Melk Abbey

October 17, 2016

About an hour outside of Vienna lies the town of Melk. Yes, Eli, I’m sure they drink a lot of milk there. We got up early and got ourselves out the door, in order to just miss the train by three minutes! What followed was an hour in the train station with the following rules: no running up the escalators backwards, no screeching, and no flinging jackets onto the floor. Austrians tend to be a rather quiet and undemonstrative culture, so I’m not sure what they thought of our hooligans running around while we sipped cappuccino, but there is something about Hunter and her ability to flash even the grumpiest person a smile. She is sort of like a secret weapon.

Occasionally a loud, dramatic weapon. But to be fair, those other three kids sometimes act a little crazy too.

Not to mention the big kids….

Melk is a Benedictine Abbey still actively educating students and home to museums and libraries full of famous manuscripts. We spent about 20 minutes breezing through all the rooms because that’s what you do when you visit museums with kids, and vowed to come back one day. The place was full of tour groups appreciating all the details we were not.

We were wondering why the lobby was pink.

And making Vacation jokes about giving our camera away, and taking our shoes off to get a good picture standing in front of the fountain.

We may not have absorbed too much of the Abbey’s magnificent history, but the details we did see were quite pretty, and the light was great with the clouds. No, that statue is not peeing out of its head.

These four still occupied most of our attention, but one could argue they are the more fleeting of the two experiences. The Abbey has been around for 1000 years and will probably be around for 1000 more.

Which makes these details far more precious.

But still, how come they wait until after we get outside to the garden where not a single other soul is around, to sit down and quietly pretend to read and tell each other stories?