Sunday June 2 - Schonbrunn Palace/Gardens and Technical Museum

The heatwave persists. amd there's no longer even a pretence of thunderstorms to alleviate it. I caught the metro -- very much in the Munich style, though the same cheaper price as Frankfurt -- out to Schonbrunn Palace, along with about a million other people. This is obviously the thing to do in Vienna on a sunny Sunday, although ther were also a lot of tour groups, including large numbers of Chinese tourists. even though it was only just after eight. For once the audio guide was a decent length -- about five minutes on each room, covering the sailient features. And then out to the gardens, which were much less crowded, although nowhere near as empty as Nyphenburg had been. At $50 for admission to the palace and a few garden attractions, it was my most expensive ticket yet; and then they had the gall to charge #.50 for the toilets in the park too. But the prices obviously aren't deterring people.

The view from the pavilion was magnificent, and the mazes were fun; but I had finished by about 1 pm. Since I'd seen the Technical Museum from the pavilion I knew it wasn't far away, so I decided to head there for the remainder of the afternoon. It took a bit of hunting around to find the entrance, and the admission fee was pretty steep -- they're a mercenary lot here in Vienna -- but it was all quite interesting, in a much less full-on way than Frankfurt, with lots of knobs to twiddle and levers to pull. I didn't realise that Austria had quite a large steel industry until fairly recently, and there were plenty of crucibles and furnaces left over from that.

I nearly left at three, but then I checked the map and realised that I hadn't seen the musical instruments at all. So back up I went and spent another forty minutes or so looking at those. One of the attendants gave a demonstration of some portable organs -- played by cards or a pinwheel -- and because more than half the audience were English we got it in English as well as German, which was nice. And I hadn't realised that there was an alternative 'rational' keyboard for the piano -- rather like the Dvorak keyboard for computers -- which, like the Dvorak never caught on.

Museums are not air-conditioned here, apart from the climate-controlled rooms like that for the pianos, so it was just as hot inside as out, minus the breeze. Next time I come it will be late autumn or early spring.

Home, via an ice-cream shop, for dinner and bed. The plan for today is a cool walk in the nearby National Park, following the trail of Napoleon's first defeat; then back for the Military Museum, which is quite close to here.

Love to all, thanks for the emails,

Jon.

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