We pulled up to Admont monastery touch-and-go as to whether we should leave it and just drive on. There were good reviews but their number came to a grand total of three... so how good could it be?
Very.
It was a large old place with ancient doors so we were really surprised at what we saw inside. The first highlight occured as we entered a modern building with a high-tech exhibit. There was a large tv screen surrounded by a room of large mirrors, which you stood on a platform to experience. The mirror theatre made a scene of the earth appear 3D, perfectly circular and huge in front of you - as if you were God forming the earth. A mix of images, colors and patterns were shown including the earth burning up and turning into a ball of flame. I (Amanda) reluctantly had to tear myself away from the awe-inspiring experience.
On another floor was a library. We opened the door and practically gasped in surprise. This wasn't a dusty old monastery library. This was a place where wisdom and thought from throughout the ages were honored with gold and colour. The decorations included wall mountings of gold heads likened to the famous pioneers and champions of theology, philosophy, medicine etc as well as rooftop paintings portraying virtues, vices and human endeavors.
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| Library in the Admont Monestary (photo sourced online as technically photos not permitted) |
We were alone with only the librarian in the far corner so I sat on the floor to take it all in. This place used to have more incunable books (books printed before 1500 A.D.) than the Vatican! I had to beg to take pictures as they technically weren't allowed because of flash/light damage.
Short on time, we rushed to one more floor. One room held 30 of 243 or so different wax apple models - exact replicas complete with imperfections. Sadly the majority of these varieties no longer exist as only a few are still grown to take to market.
Further along that floor there was an unpleasant tangy smell of preserving liquid. Jars of preserved reptiles lined the walls reminding me of my high school science building. Further still were rock specimens, skeletons and a room with an amazing array of stuffed animals, from a lioness and birds with long brilliant tails to drawers of probably every type of gnat, mosquito, beetle or moth that humanity has ever documented! The presentation didn't beat the NY or London natural history museum exhibits but the variety put it as a not-too-distant contender!
The other discovery we want to share with you in this blog is the ARS Electronica centre in Linz, which I'll let Jahda talk about.
[Jahda:]
I'll get to Linz in a moment, but first a story from the journey. We stopped at one rather forgettable little town on our way through. It was always intended just as a sleep and rest stop, but the local hotel/pub/restaurant didn't do much to esteem himself or his town. There is a certain feeling you get when you are paying for dinner (goulash) and they ask if you ate the bread rolls they served after you ordered, before proceeding to add 1.50 Euro to the bill. It's not much financially, but it's a lot of principle.
As we left the next day I saw Amanda stuffing a massive handful of tissues into her handbag. I looked at her quizzically and she replied sheepishly, "about 1.50 Euro worth don't you think?" Laughing out loud I thought once again, "I love this woman!"
There have been many times on this journey when Amanda and I have wondered how people planned their travel before the iPad, or worse - before the Internet! We had two days to make the journey from Hallstatt to Melk, so we simply jumped online, used google maps to see the bigger towns we were passing through and did a quick google search for 'things to do near...' Amanda has already described the hidden treasure of Admont abbey. Well, we also saw that the ARS Electronica museum in Linz was getting rave reviews so we took the detour to check it out.
It was incredible. They had one of those in-the-news-right-now 3D printers and a laser paper cutter so we could design and 'cut' our own creations.They had robotics of all types, including a little doll that operated like a multi-sensory telephone handset. If one person gestured to give a hug, then their doll would relay this to the other doll, which would hug the person at the other end. They had fascinating displays on the human body, including a machine to photograph your own retina (eyes) and games to play with electrodes on your head, but the two big ticket items were the 3D universe show and the Facebook display.
The Facebook display - or rather the 'we know everything about you and your life is an open book' display showed just how much data Mr Zuckerberg and his now public company have on all of us and what they and other intelligent people can do with it. Scary. There was this guy who designed an algorithm that mined Facebook for profile photos where people had their heads cocked and faces smiling at a certain angle. It then extracted them and built a dating website using their Facebook data. I think it had a few hundered thousand profiles setup within a few days. Some of you are freaking out about now. Others, like us, were probably already mildly aware of all this but due to the convenience and utility of Facebook we suck it up and just use the tightest security and privacy controls we can... Oh, and we do our best to self-sensor what we post. But as this travelling blog has shown, sometimes we just can't help ourselves.
The 3D universe display was nothing short of impressive. We sat in a big room wearing 3D glasses and then the screen, or the room, or something, came alive and took us on a journey through the universe. It was all around us. There was a guy standing there controlling it like it was a PowerPoint slide show as he narrated our journey. He was clicking us forward and backwards through the universe as need be. It was incredible. We've never really watched Star Trek, but I think we both felt like Captain Kirk and his crew. It felt like we were floating among the galaxies and could touch the planets! Well worth the visit if you are ever in this part of the world.
A and J.
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