Jeanette and I had been planning a three week trip through Austria and Hungary to celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary … a trip destined to be shortened by a week by bad weather and a punitive monetary exchange rate ($1.44+ per Euro.) Our 10/16/07 flight to Vienna was uneventful other than the traditional torturous terminal transfer at London's Heathrow misty airport. When we finally soddenly settled in our hotel in Vienna, I took a nap while Jeanette reconnoitered the neighborhood … returning with some semi-sweet Tokay wine, delicious local grapes, crackers, and good Austrian cheese. We eventually went out to dinner in the rain to a lovely Viennese restaurant which Jeanette said had “the best profiteroles (cream puffs made from small, round baked choux pastry filled with a sweet filling) since her father had baked them.” I managed to stop up their toilet (pushing the small button instead of the large one) causing much travail by the staff. As a consequence, much as Jeanette wanted later to go back there again, we were precluded by my embarrassment.
The next morning I went out to get some delicious Viennese pastries to enjoy with our awful self-brewed hotel coffee. (We eschewed the hotel breakfast costing 15 Euros, or about $22 apiece.) On our first full day in Vienna, we took a bus/boat tour of the city. It was still raining and quite dismal … as it was for virtually our entire trip. Both Jeanette and I were jet-lagged and so tended to doze off when our guide was speaking in Austrian or French or Spanish or Italian or German. Vienna is lauded as one of the top ten beautiful cities in Europe, but you couldn't count on us to support this ranking. It suffers from a surfeit of graffiti … to the point of distraction. Even though, individually, some of this graffiti is quite artistic, overall it comes across like flies on a wedding cake. We saw the opera house, Einstein's house, Beethoven's house, Mozart’s house, the Vienna Woods, St. Stephens’s Church and took a boring cruise on the Danube River. At the end of this tour we were taken to a post-war urban housing project designed by a local socialist artist. Each apartment unit in this project had the right to decorate its façade to its owner's taste. The result was a wide variety of colors and architectural styles. Although, our guide and the city fathers were proud of the result (a diversity celebration), to me it looked more like a dog's breakfast. I mistakenly said so and thus created another set of Europeans who hate Americans.
The following day (raining again) we took the train to Salzburg. (The difference between first and second class Austrian train accommodations is de minimis so don't be tempted to spend the extra Euros.) Salzburg itself was quite beautiful, even in the rain, and it is rated very highly in European travel guides. But it seems to have suffered from this popularity since the old city is a bit like Rodeo Drive, one expensive (and empty) boutique after another. One night we ate at a small bar across from our hotel. Two things you can't get easily in Austria are real German sausages (bratwurst, weisswurst, etc.) and cooked red cabbage. When you ask for sausage, you get two hot dogs sans buns with a big dollop of mustard, some finely grated fresh horse radish and maybe a roll. Natives eat theses frankfurters with their fingers and, when I cut my roll in two and inserted the dog, everyone immediately knew I was an American.
We saw the city Citadel and Jeanette visited the local castle (while I slept) but our best viewing was the Salzburg museum. It had a very clever exhibit of preening photos of many of the early residents ("All in the ground." was my comment) with an antique chair where you could take your own photo and then e-mail it (free) with a short message to friends anywhere in the world. (This was an excellent use of available internet technology … replacing that old boardwalk photo booth. I wonder how many other such entrepreneurial innovations could arise out of what internet technology today offers?) It was after two days of sightseeing, shopping, and unrelenting snow and rain in Salzburg that we decided to cut our trip short by a week.
Our last morning in Salzburg we took the first trip with our new rental car to the salt mine (Salz Welten) after which Salzburg is named and which funded the boom in this region hundreds of years ago … with an interim stop at the palace of the archbishop who plundered the benefit from this mine. His palace was located in Hallein (the Celtic word for salt and a town about 15 kilometers south of Salzburg.) It was a fashionable mustard colored mansion with impressive two and a half foot wide floor boards, but no remaining furniture. This mine itself is located in the Bavarian Alps above Hallein. As we drove there it started to snow again and as we climbed up to the mine entrance the weather worsened. Fortunately, we found the mine without incident and signed up for the tour amid a group of Indian software engineers working in nearby Germany. First, the tour required that we wear, over our street clothes, a full covering of white overalls and tunic. Next, about 30 of us straddled benches on a series of thin tram cars which then whisked us deep inside the mountain. Our guide spoke in Austrian, German, and English so there was quite a bit of standing around waiting your language's turn. (She was surprised when I told her that "halide", like the name of the nearby town, was another English word for rock salt.) The mine itself was fascinating. It had wooden slides that we sat astride and slid down to lower levels and a shallow lake across which we rode on a big barge. (We even briefly crossed the border into Germany many meters underground.) For centuries the salt (mixed with various impurities) was dug out and transported out whole. Later on it was dissolved in water and piped down to Hallein in wooden pipes where it was then boiled back down to rock salt. This was economical due to the plentiful supply of wood from the nearby forests.
One of our real joys at our Salzburg hotel was its hot chocolate. Every afternoon (and some breakfasts) we would enjoy a delicious frothy cup of this deep, rich treat. And our last meal in Salzburg was our best … in a family-owned Greek restaurant. I had tender, moist grilled octopus and Jeanette, souvlaki, and we both had Greek salads. We finished with baklava. The next day we started back toward Vienna in the snow with the intent to spend a few days doing some interim sightseeing and getting to know Austria.
Our first soggy stop was Bad Ischi where the summer palace of Kaiser Franz Joseph and his wife Elisabeth ("Sissi," actually his first cousin) was visited. It was named Villa Schratt for the Kaiser's actress mistress. There was no English language tour so we tagged along on a German tour with the help of some English text. The Kaiser was an avid hunter as witnessed by thousands of chamois horns mounted all over the walls. A chamois is about the size of a large dog and resembles a goat. I know this only because the Kaiser's 5,000th chamois was stuffed and stands in his gun room. The palace itself was quite palatial (again painted in what was apparently a very popular color once -- mustard yellow.) It was two stories of many large rooms filled with gorgeous furniture, museum-quality paintings and sculptures, many family mementos, and of course, mounted chamois horns. It also contains the death mask of Elisabeth who was killed by an Italian anarchist (stabbed) when she was in her late fifties. The Kaiser outlived Sissi by 18 years to the chagrin of the local chamois clan.
Then, on our way back to the autobahn, we went to Ghunden to see its famous pottery manufacturer. This was a mistake. (Barbara and Terry, think Alba de Tormes.) After parking and climbing (on foot and in the rain) a very long hill, we finally found the pottery outlet. The pottery itself was rather pedestrian but compensated for this by being very expensive (over $40 for a dinner plate). We busted out of this burg and fled to Melk where Jeanette wanted to stay the night. Our best meal by a country mile was at a small restaurant (Tom's Restaurant) in our hotel (Sadt Melk) … literally in the shadow of the famous (and enormous) Melk Abbey. We started with a complimentary pate and broiled goose liver. We each had a cold glass of local dry white wine (never available in the U.S.) Next Jeanette had duck comfit (slowly simmered deep in its own fat) with tasty potatoes croquettes and the best sauerkraut I've ever tasted. I had broiled veal cheeks (yes, you read me correctly) and a delicious mushroom risotto. The veal was far tenderer than even the best filet mignon and it had a nice contrasting broiled crust. We finished this glorious repast with a creamy chocolate mousse. The next (rainy again) morning we visited the Abbey. It was very well maintained and most impressive … full of jewel-encrusted relics and tens of thousands of illuminated manuscripts. Then we briefly visited the boyhood home of the artist, Oscar Kokoschka, in nearby Pochlarn. There was only one original O.K. painting there and a number of mediocre lithographs … not really worth this side trip.
Jeanette had decided that Bunderland, south of Vienna, would be a good chance for us to warm up and dry out. Not a chance. Our first destination there was Rust (pronounced Roost), a town on the Neusiedl See, a big lake near the Hungarian border. I don't know how I talked Jeanette into it, but we spent two nights there in a hostel. At 44 Euros a night it was less than half the cost of most of the other hotels we had stayed at up to then. The accommodations were in fact equivalent to a hotel and the breakfast was scrumptious. Since we were the only guests, the owners were very solicitous. The next day we drove around the lake to Ilimitz intending to stop for some wine tasting along the way. We were too optimistic. For whatever reason … the weather or the season … we found only one tasting room open, Wein Werk in the town, Neusiedl am See. I got a gratis cup of espresso and Jeanette bought only one small bottle of ice wine.
The next drizzly day we drove back to Vienna, dropped off our car (with great gnashing of teeth), took the train to Budapest, and settled into our very nice hotel, Zara. When we had changed our reservations there we lost the great room rate that Jeanette had previously negotiated. Fortunately the desk clerk was very accommodating (excuse the pun) and, instead of 120 euros a night for three nights, we ended up paying only 70 euros … quite a savings. On our walk-around that evening we found that we were quite close to the Central Market, a huge steel building containing a remarkable conglomeration of private booths that sold all sorts of foodstuffs, paprika, flowers, and Hungarian crafts.
Budapest was originally created by a merger of two ancient towns on opposing banks of the Danube River, Buda (the hilly area) and Pest (the flat area). (Natives pronounce this city's name is a very idiosyncratic way buda-pescht.) The medium of exchange in Hungary is the forint (we called them Floridas) and the rate is roughly 185 to the dollar … although they had recently strengthened against the dollar (of course). This caused confusion since everything was priced in thousands of Floridas and shifting decimal points is not an easy exercise for a calcifying brain. The high point of our Budapest visit for Jeanette was the Gellert baths (a huge Romanesque spa and hotel across the Liberty Bridge from our hotel). There we spent a relaxing morning (bathing suited) in a series of warmer and even warmer therapeutic pools and a finally a steam room. Jeanette concluded our visit with an herbal message which she said was the best she ever had. While I waited for her to finish this indulgence, I soaked in the medium-hot pool. Across this pool, an attractive middle aged woman kept eying me. She then paddled across the pool to about ten feet away, and finally sidled up next to where I was sitting. When I had made no move on her after a few minutes she got up and left. But I did conclude that, despite my advancing age and receding hairline, I still got it! (Either that or she was a working woman.)
The next day we were to take a bus tour of Budapest but there were demonstrations in the city celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian uprising … which precluded this jaunt. So instead we took a boat ride on the Danube River. This was, to me, the highpoint of our Budapest experience … far better than the equivalent one in Vienna. There was less graffiti, the guides were more gracious, the sights (particularly the Parliament building) were more impressive, and we were even served complimentary beverages and fruit cups. The following overcast (no rain at last!!) day we did get in the bus tour which was very intense -- Elisabeth Square (the very same wife of Austria's Kaiser Franz Joseph who was simultaneously the King of Hungary), the Royal Palace Hill, Heroes' Square, the Citadel, Castle Tunnel, etc. Our guide on this bus tour spoke very fast in order to describe everything in English, Hungarian, French and German so invariably her English description of a landmark was not coincident with the place itself. This was disconcerting and there was also a bitter undertone to her travel log -- to wit, that Hungarians were getting the short end of the European Economic Community stick (in the opinion of the London Financial Times because Hungary was too slow to shake off its socialist shackles.) We chose to tour the Parliament Building on our own (despite our tour guide's admonishment that we had only a 1% chance of getting in.) This building was, to my mind, a cathedral to secularity. It was spectacularly beautiful and very well maintained!
Sunday morning we returned to Vienna by train. (We probably should have gotten creative and taken the boat back to Vienna … on the Danube.) It was again raining … hard. But Jeanette insisted that we visited St. Stephen's Church and do a once again around the city's opera district. (She lit a candle at St. Stephen’s like she had in every other church and cathedral we had visited … this time, I think, to our former dog, Maggie.) The next day, Monday, we left to return to the U.S. in a Vienna cab driven by a Polish ex-patriot. He and Jeanette conversed in Polish for most of the damp trip to the airport. She said it was all about his family and his experiences in Austria, but I suspected it was more about what a complainer I had been on our trip. When we got to hellish (but sunny) Heathrow, there was a bit of a festive atmosphere as the New York Giants football team was roaming around the terminal in logo-ed Giants gray sweat suits … having trounced the Miami Dolphins the day before in London in a regular-season NFL game. They were graciously signing autographs and posing for pictures with American fans and Limey gawkers. I was able to learn how the Patriots and Colts had done the previous day since neither CNN nor the BBC deemed to supply such info. We finally arrived back in the U.S., grabbed our luggage, went through customs, and were whisked back to Natick. Unfortunately in my haste, I grabbed the wrong suitcase for Jeanette and had to return to Logan Airport the next day to rectify things. I guess I know now why people put all kinds of odd colored belts around their baggage.
And so to bed-a-pest.
The next morning I went out to get some delicious Viennese pastries to enjoy with our awful self-brewed hotel coffee. (We eschewed the hotel breakfast costing 15 Euros, or about $22 apiece.) On our first full day in Vienna, we took a bus/boat tour of the city. It was still raining and quite dismal … as it was for virtually our entire trip. Both Jeanette and I were jet-lagged and so tended to doze off when our guide was speaking in Austrian or French or Spanish or Italian or German. Vienna is lauded as one of the top ten beautiful cities in Europe, but you couldn't count on us to support this ranking. It suffers from a surfeit of graffiti … to the point of distraction. Even though, individually, some of this graffiti is quite artistic, overall it comes across like flies on a wedding cake. We saw the opera house, Einstein's house, Beethoven's house, Mozart’s house, the Vienna Woods, St. Stephens’s Church and took a boring cruise on the Danube River. At the end of this tour we were taken to a post-war urban housing project designed by a local socialist artist. Each apartment unit in this project had the right to decorate its façade to its owner's taste. The result was a wide variety of colors and architectural styles. Although, our guide and the city fathers were proud of the result (a diversity celebration), to me it looked more like a dog's breakfast. I mistakenly said so and thus created another set of Europeans who hate Americans.
The following day (raining again) we took the train to Salzburg. (The difference between first and second class Austrian train accommodations is de minimis so don't be tempted to spend the extra Euros.) Salzburg itself was quite beautiful, even in the rain, and it is rated very highly in European travel guides. But it seems to have suffered from this popularity since the old city is a bit like Rodeo Drive, one expensive (and empty) boutique after another. One night we ate at a small bar across from our hotel. Two things you can't get easily in Austria are real German sausages (bratwurst, weisswurst, etc.) and cooked red cabbage. When you ask for sausage, you get two hot dogs sans buns with a big dollop of mustard, some finely grated fresh horse radish and maybe a roll. Natives eat theses frankfurters with their fingers and, when I cut my roll in two and inserted the dog, everyone immediately knew I was an American.
We saw the city Citadel and Jeanette visited the local castle (while I slept) but our best viewing was the Salzburg museum. It had a very clever exhibit of preening photos of many of the early residents ("All in the ground." was my comment) with an antique chair where you could take your own photo and then e-mail it (free) with a short message to friends anywhere in the world. (This was an excellent use of available internet technology … replacing that old boardwalk photo booth. I wonder how many other such entrepreneurial innovations could arise out of what internet technology today offers?) It was after two days of sightseeing, shopping, and unrelenting snow and rain in Salzburg that we decided to cut our trip short by a week.
Our last morning in Salzburg we took the first trip with our new rental car to the salt mine (Salz Welten) after which Salzburg is named and which funded the boom in this region hundreds of years ago … with an interim stop at the palace of the archbishop who plundered the benefit from this mine. His palace was located in Hallein (the Celtic word for salt and a town about 15 kilometers south of Salzburg.) It was a fashionable mustard colored mansion with impressive two and a half foot wide floor boards, but no remaining furniture. This mine itself is located in the Bavarian Alps above Hallein. As we drove there it started to snow again and as we climbed up to the mine entrance the weather worsened. Fortunately, we found the mine without incident and signed up for the tour amid a group of Indian software engineers working in nearby Germany. First, the tour required that we wear, over our street clothes, a full covering of white overalls and tunic. Next, about 30 of us straddled benches on a series of thin tram cars which then whisked us deep inside the mountain. Our guide spoke in Austrian, German, and English so there was quite a bit of standing around waiting your language's turn. (She was surprised when I told her that "halide", like the name of the nearby town, was another English word for rock salt.) The mine itself was fascinating. It had wooden slides that we sat astride and slid down to lower levels and a shallow lake across which we rode on a big barge. (We even briefly crossed the border into Germany many meters underground.) For centuries the salt (mixed with various impurities) was dug out and transported out whole. Later on it was dissolved in water and piped down to Hallein in wooden pipes where it was then boiled back down to rock salt. This was economical due to the plentiful supply of wood from the nearby forests.
One of our real joys at our Salzburg hotel was its hot chocolate. Every afternoon (and some breakfasts) we would enjoy a delicious frothy cup of this deep, rich treat. And our last meal in Salzburg was our best … in a family-owned Greek restaurant. I had tender, moist grilled octopus and Jeanette, souvlaki, and we both had Greek salads. We finished with baklava. The next day we started back toward Vienna in the snow with the intent to spend a few days doing some interim sightseeing and getting to know Austria.
Our first soggy stop was Bad Ischi where the summer palace of Kaiser Franz Joseph and his wife Elisabeth ("Sissi," actually his first cousin) was visited. It was named Villa Schratt for the Kaiser's actress mistress. There was no English language tour so we tagged along on a German tour with the help of some English text. The Kaiser was an avid hunter as witnessed by thousands of chamois horns mounted all over the walls. A chamois is about the size of a large dog and resembles a goat. I know this only because the Kaiser's 5,000th chamois was stuffed and stands in his gun room. The palace itself was quite palatial (again painted in what was apparently a very popular color once -- mustard yellow.) It was two stories of many large rooms filled with gorgeous furniture, museum-quality paintings and sculptures, many family mementos, and of course, mounted chamois horns. It also contains the death mask of Elisabeth who was killed by an Italian anarchist (stabbed) when she was in her late fifties. The Kaiser outlived Sissi by 18 years to the chagrin of the local chamois clan.
Then, on our way back to the autobahn, we went to Ghunden to see its famous pottery manufacturer. This was a mistake. (Barbara and Terry, think Alba de Tormes.) After parking and climbing (on foot and in the rain) a very long hill, we finally found the pottery outlet. The pottery itself was rather pedestrian but compensated for this by being very expensive (over $40 for a dinner plate). We busted out of this burg and fled to Melk where Jeanette wanted to stay the night. Our best meal by a country mile was at a small restaurant (Tom's Restaurant) in our hotel (Sadt Melk) … literally in the shadow of the famous (and enormous) Melk Abbey. We started with a complimentary pate and broiled goose liver. We each had a cold glass of local dry white wine (never available in the U.S.) Next Jeanette had duck comfit (slowly simmered deep in its own fat) with tasty potatoes croquettes and the best sauerkraut I've ever tasted. I had broiled veal cheeks (yes, you read me correctly) and a delicious mushroom risotto. The veal was far tenderer than even the best filet mignon and it had a nice contrasting broiled crust. We finished this glorious repast with a creamy chocolate mousse. The next (rainy again) morning we visited the Abbey. It was very well maintained and most impressive … full of jewel-encrusted relics and tens of thousands of illuminated manuscripts. Then we briefly visited the boyhood home of the artist, Oscar Kokoschka, in nearby Pochlarn. There was only one original O.K. painting there and a number of mediocre lithographs … not really worth this side trip.
Jeanette had decided that Bunderland, south of Vienna, would be a good chance for us to warm up and dry out. Not a chance. Our first destination there was Rust (pronounced Roost), a town on the Neusiedl See, a big lake near the Hungarian border. I don't know how I talked Jeanette into it, but we spent two nights there in a hostel. At 44 Euros a night it was less than half the cost of most of the other hotels we had stayed at up to then. The accommodations were in fact equivalent to a hotel and the breakfast was scrumptious. Since we were the only guests, the owners were very solicitous. The next day we drove around the lake to Ilimitz intending to stop for some wine tasting along the way. We were too optimistic. For whatever reason … the weather or the season … we found only one tasting room open, Wein Werk in the town, Neusiedl am See. I got a gratis cup of espresso and Jeanette bought only one small bottle of ice wine.
The next drizzly day we drove back to Vienna, dropped off our car (with great gnashing of teeth), took the train to Budapest, and settled into our very nice hotel, Zara. When we had changed our reservations there we lost the great room rate that Jeanette had previously negotiated. Fortunately the desk clerk was very accommodating (excuse the pun) and, instead of 120 euros a night for three nights, we ended up paying only 70 euros … quite a savings. On our walk-around that evening we found that we were quite close to the Central Market, a huge steel building containing a remarkable conglomeration of private booths that sold all sorts of foodstuffs, paprika, flowers, and Hungarian crafts.
Budapest was originally created by a merger of two ancient towns on opposing banks of the Danube River, Buda (the hilly area) and Pest (the flat area). (Natives pronounce this city's name is a very idiosyncratic way buda-pescht.) The medium of exchange in Hungary is the forint (we called them Floridas) and the rate is roughly 185 to the dollar … although they had recently strengthened against the dollar (of course). This caused confusion since everything was priced in thousands of Floridas and shifting decimal points is not an easy exercise for a calcifying brain. The high point of our Budapest visit for Jeanette was the Gellert baths (a huge Romanesque spa and hotel across the Liberty Bridge from our hotel). There we spent a relaxing morning (bathing suited) in a series of warmer and even warmer therapeutic pools and a finally a steam room. Jeanette concluded our visit with an herbal message which she said was the best she ever had. While I waited for her to finish this indulgence, I soaked in the medium-hot pool. Across this pool, an attractive middle aged woman kept eying me. She then paddled across the pool to about ten feet away, and finally sidled up next to where I was sitting. When I had made no move on her after a few minutes she got up and left. But I did conclude that, despite my advancing age and receding hairline, I still got it! (Either that or she was a working woman.)
The next day we were to take a bus tour of Budapest but there were demonstrations in the city celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian uprising … which precluded this jaunt. So instead we took a boat ride on the Danube River. This was, to me, the highpoint of our Budapest experience … far better than the equivalent one in Vienna. There was less graffiti, the guides were more gracious, the sights (particularly the Parliament building) were more impressive, and we were even served complimentary beverages and fruit cups. The following overcast (no rain at last!!) day we did get in the bus tour which was very intense -- Elisabeth Square (the very same wife of Austria's Kaiser Franz Joseph who was simultaneously the King of Hungary), the Royal Palace Hill, Heroes' Square, the Citadel, Castle Tunnel, etc. Our guide on this bus tour spoke very fast in order to describe everything in English, Hungarian, French and German so invariably her English description of a landmark was not coincident with the place itself. This was disconcerting and there was also a bitter undertone to her travel log -- to wit, that Hungarians were getting the short end of the European Economic Community stick (in the opinion of the London Financial Times because Hungary was too slow to shake off its socialist shackles.) We chose to tour the Parliament Building on our own (despite our tour guide's admonishment that we had only a 1% chance of getting in.) This building was, to my mind, a cathedral to secularity. It was spectacularly beautiful and very well maintained!
Sunday morning we returned to Vienna by train. (We probably should have gotten creative and taken the boat back to Vienna … on the Danube.) It was again raining … hard. But Jeanette insisted that we visited St. Stephen's Church and do a once again around the city's opera district. (She lit a candle at St. Stephen’s like she had in every other church and cathedral we had visited … this time, I think, to our former dog, Maggie.) The next day, Monday, we left to return to the U.S. in a Vienna cab driven by a Polish ex-patriot. He and Jeanette conversed in Polish for most of the damp trip to the airport. She said it was all about his family and his experiences in Austria, but I suspected it was more about what a complainer I had been on our trip. When we got to hellish (but sunny) Heathrow, there was a bit of a festive atmosphere as the New York Giants football team was roaming around the terminal in logo-ed Giants gray sweat suits … having trounced the Miami Dolphins the day before in London in a regular-season NFL game. They were graciously signing autographs and posing for pictures with American fans and Limey gawkers. I was able to learn how the Patriots and Colts had done the previous day since neither CNN nor the BBC deemed to supply such info. We finally arrived back in the U.S., grabbed our luggage, went through customs, and were whisked back to Natick. Unfortunately in my haste, I grabbed the wrong suitcase for Jeanette and had to return to Logan Airport the next day to rectify things. I guess I know now why people put all kinds of odd colored belts around their baggage.
And so to bed-a-pest.
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