Back to the Romans

Gruss Gott
Shall I tell you what’s so great about having an actual apartment in Vienna as opposed to an ordinary hotel room? Well, I get to come home, take contacts out and my shoes off, make myself some green tea to go with my incredibly rich pastry and sit down at watch the Tour de France while having my snack. And no one is smoking cigarettes in my vicinity either.
The day started off clear and warm, but it’s turned blustery, and those clouds coming in look pretty dark.
I love open-air museums especially when they deal with aspects of everyday life in the past. One of the other things I really like is a good Roman site. A lot of the time they are hard to get to, because if a Roman site is in the middle of things, it’s already been plundered etc. But this morning I strolled over to Wien-Mitte Bahnhof and took the train out to Petronell-Carnutum, which is an open-air museum about the Romans.
Carnutum once was a major Roman center in the province of Pannonia. The town is south of Vienna well out of its encircling hills on the plain that runs into Slovakia and Hungary. The land is pancake flat. It’s hard to imagine what it was like before the towns, farms, and roads. Pannonia did not remain a Roman province for long as that plain proved a highway for Huns, Avars, and Magyars, but for about two hundred years Carnutum flourished.
The sites are a fair step away from the station, and as the trains to and from Vienna run only every two hours I was not able to make as long a day of it as I hoped. The exhibits are a work in progress, but I think the idea is to make a sort of educational Roman theme park. Along with the archeological remains, there are some furnished reconstructions of Roman houses that one can go in, and the guides are dressed in tunics and sandals. One thing I really liked about this was that the rooms were lit by little Roman style lamps. The windows were small and even with the lamps the rooms were dark. I had a good time walking around, but I wish I had been able to see the other sites.
Before I left I went on a pastry run, trying a new but equally elegant K und K shop on Karntnerstrasse where so many of them are found. On the way I ran into a religious procession. At least that’s what I thought it was. Some of them had posters, but some had rosaries and pictures of the Virgin Mary. A couple of days ago I nearly walked into a military band. But back to business. Today I had a slice of naughtiness called a Truffletorte. Yes. Chocolate. Not as many layers as some tortes, but the chocolate ganache layers were as thick as the cake. Ooh the richness! It was almost too much even for me. I’m glad I had my green tea. I don’t know how folks drink coffee with whipped cream with these things, and yet I understand it is a common practice.
Servus.