Austria: Naturhistorische Museum in Vienna

Indeed I have been putting off my last blog entries for the last leg of my Europe trip. So here goes one of the places I went and that was the Natural History Museum in Vienna. If you have read all the books on Human & Animal Evolution as I've had then you will find the museum pretty boring. Extensively boring, that is. There are halls upon halls filled with moon rocks, stones, marble samples, hold nuggets, crystals, semi-precious stones and outer space rocks (boring, since I have been following Nat Geo and Discovery since I was 10, plus my favorite scientist is Michio Kaku) The whole museum is poorly lighted and even poorly ventilated so it's hot and stuffy in the summer that the guards had the large windows opened to allow in some air. Also the museum looks pretty old, in need of some good renovation I say. OK, criticism aside the museum wasn't half bad. They charged me EU 14 per person which also included the access to the human plastination exhibits which was on tour in Vienna. In my opinion, that was the highlight if the museum tour. And also the Venus of Willendorf. Alot of the artifacts and stones were on loan from NASA and the US; especially the moon rocks and meteorites. I also had the chance to see an outer space diamond which was pretty cool

So here are some pictures after the jump, on a scale of 1-10; 10 being the best this museum ranked 7

The Kunsthistorisches Museum opposite the Naturhistorische Museum

Note the banner promoting the human plastination on exhibit

The grand staircase and the mural on the ceiling as well as a painting of Mozart on the wall

This kind of reminds me of the marble samples at my husband's workplace

Pink Crystal

More stones from all around the world

I liked the cobalt blues and glow in the dark colors on this rock

What a juxtaposed composition of colors

Semi precious gems

Semi precious stones and gems

Pink crystal slabs cut in half

Cut stones taken from Moon

Stone specimen from the Moon

More of them, in fact the heaviest moon rock in the world is housed in this very museum

Well, not the real thing it was just a mechanical T-Rex that moved at a regular interval

Again, not the real thing but replica

Remember the time when scientists discovered that these things could fly and crawl at the same time? It was as if they discovered the time-space continuum theory

Ah, one of the highlight of the museum; the Venus of Willendorf. And to think that I nearly overlooked this exhibit! The horror!

The Venus temple

The Venus herself. You know you can buy the same size fridge magnet from the souvenir shop, which I did but because my mother in law would find this sort of thing vulgar I had to bring it back home where my parents are more open towards culture and art