Austria 7: Römermuseum in Wien

 Patrick and I stopped at an actual museum and paid for the opportunity to look around and sit down for a while. The attendant asked us if we had any discounts to apply, and Patrick said no, that he was too old to be a student. The attendant asked if maybe one of us might be eligible for a senior's discount? Which starts at age 60? I laughed because I never think about that! It has been a few years since I last saw 60, but I feel still the same ageless age of being me, so I didn't even think about a discount! But we happily took it when he offered it!

Here is the website for the Römermuseum in case anyone is interested. It is not expensive, comparatively speaking, and was quite interesting, because you go under the street, and can hear the clip clop of the horses hooves as the carriages pass on the street above. (Because there are horses and carriages all over in the First District of Vienna.)

I just liked those stones. They were on the main floor. Then we went downstairs, having decided to start at the bottom and work our way up.

Here is the entrance to the under the street part:

The window helpfully tells us in English that we are going to see structural remains from tax officers' houses. I do not know how they know that. But there were many explanatory posters all around the place, however they were mostly entirely in German, with only sometimes captions in English, so there is still a very lot of information that I do not know. For example, I do not know the significance of this wheel that I memorialized in a photo!

These Romans were the smartest! They heated their homes with fires underneath the floors, in those spaces that you can see. So this is a picture of their radiant heating system.

This looked like maybe some kind of place for water, like a tub of sorts, to me, but Patrick said it is still part of their radiant heating system.

I liked this map with the names the Romans used. The Danube is still the Danube: Danuvius.

Patrick really likes this museum because it is interesting to him. I therefore made him be in a picture.

This map shows the layout of the Roman city that is underneath Vienna, with actual words that I can read and understand!

These are some rather grisly remains. I am not sure how or why these came to be housed in the museum, thanks to my lack of expertise in German. All I can tell you is that it was very hard to get an angle on these artifacts that didn't show my shadow.

This photo shows how, when they excavate, all of the artifacts are in a great big jumble and have to be sorted out.

This museum had some places where you could touch things, with facsimiles of objects on display with a green hand so you would know that touching was a "go."

We ended up in a children's area, where there was a Playmobil Roman dwelling that children could play with and move the Roman soldiers around. There was also a place to sit, which we took advantage of, and there you can watch a film that explains about aqueducts, and how they dealt with sewage, and other mechanical feats of the Romans. All with NO WORDS. No words spoken, no words written, just images that carefully showed entire processes in very interesting ways. I came away feeling that I understood what they were trying to teach with absolutely no use of language. I thought that was very cool! 

And then we were on our way back to Patrick's apartment for a late lunch and naps!