Entries about museum

Saturday 8th February (yesterday)

I had a lovely day yesterday (except for waking up with worse back and side pain than usual). My main destination was the Hofburg, the former Habsburg palace complex. There are so many museums and other attractions there that I could never hope to see them all in one day, so although I really liked the sound of the Butterfly House, Palm House, Fine Art Museum, the Armoury and some other places, I decided to get the ticket that would get me into three of the main places I wanted to visit; the Nationalbibliothek Prunksaal, the Papyrus Museum and the Globe Museum. Should I have the time and energy during the coming week, it also allows me entrance to the Esperanto Museum, Literature Museum and House of Austrian History until next Friday.

I started off at the Nationalbibliothek Prunksaal, though before entering the Hofburg I admired the strip of Roman and 18th century remains in the Michaelerplatz in front.

Words fail me when it comes to describing the Prunksaal, one of the most historic and atmospheric libraries in the world. It was breathtaking! The tiered, ornate wooden bookcases, beautiful leather-bound books, colourful Baroque murals, globes... Even the stepladders, although modern and made of plastic or metal, are painted to fit in perfectly with their surroundings.

There was a special exhibition on Ludwig van Beethoven, as 2020 is the 250th anniversary of his birth. It had a fascinating display of facsimiles and originals of documents relating to nearly every stage and aspect of his life and his relationships with various people, within both his professional and personal life. Pride of place was the original manuscript of his 9th symphony, open at part of the 'Ode to Joy' section. It also had two audios of it which I could listen to with headphones; one a normal recording, and the other a special recording of the same piece but changed to sound how it does to someone with significant hearing loss of the kind that Beethoven had at the time he composed it. Listening to that really made me realise again what a genius he was.

There were also some separate texts unrelated to Beethoven, such as a richly decorated 16th century copy of the Persian cosmographical text The Wonders of Creation and a facsimile of the Vienna Dioscurides, one of the most famous manuscripts of late antiquity. The main part of it contains a series of images of alphabetically-arranged medicinal plants, with text alongside each one describing it, its medicinal uses and how to prepare it as medicine.

From the Prunksaal I headed to the Papyrus Museum. This was also very interesting, with a greater variety of artefacts than one might potentially imagine. It ranged from scrolls containing the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Coptic and Islamic amulets intended to protect the carrier against scorpion stings, a spell for the return of a bronze vessel (and curse upon the thief), a scroll containing mathematical exercises, and a set of examples of different languages and writing systems used over the years (e.g, hieroglyphs, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Coptic and Arabic)...

...to Coptic textile clothing, mummy cartonnages (a type of mask similar to papier maché style, originally made from waste-papyrus but later from linen or plaster), realistic Roman mummy portraits on thin wooden boards, and an extremely rare papyrus contract relating to a Roman Empire trade voyage to India in the 2nd century AD (expeditions to India often left from Egyptian ports on the Red Sea).

On leaving there I used up some small change on an iced coffee from a handily-placed vending machine and went on an ice cream hunt in the streets surrounding the Hofburg. Amazingly, I was unsuccessful, but as I got a bit further away I made a interesting discovery...

I'd given up on ice cream at this point and was just enjoying wandering the historic streets for a bit before going on to the Globe Museum.

I suddenly saw the word 'Schotten' on a street sign and this brought to mind the name of the area where I worked in Vienna last year. A beautiful yellow church appeared, I went in to have a look, and it turned out to be part of a working Benedictine monastery. Most of it was closed off behind a metal grid, but through it I still got a good view of the stunning, colourful Baroque interior.

On reading the blurb they had on display, I found out why it was called the Schottenkirche, or the Church of the Scots - it was founded by Irish Benedictine monks, and apparently the Irish were known as Scots at the time. The blurb mentioned some of the good works the monks are involved in within the Schotten parish, including education.

After lighting a candle in a tiny side chapel and continuing on to the end of the street, I could see that I was indeed back in the area I remembered from April last year. That made me remember the Indian restaurant I went to a couple of times with my colleagues, where you only pay how much you think the food was worth, or you don't have to pay at all if you can't afford it. Since I remembered having a very tasty main dish with rice there, plus a really nice dessert, I thought I'd go there for a late lunch before retracing my steps to the Globe Museum.

The only problem was, I couldn't find it! I'd forgotten what the name was, but knew I'd remember it when I saw it. I thought I remembered seeing it on the edge of the big square I was in, but no sign of it. Either I misremembered the location (always possible) or they've closed down. So I began retracing my steps, taking on my way a picture of the cathedral-like Votivkirche, which overlooks the square. It's named that because it was built in 1879 in thanks for the Emperor's survival of an assassination attempt.

I stopped at a Billa supermarket and bought a tabbouleh salad instead. Then it was time for the Globe Museum! It was absolutely fascinating. My favourites were the globe from 1492 which naturally doesn't have the Americas or Australasia on it, Mercator's celestial and terrestrial globes from 1542 (and accompanying screen with a virtual copy of the terrestrial one on it which I could move around, zoom in and out of, etc.), a set of very cute 18th century English-made 'pocket globes', massive and richly decorated 17th century Coronelli globes, paper or cloth collapsible globes the user could extend or inflate a bit like an umbrella, and a miniature child's globe, probably Victorian or Edwardian, with an accompanying multi folded paper showing pictures of the world's inhabitants, including a Sandwich Islander, an Esquimaux (sic), an Iroquese (sic), a Scotchman and a Peruvian, dressed according to what Westerners of the time believed was the case.

It was also very interesting in general to see so many historic terrestrial globes at different points in history, reflecting the current state of geographical knowledge of the world at each stage. The moon globes and globes of different planets were good to see as well.

I went (almost) straight back to the hostel after that as my back, left side and hip were all protesting, and I was running low on energy again. I did stop at a supermarket and buy a couple of twisty rolls with tomato, cheese and ham on top to have for dinner a bit later, however.

I enjoyed the rolls for dinner and spent time following the BBC Sport live text of the England vs Scotland Six Nations rugby match.

Sunday 9th February (today)

Earlier today I transferred to Hotel Admiral, relaxed, met my colleagues for the coming week and got ready for work tomorrow. For dinner we went to a Mexican place - not a place I would have chosen to go to, but actually I ended up being very glad we'd come. I had a bowl of Crema de Elote (delicious sweetcorn soup), some potato wedges with sour cream, and for pudding Crema de Semola, or semolina pudding in a glass with strawberry sauce on top. Lovely!

Edit from May 2023: I realised a lot later, after having returned from Austria, that the Indian restaurant I was thinking of is actually the Pakistani pay-what-you-can-afford restaurant Der Wiener Deewan - very much still around! If only I'd had a smartphone at the time, I would have found it easily - I wasn't to get one for another six weeks though...

Today I finally made it to the City Museum in the Old Town Hall!

The tower was open, luckily, although the wind was still quite strong. There were some great views of the Old Town and I was very glad I'd finally made it up there.

On the way down from the top of the tower I stopped to look at Dr Ovidius Faust's Study. Dr Faust was the town archivist in the inter-war period and was also a scholar and passionate book collector.

The Archive Room is in the same museum; all the most important documents of the town were kept there from the mid-18th century to 1948. They are stored elsewhere now, but some of them were on display, along with some facsimiles. I also admired the original iron door which is still in use, dates from 1749 and has extremely fancy Rococo decoration.

Adjoining the Archive Room were the richly decorated Court House and Hall of the Extended Municipal Council.

Above the gate to the Town Hall was the St Ladislaus' Chapel, the 15th-century chapel of the municipal council.

In the exhibition rooms in the rest of the museum, something intriguing which kept popping up without much explanation was painted circular wooden shooting targets, mostly with bullet holes still in. They had a range of quite detailed scenes, painted in oils and dating between 1790 - 1840.

I wondered why people would bother decorating targets in such detail only then to shoot at them. I finally got a little more information about them when I reached the section on various clubs and associations which the townspeople joined from the late 18th century onwards and came across the Shooters Club. This club actually had its origins in the 16th century as an association of volunteers formed to provide defence for the town, but in the late 18th century it began to lose its defensive function and became focused on competitive leisure activities such as free-shooting, bird shooting and target shooting. Shooting contests were very important, grand events and artists began to get commissions to paint targets for them.

Regarding other clubs, apparently male voice choirs became very popular in the 19th century, as did the Cycling Club; on display were a wooden-wheeled early velocipede and a penny-farthing. I was surprised to hear about the male voice choirs because I'd only heard of Welsh ones before.

Bratislava, or Pressburg as it was known then, was a town of guilds until the 19th century, and reflecting that was a collection of various items relating to them, e.g. copperware, stamps, fine wooden coffers, etc.

There was a section on the coronation town which Pressburg became for about three hundred years until the 1848 revolution. I was glad to get information about why Pressburg had become the seat of coronation for so many Hungarian kings, because on Monday I didn't see much explanation about it at the cathedral where the coronations happened.

Other highlights for me were some glass paintings which used to be in St Martin's Cathedral, an 18th-century polychrome woodcarving of St Florian, 19th-century musical instruments, an Early Modern special security door of extraordinary intricacy of mechanism, an exhibition of gruesome instruments of torture in the former prison cells, some original painted metal inn and shop signs, a 19th century box of board games and some early 20th century advertising leaflets for household products.

The museum was bigger than I expected, and I'm still recovering from my illness in Basel, so I was completely drained by the time I finished. Too drained to seek out the Jewish Museum, so instead of that I walked to the edge of the Danube (very swift-running today) and pondered transport to Vienna tomorrow. I saw one place that said it did Bratislava to Vienna boat trips, but it looked a bit deserted, plus I'd heard that a trip would cost about 30 euros which seemed a bit expensive, so when I got to the bus station I arrived at on Sunday and noticed a sign advertising bus tickets to Vienna for 5 euros, I decided to go with that instead.

After a long-ish rest at the hostel I went out for dinner. It was 7 p.m. but I was almost the only person there; not always a good sign, unless it's the custom in Slovakia not to eat until later in the evening, but at this place the food was good. I didn't feel like a big meal so I stuck with some garlic cream soup in bread - a big hollowed-out crispy roll with the top cut off as a lid and the soup inside - and for pudding, a parené buchty - a giant sweet steamed dumpling with chocolate sauce and icing sugar on top and with jam or custard inside (I've forgotten which).

I did take a picture of the parené buchty too but it came out too blurry to include, unfortunately.

My only destination today ended up being the castle. I left the hostel with more energy I'd felt since arriving in Basel on the 26th, but this turned out to be premature, because the energy drained out of me on my walk up Castle Hill and has not yet returned.

On my way to Castle Hill I passed St Martin's Cathedral and unexpectedly came across a plaque to Imrich Lichtenfeld, the founder of the martial art Krav Maga and a defender of his Jewish neighbourhood against Fascist gangs in the late 1930s.

There were some fantastic views of the city and the Danube as I went up Castle Hill.

However, it was sobering to see the controversial Bridge of the Slovak National Uprising (more commonly known as the UFO Bridge due to its flying saucer-shaped observation deck/ restaurant). It's controversial because when it was built in 1972, nearly all of the Jewish Quarter in the Old Town was demolished to create the roadway leading to it.

The castle was a rather odd experience, mainly because over five public floors about 70-80% of rooms available to walk through were empty, and some others were no entry at all. At times it felt a bit like I was trespassing, although I'd had my ticket checked on entry and after that nobody said anything to me. There were very few other people apart from me inside.

The ground floor had only the cloakroom and some information about the reconstruction/ refurbishment of the castle. The first floor had the redone music room/ chapel and two rooms which were completely empty except for an antique painted wooden cabinet in one and two large oil paintings and an antique grandfather clock (without the pendulum) in the other. No information given about any of them.

The second floor had an interesting one-room exhibition of historic prints, watercolours and woodblock prints of the city of Bratislava (known apparently as Pressburg in the 18th and 19th centuries) from the 17th to the early 20th centuries.

The third floor had an exhibition on the part students, artists, musicians and other activists had to play in the Slovak equivalent of the Czech Velvet Revolution, which together caused the downfall of Communism in then-Czechoslovakia in November 1989. It felt a bit strange to think that this momentous historical occasion happened in my lifetime, albeit when I was too young to hear about or remember it.

The third floor also had the entrance to the steps up the original tower, so I went up. Nice panoramic views from the windows, though they were quite small.

I finished up with a look round the basement, as it promised me an exhibition about the Celts in Bratislava and other places in Western Slovakia. Although a bit amateurishly presented, and small, it did have some interesting exhibits, such as gold and silver coin hoards, bone dice, skeletal remains (both human and of the animals they ate), an engraving/scratching of a pig, a tiny metal figure of a dog, and glass, metal, amber and bone jewellery and other personal objects.

After leaving the main building I re-admired the views over the Danube and the rest of the city. The sun had come out, though it was still very chilly, with biting winds.

I made the decision then not to go on a day trip the next day, as I felt so sapped of energy, but rather give the City Museum within the Old Town Hall another chance to have their tower open, and to go to the Jewish Museum as well.

Pleased at having made the decision, I decided to go back to the hostel a different way to the one I'd come. The architecture and cobbled streets of the historic centre are a sight to behold, even in chilly February. Similar to Graz, though smaller.

On an impulse, after seeing someone leave and thus realising it was open, I popped into the 17th century Protestant-turned-Jesuit church next to the Old Town Hall. Lots of marble, and a large oil painting above the altar.

Since I still felt very drained and cough-ridden today, I took it quite easy again.

I started with what I didn't manage yesterday; the Arms Museum, held round the corner within St Michael's Gate, and the historic Red Crayfish Pharmacy Museum, a couple of doors down from there.

Both are tiny and handily share the same ticket; entrance to one gives you free entry to the other. I went to the Arms Museum first. I admired their collection of pistols, giant metal 'speaking trumpet', Central European, Moroccan, Middle Eastern, Indian and Japanese daggers and swords, Central European huntsman's bag and stag- and cattle-horn powder flasks, and Austro-Hungarian armour, drum, uniforms and field-glasses.

I also walked round the viewing platform at the top of the gate, managing not to get blown off in the process (it was an extremely windy day today). Intriguingly, when looking down on one side, I noticed small coins in the copper gutters below, and that the gutter ends were shaped like dragons.

The Pharmacy Museum didn't have the dried pufferfish and bats, collections of exotic biological and mineral materials, or historic medical texts which I've seen in other pharmacy museums, but it was still interesting to have a look at its collection of wooden cabinets and ceramic, wooden, glass and tin jars, and I admired the painted ceiling in the main room. After taking a photo of a wooden cabinet near the start, I was told that photos weren't allowed, so I didn't get any of the rest of the interior, though I did get ones of the exterior; the metal crayfish sign and the historic metal gates.

After that my intention had been to go to the castle, but I was so lacking in energy I decided to leave that until the next day, when the weather is due to be better in any case, and just wander round the City Museum this afternoon instead. It's held within the beautiful Old Town Hall, practically on my hostel's doorstep. After a decent sit-down at the hostel, I walked over. However, the lady at the ticket desk told me that although the main part of the museum was open, the tower was closed today (due to the strong winds, I assume), so since I didn't want to miss going up it, I decided to leave the museum until the next day as well.

After then finding out that the majority of the Slovakian National Gallery is under refurbishment and/or having new exhibitions installed, I settled on something a bit different; the site of Slavín, the largest war memorial and cemetery in Europe.

I assume they mean the largest in terms of numbers buried there, because I'm sure some of the WWI cemeteries I saw in France and Belgium were bigger in terms of site size. This one contains the bodies of nearly 7000 Soviet soldiers who died in April 1945 during the liberation of Bratislava from the Nazi forces who were occupying the city. The statue on the memorial column shows a Soviet soldier crushing a swastika underfoot.

The memorial/cemetery lies on a hill, so there were some impressive views of the city. Very cold and windy, though, and the setting of course was sombre.

My birthday went well yesterday considering I was in recovery from my illness. I was well enough to teach during the day and help with the running of the Show in the evening - one of my two groups had decided to do a big quiz with audience participation, so my role was to hand out sweets to those who got correct answers. Earlier in the day, I was serenaded with 'Happy Birthday' by the first class I had, and I got a card and some Lindt chocolate from my colleagues. After the Show, a video call home was just the thing to round the day off.

This morning I had a lie-in and a leisurely breakfast of coffee and yoghurt before packing all my stuff and heading downstairs to put it in the luggage room and check out.

I took a bus to Museum Tinguely, which looks out over the Rhine.

I was able to use my Basel Card to get my ticket half-price; this card was an unexpected bonus we received in our hotel rooms on arrival last Sunday. This had our names and dates of stay written on them and allowed us free public transport within the wider city, half-price museum tickets, public wifi at certain points and one or two things I didn't use.

The museum was playful and interesting, as I expected after remembering the intriguing moving fountain I saw last September, which is one of his works. Jean Tinguely was famous for his kinetic, often noisy, mainly mechanical sculptures, reminiscent of Heath Robinson's inventions - amongst other things, I was impressed with a series of mechanical automatic drawing machines - though he also made some 'still' works.

I managed to get a couple of videos, though not unfortunately of one of the crowning glories - an entire wall-sized musical contraption with wheels, piano, bell, horns and other things (the video I thought I was taking didn't come out).

That big one set off automatically every hour, but lots of the others could be set into motion by pressing a button with your foot, though they would only work if a certain minimum number of minutes had passed since the last time (usually between 5-10).

Unfortunately, while walking round I started feeling really lightheaded and drained. I still liked the rest of what I saw there, but decided not to go on to the other museum I'd had my eye on, but rather stick to the rest of my walking route.

This took me along part of the route along the side of the river which I took last September. Only saw one person floating down it this time... The emptiness of the stony river banks/beaches from humans benefitted the seagulls, however, who took advantage by taking baths. Just as I got to the first bridge a boy punted his unsteady way along the edge in a very bare wooden boat. The seagulls ignored him, as did the ducks and swans who were feeding in the shallows.

After buying a late lunch from a supermarket I crossed the historic bridge I remembered from September and wandered up an invitingly cobbled and twisted path which followed the other side of the river.

I came out at Minster Square, which appeared very handsome, with the red sandstone Minster on one side and then round the edge of the square, white buildings with green shutters.

Although I was keen to go in and have at least a quick look, my plans were foiled by the service just about to begin; no tourists allowed. I could have gone to the service, I suppose, but I didn't have time, as I needed to get back to the hotel before 5:30 to collect my stuff before the receptionist went home and I lost access to the luggage room.

I took a bus a couple of stops to the station to help speed the process along. At the station I bought some supplies for the long journey to Bratislava and found the Flixbus stop for later, then walked down the road to the hotel.

To help while away the time In my long wait in the hotel lobby I started a fascinating book called 'Travels with a Tangerine'.