Master Jonjon Tourist Videos

LOCATION. Nearest tram station: Schwarzenbergplatz. As you get off the tram, head towards city centre through Schwarzenbergstrasse. You’ll simply be going from one end of the street to the very other, a four minute walk. See: “House of Music” (Vienna) This is a complicated attraction. You get to see the many sides as to what counts as “music”. Imagine getting across a corridor to be stormed by a hoard of panels on the directors of Vienna’s state opera. And this is how you’ll start your journey. Endure on as this peculiarity flows past you. It will get better. The next floor lets you remix sounds and samples as an entertainment system turns classical tunes into club music. You also get to play instruments and put everything together – a 21st century celebration of everything-can-be-music. Clip: “House of Music” (Vienna) Yet another floor is dedicated to classical Viennese composers with the big names each getting their own room, chronologically. Find yourself start...

LOCATION. The museum is at the mid-point between Stephansplatz and Karlsplatz. Expect a ten-minute walk. If you start off from Karlsplatz, step away from the parks and go north along Karntner Strasse. Hike your way into the pedestrian zone and past the church. Turn right into Johannesgasse and you’ll be there within a minute. "Literature Museum" (Vienna) CROWD CONTROL CHECK. This is a lonely poor thing, and by far the most uncrowded attraction I can find in Central Vienna. Don’t underestimate its size – two floors of permanent showcases, throw another one in for changing exhibitions. Imagine what it’s like to stroll across videos screens and alleys of descriptions, artifacts, excerpts – only to meet no one else but two staffers along the way. After buying your ticket you’ll be given an iPad “audio” guide (not a hiss ever comes out of it I’m not sure if that’s the right name). As you walk from checkpoint to checkpoint you have to literally touch the sticker at the...

LOCATION. Southwest of Stephansplatz Station. Requires a three-minute walk. In other words: right at the city centre. That means you can schedule this museum on the same day as other Stephansplatz attractions such as the Cathedral of St. Stephen, Mozart House and Roman Museum. See: “Jewish Museum Vienna” Last time we’ve been to the Museum Jewish Quarter to be reminded of the medieval Jewish-Viennese settlement that has been destroyed in 1420. And now here’s another one – this time more of a get-to-know type of exhibition showcasing the life of Jews in Austria through the last five hundred years. On ground floor (clip) you are confronted with the struggle for equality in the twentieth century through everyday items and written records. Find yourself re-living the last one hundred years as Austrians just as the rest of the developed world spirals through prejudice, racist crimes and the enactment of civil laws. And the series of both violent and courageous acts concentrated...

LOCATION. Nearest tube station: Herrengasse. Then embark on a ten-minute walk uphill passing through medieval alleys and a joyous theatrical square, Am Hof. See: “Museum Jewish Quarter” (Vienna) HERITAGE. The Jewish Quarter was a medieval Jewish settlement in Northwest Vienna. It grew to a population of nearly a thousand in the early fifteenth century. Mounting hate towards the Jews under Duke Albrecht V led to the community being entirely destroyed in 1420. This resulted in both expulsion and murder. (It was until more than a hundred years later that another Jewish settlement was to be formed in Leopoldstadt, the Danube’s “island” district.) Computer graphic showing the Jewish Quarter in multiple angles, five hundred years ago.  “Museum Jewish Quarter” (Vienna) EXCAVATION. The foundation of the quarter’s synagogue (destroyed 1420-21) was discovered in 1995. You’ll get to visit the air-conditioned ruins underneath the museum. Another angle:...

LOCATION. Centre-west Vienna. A ten-minute walk from tube station Zieglergasse, you’ll be walking into these smaller streets gentrified sparsely with Japanese restaurants, cafes and organic supermarkets. So if you decide to take a break from those Hofburg or Art History Museum or any other thing too city-centre and touristy, here’s an ethnographic excursion to get a glimpse into the multifacetedness of the contemporary “Viennese”. “Haydn House” (Vienna) HERITAGE. Franz Haydn moved here in 1797 and stayed until his death in 1809. This is one of the composer houses still standing in the Viennese suburbs. (You might still remember the Beethoven Museum , which is much further away as Beethoven had to take a rest from the hectic city centre to better his stress issue). And now here in Haydn House the storyboard is rather simpler – it functions as a summer house for a rising wealthy musician. The house belonged to his wife and following her death, he was to live her...

Well-hid behind a park, this museum requires you to burn your carbs before you’re to find yourself among trains, carriages, forging equipment, water mills and turbines, typewriters, harpsichords and organs. A fifteen-minute walk from Schonbrunn, one of the must-see’s of Vienna . So if you’re to visit West Vienna, you might as well include this in your itinerary. See: “Technical Museum” (Vienna) GENRE. This is a complicated attraction, more like a combination of a museum of science and industrial development with transport as a main course and chocolate sprinkles of musical instruments . Clip: “Technical Museum” (Vienna) (In this wheel chair experience (clip), you turn the wheels and bump into all kinds of stuff as the chair vibrates your bum off. Safety belt not included.) If you’d rather see what technology has done to Vienna – upstairs you’ll see an exhibition of what it’s like when Vienna has been going through industrialization (and urbanization) and th...

HERITAGE. This is the summer palace for the Austrian monarchs. At other times they’d rather stay at the more centrally-located,  Hofburg . Built in Rococo style; façade later updated to fit neoclassical tastes that were to come. See: "Schonbrunn Palace" GETTING TICKETS. Don’t be as dumb as me – the ticket counter is at the park’s main entrance (enter the park, turn left, walk inside the café) not in the palace. Otherwise when you go straight into it you will be left with a lonely ticketing machine. It offers only some of the basic packages – many of the combo or reduced tickets can only be bought over the counter. Clip: "Schonbrunn Palace" WHAT TO SEE. While any ticket will admit you to less than 1/20 of all the 1,441 rooms in the palace, each of the rooms tells a little story on its own. You’'ll find youself in the very room in which Mozart performed for the monarchs, the dining room that served traditional Austrian meals (and Frenc...

HERITAGE. As the palace of Austria, Hofburg has served lineages of emperors for over 600 years. Which means – yes, the Habsburg monarchs included. See: Ephesus Museum, "Hofburg" (Vienna) And now let’s explore this new wing, built in the nineteenth century and hasn’t been quite completed since then. As you step away from the garden you’ll quickly realize how it has been chopped into different uses: There’s a separate entrance to the Museum of Musical Instrument and the Museum of Armory. Enter through hallway and you’ll find yourself the door to the national library and the Papyrus Museum (closed during my visit unfortunately). The rest of the wing is divided into two museums. On the northern side you’ll find the Ephesus Museum with artifacts from the actual city. Viennese institutions have been heavily involved in its excavation very soon after archaeologists have started work in 1895. The collection is made possible because the Ottoman government used to allo...

FINDING THAT DOOR. Massive scaffoldings tell you that the museum is under repair. You need to walk into the square to find the entrance. "Art History Museum" (Vienna) LOWER FLOORS. These lower-floor galleries show us ancient artifacts and the line between art and applied arts are blurred. You can buy an audio guide at the main hall (ground floor). Otherwise, much of the display texts here is only in German – especially the Greco-Roman and many parts of the Egyptian galleries. You can get a hang of the time periods easily: Jh. = century, n. Chr. = A. D., v. Chr. = B. C. The other side of the mezzanine holds a vast collection as gathered by the Habsburg Monarchy. You can imagine this diverse assortment of stuff as what we in the modern days call “hoarding”. A high-end kind of hoarding though, and it’s in their culture to gather a comprehensive “survey” of everything from natural curiosities to art to utensils to exotic artifacts. Mainly art. And also jugs and bow...

LIVING HERE. Schubert moved here to live with his brother in 1828. His health had long been deteriorating even before the move and in only two and a half months he passed away on typhoid fever. EXHIBITION SPACE. This is a smaller flat than his birthplace and may reveal what has come to be of his later years. It’s flat 17 on the second floor – you can see the other tenants watching TV as you walk along the corridor. (This truly is conservation in practice, where a museum blends in as the building continues to serve its original purposes.) See: Schubert Memorial Apartment (Vienna) Upon entry the staffer will hand you a catalogue. It introduces every item in the exhibition and something more – the black-and-white booklet covers both attractions, his birthplace and here. (And hence while my memory of a few hours ago is starting to fade, finally I’m given a sense of what the previous exhibition is about.) Clip: Schubert Memorial Apartment (Vienna) The t...

LIVING HERE.  Schubert grew up in this flat as a kid and was probably born in the same place, 1797. LOCATION. The fastest way to the birthplace is to take the tram. Get to Canisiusgasse Station and walk south for twenty seconds. The house is to your left, with a characteristic purple-on-white “Vienna Museum” door sign. See: “Schubert Birthplace” (Vienna) Multiple mysteries enshroud the spacious apartment. Portraits. Paintings. Artifacts. And you’re now on your own to find out how they’re to be linked to Schubert. Find yourself surrounded by all these stuff each trying to tell its own story while you imagine what it’s like to be the twelfth child of a family that’s luckily appropriately well-off. And with a narrative lacking, and the cardboard descriptions are of little help either, and to add a little bit of suspense, for some reason – the cardboards are covered with wooden blocks. You’ll have to open them one by one to get a little clue with your own meaning...

This is literally my first place to go after my plane touches down Vienna. I have to move this time sink to my schedule’s very beginning – by far it’s the least-central attraction of my trip, requiring a ten-minute train ride from the Mitte Station followed by a fifteen-minute walk. See: “Beethoven Museum” (Vienna) Branding. The house can also be casually called a “Beethoven House”. But having been rebranded as a museum, it now acquires a bit more legitimacy to attract visitors to this Heiligenstadt, an otherwise suburban, residential district much less touristy than those with other composers’ houses. (Not to be confused with the “Beethoven Pasqualati House”, an apartment he lived in at a later period.)   Clip: “Beethoven Museum” (Vienna) Background. The museum traces the time Beethoven was to visit Vienna for the second time – a time that that he was already well-established as a musical genius in his home town, Bonn. But then this time his visit ...

The Venue. You come here for architectural exhibitions. Consistent themes: urban planning, housing needs, welfare, London. One of the galleries almost always shows us futurist / surrealist designs that you only find in dreams. Location. A stone’s throw away from Goodge Street Station. Exit the station and walk south along Tottenham Court Road. Look to your left until you see a crescent. The Building Centre is right behind a tree. A four-minute walk in total. See it: “Public Housing: A London Renaissance” (The Building Centre) The centre also features a permanent, interactive model of London’s cityscape . Why the Title. The showcase tells the story of how London has decided to build public housing again. Background.  The councils have stopped its public projects (clip, grey bar) from the early 90s and have only got them restarted in the recent few years. Clip: “Public Housing: A London Renaissance” (The Building Centre) And as per conventio...

The Petrie is a classic example of a lost era of curating (and being in Central London, you get to walk by once a while). Let’s refer to it as a fine example of the old-styled “academic / university museums”, representing an antiquated way to do knowledge. You can smell the exclusivity and the ambivalence in the very beginning with jargons to decipher and exhibits to be understood by getting another Master’s degree. (Over the century they start to change and gradually acquire new styles of narration. You can find these hybrids in many major institutions; try Horniman Museum if you’re to stay in London. If you happen to be in Cambridge, try the Sedwick Museum of Earth Sciences .) Glance: “Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology” (UCL, London) If you are to pass by occasionally (it’s at a prime location – near Russell Square – but you need to know how to walk the secret pathways of UCL to feel its convenience), you would have realized how it has been evolving too. And to enj...

Location. Room 69a, on third floor. BM’s Department of Coins and Medals has dedicated themselves to put on temporary exhibitions at an exceptional speed , a feat unmatched by other offices. Sooner or later, you’ll also realize how fast their themes have been evolving. For now for the first time, enter the realms of make-believe monies. Glance: “Playing with Money: Currency and Games” (British Museum) Our story starts with The Landlord’s Game (1903) (clip), a box set that could sound obscure until you realize it’s the precursor to Monopoly . You’ll find yourself in pity mode the more its unfortunate fate is being explained, with it starting off as a critique on the tendencies of capitalism – but now with its rules changed and then popularized to the point of a Brobdingnagian “meh” as to its educational / original purposes. The narrative does give credit along the lines of gameplay – that it has helped transform a leisurely activity from one that involves pure chance (th...

The Room 3 of British Museum is a mysterious piece of land. Imagine an air-conditioned space right next to the main entrance but with most people walking straight across having never noticed it . Just pretend it more of a miniscule version of the hours of time to be spent in the remaining 90+ rooms. And especially this Captain Cook thing. See yourself: “Collecting Histories: Solomon Islands” (British Museum) 1. The showcase covers how the islands come under British colonization, then Christianization, their economic activities and how they’re today. Clip: “Collecting Histories: Solomon Islands” (British Museum) 2. Storage storage storage – find yourself among artifacts that could have been left hanging out in the museum's dark cellars. And how these thematic displays can help them resurface. Time is asset: save it for better with 25-min museum tours . Or find yourself in my novel , check out the photo of the day and finish it off with a secret prize . ...