24 Sep 2021, Friday

 24 Sep 2014, Friday

Prioritized Daily Tasks

LINZ, Day 6 walking tour 9:30 AM - 11:30 PM Day 6-Friday, Sept. 24.

We had prayer together, walked on the track on the top deck, ate a late breakfast before going on a walking tour.

Today was Dagmar, our tour guide's, birthday.  The city of Linz, capital of northern Austria. The city Linz straddles the Danube River midway between Salzburg and Vienna. Population about 200,000; 5 things Linz is famous for, is one, Anton Bruckner, a famous composer, two, Ars Electronica Center, the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Konditorei pastries, and the steel plant, Voestalalpine Stahl GmbH.  Other notes of interest were, Mozart stayed here and composed the Linz Symphony No. 36 in C, K. 425.  Another note was Adolf Hitler was born in Austria. He attended school in Linz.  Later he had twin buildings built to honor himself.

On our tour of Linz, we rode on a gasoline street train to the center of town where we started our walking tour.                                                             The first train was in1835 and pulled by horses from Linz to Budweiser Brewery.

Debbie and I went with some of our group up a hill south of Linz up a hill by an electric tram.  We could see the Alpine Range of Mountains about 35 to 40 miles north.  We had pastries at Konditorei on the mountain.

After dinner, Viking Cruise had a team performing Salsburg Austrian music-0pera, Mozart, and Sound of Music. 

                          Preschool children on tour with their teachers

                            School Adolf Hitler attend as a young boy

                                                         

                                                

                                  Building where parlement meets

                            Apartment building where Mozart lived

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and wife, Constanze, who was an Austrian singer

                                              View from top of small mountain south of Linz

                                               View of town of Linz and Alpine Mountains

                                \ Long and steepest elrctriv trolly or train car ride up mountain in Linz

                                              Debbie standing on map of Linz in old city hall

Famous pastry shop in Linz

         

   

                                               Debbie and I tried some of Konditorei pastries
Computer composes music for piano at Ars Electronica Center Museum

                nnn                         Debbie in front Ars Electronica Center Museum
                View of the Danue from the bridge 

                                   In the background are the twin building built in honor of Hitler

                 Viking team performing Salsburg Austrian music-0pera, Mozart, and Sound of Music. 

Debbie wrote: Today we went on a walking tour of Linz, Austria-originally known as Lentia (bend in the river) in its days as a 1st-century Roman castle-settlement-is today's provincial capital of Upper Austria. Our tour guide, Dragmar, talked to us as we went by a small train through the small streets of the history and important things of Austria and Linz. 

The small town of Braunau am Inn, located just over 120 km / 75 miles to the west of Linz, witnessed one of the most influential moments in world history - the birth of one Adolf Hitler in 1889. The Hitler family relocated to the Linz area during the next decade and this future tyrannical dictator spent much of his childhood here, before moving to Vienna in 1907. Hitler loved Linz and came here to attend Elementary School, but did not finish school.  He could not pass and he kept dropping out.  Due to his fondness for Linz, Hitler envisaged it becoming the heart of his Third Reich movement and he moved many factories here from Czechoslovakia during the Second World War.

We first went through two twin buildings that Hitler built while here as we entered the Haupt-plaza.-once the largest town square in Austria.  The city was divided by the Danube River after WWII as a settlement.  The north side was communist and the south was American, French and British.  The Austrians got their country back around the year 1989. 

We passed the massive Brucknerhaus concert hall, named for the famed Austrian composer and drove by the new Town Hall.  In the Old Quarter or Old Town we saw the Market Hall, the Mozarhaus, where the composer wrote the Linz Symphony, the magnificent Renaissance Landhaus tower and the elegant facade of Landestheatre.  We stepped inside the New Cathedral, Austria's largest church and enjoyed the 72 beautiful stained glass windows-room enough for 20,000 people!

From the Hauptplatz (main square) where there was an organic food market, we hopped on a tram (Postlingbergbahn) that took us up 4.14 km. at an altitude difference of 255 meters in 20 minutes to the Postlingberg hill and its 18th century pilgrimage church.  We had to sample the city's famous Lunzer Torte, the jam-filled cake topped with almonds.  (I tried a wonderful strawberry and cream torte that was heavenly). In the heart of the Old Town, with narrow lanes leading to the Hauptplatz, once the largest town square in Austria.

We stopped off at the ARS Electronica Center, museum of the future.  We touched on understanding artificial Intelligence, the global shift, between human creativity and technical perfection and artificial intelligence and music.  We saw a presentation experiencing gigapixal images, videos, films, and 3D animations and virtual worlds.

We then thought we would go back to the food market, but found it had changed into a political rally for elections on Sunday.  We then went back to our ship, ate dinner and had two special guests that sang opera, played Mozart and did a sing-a-long of the Sound of Music.  So fun!

We are on our way to Krems...we get to go into the Gottweig Abbey.