Welcome to another embroidery-free-sunday. Today I have something special for you – I found the best panoramic view in Vienna.

This week a friend of mine visited the “Haus des Meeres” and invited me to accompany him. I really like this “Aqua Terra Zoo”. It is a great example of how something as ugly and huge that belongs to WWII history can be turned into something good and useful.

Well, who would expect an “Aqua Terra Zoo” in a WWII Flak tower in the middle of Vienna? …but on the other side – isn’t that the perfect solution, especially when you also think of the climbing wall at the outside of it? *lol*

As every other citizen of Vienna, I grew up with Vienna’s WWII history. If you are living in Vienna you can’t really avoid history or art because you can see it everywhere.

You can see findings from the Roman times on display in the U1 underground stations, you run into excavation places all over the inner city and you find monuments every 200m when you walk through the inner city. Not to mention the museums – they seem to be countless and there is at least one museum for everything. I remember my school time very well – our bad weather program always included the visit in one of this countless museums. You can imagine what we always hoped for – for good or at least bearable weather that we can avoid another museum visit… *lol*

But back to the Flack towers – Vienna has 6 of them and they are huge, ugly and hard to ignore. As far as I remember they tried to blow up one of them after the war but just with little success. This one Flak tower is still located in the “Augarten” – huge, still standing and already falling apart. Well, as far as I know and was told, after they failed to blow this very first one up they gave up to even try to blow up on the other ones.

This is one of several reasons that makes this “Aqua Terra Zoo” so unique in my eyes. Besides really cool and huge fish tanks, you can see and touch the places where they cut through about 2.5 – 3m of concrete to create doorways,…

Somehow they managed that this huge Flak tower lost its intimidating look and turned into a place for families, kindergarden and school groups to hang out and enjoy nature. Btw. you can see some photos at the “Haus des Meeres” website of how the Flak tower with the “Aqua Terra Zoo” looks like from the outside: <here>

For today, I think this was enough information about a special attribute of Vienna you normally don’t get to know about when you look into travel guides. I am sure you are already looking forward to the pictures of the great panorama view I promised you and here they are:

Here a small gallery with selected panorama pics for you – please klick on the following thumbnails to enjoy the full photo 🙂

Well, you might ask why this is the best view over Vienna – well, it’s rather easy to tell: The Ocean’Sky is rather new and there are nearly no other tourists or visitors. Furthermore there are no bars, glass (if you are tall enough) or mesh between you and the view… over you just the sky and you can feel the wind – just awesome…
There are about two other nice possibilities if you want to enjoy a really nice panoramic view of Vienna:

Stephansdom
Though the Stephansdom is really a unique experience and I already climbed up all stairs up to the tower twice, I really regret this idea every time again. I regret it during my complete way up and again during the complete way down. I promised myself that I will never add a 3rd experience to it. While the beginning of the stair case is rather comfy the walls narrow with every every “floor” you climb.
The steps seem to have no end and when you finally reach the end of the stair case, it is more like a one-way-system that tries to keep up a two-way-system. Well, to put it this way – you get to know other people better than you ever expected and/or wanted. Just to face an overfilled and crowded platform at the top where you feel like an animal in a cage. I can tell you – I did it twice and will never ever do it again! …but I admit it, it is really an extraordinary experience.

Wiener Riesenrad
Concerning the “Wiener Riesenrad” – well, this is another one of the famous parts of Vienna and it is quite funny to experience Vienna this way. Though the view is limited because of the Riesenrad itself and the other cabins it is definitely fun.

Btw. as you can tell from the photo on the left, it’s already Spring time in Vienna. Besides that I am only wearing a pullover instead of my warm coat, there is also another reason why you can tell that Spring already arrived in Vienna.

Not only the blossoms, the small green sprouts everywhere or the growing amount of tables and chairs of the re-opening garden restaurants are announcing to everyone that the Spring time already arrived. You can also see many young or baby animals in the zoos now and also in the aqua terra zoo – “Haus des Meeres“. Lets start with the:

Lisztäffchen
Cotton-top tamarin

After watching the “Lisztäffchen” for some time, suddenly some smaller apes appeared and I recognized that this were kiddies!!! …and such cute ones:

During some of the time the adult apes came surprisingly near – just about 30 cm away from my camera… *lol* so cute…  Besides the cotton-top tamarin there were also some:

Weißbüscheläffchen
Common Marmoset

After this small ape passed me by and just sat down about 1m away from me, I was very surprised. Well, what first looked like a huge knob just raised its head and it turned out that this little common marmoset was carrying a tiny baby… omg… sooooo cute:

…and last but not least, one last fun picture for you – I would call this a triple sandwich – and you? …can you see the third one? *lol*

…and tomorrow I have again some pictures of new embroidery progress for you. I started working at a small embroidered gift for the 9th birthday of my blog which will be raffled off between the members of my blog at the 9th of April. 😀