I do not have good sense of direction at the best of times. Put me in a region where all of the signs are in German, in cities I have never seen before where the traffic is all on the wrong side of the road and I am hopeless. Agreed if the language on the signs is the same as the language on the map then it should not matter. It does.
I spent weeks going the opposite direction than intended. Every time.
In Vienna I visited Zentral Friedhof (Central Cemetery). It has a lot of Jewish graves and a lot of graves in general. It is a dauntingly large cemetery. Big enough that graves are themed, by religion, profession, birthplace. It is big enough to warrant three tram stops all on the same route to cover the distance between the different sections.
On the same day having visited the cemetery I planned to have lunch at Schilzelwirt Schmidt, home of the worlds best schnitzel, before visiting Mozarthaus.
Due to my poor sense of direction on this particular day I also had unscheduled viewings of
• St Stephen’s Cathedral
• Imperial Palace
• Spanish Riding School (twice)
• Museum of Fine Arts
• Folks Garden
• Austrian and European Union government offices
Having accidentally seen these places whilst in transit did not do anything to increase my ability to find them again when it came time to tour these places of interest.
For the record
Schilzelwirt Schmidt: truly delectable schnitzels. Mammoth portions, my meal included three full sized schnitzels, 7 full potatoes, layers of ham and cheese and enough cheese sauce to drown a small child. My heart and stomach hated it but my taste buds were in Bavarian heaven. Yes that was all one serve. This meal also commenced my stomachs preparation for the portion sizes of America, which were yet to come.
Mozarthaus: this building was definitely owned by and lived in by Mozart and his family for two and a half years. After this fact the rest of the museum and tour is based on conjecture, rumour and hearsay. The “facts” presented in Mozarthaus is based on out-of-context quotes from letters and journals. Any furnishings in the house were replicas, merely representing the furniture of the era. Not even the furniture Mozart actually owned but merely representative of the type of furniture he might have owned. The museum could not even say with certainty which room was which. “This room is likely to have been used as a bedroom.” In reality this museum is simply an inner city apartment with Mozart’s name on the sign hanging on the front door and a CD of his music playing in what may have been the room he wrote his music. This experience cost Euro4.50. I tried paying with replica money, representative on the money a tourist might actually use.
