Vienna, Day 4

Wednesday was a light day, probably because we are wearing down. We went to the Technology Museum, a combination science/technology museum and hands-on interactive kids' museum. It was amusing to see technology from my scientific lifetime enshrined in a museum. I was sad that the scanning electron microscope was out of order. Of course, I wonder if it ever was really accessible to museum patrons. The mass spectrometer was also entertaining, as it had its huge rack of electronics, with vacuum pump controllers etc. that Keenan and I both recognized. More intriguing were the cases of historical equipment from around 1900, things like old batteries and telescopes.

The most fun interactive displays were the simple physics experiments, but they were of little interest to the bus loads of children visiting that day. Too much knowledge needed to make them interesting, I fear.

A display on cast iron jewelry was intriguing. I didn't realize that cast iron was ever used for jewelry, but it was evidently popular in the late 1800s, as the initial impact of mass production on the jewelry world. This is the "casting tree," with all the pieces attached to their sprues that enable the metal to flow during the centrifugal casting process.

There was of course a display on flight, and Joren enjoyed the engines as always.

After the museum, we went back down to Stephensplatz, the huge shopping district around St. Stephen's Cathedral to find Österreichische Werkstätten, a local artist's coop featuring glass, pottery, fiber and jewlery. There I collected a black and white boat-shaped dish, with simple decorations that look very Art Deco to me. Again, it's packed up nicely to travel, so you'll have to wait to see it until we get home.

This ornate, gilded Russian Orthodox church is the view from our hotel room (over the railroad tracks). When we walked through the neighborhood near sunset the other evening, we took these photos.