For reasons that I don’t quite understand some of my friends seem to think that I am a bit of a trainspotter. This is not to imply that I like standing at the end of chilly platforms waiting for the latest double bogied diesel to come through and nor do I run a popular Tik-Tok channel. Nevertheless the myth persists.
When planning what we would do each day on this trip one of the things that I had identified as a must do was the railway up the Pöstlingberg in Linz. I appreciate that this somewhat undermines my argument that I am not a train nerd but so be it.
The trams leave from the center of town and clearly have been designed to be modern versions of the originals – complete with the hard wooden seating! The journey to the top of the Pöstlingberg takes just over 20 minutes and is a steep rise to the summit. At the top is a church surrounded by a very deep moat with free roaming deer. We walked the circumference of the church and discovered that there really wasn’t anything else to keep us occupied so early in the morning before the coffee shops had opened so we got the train back down again.
Mission accomplished ✓.
Ars Electronica Centre
In the afternoon the weather turned but we had already decided on an indoor activity with a visit to the Ars Electronica centre. I don’t think that we were really sure what to expect from it other than it was a bit sciency.
On the ground floor there was what was called Deep Space 8K. I had imagined that this was going to be something similar to IMAX but actually was very different. We were shown a film of views of the Canary Islands on the giant 8K screen that extends both in front of you and on to the floor but the main presentation was very different. For this we had to wear 3D specs and a guide took us through what was basically an interactive map of the mapped universe. It was both fascinating and terrifying in equal measures and reminded me very much of this 👇.
It was watched by us and 30 very well behaved teenagers from the Czech Republic.
Downstairs was an exhibition on Artificial Intelligence (AI) which was complemented by a AI music exhibition on the second floor. It was a very thorough and comprehensive look at not only the applications of AI but also the downsides and pitfalls that come with it. All in all it was very well done and well worth a visit.