Austria, Vienna: Sigmund & Other Museums

Sigmund Freud museum - actually, his former house turned into a museum. Saunter around to see not only an exhibition of his objects, documents, texts, and certificates, but also his personal possessions such as photos and antiquities he enjoyed collecting.

Other 'museum' 1 - not exactly museum, just in the poor part of town, a really strange looking house (yes, apparently people live there, we were warned not to throw peanuts...) which seems to have been built without any architectural or 'painting' plan ... Tough to describe, picture will have to tell 1000 words.



(museum interruption moment to eat some kaiserschmarren mit zwetschkenroster - basically deep fried crepe with something tasty, and sprinkled sugar and jam-like side. Mmmmmm calorie intake for the week, recommendation thank you TP)

Other museum '2': Jewish museum, although not set up like your typical museum. The first room has 1 large glass display, which is a cabinet of hundreds of Jewish-related articles, many blackened by fire in varying degrees (Torah covers, prayer books, menorahs, etc). Their being kept together represents the fact that all pieces collected come from one night 'kristallnacht' or 'the night of broken glass' in 1938, in which all Jewish community synagoges, stores, businesses, etc. had their windows smashed, were completely looted, and set on fire.

The aim of the second room was to paint a picture of what the life of the Jews was like in that time. Only problem is, one walks into a room with 21 glass panels (arranged in a rectangle) without anything on them. There are no physical objects pertaining to history anywhere in the room, such as is the case for most ethnographical museums I have been to. I walk further into the room and notice light bouncing off the glass panels, and then notice they have holographic images which appear and disappear, with Jewish symbols, or people, or documents, or other. And then the handy audio guide explains that 'it's a memorial. What you see depends on the angle from which you look at it, such as our changing views of history, which can be interpreted differently based on many factors. Historical objects make us think we're in touch, but the souls of the objects are lost to history. The holograms are intangeable and illusory to enable us to learn about history, but we cannot relive it. Finally, while one can use te audio guide for bakground information on any of the holograms, there is no sequence, one can enter from all sides, as the relationship between the past and present changes depending on which holograms you may choose to look at first.'. While I could ramble about the exhibit itself, I found the way in which it was portrayed to be more insightful than anything else I'd seen, and something which made a lasting impression on me. So that's why I chose to share...

If you are interested in that, or in the temporary display set up apart from this one, showing how the Turks and the Jews lived homogeneously (is that the word? See pic of flag combining both culture's symbols together) in the Balkan states prior to WWII, then just catch the next flight to Vienna... Ok, I guess you can ask...