We eventually came to a pretty cool exhibit from Ancient Egypt. That was a little more fun to see, but eventually our decision was to breeze thorugh this one (as it was now about 11 o'clock) and move on to something new. I think this one was kind of lost on us, but here's what we did see. 

Next we walked across the street to building we'd seen already and really liked to see what was in it. There was nothing open in that building, but in the yard there was actually the set up and headquarters of the event. From there we found 5 bus lines, running all over the city, that would take you to different museums a little farther away. We jumped on line 1, because we figured that one would do some main ones in and around downtown. Nope, that was not the case. Turns out this one just took us all the way out to one of the metro stations and then came all the way back. So we rested on there for about 20 minutes, and then we were ready to get going again. It was starting to get kind of late, so we decided to jump on the number 5 line because it went close by our house and we could make it home easily at the end of the night. 

First museum we saw off the number 5 was Josephinum-Sammlungen der Med. Universitat Wien. The little description in our guide said it was a collection of the evolution of medical studies and discoveries from the university over the last century. It had a couple of pictures of cool bodies with muscles and stuff showing, so we decided to check it out. We got there and wandered through a few minutes, but much to our dismay they were not real bodies, and not very exciting displays. Alas it was mainly more statues of naked men. All of them men. We have no pictures from that museum. 

We got out of there quick enough though to make it to one last one before 1am. We dug out our map and routed our way to the Sigmund Freud Museum. I don't want to offend anyone, or get any debates or big conversations going by saying this, but after studying Freud in my beginners psychology classes I think the man is a nut. I definitely didn't want to see his museum because I respect him and think he's wonderful, and neither did Eric. We both just thought it'd be cool, because it's set in his home where he studied for 47 years, until he was sent into exile in 1938. (that's how I feel about him too). I'm kind of glad we saw that one at 12:30am for only half and hour and for free at the end of the night, it wasn't really worth it to me. The museum had hardly anything on display to begin with. There were a few of his books and a few things he owned, but mostly it was just pictures painted on the walls, with quotes by him and theories he brought us. Here are a couple things we did see though. 

 E: I told her to be careful. I'm glad she was and didn't fall out the window.

After we left that museum it was 1 o'clock and time to head home. We sat at the tram stop for about 10 minutes and waited for the night bus, and started to drink the carton of apple juice we bought that Eric carried around in his bag all night. We got home and fell right into bed. The Night at the Museum was fun! But what a LONG day this was. Eventful and Exciting, but long.