Eisenstadt!

Friday our friends were still working a bit, so after walking into town with them, Chantal and I took a leisurely stroll along the shops, stopping for a few things we needed here and there. Eisenstadt has a palace owned by the Esterhazy family right in the center, and next to it is a lovely park with some ponds in it. Things aren’t quite in bloom yet, so there is less colour than there was when we were there in October, but it is still a relaxing place to be.

After our friend was done with work, we grabbed lunch in a nearby project-kitchen. It is used for training immigrants and the like to give them a footing in Austria to start a new life. We were told that, because of this, the food is sometimes better some months compared to others depending on who is running the kitchen, but we both though lunch was excellent. After lunch we walked the long way home – an hour through the forest with some nice views of the town.

This morning we all took our time getting up and had a leisurely breakfast. The forecast was for rain in the afternoon, so we tried to walk quickly to the local market for dinner fish and get back before the rain. No such luck, and of course Chantal and I didn’t think of bringing the umbrella that we’ve been carrying for the last three weeks. Oh well, we both have a change of pants to have something dry on.

Once we were back at home (and dried off), we headed out in the car to LUEM, a small museum about light in Leobersdorf. Everything was in German, but they had since displays and oil lamps and candles that, with the videos, gave us quite a bit of information. They also had a display with a power meter comparing an incandescent, compact fluorescent, and LED lightbulbs. It was interesting to see that LED bulbs have significantly less reactive power than fluorescent bulbs (the incandescent, of course, having no reactive power whatsoever), so I learned something new. The museum building itself used to be used by coopers and cobblers, so there was also a room displaying a lot of their equipment.

After the museum we stopped for some sandwiches and then to Mittelschule Berndorf, an active primary school that has unique classrooms. Each classroom has a different theme, being an era and a place, and is decorated as such. So, for example, there is a Louis XIV room, where the door, ceiling, and walls are all in a French style from that era. There is an Egyptian classroom, an Italian Renaissance one, a Moor one, and plenty others. The school was built around 1910, and the idea of the classroom themes was by Arthur Krupp, who financed the work himself. It is open on the weekends as a sort of museum, which is why we were allowed to look around.

At the school the lady at the front desk mentioned a lookout tower nearby, so we drove up to it to take a look. None of us were able to open the door to the tower, despite there being instructions on how to push the buzzer while you push on the door. Luckily there were some teenagers on their bikes nearby, and one was able to open the door with no problems at all. We still don’t know how she did it, but we got into the tower anyways. It was a bit of a climb to the top of the tower, but absolutely worth it for the view. We were able to see the entire town of Berndorf, plus a 360-degree view of the surrounding mountains. There was a restaurant next to the tower, so we stopped in for dinner tea/coffee/hot chocolate and an apple strudel. Our running was perfect, because it started raining while we were inside, and stopped by the time we left.

It started raining again on our drive home, at times torentially, but we are back at our friends place again, and dry and cozy for the night.