I’m beginning to suspect that it is always raining in Linz as I have been twice now and it has rained both times. This is a great shame as it is a beautiful place but hard to really enjoy and love in the grey drizzle.
We had intended to be outside this morning but decided that the weather looked marginally better in the afternoon so split into two groups to do indoor activities. While the girls went shopping Dad and I visited the Ars Electronica Center. This is a small but fascinating museum with exhibitions covering things such as electronic music and artificial intelligence.
Thinking I was being smart I bought tickets online before we travelled sure that this would allow us to skip the ticket line. How very wrong I was. On arriving there was a long line to purchase tickets and we had to join the back it in order to have our electronic ticket scanned and replaced with a paper ticket! To make matters worse (and slower) we were the first idiots of the day to pre-purchase tickets and so had to wait while they found the scanner which was locked away in a cupboard, turned it on, logged into the app and, finally, scanned our eticket!
The ground floor houses a room with an 8k projection system which is billed as showing highlights of the solar system but actually offers much more variety than that. We saw some 3D computer generated designs, an overview of a painting from a museum in Vienna showing the detail that is revealed when it is scanned at such high definition, an exploration of solar system and finally a first-person view from a downhill skier. The latter made me feel very giddy.
Pöstlingbergbahn
By the afternoon the rain had almost stopped and so we wandered to the town square (the largest in Austria) and caught the Pöstlingbergbahn which is a small tram running up a hill to Pöstlingberg where there is a church and very little else. I’m told that from here on very clear days you can see the snow capped alps in Switzerland. Today we felt lucky to be able to see Linz!
It’s a very touristy run but none the worse for it. The trams are small but modern replicas of those that ran the route in past times. All in all it’s a fine way to kill some time in Linz.
The weather has required us to use umbrellas but we’ve been here less than 24 hours and already lost two of them and broken another😂. Fortunately, the weather is predicted to improve tomorrow.
