Charming medieval appearing alleys in Linz old city
"Truth is the daughter of time, and I feel no shame in being her midwife. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment. Nature uses as little as possible of anything..." Johannes Kepler, astronomer, 1571-1630 AD and resident of Linz where he developed laws of planetary motion.
We did a walking tour with a local guide who knew plenty about Linz. He started off by saying, "I can give you the history of Linz in thirty seconds: Romans, Barbarians, Hapsburgs, Fire, Rebuild, Plague, Fire, Rebuild, Napolean, World War I, World War II, Allied Occupation, Covid. That's it!"
He was being a bit simplistic, but that is in fact a history of a great deal of Austria and its neighbors.
He gave us a few more insights as we strolled the Old City.
A CBD vending machine.
You have to have a card from an Austrian bank which will automatically let the machine know if you are over 18 (Legal CBD age) and if so, it will take your money and dispense your product. If you are under 18 or a foreigner, you pay someone older/Austrian citizen 5 euros and they get it for you. (Not unlike underage drinking in the USA!)
We only saw one CBD dispensers in Linz and there appeared to be about 44 coffee shops in Linz with plenty of customers and a large number of sausage stands with tasty looking wurst!
We were told to order the Bosner, the best of the Wurst!
Linz is a city in Upper Austria, straddling the Danube River midway between Salzburg and Vienna. Baroque buildings, including Old Town Hall and the old cathedral or Alter Dom, and ring Hauptplatz, the old town’s main square are abundant. The guide was convinced we would not want to see the main church after coming this far down a Danube full of religious buildings. Actually, I wouldn't have minded, but whatever. He is the guide and I am the guided!
The riverside Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz has a major modern art collection. Hitler had planned to open the world's largest fine arts museum in Linz after winning WWII, hence all the stolen art (represented in The Monument Men, for those who get their history in cinemas.) The museum, in addition to displaying art, spends a lot of time researching stolen art and returning it.
The impressive exterior structure of the Linz art museum along the Danube. We didn't get the privilege of going inside.
Across the river, the striking Ars Electronica Center focuses on society, technology and life in the future.
Ars Electronica Center lit up at night. There is a festival here annually and the guide seemed pretty stoked about it. He said last year, they coordinated a concert in which everyone in Linz opened their windows and turned on their radios while the symphony broadcast through all the streets. Another year, Ars Electronica Festival organized an entire ballet performed by pieces of heavy equipment such as cranes and tractors. I would have loved to have seen it.
Overall though, Linz seemed like a normal really clean and cutesy town along the Danube with several interesting features.
Our lady of Linz....hairstylist's patron
Our guide told us that while he was training, he was told to always mention Mozart at least five times in any tour. It ends up Mozart was in Linz several times and stayed at this house where he wrote the Symphony #36 (Linzer symphony) in less than 72 hours on request of his host. Such a wunderkind! Beethoven also visited Linz to see his brother.
Hitler was born very near Linz and had lots of plans for it. During WWII, he constructed steel and chemical factories here to aid the war effort and they are still mostly operational.
We enjoyed our walk through Linz which included people-watching at the Saturday flea market and a look at the Trinity statue which depicts patron saints who have saved them from war (the Ottomans were stopped in Vienna), fire (well, they were partially protected) and plague (not really but maybe less people died?).
Saints Sebastian, Florian and Carlo Borromeo and the Father, Son and Holy Ghost guard the main square of Linz and the shoppers at Saturday flea market.In the afternoon of our one day whirlwind Linz tour, we took a trip out to the nearby Mathausen work camp. I won't go too heavily into detail here as if you know anything about WWII, you are at least conceptually aware of the camps and deaths of the Jewish and other oppressed people living in Europe. Paul and I have never been to a camp, and although we knew it would be emotionally challenging, we thought we should see a camp at least once to imprint in our minds how awful this was and to inspire us when we spot injustice and discrimination. We certainly realize that there are plenty of discriminatory acts in the USA even today and we want to fight against anything dehumanizing that occurs both on an individual and national level.
I am going to forego most photos I took and in fact, not talk about a lot of what we saw, because it is 1. the worst sort of bummer and 2. too disturbing for many readers. Here's what I am willing to say which could be too much for some, so feel free to skip fthe remainder of the post:
Mathausen was not a death camp where people were transferred specifically for extermination. It was a Class III work camp and apparently the only such class in the Nazi camps. This meant that people, nearly all men, were sent to work and that additionally, no one could leave alive. They were a big success in their mission--to work people to death. The camp is at a stone quarry and stone was needed to build various buildings, roads and to make concrete, etc. Stone was quarried in the valley and then carried by men in 50 kilogram weights up to the top of the hill via a set of stairs to be transported for Hitler's infrastructure.
The stairs that the prisoners were forced to carry 50kg stones to the top. The caloric needs to do this daily were about 4000-5000 calories, but the prisoners were receiving only about 450-500 per day. Average life expectancy in this camp was 8-12 weeks. These steps were called "the stairs of death."
A view of the quarry.
All in all about 95,000 captive prisoners died at Mathausen, of which approximately 14,000 were Jews. Other individuals seen as enemies of the Nazis who were taken there were Romani (gypsies), Jehovah's Witnesses, criminals, homosexuals and political enemies. There were also some prisoners of war amongst them and there were people classified as "asocial" which were a great variety of people whose behavior was not condoned for even minor infractions.
Roll call at Mathausen camp. Everyone had their heads and body hair removed on arrival.
The only good things that I can see in this visit is that countries have come and made memorials to those who perished here. So many of them are mass buried in the region and on the site of the camp. 
Americans had few who died here (praise the Lord) and most that did were Special Ops. The Austrian townsfolk erected these plaques to honor the liberators. It's the least conspicuous of the memorials in the remains of the camp.
Monument to those who perished.
Italian monument
Menorah monument erected by the Israeli government.
There was a lot more to this work camp than I will write about, much of it too gruesome for a blog post. Although upsetting, I am glad that we went. I don't think I will ever visit another concentration camp even though there were approximately 44,000 of them in Nazi Europe, but it strengthened commitments to defending others. As graffiti I saw in Passau said, "No human is illegal."
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