We took the kids to the Vienna Haus der Musik. We took Oliver and Elora there years ago when they were 4 and 2, but because it is included with our Niederösterreich Card we were happy to take them again for free. The Haus der Musik is an interactive sound museum, which makes it sound more cool than it is… Some of it was very interesting, but a lot of the interactive stuff was too technical for kids or even for adults who aren’t that interested in the science of sound.
This was one of the interactive sound displays that was pretty fun. It had different sounds you could listen to from different cities, outer space, and every day noises. Marion kept telling everyone “Come listen to this one, it is sneezing!” and then laughing hysterically when they discovered it was really the sound of farts.
A couple of the other interactive displays we enjoyed were the musical stairs which reminded us of that scene from “Big”. We tried to play a song, but it was pretty tough to do on the stairs. There was also a fun game with motion sensors that the kids really loved. If more of the museum was these kinds of things, it would be perfect for kids.
There was a room called Classics Reloaded where we sat down for awhile that was dimly lit and playing loud techno remixes of classical music. Elora liked laying down and relaxing while both the boys got up and danced.
There was a floor with different rooms for five famous Viennese composers. Oliver was very excited about the Mozart room, but discovered that he really likes Strauss. The whole time we were in the Strauss room he was dancing and marching to the music. Elora enjoyed pretending to sing opera in one of the rooms, as well as posing like all the statues and paintings we saw. The kids are really starting to ham up for the camera.
One of the best sections of the museum gives you the chance to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic, and if you don’t do a good job the band members stop, stand up, and insult you. The kids didn’t think the insults were funny. James was very sad that they didn’t let him finish leading his song. Elora was horrified and refused to try again. Oliver was very careful to lead well and made it all the way through.
Oliver chose the Radetzky March by Strauss and took his conducting duties very seriously, as you can tell by his look of concentration and his determination to make it all the way to the end. The little kid who went after Oliver made it through ten seconds, yelled, “DAS MACHT KEIN SPASS!!!” and stormed out of the room.
The museum has a lot of walking, so we were content to sit down for a few minutes and let the kids just be themselves for a few minutes without any interference from us.
On both the way to the museum and the way home from the museum, we stopped at a couple parks that we passed so the kids could run about. We found a new little park by our apartment that has fun trampolines built into the sidewalk and some balancing bridges. The kids new favorite game is to make beds in the sand. Oliver meanwhile, made sand crepes with his crepe-maker stick. American kids make mud pies while our European kids make sand crepes… does that disqualify him from being president one day?
Vienna has a lot of statues and the kids thought it was funny to pose with them on our walk. Haus der Musik was great to go to once, but it wasn’t the best for our littlest kids. The older two enjoyed it much more.
