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...