Standing on Giants Shoulders

We have visited:
The Coffee Houses of Vienna where Beethoven and Sigmund Freud spent their days composing music and thrashing out ways to understand the world's problems.

The Place in Vienna whose electrical wiring was done by Thomas Edison. The father of the Light Bulb and founder of General Electric.

The house where Mozart grew up and composed his numerous pieces which still grace millions of ears today.

Ettal a Benedict Monastery in Bravia where Dietrich Bonhoeffer spent the months of his life before his famous Vykarie plot to assassinate Hilter. The  Gestapo headquarters in Berlin where he spent the last days of his life. Bonhoeffer over his life shaped the fields of theology and philosophy.

The Eagles Nest where Hilter led the German's during the second world war and aurthorised actions which would forever change the world.

The Fraumünster church in Zurich where Huldrych Zwingli led the reformation to move the Christian church away from the rituals and ornate churches back to the essence of the Christian faith.

We stood in the room that Napolean had slept in when he invaded Vienna on his way to conquering Europe.

It's surreal when you look back at the places we have been and think of the influential  people who have stood there before us. Who have shaped the world as we know it. And then you think about the people who have come and gone with no record of their life for others to read. The 12,000 people who are buried in the crypt below St Stephan's in Vienna or the thousands of others who have built Cities and Nations with no names or story remaining to tell us what they did or who they were.

The known and celebrated history makers as well as the unknown players have created our world enabling us to be who we are and achieve what we have. Isaac Newton has been quoted saying "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants". I've only realised how true this is once I started to visit the places they (the giants) spent their time. You start to understand what has gone before you and how you are standing upon their shoulders. The shoulders of giants.