Exhibition of Lower Austria 2011

Since I am quite grounded this weekend - Pharingythis; with pain killers I am okay, but without it is not so nice; still today it is Stefan walking the kiddos and not me, I am mean!! - I thought I might recommend something to you.

We visited the NÖ Landesausstellung/the Exhibition of Lower Austria 2011 in late Summer a couple weeks ago and it was definately fabulous. I thought, why not make a little advertisment for this fine exhibition in Lower Austria? So, if you are in the area, I recommend it as a must-see.

http://www.noe-landesausstellung.at/noel-en Here you will get the exact details. The Landesausstellung is a combination of two places, the archeological park Carnunthum and the Hainburg culture factory. Please check the HP for details!

Carnuntum, in the 6th century a.d., was a military camp and later the capital of the Latin province Pannonia. It turned out to be a huge ancient setting, Roman Emperors lived there, and of course it was a great place to defend the Roman Empire against the German tribes. The Danube was the borderline between the Roman Empire and the German area that was never overrun by the Romans.

The archeological park of Carnuntum is the place where you see lots of excavations if you are interested and where you actually find the Roman times come to live. You see zillions of age-old excavations, walls and streets, if you want to - Carnuntum was huge, 50.000 people where living here at its heyday, so there is plenty to dig out and plenty to explore. http://www.carnuntum.co.at/

But the great thing they did here: They re-built some houses as they were. So for example the spa area, the house of a rich person and the house of a middle-class person. You see the house, the furniture, the murals AS THEY WERE - and the best thing: They only built what they had scientifical proof for. So if you want to experience how the Romans felt right there at Carnuntum 2000 years ago - that is the place.

First you get the see a 3D-map of the whole area 500 years a.d. It shows you the real dimensions of the place, it was enormous! And afterwards, after a little walk down into the park, you see the buildings they rearranged.

The first place our tour visited was the spa area. From my point of view a very political place - for the price of an entry was "an egg - or the equivalent". People went there every day, to keep clean and to keep warm, and of course when people are warm and comfortable, there is no need to revolt against the Empire.

This was the entry to the spa area. What I liked best: They only used the same colours people used back then.

This was the entrance hall to the spa area. In the olden days people met here to talk and warm up and discuss. And then they went from the cold to the warm to the hot tubs.

If you are interested in Roman daily life you should read "SPQR" and its sequels by John Maddox Roberts, he was one of the first to write ancient crime stories. Well, you know that I am not the least interested in crime stories, I just don´t care, who did it - but John Maddox Roberts also tells a lot about Roman daily life, and it is really funny, e.g., when he tells about the Romans trying to be brave and sitting in cold water "as if it was the normal thing to do" and then escaping into the hot tub.... Do not bother reading any other ancient crime stories, Roberts is the best!

 Incredible, the Romans had floor heating at that time too...

I especially recommend the folders you get at the entry point. They explain a lot about the area and the buildings.

Now we switch to the triclinium of the rich person ."Triclinium" comes from "tricline" which was the kind of sofa people bedded themselves on before a great meal. This room is perfect - even though there are no triclinii, as you can rent the place for meals, and which is why they put recent tables and chairs there. Again: There are frames at the walls with no pictures inside, the reason being that scientists don´t know which pictures have been inside, and how they made the colours.

Now this is the kitchen of one of the middle-class people. The slaves, who basically where used like we use kitchen tools nowadays, slept whereever they found some space. Oh gee, I love my bed-room....

The place definately looked quite modern. But especially now when Winter comes, I am really happy to live my modern life with warm water coming out from the tub...

If you feel hungry, there is a cantina there, but it is zillions of people, and the quality might not be just as you like it. So I recommend to go to Carnuntum after some nice breakfast and then find yourself some nice place for some early dinner.

Afterwards we went to the exhibition in Hainburg. You see a lot of exhibits there, but Carnuntum is the even better place to go.

We felt hungry afterwards, so we were lucky to discover the http://www.donaucafe.at/. You get lovely burgers there, and of course lots of other things too, and you have a stunning few on the Danube.

It was a perfect day, and I just can recommend it to any of you. Now back to bed and one of my favourite books "Jane Eyre". We have to read it for the next unit of "Colonial and post-colonial literature" - if I just knew why....