Trap Family: Vienna Technical Museum

Sunday morning in Vienna, we decided to head to the Vienna Technical Museum. On the travel guides, it was one of the recommended places to take children, plus museums and palaces are about the only things open in Europe on a Sunday. It was only one stop away from our hotel, so it was really convenient. We've been to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI and more recently, three of the car museums located in Germany, and I would classify this museum as a combination of those museums.

Andy goes "hands on" and works to get the right combination to create an electrical charge.

There was a huge room that dealt with train travel and this was an old electric drill used for creating tunnels. Before this, they used dynamite. You can only imagine how inaccurate that could be.

Brady, as usual, along for the ride. The museum was so large, that the first floor took us almost an hour to explore and by that point, he was out of snacks. We made short work of the next two floors to make sure he didn't throw a fit when he asked for more snacks and there weren't any.

Brady has become very interested in other modes of transportation other than his favorite, cars. He can now say "choo choo," "boat," and "airplane." He also likes bikes, but can't say that yet.

The old Vienna Hauptbahnhof (main station). It was destroyed by the bombing during WWII and in the 1950s, the remaining portions standing were demolished.

The old hauptbahnhof from the side. It really was beautiful. Our hauptbahnhof in Stuttgart survived the war bombings, but is currently under construction to make it more efficient and add park land to the area. We realized in our travels that it must be very common for people to be doing updates, as the main hauptbahnhof in Vienna was under complete construction (hence why we came into the westbahnhof) and while passing through Salzburg on the way home, they were currently doing quite a bit of construction.

One of the first mountain gondolas.

An old "summer" coach that was pulled into the mountains by horses. Can you imagine how slow that must have been?

Andy cranking the wheel of an old paddle boat.

A really primitive motorcycle with a sidecar. Andy took one look at the sidecar and said it was a death trap.

I love looking at these old bicycles. It's a wonder anyone was ever able to ride them.

An old printing press. Really cool for book lovers like myself.

The evolution of the well.

A Bosch fridge from the 1950s. Bosch is everywhere in Europe (go figure). Before Andy took the job with them almost two years ago, I'd never heard of them.

Old washing machines.

I found this next display really cool. They had prosthetic legs from today, all the way back to their invention. Above, you can see a few of the most modern legs.

These were some of the oldest. Look at the ones on the top that are just a few pieces of metal.

It was really cool that they also had a display case of models wearing the various prosthetic legs. You can see some had to he held in place by a waist strap and you can even see a man (second from the left), wearing on that's just a few pieces of metal. You can't help but be grateful for the advances in technology when you see something like this.

There was also a room where they had display cases showing the evolution of certain items of technology. They had a case with all vacuums, telephones, computers, televisions, radios, and yes, even video games.