Let's Get Lost

So here we are, second post on Linz (who would’ve thought two posts would be necessary to describe our day trip to a randomly picked drowsy city in Austria?)

So I have to admit that I wasn’t quite sold on the museum exhibit that we decided to check out next. As Tess mentioned, we already had decided to turn down a longer weekend trip to save some money, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pay five euro for this “OK tour” (the name doesn’t exactly inspire confidence—not good, not great, just… mediocre?) But I didn’t want to get separated from Tess and Ginny and so I decided to go ahead and join them.

The first room of the exhibit that we entered didn’t exactly alter my uncertainty. We entered a dark room and waited for several minutes for something to happen with some other people touring the exhibit. Then all of a sudden a machine on a pole in the middle of the room lit up and started moving around and shining a beam of light in all directions. Needless to say, we were slightly confused. We waited a while, but it didn’t really do much else and then followed the first family who left the room (I think we were all kind of thinking the same thing and everyone was just waiting for someone else to leave first because most of the room followed us). Only after leaving the room did we realize that the pamphlet we’d been given when we got our tickets had short explanations of each part of the exhibit. The one on the room with the light went like this: “When entering the room the light begins to dance, shining a spot that seems to be curious to illuminate what lies hidden in the dark. The playful struggle for insight is accompanied by the sound of the motors that almost have a musical quality.” So as you can see, it didn’t shine a whole lot of light (yes, I admit, pun intended) on the situation. Or else, I am simply uncultured and unable to appreciate modern art.

We continued through the exhibit, enjoying the sometimes strange, albeit interesting, displays. When we realized we didn’t have a whole lot of time until we needed to head back to make our train, we hurried to what had attracted us to the museum in the first place: the tower with the lookout over the city. After only making it halfway up, I knew I didn’t regret paying the five euro—the view was beautiful! 

We headed back down the tower to the rooftops and across to another part of the exhibit: a sort of dome woven out of bamboo creating a light-flooded space inside.

We stopped to get some gelato on the way out and made it back to the train station with time to spare. We had a (pretty) uneventful trip back to Gaming, missing one train on the way, but thankfully it wasn’t the last one of the night and we didn’t have to wait long for the next one. We’ve been told that it’s inevitable that we’ll miss a train at some point and I don’t think things could have gone much more smoothly than they did when missing a train.

This weekend we are doing a 22 mile hike to Mariazell as a pilgrimage to a Marian shrine. Then on Saturday we’re planning to head back to Linz for a day trip of shopping, since we know our way around now.

Tschuess! (that’s bye in German!)