CAPITOLS OF EASTERN EUROPE
The Aeroflot jet liner glided into Pulkova Airport outside of Saint Petersburg, Russia. As it touched down, the Russian passengers burst into applause. What a strange thing. In all of our travels, we had never experienced passenger applause. Did they know something we did not?
It was April, and we were attempting to escape from Heathrow for our last leg home from our Around-the-World adventure. Getting out of this horrible airport is always a challenge what with emptying your suitcases so security could help themselves to your smaller gifts, and paying the $600 Escape From England Tax. I diverted myself by thinking of a trip to the capitols of Eastern Europe more amenable than London. There were so many I wanted to visit; too many to reasonably accomplish in a couple of weeks. So, where had we not gone that we really wanted to visit next? I figured we could get to four. After some discussion, we decided on Saint Petersburg Russia, Vienna Austria, Bratislava Slovakia, and Budapest Hungary. We had been to Vienna, but only at the airport. We had facebook friends that we could visit in Bratislava and particularly Budapest, and perhaps in Vienna we could look up an orchestra director we had met on the Great Wall in China in March. We looked ahead and determined we would accumulate enough airline miles and hotel points by the middle of July. That should also be just enough time to obtain visas for Russia.
The visa process for countries such as Russia and China is daunting to say the least. I did China at the first of the year; it took two and a half months, but I was successful. Could Russia be any worse? Of course it could. For China, I went through the Chicago embassy where I had a friend who worked nearby. He was able to walk our applications through without surrendering our passports. No such luck for Russia. The application center is attached to the embassy in Houston. Our entire trip had to be spelled out and ‘baksheesh’ paid. Our passports had to be surrendered to persons unknown. Our hotel had to be booked and they had to send letters of invitation to the embassy for us. If we dared to overstay our visa, or wandered out of the prescribed permitted visit zone, we would have to stay in Russia, sleeping on park benches while new applications were made, because one cannot stay in a Russian hotel without a visa.
Well, I contacted the nice Russian girl in Houston to get the process going. She walked me through the numerous forms while I tried to work out her heavily accented English. I asked her once if it would be easier if we simply spoke another language together, like German. Woops. Never ask a Russian to speak German, and NEVER speak German to a Russian. I am fairly sure I got flagged for that mistake, a German masquerading as an American, because the nice Russian girl advised me to pay an extra $50 for each application to cover future mistakes. I informed her I did not make mistakes, and declined. Mistake #2. Just the kind a statement a German would make.
I sent everything off certified mail to the application center, which included our passports, and waited. And waited some more. There was a drop-dead date that we had to avoid if we were to get the visas. This date was some period before the proposed trip, and if we crossed it, the entire trip would need to be rearranged. Three days before the date, I received an email from the embassy informing me there were mistakes in our application and everything would be returned to me, sans the hefty application fee. I called Houston. The nice Russian girl told me there was a mistake in the letters from the hotel. I had email copies of these letters and quickly reviewed them. There was a mistake. The hotel had entered my birth date for Cheryl.
I called Houston and asked if the nice girl could just strike the wrong date and list the right date just as it showed on our passports, which she had. No. The original letter from the hotel had to be perfect. Watching the relative time of day, I called the hotel in Saint Petersburg and asked them to correct the letters and fax them to Houston. I wrote a check for $100 and overnighted it to Houston. On the drop-dead day, everything got to the little, or perhaps large, I don’t know, Russian girl. Two weeks later, our passports came with the visa glued to an inside page. It had only taken two and a half months. I have since been told there is an easier way to do this, but I don’t know what it is. Next time we decide to go to Russia I will find the easier way.
Cheryl had already reserved our airline tickets, but left the hotels up to me. It was a stressful construction season and she just didn’t have the time for the hotel work. So, I already had the Renaissance Baltic in St. Petersburg, the only 5-star in the city, as needed for the visas. When in doubt, go for the best. Our first stop was Cologne, Germany, where we would stay the night and visit our good friends the Krügers. According to Cheryl, this would only be one night so it would be a short visit. Looking for a cheap one-nighter hotel close to the airport, I quickly found everything was booked up. I kept looking, and finally using Cheryl’s gold card status as leverage, located a room in a Holiday Inn Express in Troisdorf, a town a few miles south of the Bonn-Cologne airport. I called Sebastian at home to let him know where were staying and when we got in. His wife Siriam answered the phone. Siriam’s English isn’t so good, and while we were limping along in German I was staring at our itinerary. Something was wrong. I told Siriam I would call her back.
Cheryl’s printed itinerary clearly had us staying two nights in Cologne, not one as I had been told. We would then arrive in St. Petersburg one day later than our visas said we would. Well, something of a crisis. I called the desk at the Holiday Inn and very respectfully, but in my best authoritarian tones, in German, because authoritarian tones always work best in German, explained my problem and ordered an additional night on my Holiday Inn Gold Card. They were, of course, booked up, but I have a good authoritarian tone, very German, no joviality, no humor, expecting complete agreement and compliance, and, of course, the Gold Card, so she agreed to work it out. Then I called the Renaissance and explained we would be one day late, in English because one dare not speak in German to Russians. I had reserved the Renaissance on Cheryl’s platinum card points, so I told them not to worry about a cancelled night, just bill us for it. That made everything ok for them, so I called Houston to talk to the visa girl. I explained we would be one day late on arrival due to a scheduling error. She said so long as we did not try to stay one day late to make up for it we would not be arrested, but don’t stray out of the City Limits. Sigh of relief. I told Cheryl about her booking error and I had fixed it. She was horrified. I told Sebastian we would have two days in Cologne. He was delighted. I had indigestion.
In the next few days, we contacted other friends we planned to meet. Larry Jortner, an American, and his wife in St. Petersburg. Larry is the VP of a very large insurance company and spends time each year in Moscow adjudicating insurance claim cases. We met Larry several years ago during some problems we were having with a construction client and became good friends. I emailed Dr. Reinhard Seifert, director of the Strauss Capella Orchestra in Vienna and gave him our schedule. We met Reinhard on the Great Wall of China where his group was touring, and struck up an immediate friendship. I messaged our friend Tina Brenner in Vienna. I messaged Jana Styriakova in Slovakia to let her know when we would be passing through Bratislava. Jana speaks 8 languages and is working on her PhD at the university there. Finally I messaged Count Peter Vendel von Schick in Budapest. Peter was a long time friend from facebook, and I had promised many times to get to Budapest for a visit. First time we had gotten to meet an actual Count in person.
So, the social side of the trip was all arranged. One must be careful about arranging meetings with people one has only spoken to on social media. The same trip that found Herr Doktor Seifert in Beijing, had also found Isabella Grace in Maui, perhaps the most bazaar crazy person we have ever had the privilege to meet. Our only risks on this trip were Jana and the Count, and I felt reasonably confident about them. No one who has the skills to become fluent in eight languages could be crazy, and Peter is the 13th Count von Schick and a geophysicist to boot. The next task was to get to Chicago for our connecting flight to Bonn.
There are advantages to flying First Class, which we always do on international flights. Our flight from Kansas City to Chicago was seriously delayed. It was doubtful we could make the connection within the allotted time, however we were First Class. The jumper flight called ahead and told Lufthansa we were late. We arrived at Chicago and moved through security as fast as we could and jogged down the concourse past the T-Rex sculpture to the very end, where our flight was, of course, gone.
We stood in the mostly empty loading area bemused, when a heavily accented woman came up. Herr Obermiller, she asked, bitta komm mit mir. She lead us to the First Class lounge while telling us Lufthansa had another flight available and we were already booked on it. We would need to wait for a few minutes in the lounge, but then could be on our (First Class) way. We would only be a little late to Bonn. They really take care of First Class passengers at Lufthansa.
Now, I need to take just a moment to explain how we travel this way. Several years ago while on a grueling coach flight from Munich to Kansas City, Cheryl read an article on how to collect mileage points by clever use of credit cards. That launched her on a new sideline. Cheryl’s construction company spends several million dollars each year. She quickly figured out how to pay her massive bills with credit cards while never carrying a balance on the cards. In no time at all, we traveled first class everywhere and stayed in the nicest hotels all for free. The airline and hotel personnel don’t know that is how you are paying for things, so they treat you like royalty. One can get very comfortable going First Class.
So, after a short wait, we were escorted by private access tunnel to the front of the plane. In Lufthansa, the stewards have a bio on the front cabin passengers. They greet you by name, offer you a glass of wine or champagne, and escort you to your seats. They murmur in German to me, because they know I like that, and English to Cheryl, aka Freifrau Dame Obermiller, because they know she does not speak much German, but likes to be addressed as an aristocrat anyway. After you are comfortably seated, the steward brings the menu ~ speisekarte ~ for your gourmet meals to be served later. I can’t say enough good things about flying first class.
The flight to Germany was very comfortable as usual. We slept a bit in the fold down seat beds, waking refreshed as we crossed the English Channel. The Bonn/Cologne airport is quite small and easy to negotiate. First Class passengers get their luggage first, and we quickly stepped through the gate right into the waiting arms of Sebastian Krüger and his Mercedes. Mine is bigger. Sebastian drove us down to the hotel and hung around while we freshened up. We were then off to his house on the west side of Cologne and dinner. The next day we touristed about Cologne, had lunch on a boat on the Rhine, shopped, and generally had a good time. Sebastian returned us to our hotel for our second night, already de-lagging from the time jump.
In the morning, we were off to St. Petersburg in a round-a-bout way. Remember, Cheryl books everything on points, and sometimes the flights aren’t particularly direct. Early, we took off for Munich in the south of Germany, the wrong direction but we had to do it. From Munich, we were flying west to Frankfurt, and then on Northeast to Russia. This is called orbiting to build up escape velocity. We do it a lot. We had an unfortunate delay in Munich. Our flight had mechanical problems that delayed us all day until it looked like we would miss the Frankfurt connection. Eventually, a plane was found to take us across to Frankfurt. Quite a crowd of Russians had accumulated that were determined to get on that overbooked flight to St. Petersburg, but we were still First Class, so we made it. In Frankfurt, we were hurried on to the Russian flight. I was concerned that our luggage would not make it.
SAINT PETERSBURG
We had an easy flight to Pulkova Airport in St. Petersburg, only one unusual event. When we touched down, the entire complement of passengers burst into applause. Why did they do that? Is flying with the Russians so risky that the natives are relieved to get back on the ground? I have never even heard of such a thing, and now I will hesitate before booking any flights on Russian planes. We made our way through the antiquated terminal to the bag claim carousels, and waited. And waited some more. After a while, it was clear our luggage was, indeed, not coming, so we made our way to the customs area to find someone to report to. So far, all the signs were in Russian and we needed help. We explained in sign language to an unfriendly official looking man that our bags were lost. He directed us to a small glass enclosed room a ways down the baggage claim area. This room was inhabited by two surly people, a woman and a man.
We stood around at the little window for a while waiting for the woman, two feet away, to notice us. Eventually, she spat out something in Russian to us. Uncertain if she would understand English, I said ‘Unser Gepäck kam nicht. Wir brauchen einen Bericht einzureichen.’ In German. Oh, crap, I forgot. The woman’s eye’s turned flinty and a frown set in. ‘Reisepass’, she spit out, holding out her hand. On producing my American passport, she lightened up. I quickly resolved to not pass myself off as a German here. Apparently, the Russians still hate the Germans for the rape of St. Petersburg during the war. The woman did speak English after a fashion, so we explained our situation. She gave us several forms, five I think, to fill out in triplicate, by hand, and explained the customs people would notify us when, and if, our luggage made to the airport. We would have to come back to personally take it through customs. If we chose to not come back to the airport, customs would inspect everything and send it on to the hotel, but that would take an extra day or two.
We went to work on the forms, wondering if we could use the copier to do the extras. No, they do not have a copier. I guess standard office equipment is not reserved for the baggage claim office at the international airport. We took our stack of paper to a little table and conspired to fill them out, Cheryl printing in ink. After at least a half an hour we took them back to the counter. The forbidding officer thumbed through them and lo, found a mistake. Cheryl asked if we could cross out the mistake and write in the correction above it. Well, of course not. There can be no mistakes or corrected mistakes in any document. Cheryl was furious. I reminded her of my problem with the visa application. We very carefully filled out the forms a second time. This time we were good and headed for passport control where we had no problems, ( having no luggage to declare) and on to a taxi stand.
It was now late afternoon. We headed for the Renaissance, arriving around 9:00 local time in the dark. The desk clerk was glad we had made it and spoke impeccable English. We explained about the suitcases and were assured the hotel would take care of it. We would get our bags late in the day tomorrow. We checked in on a platinum card and promptly got upgraded to the best top floor suite they had. This is another points trick that is quite nice. Gold or platinum cards gets one an automatic upgrade to the best suite the hotel can offer. Also a lot of obsequious behavior from the staff. Our room had a fabulous view of St. Isaac’s cathedral just up the street. It also had a fancy bottle of vodka and two large shot glasses. Too bad we don’t drink alcohol; I would have had a shot or two. We ended up carefully packing this away and made vanilla extract with it when we got it home.
We were quite hungry by this time and decided to get room service. The menu featured a variety of Russian foods and an American menu. We decided to be gross and ordered hamburgers and fries. Totally out of character for us; we like to eat the native fare wherever we go. The food came and it was good. Unfortunately, my hamburger had a piece of bone in it that I managed to chomp down on, shattering a crown on my left side. The shock hurt all they way into my jawbone, but at least the tooth itself didn’t, as it had no nerve. Well, nothing for it but to chew on the other side until we got back to the states, the ragged remaining crown ripping up my cheek inside. An inauspicious start to the capitols tour you may think, but I knew we had a long way to go. In the mean time, Cheryl had been messaging back and forth with Larry, arranging to meet him and his wife Dianne in the morning, and so ended our first day in St. Petersburg.
Larry and Dianne were staying in a hotel just up the street, and they walked down to meet us in our lobby, in the rain. From then on, it was going to rain. Larry wanted to see the Hermitage with all the artwork. I am not too keen on museums full of artwork, but the Hermitage itself is famous, so off we went. The Hermitage faces an enormous square, and the line to get in snaked clear across it. The people around us were generally Russian, and looked the part. They seemed friendly, but no conversation for us.
The tour through the Hermitage was endless, at least for me. Eventually, we escaped and walked down to the St. Isaac’s Cathedral. Larry resisted looking at the cathedral, but I had suffered through the museum and turn about is fair play. The cathedral, as it turned out, is also a secular museum today. It is a monumental building and quite beautiful. It was here that I noticed the gorgeous Russian girls. They were everywhere. I took photos of them, which they didn’t mind in the least.
By this time, we were pretty much jet-lagged out, and decided to go for dinner. I don’t even remember the restaurant this night, so it was uninspiring. The Jortner’s were heading back to Moscow tomorrow afternoon, but wanted to see the Russian Museum before they left. We agreed to go with them. Just as well. They had not intended to stay an extra day waiting for us, and were looking pretty rumpled. At Larry’s insistence, we agreed to experience a subway ride to the museum. So, the next day we shopped a bit at the subway stop, and then descended 300 feet to the underground on the longest escalator I had ever seen. I haven’t figured out the reasoning behind the depth yet. Were we getting into permafrost? Shelter from nukes? Very strange.
We only went a few blocks and got off at the museum stop and climbed to the surface. Now it was raining hard. We hadn’t taken umbrellas because it was clear and nice earlier. The rain was cold. Fortunately, there was an expensive café across the street, so we had lunch. Or, at least Larry had lunch. He has a stomach to feed. The rest of us had enough snacks to keep from getting kicked out. Eventually, the rain stopped and off we went to the museum and more artwork. I was ready to revolt at the museum slash art trip. However, it was just this last one. The Jortner’s were leaving from here, heading for the train station and the eight-hour ride to Moscow. Cheryl and I were ready to do our normal sight seeing thing as soon as we were on our own.
With the company gone, we walked to the Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood. This beautiful but bazaar church was built here on the bank of the Griboedova Canal because Czar Alexander II had been assassinated on this very spot, and is, in fact, entombed here. The Czar’s son ordered this truly magnificent structure constructed on fill material placed to encroach on the canal. It was completed in 1907, but closed as a church in 1930 when the Bolsheviks took control. Amazingly, the Bolsheviks did not destroy it, but turned it over to the local peasants who grew vegetables in the stately interior protected from the weather. When the Nazi’s took over the city in the Second World War the church was used for storing hay for Nazi horses stabled in it. After the war, the church was home to vagrants for several years, but in the 1960’s a restoration was started by the Church. It took 30 painstaking years but in 1997 it was again opened for religious services. We wanted to attend services here but would be gone by Sunday. I am so thankful that none of the crazies that had control of St. Petersburg ever had the cohunes to tear this place down. Perhaps Guardian Angels had something to do with it. There was a WW2 artillery shell still stuck in the dome. It did not explode.
It was getting late when we finished with the Church on the Spilled Blood, and it was a long hike back to our hotel. Casting about for some easier way to get there, we noticed a bicycle taxi. This consisted of a pedal powered three-wheeler with two back seats. We hailed the young operator, told him where we wanted to go, and asked how much it would cost to get there. He told us 20 Euro and we climbed in. The young man gave us a verbal sight seeing tour on the way while dodging pedestrians and traffic. Nevsky Prospect is a very busy four-lane street full of 50 mph traffic, but the drivers were kind and did not smash us as would certainly happen in, say, Atlanta. Eventually, we passed Isaac’s Cathedral and got to the hotel. I was impressed with the young man. We had seen no other bike taxis along the way and I got the impression the foot-powered conveyance was intended for pedaling around the Spilled Blood district as opposed to traveling on busy thoroughfares. Cheryl went into the hotel to get some change while I talked to the pedaler. He earnestly inquired how his English was because he was saving his money to immigrate to America. His English was quite good and when Cheryl returned I doubled his fare. After all, he wanted to be an American and he had to pedal back to the Spilled Blood. I gave him my business card and told him to look me up when he needed a sponsor.
The next day we decided to travel by bus to Catherine the Great’s palace. The palace is outside St. Petersburg so we would be violating our visa restrictions to go there, but one cannot go to St. Petersburg without touring Catherine’s palace. We walked back up Nevsky almost to the Spilled Blood and the terminal and worked our way through the confusing process of getting two tickets and finding the correct bus. Cheryl had to find a public restroom and disappeared. There were also places to shop between the bus and the restroom. I waited nervously for her to reappear, following her usual policy of ‘just in time’. But she made it, just in time, and off we went.
The bus inhabitants seemed to be mostly British and thus difficult to understand, but the tour guide’s English was passable. We arrived at the palace with glittering gold domes everywhere. It seemed like everywhere we went in St. Petersburg there was glittering gilt with more at the historical places. If you have typical American visions of Russia being cold and drab, I would disabuse you of that. I have never seen so much gold on display as I saw in St. Petersburg. Anyway, I digress. Our short Russian female guide was very strict about how we would conduct our tour. She was in charge and we must always keep up, or there would be consequences. Later in the day we must be on time getting back on the bus or we would be left behind and have to sleep on park benches.
We made our way through the impressive formal gardens to a glittering domed building called the Grotto Pavilion on the lake. This was expressly designed for parties, and in fact there was a quartet singing Russian ballads a cappella inside. The acoustics’ under the dome were fantastic, and the voices were very good. We listened for some time, and when they were done they pointed out we could all buy one of their CD’s. One of the songs was done in German, so I timidly tried Deutsche Sprache on them. To my delight, one of them spoke back to me in Deutsche. I bought all four of their albums.
After the entertainment, we made our way to the palace entry hall in the gentle cold rain, looking for our tour guide amongst the hundreds of tourists. She gave us strict instructions about going through the spacious palace on our own, paying close attention to the time so as not to be left behind. We picked up recorded tour devices and began. There is no point in describing the palace in any detail as it is just too huge. After being stripped of all gold gilt by the Nazi’s and generally trashed with all art objects taken, including the Amber Room, I didn’t know what to expect. I was surprised. The communists completely restored the palace, gold, amber, art and all like new. I looked at photos of the wreck left in 1944. What an outstanding job they did. This visit to St. Petersburg was a real eye opener for an old Cold Warrior like me with my highly prejudiced views of the old Soviet Union.
We returned to the bus terminal and started walking back toward the hotel. On the way, we crossed one of the many canals and decided to take a boat tour. At first, the ticket sales people said everyone was closing for the day, but we spotted a boat just loading and got on. Boat tours are fun. We did this in Venice a few years ago on a gondola and got a unique view of the city. This boat was large and not a gondola. It sat low in the water to clear the numerous bridges it had to pass under. Just clear the bridges. Most of these were mere inches above ones head. Should one stand up, or even crane your neck to see at the wrong time, you would be very sorry. We no more than got under way than a man and his son climbed up on the deck in front of us, completely blocking our view ahead. This went on through the entire tour. I was hoping they wouldn’t notice a bridge and get swept overboard, or at least get clobbered, but they survived, jumping down at the last second to avoid injury. When some tourists tried this on a boat ride on the Rhine in Germany, an angry German passenger ordered them to sit. When an angry German orders you to sit, you sit. I would have tried this here, but I don’t speak Russian. Oh, well. The ride was still fun and informative.
We stopped at a restaurant next to our hotel for dinner, which was good, but it was also very dark. There was some confusion paying with my credit card and I think, although I will never be certain, that I left it on the table. The card is dark blue and the table was dark brown and the lighting was poor, so that is my excuse. I didn’t notice it was gone until we got to our next stop, Vienna, the next day. When we got to our hotel, the Bristol, Cheryl went on line and cancelled the card. I carry several, so it shouldn’t be much of a problem, but I only have pin numbers on two; the missing card and my business card. When we went to an ATM to get some Euros I inserted my business card only to find Cheryl had cancelled it instead of my personal card. I was annoyed. Now I could only get cash from a bank on my AMEX card, a real chore in foreign countries. Cheryl had a new card and her old pin did not work. Well, no help for it. We made sure my personal card was also cancelled, and attempted to call Reinhart to let him know we were here from our room. Couldn’t do it, the number and system being Austrian and all. I finally went to the concierge to get him to place the call. He was a little disdainful until I proffered Reinhart Seifert’s card with the number. That brought him to attention and immediate obedience. Orchestra directors are very important people in Vienna. The concierge obviously knew who he was and was privileged to make the call. He listened in amazement and admiration that I was a friend of the Director, and that he was coming to pick us up.
VIENNA
Reinhart and Tanja showed up shortly thereafter, pulling into the porticoes of the hotel in his black Mercedes. Black Mercedes seem to be preferred over here. After introductions, Reinhart announced they were taking us to dinner in a special restaurant. Tanja drove and we visited while on a longish drive, finally arriving at the Heuriger Fuhrgassl-Huber located in the vineyards northwest of the city. This interesting Heuriger was arranged outdoors on a hillside with lots of picnic style tables. Food came from a cafeteria arrangement inside where you selected the dishes you wanted to eat while they heaped your plate with mountains of food. Reinhart insisted on paying for dinner, which, I know, is traditional the world over, but still makes me uncomfortable. I generally assume we are better capable of paying for dinner. No help for it. Our Austrian host would pay for all even though he barely knows us. (In Cologne, Germany, we once invited the Krügers to dinner at Schloss Lerbach where we were staying. I had to firmly instruct the Maitre-de to not bring the check to the table but add it to our room. Sure enough, Sebastian tried, and failed, to get it.)
Dinner was excellent sitting outside on our picnic table with a vineyard decorating the hillside above us. Reinhart and Tanja kept plying us with food until we could eat no more. Then they got more for us anyway because we should try everything. Of course, in Austria it is exceptionally bad manners to not eat everything you are given. I suppose our not cleaning our plates was put down to the fact that were Americans, and thus somewhat uncivilized, but cultured enough to visit Vienna. Reinhart and Tanja are trim and fit individuals, and ate vast quantities of food with no apparent affect. I could almost see the pounds packing on Cheryl and me.
As we stuffed ourselves, we were serenaded by two men, one playing an accordion and the other a guitar. I did not know it at the time, but this is traditional at Heuriger restaurants. Heuriger restaurants are associated with vineyards and sell their vintage wines made in their own cellars along with food. They are generally only opened a few weeks of the year, and indicate they are open by tying spruce bows to their gates. They are frequented by locals and, indeed, we were obviously the only tourists at the Fuhrgassl-Huber. Going to the local hangouts adds spice to traveling and we love to do it. I recall having, believe it or not, Mexican food at a tiny hole-in-wall restaurant located in an alley behind the cathedral in Amberg Germany (near the Czech border) where never an American had tread. And another time eating at a locals only restaurant in Freising, Germany, where the ‘Ober’ got our order wrong, and then snidely commented in German that we should have ordered in German, and I had to correct him in German saying that I had ordered in German. We have been back there over the years and gotten the same waiter who still remembers us and is most unfriendly. I may have to do a book titled Restaurants I Have Known. Anyway, after several hours, Seifert and Tanja took us back to our hotel and arranged to meet us on the morrow in front of Saint Stephan’s Dom for a walking tour of central Vienna.
In the morning, we walked down the magnificent stair way, passing the Prince of Wales room directly below ours, and started north on the beautiful Kärntner Straße, passing the famous Vienna Opera House and numerous tony stores, beautiful buildings and street performers to the heart of Vienna, the St. Stephan’s Dom. I must say, Vienna is definitely the cultural capitol of Europe. The only downside was the presence of numerous burka clad women congregating in little groups of four or five and overseen by vigilant hostile males wearing tee-shirts and shorts. Mind you, it was in the 90’s. Those women wearing black sacks over their entire bodies with just eye slits for air must have been excruciating hot. This trip occurred just days before the Muslim invasion of Europe where these people came in waves from the Mideast with the goal to take over Europe.
We hung around the Dom admiring the architecture and shear size of the place. Later we would go in, but right now we looked for Reinhart and Tanja. The couple showed up and took us for a walking tour including an impressive ancient library containing huge globes from different historic periods, the university library on Heldenplatz where Hitler gave his famous welcome to the Third Reich speech to the assembled Austrians, ancient Roman excavations, and on and on. Eventually we ended up back at the Dom where our hosts bid us goodbye as they still had to work the next day.
We went on in to St. Stephan’s and admired the huge majesty of the place, quickly deciding we would have to attend church here sometime. Not now because it was Thursday and we were leaving, but sometime. (We did that six months later while on our traditional Christmas shopping trip to Europe.) There are extensive catacombs under the Dom that contain the usual saints and important people, but also the bones of thousands of plague victims. It was too late to catch a tour today but we promised ourselves to do it next time in Vienna, which we did.
Reinhart had recommended we eat dinner at Figlmüllers restaurant, famous for Vienna Weiner Schnitzel. Figlmüllers was to be found only a couple of blocks north of the Dom, so we went looking, in the just started rain. We had an umbrella. The restaurant was easy to spot from the large crowd waiting on the sidewalk in the rain for tables. Cheryl squeezed in to get a reservation then squeezed out to wait with me. 45 minutes later we were in. It was worth the wait. I ordered a Schnitzel and Cheryl ordered deep fried cheese. We each got an Almdudlers soft drink, a treat we had not encountered before. The Schnitzel was larger than my plate. Cheryl’s deep fried cheese came in two 2x6x1/2 thick blocks. There was no possibility we could eat all this food. What was wrong with these Austrians? Obviously, ordering for dinner in the future would involve some strategizing, like sharing meals or eating only appetizers.
Well, we ate and ate, and did the Tongan Shuffle, which involves rotating your trunk while sitting on your seat and supposedly helps you to consume more food. It must work, just look at the Tongans. After a while, having consumed about half our food, thus embarrassing ourselves in front of the Austrians again, we paid up and staggered out. The squeeze through the narrow hall crammed with people was much harder now. We had to agree the Figlmüllers experience was well worth the distended stomachs, however, and vowed we would be back. (We did return the following December just to eat exactly the same things.)
We slowly made our way back to the hotel and planned our next day in this marvelous city. The most visited place in Vienna is Schloß Schönbruun which was the summer palace for the Habsburgs during 300 years of Austrian Empire. Although we typically like the more out of the way places of the world, this particular vacation was to see the capitols of Eastern Europe, so Schönbruun was on the list. Franz Joseph and Sisi were the rulers until 1914 when Franz Joseph died. His son ruled until 1918 when the Austrian Empire was disbanded after the war. There would be no more royalty and even the lesser title holders had to give up their ‘von, Graf, Freiherr and Ritter titles. This includes my own family although we were Bavarians. I have kept our family crest or ‘wappen’ as it is called in German, as have most of the rest of us. After all, one never knows what the future holds, and my calling card with the crest on it always gets us a table at restaurants even without a reservation. The aristocracy may be brought back someday to bring sanity to Europe again. But I digress, again.
So, we had to get to the Schloß in the morning. Our options were to drive, take a taxi, or ride the subway. Driving in European cities is hair raising at best, and taxis rather expensive, so we decided to brave the subway. According to our concierge, the subway stop, U-Bahn Haltestelle if you happen to be looking for it, was right outside the hotel door and would take us straight to the Schloß in just 20 minutes. We hoped this would be easier than, say, the subway in Tokyo or Hong Kong. After a relaxing and historic tour, we would return and search out Demel’s restaurant where Cheryl particularly wanted to eat. The concierge gave us a couple of tokens. After all, we were friends with Reinhart Seifert, orchestra director. It was the least he could do.
We descended into the subsurface station and wandered around until we found the appropriate line to Schönbruun. We could not find anyplace to validate our tokens, which is fairly typical in German speaking Europe where one never really has to use subway tokens, one just buys them. The subway was not crowded at all and the trip was, indeed, quick. We exited at the appropriate stop and started walking in the ever increasing heat toward the Schloss entrance a half mile away. By the time we entered the grounds it was a scorcher, in the 90’s. The walk across the platz to the building is another quarter mile or so, over hot flagstone. I was wondering about this heat. I had never experienced heat like this in Europe. It was just like the Midwest US. Was this ‘global warming’? We were anxious to get into the tour where we could cool off a bit.
At home, in July and August, temperatures in the 90’s are typical. We adjust to it by periodically sheltering in our air conditioned buildings and homes where we can cool off. Schönbruun was not air conditioned. There was no breeze inside. There were hundreds of people all lined up for their tours. Sweaty, hot, smelly undeodorized people. Europeans don’t much go for deodorant. Crabby people all waiting to get out of the crowded entry hall with its floor to ceiling west windows where the sun shown in. After 30 minutes or so we passed through the turnstile into the shade, which was at least an improvement to the sunny hall, but hotter still.
The tour through the schloss took about three hours. Not terribly interesting hours either. Most of the place is devoted to Emperor Franz Joseph Habsburg and his wife Sisi. Franz Joseph reined through much of the 1800’s until 1914, finally dying of old age. He conducted some wars in a very genteel Austrian manner, losing them, but then wars in that era were primarily disputes between the closely related ruling families. They were very formal, dressy affairs where a good appearance was all-important. Sisi, short for Elizabeth, was born a Bavarian and married Franz Joseph when she was 16. Their marriage was unhappy, even tragic, and is too long a story to get into here. Also I am not interested in getting into it. Suffice it to say that the Austrians, in their rather austere existence devoted to the fine arts, dote on the story of Sisi and her tragic life. Of course, she was the Empress of Austria, Queen of Hungary, Queen Consort of Bohemia (Czech today), and Queen Consort of Croatia. She died in 1898 after 44 years traveling to and from her various thrones. But her life was tragic.
Sometime after the Sisi wing of the schloss we got to buy water, which was getting very important considering the amount of sweating we were doing, then we went out to wander about in the scorching formal gardens. We found a bench in the shade, drank our water, and decided we had seen enough of Schönbruun. Time to get back underground where it was cooler.
Riding back to town on the subway, Cheryl decided she had to go to Demels, a combination store, pastry bar and restaurant. Referring to the subway map, she determined we needed to go past our stop, past the St. Stephan’s Dom stop, past the Schwedenplatz stop, and get off at the Schottenring stop. I do not know how she determined this, but once it was in her head there was no getting it out. We exited into the still scorching heat. My internal navi told me we were two miles from the Dom, and it had no idea where this Demels was anyway. We started walking south toward the university area.
Eventually, we got to no place in particular. I had to tell Cheryl I still did not have the slightest idea where Demels might be, to which she replied of course I did, we walked right by it yesterday. We had walked all day yesterday, covering miles and miles of Vienna streets. She was getting angry that I could not lead her to Demels, so she asked a passerby where it was. The passerby indicated vaguely that it lay to the east toward the Dom. If we simply followed the crowds of Japanese tourists we would find it. Apparently, all Japanese tourists in Vienna are heading to Demels.
So we headed east, and after a while found a group of Japanese tourists, which we followed. The passerby was correct. After a period of uncertainty, the Japanese tourists found Demels. There were lots of Japanese tourists converging on the place. Being much taller than the Japanese, we pushed through the crowd into the store and on back to the bakeri. They were baking things. The actual restaurant was upstairs, and there was an appallingly long line waiting to go up. We went back out to the shop, bought some things, and headed back to our hotel, still a mile or more away. (We did return to Demels the following December and ate at their wonderful restaurant. I recommend it.)
Making it back to the Bristol, we had some dinner at a little restaurant just down the street, resting our legs, having walked the entire day. The next morning, we called the concierge to get our car, and headed out for our next adventure in
BUDAPEST
It is 150 miles from Vienna to Budapest, two capitols of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I always thought that was a strange alliance since all the 11 countries in the empire spoke radically different languages. I am not at all sure how they communicated, but maybe it wasn’t necessary.
We started southeast on the E60, which is four lane all the way. In 47 miles we came to the Hungarian border where one must stop to get the 25 € sticker in order to continue to drive in Hungary. Hungary is, apparently, not a full-fledged member of the EU hence the road tax. Some other EU countries and Switzerland do the same. In the past, this was the border to the Eastern Block and the Iron Curtain and a little harder to get through. Now, one just goes into the little tax building, assuming one knows one has to get this sticker, and pays up. Otherwise the polizi will get you and hold you up for a fine.
So we stopped, paused at the associated quick stop for refreshments and restrooms, and started out. Just before entering the E60, there is a large billboard announcing Hungary. We had pulled over just before this billboard, and when we started rolling, we noticed a woman and several men peeking around the end staring at the quick stop and tax office. They looked hungry, no pun intending, and seemed somehow bereft. The woman had a scarf around her head in the 95-degree heat. They all looked like Middle Easterners, or gypsies, or something. I asked Cheryl if we shouldn’t pause and give the woman some money. She hesitated, and as we moved we saw scores of people behind the sign. We did not stop. A few weeks later we found we had looked straight into the initial wave of Syrian ‘refugees’ on their way to Germany. Evidently, they were hesitating at the Austrian border, not having any permission other than Angela Merkel’s invitation, to cross it. A little later, this became a flood as 1.2 million of them trudged up the Balkan Route into the heart of Europe, becoming a monumental problem that still hasn’t been sorted out.
The remaining hundred miles to Budapest might well have been I-70 between Kansas City and Columbia Missouri. Hot slightly rolling farmland and nothing else. Reasonably fast auto traffic and slow trucks sporting advertisements on their sides, in Hungarian of course, but with strikingly familiar products for sale. But there were no castles on the hilltops like Bavaria. In fact, no hilltops at all. Cheryl fell asleep, which always annoys me greatly when we are driving through strange foreign countryside, even here, where it wasn’t strange or foreign at all. The navigator woke up on the outskirts of Budapest and started giving me directions. Cheryl woke up to help if necessary.
Cheryl booked the hotel in Budapest, a Holiday Inn. Yes, they are everywhere and all have certain quality issues. This hotel was several blocks east of the capitol district, on the border of the not quite so nice district. Finding the parking garage was a major accomplishment, but eventually we got to the lobby with our bags, no bellhop here. The lobby was crammed full of teenagers with backpacks. We could only hope our Gold Card status would get us away from them. It did. We got a rather large suite overlooking the street on the third, or top, floor, and subject to a constant refrain from emergency vehicle sirens. The bed was Holiday Inn uncomfortable. All in all, a serious come down from the Bristol in Vienna. Oh well. You can’t win all the time. I called my friend Péter to let him know we had arrived.
Péter had arranged for us to have a family dinner at his home in western Budapest, on the Buda side of the river. I had hardly hung up before he arrived in the lobby. He had apparently been at work only a few blocks away. Péter and I had become good friends on line. His family is a very old German transplant to Hungary, for about 1200 years. He is also a genuine Count, the 13th Count von Schick, and a geophysicist with his own company. I have found it is important when developing remote friendships that some aspects are shared in common. I am a senior Civil Engineer and Environmental Engineer with a minor in business, and I like to talk with people with similar education levels. I can also claim to be a Bavarian aristocrat. My wife, aka the Pothole Queen, is beautiful, regal and wealthy, and can get along with virtually any educated person. She likes titles, including her own, and really likes to be addressed as Freifrau or Dame in Germany. We should get along with the Count and Countess just fine.
We shared introductions, climbed into Péter’s car, and took off for the longish drive to his home in the western edge of the city. Péter is one of those rare Europeans that own a house. Almost everyone in Europe lives in an apartment or condo, home ownership is unusual. The house was quite nice and unusual in construction. It has a fish pond in the living room with a massive circular staircase curling around it. The pond has friendly house frogs and turtles as well as fish, and tropical foliage. The Count’s Coat-of-Arms is done in stucco on the north wall. A swimming pool for humans is just outside.
Péter’s wife Rozália was preparing a traditional Hungarian dinner for us, pork wraps stuffed with something, with other somethings for side dishes. We sat in the living room next to the pool having beverages and visiting with Péter. He had his son Andris come in with his girlfriend for introductions. Very straight and obviously intelligent young 16 year old, very proper, quite nice. I don’t remember the girlfriend’s name, but she was also very proper. I like it when young people have been taught respect. After a suitable interval talking about family and business, we retired to the dining room to eat on 200-year-old china. What fun. The only problem was the massive amount of food we were expected to eat. Quite impossible but, of course, we were expected to eat it all and have desert. So we ate prodigious amounts of dinner and desert, and finally retired to the living room for some more talk. Roza stayed in the kitchen cleaning up as she couldn’t speak English anyway. Péter suggested things we might do and see on the morrow on our own since he would not be available, and after a time took us back to the hotel.
Our hotel was a couple of miles from the river where all the historical buildings and shopping district were located. Having not learned our lesson in London, we got tickets for the Hop on Hop Off Red Bus. In London the same tourist service left us stranded miles from our hotel with no explanation except it was quitting time and if you were foolish enough to try to use our bus for transportation you got what you deserved. But we got on one anyway and made our way down to the river shopping district. We wandered about looking at things but not buying much when a whopper thunderstorm blew up. We were seated at an outdoor café under awnings just finishing a snack when a gale blew through taking the awnings with it. We ran across the street to a multi-floor department store to hide and pretend to shop. It rained, hard. Then it hailed harder. It slackened up after a couple of hours, so we ventured out thinking to find the Red Bus stop and getting a ride back toward the hotel.
After a while a bus showed up and people got on. Unfortunately, the bus didn’t want to leave. In fact, the driver left. The little tour guide girl finally figured out that he wasn’t coming back and announced the bus couldn’t continue because of the rainstorm. That, of course, was why we were all on the bus…the rainstorm. The girl announced we could get a partial refund on our tickets if we could figure out where to do that. Shades of London. They said exactly the same thing there. Come to think of it, we were also staying at a Holiday Inn in London. Hmmm. And we never did get a refund. I told Cheryl we should not have gotten on the Hop on Hop off in the first place, and we started walking.
We consulted our slightly wet tour guide map for the best route back to the hotel. It didn’t look too bad. We could do some closer sightseeing along the way, and besides, we jog two miles every morning back home. It was interesting. We came across a Bohemian café featuring Bohemian musicians playing Bohemian instruments. We ate dinner. It was tasty in a Hungarian sort of way. The hotel was close now, so we went on back to consult on what we might do the next day. We decided to ride the bus to the capitol building by the river and cross the Danube to the Buda Castle and museum on the bluffs. Budapest consists of two cities lying on both banks of the river. Buda and Pest. Buda is on the high ground and Pest is the low ground.
Early in the morning Cheryl got up to watch the sunrise, realized there were ghosts on the balcony, and came back to bed totally freaked out. Ghosts, of course, cannot tolerate the presence of engineers and promptly dissipate. (I am an engineer and have often noticed this phenomenon in our very old ghost ridden house. The daughters would scream about ghosts in the second floor hall mirror and third floor bedroom. I walk in and …nothing. Very old Budapest is apparently also ghost ridden and for good reason.) It turned out to be a nice sunny day as we rode the Hop bus, we had bought a two-day pass, back to the river. We got off at the base of the cog funicular that takes tourist up the cliff some 400 feet. There was quite a mob of tourists waiting for the funicular in the now blazing sun. We stuck it out for a while, but we have ridden cog trains before, so we decided to Hop On and go up by road.
The Buda Castle complex is quite interesting. The president of Hungary actually lives in part of it, but the greater part is a huge historic museum. There was virtually no security for the president. A small guard hut on either side of the door. No fence or gate. No cameras. The guards were wearing hot woolen uniforms with hot coats, boots and gloves in the 90 degree heat. Every little while there is a change of guards, necessary to keep off the heat stroke. This is just like Prague, only there is only one little guard hut there. I am pretty sure the guards aren’t allowed bullets. I took photos of Cheryl with the guards just like in Prague and London. No real security at all, unlike the super paranoid U.S. presidents who have any suspicious person machine gunned outside the White House. Kind of refreshing, really.
We wandered down the stairs to the courtyard in front of the castle turned museum and went on in to get out of the heat. The first thing one is confronted with at the entry stair landing is a huge mural of mustached warriors killing other mustached warriors. The group with really big impressive mustaches, apparently the Hungarians or Magyars, were clearly beating up on the army of smaller mustached soldiers, apparently the Turks. This was the overriding theme of the museum ~ Hungarians saving Europe from the evil Turks through battle after battle and war after war over the centuries. Christians against Muslims. It is still going on today. We spent a lot of time in this museum; it was very unusual for a museum, well worth the visit.
We climbed up to the dome of the museum for an open air view of Budapest. The scenic river and parliament building made it clear a visit to the spectacular parliament building was in order. If you happen to see the Viking river cruise commercial with a turreted huge building on the bank, that is it. So back to the bus stop and thence down to the Chain Bridge. The Chain Bridge, opened in 1849, is a suspension bridge with heavy chain cables. Pretty neat and I think unique. We walked across it and then walked along the river side of the parliament. We discovered a unique tribute to the Jews caught up by the holocaust in WW2 along the sidewalk on the river bank. For several hundred feet, bronzed shoes are fixed to the concrete. Turns out that the Nazi’s, in a final fit of hatred before abandoning the conquered city at the end of the war, gathered up all the remaining Jews, lined them up on the river bank in January, made them strip naked, and shot them, the bodies falling into the river for easy disposal. They took the clothes, but not the shoes. The Hungarians bronzed the shoes and placed them where their owners were shot, fixing them to the concrete. A lot of them are children and baby shoes. I really despise the National Socialist Party and all it stands for.
Well, enough is enough. We walked through the shopping district again and on back to the hotel. We planned to leave in the morning to drive to Bratislava, Slovakia, but before we left, Peter wanted us to drop by Memento Park on the way out of the City. If you do nothing else in Budapest, you must see Memento Park. When the city was freed of communist rule in 1986, the citizens tore down every vestige of the Soviets, primarily ugly statues. They were dumped in a landfill and buried until an enterprising man found them and persuaded the City to help him create a park out of the statues. The park is mostly complete and is an amazing place. It contains 42 huge to gigantic statues of communist leaders and communist workers. Truly a monument to the crime of communism. The park is in a rural area and hard to find. Our navi got us close but we went right by the entrance and had to double back. You can buy little sealed containers of the last communist air for mementos. I bought one.
On to
BRATISLAVA
Bratislava got on the Capitols list because it is, in fact, the capitol of Slovakia. You might recall the former Czechoslovakia which split up a few years ago to become the Czech Republic and the Slovakia Republic. Bratislava is such a cool name and it is also a university town. I have a Slovakian friend, Jana Styriakova, a rather remarkably educated woman who speaks eight languages. Jana is pursuing a PhD at the university and really wanted to meet us in Bratislava. We exchanged texts with Jana from Budapest and agreed to meet at the Hall of Justice on the campus. Later, we discovered the navi did not recognize the Hall of Justice as a point of interest. When we got to the city we were reduced to looking for the campus, which we found, and then following helpful hints from the natives to try to find the building. It seemed it should be simple, but Bratislava is a very old European city, so, of course nothing is simple. Even going around the block isn’t simple. All I accomplished was backing into a pipe parking barrier while laboriously turning around in a dead end alley. No visible damage to the little rental SUV.
After being frustrated for an hour or so, we pulled into a five star hotel back where we started the search looking for assistance. The girls at the check in desk were willing to let me use their phone. I called Jana. Jana was currently waiting at the Hall of Justice for us. I got new directions but not a street address. Off we went again. This time, although we overshot the destination, we managed to double back and find it, and Jana, and her daughter Petra and her Italian husband.
We had a great time wandering around old town looking at Medieval things and interesting statuary. One of these featured a City sewer worker peeking out of a manhole at women walking by. Of course, he managed to look up Cheryl’s dress, which may have made her blush a little. We had an interesting dinner at a local restaurant eating some traditional foods. We had an interesting time talking with Petra, 16, in English, which she really enjoyed after she got over shyness speaking English with English speakers. We told her she would have to come to America for a semester to polish up her skills. Later that year, we hooked with Petra in Vienna for some Christmas shopping and sort of agreed she could stay with us. Cheryl later recanted on this, however, and I don’t know at this time if she can come or not.
Our day ended too soon, and we had to drive on back to Vienna where we had promised yet another friend, Tina Brenner, that we could meet for dinner, and the following day return to America. We had no problem hooking up with Tina for dinner and Austrian cake and cocoa the next day. We stayed at the Imperial Hotel this time and discovered the most elegant hotel in Vienna or maybe anywhere. We don’t know what this place costs since Cheryl got it on Starwoods points, but I am sure it would have been very costly indeed. We did stay here the following December for several days, and I must say, if I had to live in a hotel and was extra wealthy and could persuade Cheryl to live in Europe, it would be here. The next day we returned our rental car and took off for home.
Cheryl had planned to spend a day in Charleston, South Carolina, to tourist around and de-lag on the way home. She had a hotel room and everything. After an easy crossing, we landed and sought a taxi to take us to the hotel. We gave the driver instructions, to which he replied, “You want me to drive you 200 miles?” I was confused. Our itinerary had us staying in Charleston, so where were we, anyway. The driver disclosed that we were in Charlotte, North Carolina. Cheryl had certainly had some difficulty with this trip planning. Well, we would obviously be staying in Charlotte, where there is only the Nascar museum to see, for a day and night. No help for it. The taxi driver was also no help, not being familiar with the town. My phone was dead. Cheryl’s had maybe five minutes of life left. She tried calling local hotels to get a room and her phone died, too.
We were sitting in a parking lot next to the airport in a difficult jet lag situation. Brains not working well. Unhelpful Pakistani taxi driver. Dead phones. We looked around in desperation, and lo, there across the street was a Holiday Inn. We had our driver drop us off and went in. They were, of course booked up. Cheryl is, however, an IHG Spire Elite member, which will get you anything you want at Holiday Inn. The desk clerk brushed aside the other customers waiting in line in order to give us the best they had to offer. The other customers were not happy, but hey, we just got in from a long flight across the Atlantic and were tired.
So the last day of the tour of Capitols of Eastern Europe was spent in the Capitol of North Carolina. We just stayed in our room and napped. The next day we took a flight to Chicago, and then a jumper to Kansas City. Home again, home again, and our very own bed.
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