My Viennese Whirl(wind visit) part 2

On Saturday morning I decided that I would indulge my fascination with gravestones and I took myself off to the central cemetary to spend some time with dead people 👻. There are over 250,000 people buried here which gave great scope for finding some cool headstones. A few that caught my eye are below

This one made me both smile and feel sad.

From there, I took a tram and metro up to the Naschmarkt, one of the two markets in Vienna. The first half was a flea market (my idea of hell) and the second half a food market (my idea of heaven) where I had an amazingly delicious falafel sandwich and some sort of apple pie that I can't remember the name of but I took a picture of it!

At this point it was getting really quite cold and so in anticipation of my museum evening I went and bought a hat and scarf and then went back back to the hostel for a bit of a rest before my mammoth museum session.

There were a few museums close to where I was staying and so I started with those, then I took the metro into the centre and did the central ones I'd chosen. Typically, when I left the hostel to start the visits, the wind had dropped, it was nowhere near as cod as it had been and so the hat and scarf were completely redundant! I'll likely need them in a couple of weeks which will be handy, but I'll also have to carry them until I do as well. Not good...

Anyway, the museums I visited were:

Contraception and Abortion (in support of the women affected by Trump's latest shenanigans). The picture is of all the different shape coils

Imperial Furniture. This really reminded me of the Geffrye Museum in London (a fab little museum if you get chance to visit).

Austrian Board Games. I love a good board game and I'm lucky that my very good friend Guillame is a big board games fan and has introduced me to fab ones. Look Guillaume, they had 7 Wonders! That was the only one I recognised though (other than the obvious ones like scrabble)...

Condom. This was most amusing and there were lots of giggles here! We were given a demonstration of how to correctly use a condom, but as I don't want my blog to be labelled in any way dodgy I'm limiting myself to the picture below!

Torure. At Trenčin Castle in Slovakia they'd mentioned a few different torture techniques in an exhibition they had on, and they had displays of them here. They also had descriptions of the torture techniques used in Guantanamo which were just horrific. 

Clocks and Watches (see what I mean about Uncle Reg's clock not being out of place here Mum?!). I love watches and so this museum really appealed to me.

Fire Brigade (early breathing apparatus). It reminded me of my morning visit to the cemetary for some reason...

Austrian National Library/Papyrus museum (forgot to take a picture here) - anything stationery related does it for me!

Leopoldov - an exhibition of Anton Kolig (wasn't really my cup of tea...)

And finally Kunsthalle for an exhibition on sharing spaces!!

Not bad going, 10 museums in one night! It was an amazing atmosphere, everywhere you looked, there were people with the little books of exhibits and every museum I went in was busy which was just fantastic.

It was a great end to my wonderful visit to Vienna and from there I made my way back to Budapest on a Flixbus (more expensive and with fewer facilities than the RegioJet bus, who unfortunately don't do the VIenna-Budapest route). From there I've headed to Debrecen for my last days in Hungary before heading to Romania on Wednesday.

Changing my route to go to Bratislava and Vienna was the best decision. The people I've met and the places I've seen will stay with me for a long time. It also reinforced to me that I don't always have to stick rigidly to a plan which I can quite rightly be accused of (although I will change if you give me a good argument for it) and going off piste occasionally can bring unexpected and much appreciated benefits!