Darwin on a Tortoise

Before I explain the detail of my Darwin sighting, I will address other recent events. On Saturday I felt I should do something other than just lie on the bed all day, and so I set out for the Naschmarkt, Vienna's largest and most famous market. My original aim was to locate some high quality baklava, as I am missing it slightly, and also because there are some people who have never eaten it who must be converted.

The food part of the Naschmarkt is a long but thin strip of semi permanent stalls, shops, bars and restaurants. As I wormed deeper in I was surrounded on all sides by piles of delicious produce from Austria and its neighbours. There were many many hummus and baklava stalls, usually also equipped with bewildering arrays of stuffed peppers, garlic, aubergines, and diverse soft cheeses. There were traditional Austrian butchers, cheese shops, cake shops, several chinese shops similar to those in chinatown in london, and also indian food shops with heaps of spice packets. Unlike London these shops are far from ubiquitous, and I think it is definitely easiest and best to go to the Naschmarkt for any curry sauce or wasabi peanut and soy sauce requirements. There were also people selling mead and honey, real (ie fermented, not put in vinegar) sauerkraut and pickles, and pressed apple juice. I liken it to borough market with all the pretension and high prices removed. I think normal people go to the Naschmarkt just to shop, which makes it a much better place.

I tried a sort of turkish pancake with sheep cheese in it, because I needed something hot and greasy in the cold, and also a delicious hungarian bread tube (my words, not theirs). These consist of thin hollow cylindrical bread wrapped around rotating wooden rods for cooking, then rolled in flavouring (cinammon, chocolate, sugar, coconut) and given to you, piping hot. It appears Hungarian food is a force to be reckoned with, at least in the realm of street food.

After my joyful pass through the food market, I discovered the equally exciting antique market beyond, with piles of books old and new, old clothes, beuatiful watches, boxes of rusting clockwork, and possibly counterfeit or stolen roman artefacts. And the usual assortment of crockery, random meat mincers, paintings etc. Very very cool, and I had to drag myself away from a gem and mineral stall where there was a (to my eyes) genuine meteorite on sale. It was not labelled as such, so I entertained the possibility they might not realise what it was and sell it for cheap, but even if you didn't know it was from space, it was still made of gems and pure iron, so it wasn't going to be cheap...

The surroundings of the market add to the experience, for some reason the generic pretty viennese apartment blocks and offices are here decorated with flowing patterns and pictures. At the end of the day as I walked back through the market towards the cathedral, I was unable to prevent myself purchasing a teapot and a couple of excellent loose teas. Clearly I have become accustomed to living with Edward and his freely available tea, and am now in withdrawal.

I stuck my head in to the cathedral before going home, because I could, and watched about the first half hour of a service to dedicate a new organ. No actual organ playing before I had to leave, unfortunately. The atmosphere inside is amazing, it is more of a working cathedral than many I have seen (this country is supposedly 70% Catholic after all). When the choir started singing and I stood next to the banks of twinkling tea lights at the foot of an unfeasibly large column covered in saints and gothic embellishments, I definitely understood that it is possible to appreciate the atmosphere of peace in a holy place, even if you are an atheist.

On Monday was the national day of celebration, when Austria celebrates being Austria and everyone gets the day off. Apparently they are also supposed to be celebrating their constitutional neutrality, something I find hard to square with the display of helicopters, tanks, jets and other army equipment in the Heldenplatz. Several museums were cheaper, so I checked out the globe museum (the only one in the world!) for free. As I said to my companion at the time, I am glad I visited it but also glad I didn't pay. There is excitement to be had examining the mistakes and political changes of globes from the past, but most globes are not incredibly beautiful and the general shapes on them are pretty invariant, for obvious reasons. Still, it was nice to imagine the romantic dreams that seeing blank areas of map would conjure in previous centuries, and to mourn the loss of 'here be dragons' and the like.

I then visited the Natural History Museum again. The new Darwin exhibit was OK, and I admired the good job it did of explaining common misconceptions about evolution and genetics as well as telling Darwin's story. However I feel I might enjoy the story more in book form, when I didn't have to wander around in a hot room, and I did know a lot of the basics already. By far the coolest and most ridiculous thing was definitely the life sized darwin model in the entrance hall, where he is depicted riding a giant tortoise. More excitingly, the plaque nearby says that he ACTUALLY DID ride tortoises at the age of 26 when visiting the Galapagos. I'm sure we could lure a few more kids to the side of evolution with that information...