Body Parts and Crazy People [written Friday, January 13]

Did you know that all the hair (ALL the hair) on the anatomical wax models in the Josephinum was from real people? This was a bit of the vital knowledge that we gained today while walking through the extensive wax model collection that was once used in medical schools to help teach medical students. We saw an incredibly detailed construction of the lymph system (though there were too many lymph nodes) and also a pregnant lady called Venus whose wax uterus had a translucent window through which you could see her early-stage baby. There were also a number of in utero models of birth complications like babies coming out the wrong way, delivery of twins, delivering aborted babies, etc. After the Josephinum, we visited the Narrenturm, a big cylindrical grey brick building that looked absolutely picturesque against the ever-grey sky, especially as it loomed up from behind a black skeleton of a tree with a carpet of lush green grass stretching out before it, now lightly dusted with the newly fallen snow. ‘Twas beautiful. Anyway, in this building where lunatics (from the Latin, luna, lunae, for moon) were previously housed, is now stored an entire museum of pathological body preserves and moulages. We saw an entire assortment of syphilis complications, adenomas, breast cancers, traumatic skull wounds, etc.

The rest of the day was used for a fair bit of relaxing. We found a coffee shop where I ordered a banana hot chocolate (It sounds weird, but it was delicious.) and then spent about two hours writing. We then wandered the streets of Vienna, looking for somewhere to eat dinner. One thing that I can’t seem to understand about Germany and now Austria is why on earth everything shuts down at like 6:00pm. It’s dark, to be sure, but even restaurants and streets that seem to be busy shopping areas become completely desolate so early in the evening. And they don’t open that early either. It was especially frustrating tonight, but even at an economical level, how on earth do stores make money here if their business hours only span such a small window of the day? Anyway, we found a Chinese restaurant and I bought dumplings. Yum. And then, following a bit more wandering, we ended up back in the Hotel Deutschmeister, where I am comfortably concluding the documentation of yet another wonderful day in Europe. Only two days left. I’m going to pretend like I didn’t just realize that.