It made me feel better to remember that in 3 days I would be seeing Dani again. Every day we counted down the number of sleeps,for the past week. I missed being all three of us together again after London.
I recognised the castle as the one we saw at a distance from the park on the hill. It really is the fairy tale castle. Especially the long thin spires with flags on the top.
We had to buy tickets to the whole museum to see the Einstein section, which was a bit annoying. We passed some boring walls with information about John the good or Paul the wise or Mathew the not so good or wise or whatever. A ray of hope: the door to the Einstein museum. I was very much hoping that this exhibit would be more like the Kafka museum and not the Freud.
It started with a modest room giving a summary of his personality. Nothing special. Then through to a room wall to wall with mirrors at different angles. One felt,looking up or down, that the corridors never ended. Screens played music and pictures of the man. It made me smile, I was full of energy and curiosity. Now this is a museum. To create a different world and immerse you in it.
The first room was about Jews in Europe in the 1800s. There were shofars and torah cases and pictures of Hassidic Jews. We thought we were in the wrong place. Thus was the genius of the exhibit. It went through his life chronologically ,but with a twist. In each room, only only side was about his life. The other side detailed society at that point in history. It created a picture of the major changes in culture of the places in which he was living. Both sides together interwove to show us not only how society affected him, but also the effect that he had on society.
Albert´s childhood. I like that he was a loner and a late bloomer. I wonder if he was ever bitter about the kids who teased him in school. Did he ever want to find them later on and say ´hah!´. The guy was a prodigy though. He read Kant´s book on critical reasoning when he 13 years old.
To his university days and his first love. They set up an entire bedroom slanted on a wall. I was impressed. Then upstairs to another room. A winding maze of white walls. His years in the patent office. But first a muon counter form the top of the Alps. There were some explanations of what the experiment was, but Josh still had to explain the basics to me. I´m glad I saw this museum with someone who knew what Einstein´s work was about. It would be like seeing an art gallery with an art student or a church with a religious Christian. They can explain things that enrich the experience.
A room to give a feel for his wife´s life once the kids were born and she had to stop being a physicist. The whole room was set up like a basement laundry. Sheets hung on the clothes line. Images were projected onto the white sheets like a cinema. An old washing basin, complete with continuously dripping tap. An old boiler. A fake window near the roof playing images of feet walking past, the view one would be of the street from that level. That makes we happy. A museum that actually puts effort into their work. Not just bits stuck up on a wall.
It got to his special theory of relativity. It didn't just assume we knew it or never would and move on. There were couches in front of screens. The screens played animations of Relativity for dummies. A cartoon man with a bouncing ball demonstrated principles and then showed us how they were like light particles and planets. A brilliant addition to the museum I think.
There were more things to see and do. An interactive video on his general theory of relativity. Then the rest of his life through the war and up to his death. I think its a pity that who one will ever know his last words. They were in German and the nurse spoke English. I bet they were something terribly profound. Maybe the secret of the universe.
After the museum I felt content. But also hungry. The whole thing took almost 3 hours and it was well into lunch time. We found a big supermarket on Marketgasse. There we procured rolls, chicken slices, juice, snacks and dinner.
We found a charming park with sweeping views of the river. There we ate tasty chicken rolls for lunch, accompanied by fizzy apple juice. We moved park to park. At our local park we sat on the shady grass. Josh listened to music and I read Chaucer. There is such a park culture there. People just hang at the parks. They play ping-pong and giant chess and read and drink. I laughed when a guy took out a shisha pipe and lit up apple flavoured tobacco.
We brought out our snacks. Cupcake shaped lemon sponge things with Swiss flags on the tops. It was the red and white icing that first drew me to them. They were good. We chilled in the park.
Once we were done with the park we did some blogging and internet bits. Then sat down by the communal TV with people. I met a New Zealand girl and some guys from Finland. Actually we didn't know they were from Finland until we asked then what someone on TV was saying, thinking that they were speaking German. I don't quite have an ear for any of the Scandinavian languages yet. Maybe I should spend some time there.
We spend the night bonding with people over MTV and bizarre German music videos.
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