Reflection - End of Trip

     Sometimes at the end of a trip, I collect a few random thoughts that occur to me but don't necessarily fit into a chronological travel blog. Here are a few for this trip:

• The older people of those nations who lived for years under the Communists are a cautious group. They do not readily make eye-contact or nod as you go by on a bike and it doesn't matter whether it is a city or a small village. They are wary. 
• This is a meat and dairy-centric part of the world: pork, duck, venison and beef are the usual offerings. If you are a vegetarian, you can find things to eat but it is easier if you can eat eggs and cheese.  
• Potatoes are served at least 5 different ways and often two ways are included in the same meal. 
• The houses in the countryside are all beige stucco with a red-tiled roof and each village has at least 2 churches - generally both Catholic.
• Beer is cheaper than water.
  
• The architecture in the cities is amazing and when lit up at night it looks like Disneyland. For us, Budapest was the most beautiful.
• The countryside is still very agricultural with field after field of crops: corn, grapeseed, winter wheat, grapes, and poppies. 
• Each city has a river: Krakow = Vistula, Budapest and Vienna = Danube, Slovakia near Bratislava = Moldau, Prague = Vltava, 
• The streets in the old parts of the cities are all made of cobblestone. They are lovely but hard on waling and rolling suitcases.  My left ankle was very unhappy with the unevenness. 
• Castles sit on top of hills surrounded by walls to keep out the enemy. This makes for wonderful views from the top.
• Churches are amazing testimonies to the power of the Catholic church in history. And in this part of the world, it was very powerful, therefore there are many, many churches. 
• You can only sustain interest in viewing every church for so long. Then you look at the outside and leave it at that.
• WWII was not that long ago and for many, it has not been forgotten.
• Everyone under the age of 40 speaks English well.
• No one who is a tourist here speaks Czech, Hungarian or Polish because it is impossible. Everyone speaks English. It is the Lingua Franca of the day.
• It is astonishing how few Jews are left in Central Europe. The buildings, synagogues and ruins from concentration camps remain, but there aren't very many Jews.
• Music is on the streets and concerts are in the halls everywhere. People appreciate music and musicians. 
• Austria was never behind the Iron Curtain. It is very different from those countries that were. It is also much more expensive. 
• All the cities we went to in the Austro-Hungarian Empire claim the major composers as their own because the composers lived and worked in all these cities. 
• It is easy to travel from place to place and withing cities (trains, trams, underground, buses). It makes flying on a plane feel even more uncomfortable. 
• European cafes are all they are cracked up to be - wonderful places to take a break and drink something delicious and eat something amazing and people watch.
• There are some people we should have learned about in our study of European history. One of them is Empress Elizabeth known as Sisi married to one of the Franz Josephs. She was a health nut, an athlete, an intellectual and hated the demands of court. She was not born at the right time.
• After talking at length with one of the young women who worked at the pension we stayed at in Krakow, I understand why so many young people from around the world want to come to the U.S. to study at the university. Universities here are very rigid and theoretical. 
• If you are into history, you need to visit this part of the world. We barely touched what is here.
  

Full Circle: Back to Prague where we began

     After a very comfortable overnight train from Krakow to Prague, we arrived at 6:50 AM at the Main Station bought a transit pass for the day and hopped the Metro to get over to the little hotel we stayed at three long weeks ago. Happily, thunderstorms had rolled through the night before and the temperatures went from 95 degrees to 65! Yay! The owners of the same hotel we stayed at when we first arrived in Central Europe, father and son, and their staff were incredibly welcoming, inviting us to sit down for a delightful breakfast and apologizing that our room wouldn't be ready for a few hours. We took the time to use their computer to upload all our photos from the GoPro and phone, check email and catch up. By 10:00 AM we were in our room showering and planning for the day.

     There are still so many things we can see and do in Prague. There is no way to do everything so we chose a combination of things we wanted to see and some unplanned wandering to allow for serendipity.

     We wanted to tour the Lobkowicz Museum in the Palace at the Prague Castle so we headed up the hill to the base of the castle complex. This museum is privately owned and filled with treasures that belong to the Lobkowicz family going back to the 16th century. Rather than a stuffy collection, it is a well-curated and maintained history of this family. There is a great audio tour narrated by the present direct descendant, William Lobkowicz, an American. All the property of this family including this palace was taken by the Nazi's and then by the Communists. When the Czech Republic became a democracy, President Vaclav Havel returned all the property to the Lobkowicz family and they in turn created this museum and three other castles housing collections and a vineyard. Each room had its charms including paintings by  Brueghel, Caneletto and Velasquez. But by far, we were most drawn to the orignial musical manuscripts by Beethoven, Mozart and Handel. One of the Princes Lobkowicz was Beethoven's patron back in the day. These were in a case in a room filled with priceless violins and clarinets.

Clarinets in the Music Room at the Lobkowicz Museum

The Eroica Symphony by Beethoven in his hand with notes written by him dedicated to Prince Lobkowicz

     That afternoon while walking across the Main Square we had one of those random travel events that seems to underscore how small a world it is. There are always live musicians playing but as we walked across this time, we notices a small group of brass players wearing T-shirts saying Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. They were playing to advertise their upcoming concert the next two nights in Prague. As we walked by, I looked at the adult who was helping conduct and hold music and realized I knew him. He is a friend and colleague of my daughter Lauren whom I had met once at my house! At that moment, our paths crossed in Prague.

     Another night we chose something a little different that seems to be original to Prague. We went to a Black Light show where dancers wearing costumes that light up under black light dance to music. Interesting but since there was no plot, it did seem to go on a bit longer than our interest held. 

     While wandering around during the day, we came upon the  Jerusalem or Jubilee Synagogue. It was a beautiful combination of Moorish and Art Deco design. On the top floor, there was an exhibition that explained what happened to the Jews of Prague after WWII when the Communists were in charge. It was almost as bad as what happened under the Nazi occupation. 

Jerusalem Synagogue

     One of the final things we did in Prague before flying home was a hike. On one of the hills above the city and its river, there is a structure called the Petrin Tower. Originally built as a copy of Paris' Eiffel Tower it is much smaller but set on a high hill which actually makes it taller. Or at least that is what the people of Prague like to say. After a 30 minute walk through a forest, we climbed the 299 steps for a great view of the city. 

Petrin Tower

     On the way down, we stopped for bubble tea. Yes, we discovered a place that made tapioca pearls and popping flavored boba. Although they offered it in beer, I declined and just had it in green tea. We used it to wash down a Prague specialty of trdelnik which is a yeast dough sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar and wrapped around a wood dowel and cooked over a flame. Yum. 

     That evening we walked over to the Municipal House-Smetana Hall and heard the Boston Phil Youth Orchestra play Bartok, Dvorak and Shostakovich. They were very good and the hall was spectacular. Although it seemed that the audience had many family members, it did seem that the locals also come out to these concerts. 

     It's hard to believe it has already been three weeks of travel. This time, we must have planned it right because we were not anxious to return home. Except for the heat, this was a fabulous trip. 

Krakow - Part II

     Krakow, unlike other cities, requires a second part post. One of the main reasons we went to Krakow was because Lou's parents were born and lived in Lodz, Poland and survived the Holocaust. Krakow is the best preserved city in Poland as it was not bombed heavily during the war because the Germans used it as a regional capital and industrial base - hence Schindler's Factory. We wanted a sense of old Poland. Also, it is the closest major city to the remains of the largest and most well-know concentration camps - Auschwitz-Birkenau. We visited and toured what is left.

Tracks in Auschwitz II Birkenau

The bus drove us the 90 minutes to the site and while in transit, we watched a film that used archival footage of liberation in 1945 by the Red Army and and interview with a Red Army photographer who was present at liberation. And then we were there. Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau are several kilometers apart and we began with Auschwitz I. It has the most preserved buildings a number of which are used as museums. Walking around in 95 degree heat with many, many other visitors, was an effort and contributed to the experience of actually seeing the relics (executions walls, starvation cells, "hospital" where gruesome medical experiments were performed and torture cells)  of this history which we have heard so much about. No matter what you think you know, it is shocking and revolting to see where it happened - at least in this one place. Our bus brought us from Auschwitz I to Birkenau and we toured there. There is not much left in the way of buildings, a few barracks stand reconstructed as an example. We saw remnants of the crematoriums which the Germans blew up when they knew the Red Army was about to arrive, a railway car, a guard tower, the pit of human ashes. At the end of the iconic railroad tracks past the dividing platform where those who were transported here were told to go to the gas chamber or to live a short time longer to benefit the Nazi cause there is a memorial for the victims. This was the death camp. 2/3 of those who came here died in the gas chambers immediately. Most of the others went into forced labor fed 900 calories a day. It didn't take long to die. Auschwitz I was mostly for the Poles and political prisoners. Auschwitz II or Birkenau was to kill the Jews. more efficiently than could ever be done at Auschwitz I.

Execution Wall Auschwitz I

Foundation of Crematorium Auschwitz II

Part of the Memorial

Barracks

Ashes of the victims

          All of this is surrounded by idyllic Polish countryside now dotted with villages and farms. It was a quiet ride back to Krakow. It is not the easiest place to visit but neither of us could come to this part of Europe without making the pilgrimage to honor all the victims of this genocide. I know people say we need to visit and see to remember so that this will not happen again but it seems that humans have a long and documented history where genocide happens again and again. Cambodia, Rwanda, Tutsi and Hutu, Shia and Sunni, indigenous populations on several continents including our own, Armenia, and more. I could go on; there are many, many more. It's hard to find the words. Sad? Angry? They hardly seem adequate. 

And when we woke we were in Krakow!

Krakow - Part I
     Let me just say, I have NEVER been in a place that was so Catholic. For those who know me, that is saying a lot. There is a church on every block. There are many priests and nuns walking the streets in full habits. Lots of people wear religious jewelry. Pretty much everyone you talk to is Catholic. The Church is a dominant cultural entity. Local boy Pope John Paul II (Pope from 1978-2005), newly beatified, is a hero with a museum, statues and iconography because of how he stood up to the Communists and gave hope to the opposition. However, his conservatism and lack of response on priestly pedophilia did not endear him to all.

     I understand why Lou's mother first tried to enroll him in a Catholic school when they first came to the U.S. The principal who was a nun explained that they taught religion in this school. His mother said, yes, she understood, didn't every school? Well, no, Mrs. Silberman, send little Louie to public school - no religious instruction there. I do not think it has changed much in the last 60 years in many parts of Poland.

     Our first overnight train - in separate, private compartments as in Lou in one and me in another (!) brought us to Krakow early in the morning. Our little pension was a 10 minute walk from the train station and we have become quite adept at transitioning from place to place without much fuss. 

     We are staying at a cute and very welcoming pension in Old Town right off yet another magnificent square framed by two churches, one big and one little, the Cloth Hall where the cloth sellers had their stalls in the Middle Ages and the Town Tower. Cafes and fountains surround the square along with a dozen or more beautiful white carriages drawn by two beautifully decked out horses, waiting to trot tourists around the Old Town in romantic style. 

On the hour, a bugler stationed at the top of the left tower plays the hejnat song. According to legend, during the Tartar invasion in 1241, a watchman saw the enemy approaching and sounded the alarm. Before he could finish, an arrow pierced his throat. So even today, the song stops abruptly part way through and then finishes. 

Saint Mary's Church

     This city also has a Jewish Quarter but this one has empty synagogues in various states of disrepair. It probably would have been better to take a guided walking tour of this district rather than following the one in our guidebook. Maybe we would have gotten more. There is a lot of history here, but it is a bit dusty.What we did learn is that this quarter has become sort of hipster district. This is where the cool restaurants are and the young people hang out. I guess it is hard for an area to maintain a cultural identity when so much of the population was wiped out. The guidebook says there are only about 200 Jews left in Krakow today out of a city of 750,000. What made the greatest impression on us was the Schindler Factory Museum which is across the river from the Jewish Quarter. Yes, this is where Oskar Schindler had his factory. It does tell the story of how Schindler protected Jewish workers but it broadens the story and tells what it was like in Krakow during Nazi occupation with film footage, interviews with survivors and residents of Krakow during that time, replicas of everyday places and exhibits about the Podgorze ghetto and its horrific conditions. 

 Schindler's desk 

     That night we decided to eat at a restaurant where the dinner included a performance of Klezmer music. Lou felt like he had fallen into some time warp because the food was so familiar (soup and Purim chicken). The musicians (violin/singer, stand-up base and accordion) were very good but we didn't feel it was "real" Klezmer. No regrets about hearing live music, but discounted a bit for lack of authenticity. 

     Another night we bought tickets for a Chopin concert in a small hotel venue that used to be a palace. Chopin is Poland's contribution to the classical composer pantheon. It was lovely music, not necessarily played at the highest level, but worth our time. 

     There are some iconic foods: pierogi (Poland's answer to ravioli), beer, soups, street pretzels called obvarzarnek, lots and lots of meat which we did not frequently partake of and wonderful, cheap breakfasts full of eggs. There are these Milk Bars which are cheap, cafeteria-style places to order a basic meal. They were pretty meat-centric, so we didn't partake. Also, they were not air-conditioned and did not have sidewalk seating, so going inside and eating a heavy meal in mid-90's temperatures did not seem like something we HAD to do. Food and restaurant prices are astonishingly low. Our last evening we ate at a place called Kogol Mogol (!) and had a three course meal with drinks for a total of $40 for both of us. 

     Our last day there, after a visit to Auschwitz, the temperature still hovered in the mid-90's. We decided the best thing to do was another trip out of the city to tour the Wieliczka Salt Mine. It is deep underground and COOL. We took this elevator down and then toured lower and lower eventually winding up over 400 feet under the surface. The mine has been producing salt since the 13th century and has had a couple of famous visitors over the years including Copernicus and Pope John Paul II. To while away the time, a few miners spent time carving. They carved rooms including a large chapel, statues, gnomes, a frieze of the Last Supper, You can get married here or have a big party deep underground where you don't have to worry about bad weather spoiling your celebratory plans. You can even come to hear Mass just about every day if you come early enough. Told you it was a Catholic country. It was a lovely relief to be comfortably cool underground for several hours. The Salt Mine was interesting but I might have found many, many things interesting to get out of the heat. 

Yes, it is carved out of the salt walls.

Made of salt crystals

Salty pool underground

     The last thing we walked to see in the old part of Krakow was the grounds of Wawel Castle. On the top of the prerequisite hill is the castle, a cafe and some museums surrounded by a wall. It has one little quirk that other castles don't. Apparently, a corner of the courtyard of this particular castle is one of the seven chakra points on earth along with Delhi, Delphi, Jerusalen, Mecca, Rome and Velehrad - wherever that is. Lou and I stood over there but didn't feel anything even though it is supposed to be a powerful energy field. On the edge of the grounds there is a marvelous view of the outskirts of Krakow over the Vistula River. 

     The best time of the day is the night when it finally cools down to the high 70's. That's when the whole city comes out to walk around, eat ice cream, sit in cafes, drink beer and people watch. The main square is full of people, all the main buildings and churches are lit up, horse drawn carriages clop around and street vendors try to sell little spinning devices that fly high up in the air emitting a blue light. Krakow is worth the effort. 

     

Vienna (Wein) Austria - History, music and cafes

In two hours, a lovely, modern efficient train whisked us to Vienna for the next leg of our journey and by late afternoon we checked in to our next residence located on Graben right in the heart of Old Town. The prices just doubled from The Czech Republic and Hungary. The Danube becomes the Donau and it's all bitte and danke, whipped cream and music. As we have only 2 days and nights here, again it is a matter of choosing what can be done. So, we decided to concentrate on music and the Hapsburgs with generous stops at cafes to rest our weary feet and eat and drink some of Austria's iconic offerings.

We walked a block and stopped in at Buffet Trzesniewski and grabbed a few open-faced sandwiches and a drink for a light lunch and then started orienting ourselves to Vienna.

The next day we tried to get an overview of Vienna by taking one of those Red Bus Tours. If nothing else, it did give us a sense of what lies a bit beyond the Ringstrasse including this weird house called the Hundertwasser that looked like something Gaudi could have done.

There are churches everywhere. There are music venues everywhere. There are palaces, now museums everywhere. The first night we tried to sit outside the Opera House and listen to the free live broadcast of Fidelio by Beethoven. But with the noise from the cars and horse carriages clopping by and the fact that it was not dark which made the screen difficult to see, we gave up and decided to buy tickets for our next concert.
We elected to hear the Weiner Symphoniker in same place where the Vienna Philharmonic plays. The Phil is on tour. The venue is as much of a draw as the music. It is the same arrangement as the hall where the Boston Philharmonic plays and was ornate and beautiful. We heard some Hayden, Mendelssohn, Dubussy and Ravel.

We even were able to drop into a beautiful church for its daily 30 minute organ recital. We couldn't

see the organist but were entertained by the amazing surroundings. Plus it wasn't 95 degrees inside the church - yay!

Interior of the Musikverein

We also visited a great little museum called the House of Music that highlighted all of Vienna's homeboys in a really interesting and approachable way. We learned of the big 6: Beethoven, Strauss, Hayden, Schubert, Mozart and Mahler. We even got an interactive dose of the physics of music and a bit on composition and conducting. I was tempted but did not push a bunch of young teens out of the way at the last interactive station. There was a screen with the Vienna Philarmonic musicians seated on stage and you could pick up a baton and try to conduct them playing Eine Kleine Nacht Musik. If you screwed it up, the orchestra grumbled and boo-ed you, if you did well, they clicked their batons on their music stands. It was fun to watch.

We did our own evening walking tour of Vienna to see the exteriors of all the major buildings. There is one building, the huge New Palace which lies in between the Hofburg Palace and the two major museums across the Ringstrasse, that made an impression by virtue of history. It was on the balcony of this Palace that Hitler addressed 200,000 Viennese gathered here to celebrate the Anschluss - the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938.

New Palace where Hitler spoke from the balcony

The next day we tackled the Hofburg Palace and jumped into the Hapsburgs. We saw amazing

collections of crystal, silver, china (when they progressed beyond solid silver and gold plates) but the highlight was the Sisi Museum. I don't even remember hearing about Empress Elizabeth called Sisi (1837-1898) married to Franz Josef at age 15. She was a woman who did not live easily in her age. She was an athlete and hated the constraints of the court. She was beautiful and really smart and increasingly withdrawn after the death of a son. In the end she was murdered by an Italian anarchist while she was away on one of her many trips away from Vienna. She was the Princess Diana of her age.

We also spent several hours walking through the Kunsthihistoriches Museum trying to take in masterpiece after masterpiece by Raphael, Caravaggio, Velaszquez, Rembrandt, Bruegels and more. It was a bit overwhelming but worth it. 

Before heading out on the overnight train to Krakow, we couldn't resist get standing room tickets at the Opera which we had toured that afternoon. For 3 Euro (about 4 dollars) we stood leaning against railings with the supertitle screens right in front of us and listened to the first act of Don Giovanni. Pretty great deal.

Interspersed with all this sightseeing, we did spend quality time in a number of Viennese cafes and restaurants and I must say, they are what they are cracked up to be. Sitting with a piece of Sacher torte in the city where it was invented with a lovely cup of hot chocolate or coffee, is hard to beat. 

There is still so much to see and do that we barely touched the surface of Vienna. Guess that means we will have to return some day. 

Beautiful Budapest - post bike tour

     Our first impression of this city on the Danube was solely of our hotel and it's fabulous showers. After cleaning up we met with another 6 members of our group and headed down the street to a restaurant close to our hotel for an early dinner. No one eats early here so we had the restaurant to ourselves. Lou and I decided to explore some of the city as it began to get dark and the buildings and bridges turned on their lights.  What a gorgeous city, maybe the prettiest we have seen so far - at least at night.

Parliament Building in Budapest at night

     We strolled across the Chain Bridge and looked into the magnificent lobby of the 5 star hotel in the Gresham Palace. We wandered around the streets and stood admiring St. Istvan's Basilica as the sun set. There was a festival going on in many of the squares around the city so we wandered through the crowds observing. On the spur of the moment, we decided to ride on the Prague Eye which is called the Island Eye.  It revolves high above the city so the lit buildings are spectacular. The next day we decided to visit the Jewish Quarter. There was a huge Jewish community in Hungary (450,000) and 200,000 lived in Budapest before  WW II. The Nazi's didn't start deporting the Jews until 1944. By the end of the war, the largest percentage of Jewish victims came from Hungary.  The most imposing structure connected to the Jews in this city is the Great Synagogue which actually was appropriated as the main Nazi office in this city because they knew the Allies would not bomb it.

Exterior of the Great Synagogue

Pulpit (!) in the Great Synagogue

Interior of the Great Synagogue

     It doesn't look like a traditional synagogue. The Budapest Jews wanted to be part of the larger community so they had an architect who designed it to look more like a church.  It even has a magnificent organ that was played by Franz Liszt when the building was dedicated.  There was a small homegrown festival going on in the quarter and we strolled along with a lot of locals until we had to sit at a cafe and collect ourselves and try to cool off with lemonade and hummus. It does pose a challenge to walk and walk and walk in 95 degree weather so we smartened up and started hopping on and off public transit. It helps. At night, it cools down around 9 or 10 and then it is lovely stolling around the city that is lit up light a fairy tale. 

     The city is divided by the Danube River into two parts: Buda and Pest. The castle and St. Mattias' Church are on the hill on the Buda side. The Town Center, Jewish Quarter, and Leopold Town are on the Pest side. 

     The Castle Hill area is impressive, even though it was hotter than hot. We walked from the statue of the Turul Bird past the Royal Castle and Museums to Mattias Church. We walked through this impressive structure and climbed the towers to view the Ecclesiastical art. Outside the church there is a seven pointy domed structure called the Fisherman's Bastion with an incredible view of the city. 

Turol Bird

Mattias Church

Fisherman's Bastian

     As you might imagine, food is an important part of our tour. The countries we are visiting are primarily known for meat and potatoes and beer. We love the potatoes but aren't really big meat folks or drinkers either but we are doing our best to step up to the plate on the beer part. On the bike tour, the guides provided lots of salads and fruit and when we ate out, we were able to order things that worked for our tastes. Here, we decided to jump in and see what the Food Hall scene is like. We made the pilgrimage to the Great Market Hall and walked through three levels of food and souvenir vendors. 

Market Hall

Pickled everything

We stopped to eat a freshly made Langos which is really kind of a fried bread with various toppings. We opted for the simple one with powdered sugar. 

     There was one iconic site we just didn't make it to. Budapest is known for its baths. There are several around the city and are supposed to be a must-visit. The trouble is that the temperature was 95 degrees and these are thermal baths. It just wasn't appealing. We will just have to return when it's cooler and try them then. 

     We have learned that we can't see everything a city has to offer and will just have to settle for what we can manage: touring the Opera House in all its baroque splendor, going to the New York Cafe full of gilt and mirrors built in 1894 for a drink and pastry, walking through Franz Lizst Square and along the shopping district along Andrassy Ut. We did not get to the many museums and squares chronicling Budapest's communist past. 

New York Cafe

Interior of the Opera House

Vents under each seat at the Opera.  The ducts lead to the Orchestra pit and made for great acoustics.

Budapest is a truly beautiful city with impressive architecture and culture. It's easy to see history in its squares and streets.