July 14 Stift Klosterneuburg 2

 I went to meet some of the people Patrick works with. Here is a photo of him with Ulrike and Eden. I of course already met Ulrike a week ago at the IAML Conference in Salzburg, and Patrick had earlier arranged for her to give me a tour of the music collection at the stift, since she and I are both in the same discipline. Ulrike, like Patrick, is a PhD student, and Eden is the librarian, though she also teaches Upper Middle German to students who are preparing to be teachers. 

Martin, who is the leader of the research team, shares an office with Ulrike and Eden, and I had met him earlier, when he had told us about three interns he has visiting from Princeton, and he asked Patrick if he would be willing to spend some time with them discussing his research, since they are trying to understand the various types of scientific and cultural research currently underway in the library. Patrick had said he would. So after this photo, we went to find Martin and the interns.

We found them, and so of course, I insisted upon taking a photo. Sorry, not sorry.

Above we have the three Princeton interns, and I do not remember all of their names, only Nadia, because I have her in my phone, who is at the left. Then the young man with the gray pants goes to university in Vienna, and Max, in the light blue jeans, works there at Klosterneuburg, doing computer things. His mom is one of Patrick's collaborators. Then there is Patrick and Martin and a very nice stift employee whose name I can't remember. (I remember four of the names, so 50% right here!)

The first order of the day was to walk over to where Patrick's equipment has been, to move it back to room seven, because he has another 120 or so items to work with at Kosterneuburg. And with many hands to make light work of the move, and to be his surrogate hands, since this crazy syndrome he has renders his hands pretty useless, we headed over to do that. It was an interesting walk because Martin has all the keys--he can go anywhere in the complex! 

But we ended up in this courtyard. And I had to take a picture of the yellow birds in the plants. Apparently I should be more interested in the fountain, which is the Leopold Fountain, but it was the yellow that drew my eye. FYI: Saint Leopold III is known as the founder of Klosterneuburg Abbey, which he established in 1114 and brought the Augustinian Canons there in 1133. He is also the patron saint of Austria, and his feast day, Leopoldi, is celebrated in Klosterneuburg each year. 

Our destination was the Stiftsarchiv. 

In the Stiftsarchiv, there are two volunteer retired professionals who are dealing with the collections of coins and medals. (Medals look like coins, but you can't spend them--they have no monetary value. So they are separate collections.) These were immediately in view when we entered the room, so I took a picture of them, but nobody talked about them, and I didn't ask, so they shall remain a mystery!

I am not the only one who forgets names! Patrick can't remember the name of this lovely lady, a retired university professor who donates her time to taking care of the coins and medals, and who was very happy to allow us to see the collections, and to touch them, as long as they were put back where they belonged. 

Here she is opening drawers of coins, and encouraging us to get close and personal with them. So the Princeton interns are doing just that. These are lower value coins. 

Here is a close up of our friendly nameless guide, doing an inspection of a small coin:

More tiny coins being inspected up close:

And then she drew our attention to these coins, also of low value like a penny's worth, only they are not flat like the coins we had been looking at. They are sort of convex/concave (depending on the side you are looking at) and that is an interesting concept, not what most of us would think of as a shape that would be expected in a coin. 

Then our guide wanted us to look at dollar coins, which even in ancient times were larger and more elaborate than the lower value coins. 

This image was actually a video. I used to know how to edit the video so I could get the very best still photo, but with my new phone, I no longer can do that, so here is just the final image. I hope you can still see the size of the coins pretty well.

And another attempt at the same drawer full of coins:

Then we moved on to medals, which might be awarded for valour, or for appeasement, or just to give someone something that they might value, but which will not break the bank for the giver. Some of the medals come in elaborate boxes, but they can't store the boxes in the same way they store the medals, because they take up too much space. Medals can be quite fascinating in design.

And then the guys, who were waiting to move all of Patrick's equipment, were showing signs of wanting us to hurry up, and so we did.

Max and one of the ladies carried the frame which weighs about a hundred pounds, and another of the ladies carried the machine itself in its case, and another one carried the case that the frame would go in if dismantled, and Patrick gave me some lightweight thing to carry so I wouldn't feel totally useles, and honestly, he was so grateful that they helped carry it all back to room seven, since his hands are not working properly!

I should have documented them carrying everything! We had to use the elevator in two groups because we were too much for it all at once, us and equipment. 

So here we are in room seven, with Patrick talking to the interns about what he does to use FTIR spectroscopy to date paper, or leather, or papyrus. They are all organic compounds, and those are the materials that the process is aiming to date with increasing accuracy, in noninvasive and nondestructive ways, so that the material being studied receives no negative impact from the study.

The interns listening...(I thought I should take pictures of them listening, since they asked me to share photos with them!) 

And I thought I should also take photos of Patrick explaining, since he is my son, so I did.

Here, they are getting closer in order to see the images that Patrick has brought up on the computer. (He wasn't set up to work with actual materials yet, but maybe since he is getting better (Hallelujah!) and the interns are still here for a couple more weeks, maybe he will get it set up and they can see the equipment they carried in actual working order? I don't know, but maybe. Two of the girls are studying classics, and one of them is studying art history, and the materials that Patrick uses in his testing do overlap into those areas for sure. 

Just changing to a landscape shape as Patrick is instructing, and the interns are listening, and asking intelligent questions as they go. It was quite lovely to watch. It just makes me remember asking Patrick what he wanted to be when he grew up, and he would say "Pizza man." (A choice which he still defends, because pizza is delicious, and when people receive their pizza from the pizza man, it makes them happy, so how could that not be a good choice?) 

And one last view of these lovely young ladies, who were so interesting to talk to, and who are so enjoying the opportunity to be at Klosterneuburg for the month of July, getting such good experiences with people and things related to their disciplines. (They look serious, but they were not bored--if they had been, they would not have been able to come up with such good questions and comments!)

July 14 Stift Klosterneuburg 1

 Patrick took me to Klosterneuburg today, where he has done much of his work, and has still more to do. And I took so many pictures! I think I will break them up into three posts so it doesn't all get overwhelming!

But the good news of the day really is that when Patrick got up this morning, he could FEEL that he is getting better! Every day I check to see how he is feeling, and while I have thought that some days the swelling he experiences was less, today he FELT it. Also, he is not running fevers randomly throughout the day anymore, and that was definitely a thing for him the past few weeks. That was lovely news to start the day!

I will start out with the sign at the bottom of the hill, after we got off the bus:

"Stift" means Abbey. Patrick was taking me up this way because there is a gravel path that goes up gradually, instead of lots of stairs, because my right knee has trouble with stairs. (I have to go up like a little child, and then there is no pain. Walking upstairs like a normal person is painful. I have no trouble at all with slopes.)

Above, he is on the path. He stopped by a sign that said something, which is translated into English, just sayings about things that happen or are being studied at the Stift. As you walk along the path, the shrubbery gets bigger, and it is pretty, so I took a pictures.

When I got to the top, I took a picture looking out south, toward Vienna in the distance, and then turned around and took a picture of the building from that vantage point.

But our entrance was around the back, and in the middle, so on we went. You can see Patrick walking on, leading the way. We were aiming for the entrance near where the man in black is standing. (He is probably a canon? It seems like most of the clerics in the stift are canons.)

Patrick had to go in that door to get the key to the elevator that leads to the library. He is on the list! His key doesn't allow him to go everywhere, but it does allow him access to the places he needs to go. I stopped to look up at the dome overhead, which was lovely, as expected, since all the domes I have seen in Austria have been lovely!

Once inside, Patrick gave me a quick tour of the library (although I would have another tour with Ulrike later--which was wonderful) before I met with others of his co-workers as planned.

There are small rooms full floor to ceiling of books! They are arranged by subject mostly, and while they do have an online presence, they still maintain and use a card catalog, so I needed a picture of that! They have it by title, author, subject, as expected. This is only part of it--more on the opposite side, and some against a wall in the corner.

The lights are all turned on from one place as you enter the first room. So Patrick did not turn on all the lights, hence this next room is darker, but I wanted to take a picture of the ghostly heads watching over this room. In the kloster, they worry about what might happen with the electricity after hours, when nobody is there, hence when they close for the night at about 6 pm, all of the lights are turned off so that there is no electricity to accidentally spark and start a fire when nobody is around. When I think of all the fires that I know have started after hours (Provo Tabernacle, I am looking at you...) this seems like a sound practice, because they have books and manuscripts that are only found THERE. If they were gone, they would be gone. So, there is one central place to turn on and off the electricity.

This is just because I wanted to take a picture of Patrick. If you see to his left (your right) that pretty thick book? The thickest one on the shelf? That is the one that he took down and opened to discuss the paper of in the next photo after this one.

Here he has it on a desk, and is busy explaining about it to me. He is very good at explaining, and is very animated while talking about this subject, which he clearly enjoys. Good thing, since this is the work he is doing!

Then he took me into the library proper, which is in one of the domes in the abbey. It is so lovely, and just what you imagine for an old library. I do not know who the woman on the ceiling is, though. But she looks European, I think. (I tried asking Google's AI, but it did not choose this ceiling painting to talk about. Then I tried a Google Image search, and also nope.)

You can see in the above picture that not all the lights were on. Patrick had to turn the lights on way back in room one, and since he doesn't have all of the lights completely memorized, he turned on the ones he was sure of, and not all of them. So.

Here he is explaining something to me, and it would be really great if I could remember what, but I honestly could not remember all of the many things that I learned--or failed to learn--during this excursion, because there was so much!

And I took a picture of this globe (but I did NOT touch, as asked) which is a globe made during an earlier time period, so the world does not exactly match our current understanding of the globe. 

And I took a picture looking out the window of the dome, looking down and across other parts of the abbey, which is ginourmous, and I do not know how all the people who work there can know their way around!

Then I took a picture of one of the many stacks of books because they look so pretty and well-cared for, since once books enter this library, they never leave. They are USED, because the canons use them, and all the visiting students, interns, and researchers use them, but they cannot be checked out, so they stay here and are cared for here.

Then we went to room seven, which is the room where Patrick works. In fact, he is standing by the table where he works. His equipment is not there right NOW--it is in the room where the people are processing coins and medals--but in the next post, the interns will be moving the equipment for him (because of the illness, he has still limited use of his hands) and so the equipment WILL be here soon. This room looks very yellow, because the light is coming from outside and through blinds. Notice the overhead lights are not turned on. (To turn them on, a person would have to return all the way back to room one.)

Making our way back to room one, Patrick showed me this wall that has a hidden door. (This is not the only one--Ulrike also opened a hidden door at one point. I wonder how many hidden doors there are?)

What do you think is hidden on the other side?

It is a WC! You never know when you might need one, and also, old books tend to get your hands a bit grimy, so there is a hidden WC that can help you take care of one kind of business or the other without having to leave the library.

Okay! End of the first post about Stift Klosterneuburg!

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!