WELCOME...
... to the Viking Cruise travel log. If you were on the cruise, Ellie and I hope that you enjoyed it as much as we did, and that you'll enjoy these reminiscences. (You can skip the first entries to the beginning of the cruise if you want, and ignore the family entries at the end.) Please note that you can enlarge the images simply by clicking on them. Meantime, as they say, anchors aweigh!
Heathrow - May 18, 2007
Well, here we are in Merrie Olde, en route to Munich for the first lap of our journey. Well, it's hardly Olde. This is Heathrow Airport. And not really very Merrie. Long lines everywhere, particularly at security. Strictly enforced rules. Ellie was carrying her side bag AND a very small handbag, and the sign said one bag only. Before being allowed to enter security, she had to put the hand bag into the side bag--to create... yes! one bag. The airport at Heathrow is a veritable rabbit warren and a polyglot, so many human beings headed importantly, like ourselves, in their various directions. Across the way from where I sit at my pay computer (two pounds in the slot!) I see Harrods of Knightsbridge--the airport version. Somehow it doesn't feel like the "home" I emigrated from so many years ago.
We had an easy flight, though. Ellie had bought our tickets months ago, and thanks to her foresight we were able to upgrade to business class for the transatlantic leg of our trip. United seemed to have improved quite a bit since our last lengthy trip. Good food, pleasant service, easy access to flim and music. All in all, the time went very fast. Grateful for that. We're waiting, now, for our Lufthansa flight to Munich. Ellie is perusing the shops while PaL sits at his little rental computer, posting this note to The Buddha Diaries. (I was grateful also, this morning early, for a good half hour's meditation on the plane. It makes all the difference to the waiting in lines!)
I'll post more later, from Germany, assuming I can find the access, which should be no problem. And the time, of course. That could be harder. Good wishes to all Buddha Diaries friends!
PS I notice there are several comments on yesterday's entries. Thank you! Please understand, though, that I won't be responding very much from Europe. I love to hear from you, always read you--and often respond. But patience, please, for the next three weeks! Cheers, PaL
We had an easy flight, though. Ellie had bought our tickets months ago, and thanks to her foresight we were able to upgrade to business class for the transatlantic leg of our trip. United seemed to have improved quite a bit since our last lengthy trip. Good food, pleasant service, easy access to flim and music. All in all, the time went very fast. Grateful for that. We're waiting, now, for our Lufthansa flight to Munich. Ellie is perusing the shops while PaL sits at his little rental computer, posting this note to The Buddha Diaries. (I was grateful also, this morning early, for a good half hour's meditation on the plane. It makes all the difference to the waiting in lines!)
I'll post more later, from Germany, assuming I can find the access, which should be no problem. And the time, of course. That could be harder. Good wishes to all Buddha Diaries friends!
PS I notice there are several comments on yesterday's entries. Thank you! Please understand, though, that I won't be responding very much from Europe. I love to hear from you, always read you--and often respond. But patience, please, for the next three weeks! Cheers, PaL
Munich - May 19, 2007
From London to Munich via Lufthansa--another easy flight. I wanted to brush up on my German—or at least to find out whether it still existed—and borrowed a copy of Die Zeit from my somewhat unfriendly neighbor to read an article about Paul Wolfowitz and the World Bank mess. I read. I understood. Well, most of it. It has been forty-five years since I lived in Germany and at that time I spoke the language fluently. I thought I’d try out a few words viva voce with my neighbor, but he made it clear he didn’t want to talk. Ah well.
Munich Airport. New. Squeaky clean, as they say, from end to end. Compared with the rabbit warrens of Heathrow, a marvel of clarity in design. We retrieved our bags with ease and took a taxi into town—probably a needless extravagance, but we had been on the road--well, mostly in the air—for close to twenty hours by now and it seemed like the easy thing to do. Here's a picture from the taxi.
The words on the triumphal arch say: "To the Bavarian Armies." Well, that was another war, another day.
Our hotel is right in the center of town, across from the Hauptbahnhof—the main railroad station. It's a good, practical, comfortable place for our first nights away. Le Meridien. I'm not sure why it should have a French name, but there you are, that's globalization for you. This is 21st century Europe. We use Euros. (I note with a smile that my computer does not believe that "euro"is a word.) We trade names and brands and languages without respect for borders. We trade in the same money.
Anyway, we have a comfortable room, as I say. For Buddha Diaries friends, note that we found, in our bedside table drawer, alongside the familiar Good Book, a copy of "The Teachings of the Buddha." So we felt safe. We felt right at home.
At nine o’clock in the evening, we took a brief walk through the city’s busy streets, bright with neon and other artificial lights, busy with traffic and swarming with people. Many, many languages, many faces. Electronic games arcades and strip joints, fast food stalls and upscale restaurants, department stores and cigar shops, hotels… A mecca of our 21st century civilization.
We found a pleasant restaurant for dinner—high ceilings, elegant furniture design, drapery and lighting—and struggled a bit with the menu with the help of a nice young waitress. We shared a very tasty beet soup, and Ellie went for a simple Caesar salad while I indulged in a pasta dish with strips of very tender beef. Here's Ellie, waiting for her salad.
Total: about sixty euros. I have yet to work out an easy formula for approximate comparison of values. We paid $200 for E130 at the airport. Which means, I guess, that E1.3 is equal to $2. So what did our meal cost us in dollars? You tell me. My brain is currently too non-functional to work it out.
We went to sleep easily with the help of a little magic pill and woke this morning nicely at 7:45 AM, in time for a half-hour’s meditation. Wrote this entry. Ellie is just now stirring. More later.
Munich Airport. New. Squeaky clean, as they say, from end to end. Compared with the rabbit warrens of Heathrow, a marvel of clarity in design. We retrieved our bags with ease and took a taxi into town—probably a needless extravagance, but we had been on the road--well, mostly in the air—for close to twenty hours by now and it seemed like the easy thing to do. Here's a picture from the taxi.
The words on the triumphal arch say: "To the Bavarian Armies." Well, that was another war, another day.
Our hotel is right in the center of town, across from the Hauptbahnhof—the main railroad station. It's a good, practical, comfortable place for our first nights away. Le Meridien. I'm not sure why it should have a French name, but there you are, that's globalization for you. This is 21st century Europe. We use Euros. (I note with a smile that my computer does not believe that "euro"is a word.) We trade names and brands and languages without respect for borders. We trade in the same money.
Anyway, we have a comfortable room, as I say. For Buddha Diaries friends, note that we found, in our bedside table drawer, alongside the familiar Good Book, a copy of "The Teachings of the Buddha." So we felt safe. We felt right at home.
At nine o’clock in the evening, we took a brief walk through the city’s busy streets, bright with neon and other artificial lights, busy with traffic and swarming with people. Many, many languages, many faces. Electronic games arcades and strip joints, fast food stalls and upscale restaurants, department stores and cigar shops, hotels… A mecca of our 21st century civilization.
We found a pleasant restaurant for dinner—high ceilings, elegant furniture design, drapery and lighting—and struggled a bit with the menu with the help of a nice young waitress. We shared a very tasty beet soup, and Ellie went for a simple Caesar salad while I indulged in a pasta dish with strips of very tender beef. Here's Ellie, waiting for her salad.
Total: about sixty euros. I have yet to work out an easy formula for approximate comparison of values. We paid $200 for E130 at the airport. Which means, I guess, that E1.3 is equal to $2. So what did our meal cost us in dollars? You tell me. My brain is currently too non-functional to work it out.
We went to sleep easily with the help of a little magic pill and woke this morning nicely at 7:45 AM, in time for a half-hour’s meditation. Wrote this entry. Ellie is just now stirring. More later.
Munich, Day 2 - May 20, 2007
Breakfast in our hotel room this morning. We slept well, with a little help from our pharmaceutical friends, and woke in reasonable time, but felt inclined to laze around for a while. I managed to get online and post my blog, plus pictures, so I felt accomplished. Then we ventured out to view the town.
First thing was to master the tram system,
which proved remarkably easy. A short walk through the train station—a notably clean and well organized affair. Looking at the destinations of the sleek machines in orderly line-up at the platforms, Ellie began to dream of trips to Paris, Venice, Rome… Emerging at the far side, we found the tram stop that we'd been told would take us out to the fabulous, 17th century Schloss Nymphenburg and its surrounding park. Take a look:
We found a long elegant approach to the sumptuous palace, along waterways graced with dozens of swans and well-stocked with fish.
Armed with tickets to both the palace and the park, we decided on the latter first, and took a long walk through the formal gardens to where they gave way to natural forests,
lakes and meadows, dotted here and there with little “burgs”—a “pagoda” designed in Chinese style; a hunting lodge complete with chapel, one of the first, apparently, to be designed specifically as a “ruin”; a summery bathhouse with a huge, sunken indoor swimming pool dating from the eighteenth century; a lovely single-story lodge with richly baroque décor;
and a carriage house with huge, elaborately gilded carriages and sleds for the aristocratic family who once owned and lived in this extraordinary estate. It was when we reached the carriage house with its extravagant display of ostentatious transportation--not to mention the porcelain collection, upstairs--that I began to wonder: who did these people think they were? I like to think I would have been among the revolutionaries!
Sated with glorious excess, we returned, via tram again, to the city center, where we walked from the Karolinenplatz with its dark obelisk to the Koenigsplatz,
a formal, neoclassical civic center whose vast open plazas and temple-like buildings evidently appealed to Hitler’s sense of pomp: it was here that the Nazi movement first took root and power. We passed an archeological site
where the basement of the “Brown House,” the Nazi party headquarters, was revealed, along with posters reminding the contemporary citizens of Munich that they still have some catching up to do with Berlin in un-burying the too easily forgotten past. Ellie and I recalled our visit to the Terror Museum there, in Berlin, where they had dug out the old Gestapo headquarters from the rubble of World War II to act as a museum and a memorial to those who were imprisoned and tortured there.
Right on the corner of the Koenigsplatz, we came to the museum we had been looking for—the Lehnbachhaus, former residence of the artist Franz von Lehnbach, now the repository of a stunning collection of art from the Blaue Reiter group from the early twentieth century: Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Paul Klee, Jawlensky, and many others whose names are less well known. As always, I was humbled to find outstanding paintings by artists whose names I did not even know. The small museum—a comfortable size to visit in a couple of hours and come away enriched—was also astounding in the adventurousness of its installation design. (I liked particulary the neon work of a contemporary artist on the facade of the building:
the words in blue neon--if you enlarge the image by clicking on it--read "You can imagine the opposite.") The floor of the Jawlensky room, for example, was slathered in neon rainbow colors echoing the colors he favored in his work
which reached up the walls and playfully splashed over a mock painting, complete with mock descriptive label attached to the wall. Elsewhere, in other galleries, the walls were brilliant pink, blue, green, and even a camouflage pattern of black and white.
Besides the Blaue Reiter collection, we found an interesting contemporary wing, with works by Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter and other luminaries, along with some interesting work by newer artists like Erwin Wurm, whose playful constructions using common articles of clothing are always surprising and delightful. We were the last ones out of the museum at six, and spent a few more minutes
in the delightful, still sunlit garden that surrounds it. Then a long walk down broad, tree-lined avenues to the Alte Stadt, the old city—now much reconstructed,
following the destruction of World War II—and spent a couple of hours wandering the streets.
We sat down for dinner in a noisy Munich beer hall filled with raucous football fans—celebrating some event of which we seemed to be the only ones uninformed. Good, simple fare: tasty Wiener sausages accompanied by a sweet-and-sour cabbage salad and a German potato salad; and a quick stop for gelato on the way back to our hotel.
First thing was to master the tram system,
which proved remarkably easy. A short walk through the train station—a notably clean and well organized affair. Looking at the destinations of the sleek machines in orderly line-up at the platforms, Ellie began to dream of trips to Paris, Venice, Rome… Emerging at the far side, we found the tram stop that we'd been told would take us out to the fabulous, 17th century Schloss Nymphenburg and its surrounding park. Take a look:
We found a long elegant approach to the sumptuous palace, along waterways graced with dozens of swans and well-stocked with fish.
Armed with tickets to both the palace and the park, we decided on the latter first, and took a long walk through the formal gardens to where they gave way to natural forests,
lakes and meadows, dotted here and there with little “burgs”—a “pagoda” designed in Chinese style; a hunting lodge complete with chapel, one of the first, apparently, to be designed specifically as a “ruin”; a summery bathhouse with a huge, sunken indoor swimming pool dating from the eighteenth century; a lovely single-story lodge with richly baroque décor;
and a carriage house with huge, elaborately gilded carriages and sleds for the aristocratic family who once owned and lived in this extraordinary estate. It was when we reached the carriage house with its extravagant display of ostentatious transportation--not to mention the porcelain collection, upstairs--that I began to wonder: who did these people think they were? I like to think I would have been among the revolutionaries!
Sated with glorious excess, we returned, via tram again, to the city center, where we walked from the Karolinenplatz with its dark obelisk to the Koenigsplatz,
a formal, neoclassical civic center whose vast open plazas and temple-like buildings evidently appealed to Hitler’s sense of pomp: it was here that the Nazi movement first took root and power. We passed an archeological site
where the basement of the “Brown House,” the Nazi party headquarters, was revealed, along with posters reminding the contemporary citizens of Munich that they still have some catching up to do with Berlin in un-burying the too easily forgotten past. Ellie and I recalled our visit to the Terror Museum there, in Berlin, where they had dug out the old Gestapo headquarters from the rubble of World War II to act as a museum and a memorial to those who were imprisoned and tortured there.
Right on the corner of the Koenigsplatz, we came to the museum we had been looking for—the Lehnbachhaus, former residence of the artist Franz von Lehnbach, now the repository of a stunning collection of art from the Blaue Reiter group from the early twentieth century: Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Paul Klee, Jawlensky, and many others whose names are less well known. As always, I was humbled to find outstanding paintings by artists whose names I did not even know. The small museum—a comfortable size to visit in a couple of hours and come away enriched—was also astounding in the adventurousness of its installation design. (I liked particulary the neon work of a contemporary artist on the facade of the building:
the words in blue neon--if you enlarge the image by clicking on it--read "You can imagine the opposite.") The floor of the Jawlensky room, for example, was slathered in neon rainbow colors echoing the colors he favored in his work
which reached up the walls and playfully splashed over a mock painting, complete with mock descriptive label attached to the wall. Elsewhere, in other galleries, the walls were brilliant pink, blue, green, and even a camouflage pattern of black and white.
Besides the Blaue Reiter collection, we found an interesting contemporary wing, with works by Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter and other luminaries, along with some interesting work by newer artists like Erwin Wurm, whose playful constructions using common articles of clothing are always surprising and delightful. We were the last ones out of the museum at six, and spent a few more minutes
in the delightful, still sunlit garden that surrounds it. Then a long walk down broad, tree-lined avenues to the Alte Stadt, the old city—now much reconstructed,
following the destruction of World War II—and spent a couple of hours wandering the streets.
We sat down for dinner in a noisy Munich beer hall filled with raucous football fans—celebrating some event of which we seemed to be the only ones uninformed. Good, simple fare: tasty Wiener sausages accompanied by a sweet-and-sour cabbage salad and a German potato salad; and a quick stop for gelato on the way back to our hotel.
From Regensburg, Germany - May 22, 2007
(A note: I’ve discovered that online time on board is intermittent at best, and costs about $30 an hour! At first it seemed like a lost cause, since I’m too cheap to pay that kind of rate. Further inquiry revealed that the hour could be pro-rated, five minutes here, ten minutes there over the course of the cruise, so I might well spring for that. Posting pictures, though, does take me time, so you might not see too many, if at all, for the next few days. Posting in the right place takes even longer, so I'll have to make do. Please exercise your usual patience. More to come…)
First, back to Munich, early morning. Ellie woke late, after a long time finding it hard to get to sleep last night. I woke early. 5AM. It’s not hard for me to get to sleep, but very hard to sleep much past 5 or 5:30—even, it seems, with the time change. I got up, did my half-hour's meditation, and downloaded yesterday’s pictures to the laptop. Then started on the text of the blog entry for Saturday. Then went back to bed and tried to sleep some more. No luck. Then read a bit of “The Teachings of the Buddha.” Then gave that up and got up again and found the hotel’s connection to the Internet, got online, and posted the blog. This took quite a while because there were so many pictures I wanted to upload, and I’m not too skilled at the process yet. Then I waited for Ellie to wake up.
We had a pleasant buffet breakfast down in the hotel restaurant, and returned to our room to repack everything ready for our half-past-noon departure from the train station across the street. What a chore! Ever notice that the suitcases seem to get smaller every day when you’re traveling? How does that happen—especially if you’re not buying anything in particular. Ah well, we finally got everything stuffed back into the bags and had time to spare to watch a few minutes of a fascinating television report on Scientology from the BBC.
An easy walk across the street to catch our train, which left the station precisely, to the minute, on time. Scary. Wasn’t it Adolf Eichmann who made sure the trains ran on time? And unkind thought. But five minutes later, we were passing merrily through Dachau… Hmmm. And here I am now on board a comfortable train, riding through a landscape of exquisite rural green fields, woods, and hedgerows, and bringing the text of the blog up to date while I have the chance.
We completed our train journey without incident at Nuremberg station, and were about to search amongst our papers for the address for the place to meet our cruise boat when we were accosted by a pleasant young man who had noticed the red “Viking Cruise” tags on our baggage. We thought he might be a fellow traveler, but no, he turned out to be none other than the cruise manager, Frank, himself on business in town, who made things easy for us in finding the address and a taxi to take us there.
We were soon on board and duly registered, and over a buffet lunch met up with a couple from Arizona who recommended a visit to the Documentation Center of the Nazi Party Rally Grounds: it was here that Hitler staged his now infamous pre-war national rallies, to summon the sinews of all good Germans to support his odious cause. A taxi brought us there, and we were astounded by the sight of the immense stadium building
which would have dwarfed the Coliseum in ancient Rome if it had ever been completed. It wasn't. Proportionate to Hitler's demented ego, the massive ruin survived him, having never once been put to use.
The Documentation Center was, as promised, a detailed and painstaking documentation of the intended role of this architectural relic, and of the city of Nuremberg in promoting the Nazi agenda through its annual rallies. The permanent exhibition is aptly named “Fascination and Terror”, though it’s hard, these days, to understand the “fascination” of the shrill rants of that loathsome little man with the absurd moustache. To watch the story of the spell he cast on countless numbers of his fellow citizens in order to lead them into war and genocide is to be puzzled, all over again, by the perversity of human nature. Most pleasing was to see the numbers of German museum visitors and the seriousness with which they gave their attention to this dark episode in their past.
The center was well worth the visit, then. Perhaps the best view came at the end of the carefully planned museum tour, where the visitor is led out onto a cantilevered platform, reaching out over a corner of what was to have been the vast amphitheater, where the multitudes were to gather to salute the Fuehrer and venerate the Vaterland…
Such grandiosity! As Byron wrote, “Look on these works, ye mighty, and despair.” “Ozymandias.” Did I get the quote right? Pretty close I think.
Back to the boat for a quick shower—it’s unbelievably warm here for this time of year, and the shower was a necessity—and off to the general assembly of our fellow passengers where our own leaders gave forth about the details of our cruise, including our friend the cruise manager, Frank. Then a good, four-course dinner in the spacious dining room at the stern of the boat and, afterwards, a quick tour of the boat in the gathering dusk, and a brisk walk along the bank of the canal which will lead us, soon, into the Danube.
An early bed tonight, as soon as I have finished and saved this entry.
MONDAY
Another short night of sleep for me. It must be the time change. I woke at half past three and managed only to doze until 5:30, when I climbed up to the upper deck for my half-hour’s meditation. I guess one of the benefits of the practice is that I don’t lie there and fret too much when I can’t sleep. Instead of “tossing and turning,” I watch the breath. If I manage to do it right…
A good buffet breakfast in the dining room, just the two of us at a small table at the back. Very pleasant. Then back to the cabin for a shower and change ready for the 8:30 departure, on three buses, for a tour of Nuremberg.. The tour took us first to where we went yesterday, the Nazi rally area where we saw, this time, not only the coliseum-like structure with the newly-added Documentation Center, but also the vast Zeppelin Field where the great marches took place and where Hitler strutted his stuff before the adoring masses. You could almost hear the roar of ten thousand ghosts.
The tour led us on, actually driving into that vast, unfinished stadium we viewed yesterday from above, and then into the city of Nuremberg, where we learned a great deal about the history from our able tour guide. An important part of that history, of course, is its role as host to the trials of the WWII Nazi war criminals, and the prison where the most prominent among them were executed. It was here that Hermann Goering escaped the hangman’s noose by poisoning himself three hours before he was due to make his final appearance on the scaffold. We made a stop at that famous courthouse,
and afterwards drove past the site of the executions. A little ghoulish, perhaps, but a healthy reminder of the history. And a challenging thought for Buddhists: is it justifiable for us, as a society, to do away with such monsters as Hitler and Goering? Is it perhaps even necessary, to purge the world of their presence?
We drove on. Passing by the medieval gates and moats that once protected the city, we stopped in the shadow of the ancient wall and de-bused for a tour of the castle, with its great view down over the panorama of city roofs.
Our walking tour took us down to one of the landmarks of the city, the Golden Founatin,
now no longer a fountain but a delight of gilded fantasy. From there, we were free to wander through the market place and the old town for an hour before returning on the buses to our boat. The ship set sail, if that’s the right term for what is basically an elaborate canal barge, while we ate our lunch, and is now proceeding through a series of locks in the direction of Regensburg.
This afternoon we watched the dramatic process of raising the twenty thousand ton boat a matter of some eighty feet to reach the higher stretch of canal above.
Later, we hear, the locks will lead us in the opposite direction, downhill—the waterman’s way to cross a mountain. For me, now , a good snooze to catch up on last night, and to escape the heat. It has been unusually hot for this time of year all day, as indeed it was yesterday. Global warming, I guess.
Post-snooze: a great nap—an hour’s good sleep, and I woke feeling much refreshed. Went up to the top deck around five o’clock and was grateful to find the it has cooled considerably. Sitting at the ship’s bow, I caught a pleasant breeze off the water as we moved gently along between the banks of the canal,
and enjoyed the gorgeous view: green rolling hills and farmlands, groves of trees and the occasional neat little village, small groups of houses and farm buildings and churches topped by spires or those Bavarian onion domes. Couldn’t stop taking pictures of this wonderfully picturesque landscape.
I took a shower and changed in time for the official greeting ceremony in the lounge, with free (!) champagne. (They really get you on the incidentals here!) There was a brief welcoming speech in German from our Captain, translated by our friend Frank, the cruise manager who had by happy chance met us at the train station, followed by introductions to the other department heads, including our executive chef.
Then it was time for the “Captain’s Dinner”—a five-course affair which started with a cold hors d’oeuvre and led through consomme and a hot hors d’oeuvre to the entree (I chose the veal, Ellie had fish) and a good dessert. Altogether, an excellent meal.
We took a moonlight stroll on the lower deck and stayed around for a short while to watch the evening’s entertainment—a glass-blowing demonstration which proved to be a good deal more entertaining than we might have thought. The glass-blower was extraordinarily adept and easy with his craft, and his patter was consistently cheery and interesting. His father, from whom he evidently learned his skill, goes across to the US frequently to pass on his skills at the Dale Chihuly school in the state of Washington. Despite the interest, though, we did not manage to hold out to the end, but chose instead to retire to our cabin for a reasonably early bed at 10:30PM.
First, back to Munich, early morning. Ellie woke late, after a long time finding it hard to get to sleep last night. I woke early. 5AM. It’s not hard for me to get to sleep, but very hard to sleep much past 5 or 5:30—even, it seems, with the time change. I got up, did my half-hour's meditation, and downloaded yesterday’s pictures to the laptop. Then started on the text of the blog entry for Saturday. Then went back to bed and tried to sleep some more. No luck. Then read a bit of “The Teachings of the Buddha.” Then gave that up and got up again and found the hotel’s connection to the Internet, got online, and posted the blog. This took quite a while because there were so many pictures I wanted to upload, and I’m not too skilled at the process yet. Then I waited for Ellie to wake up.
We had a pleasant buffet breakfast down in the hotel restaurant, and returned to our room to repack everything ready for our half-past-noon departure from the train station across the street. What a chore! Ever notice that the suitcases seem to get smaller every day when you’re traveling? How does that happen—especially if you’re not buying anything in particular. Ah well, we finally got everything stuffed back into the bags and had time to spare to watch a few minutes of a fascinating television report on Scientology from the BBC.
An easy walk across the street to catch our train, which left the station precisely, to the minute, on time. Scary. Wasn’t it Adolf Eichmann who made sure the trains ran on time? And unkind thought. But five minutes later, we were passing merrily through Dachau… Hmmm. And here I am now on board a comfortable train, riding through a landscape of exquisite rural green fields, woods, and hedgerows, and bringing the text of the blog up to date while I have the chance.
We completed our train journey without incident at Nuremberg station, and were about to search amongst our papers for the address for the place to meet our cruise boat when we were accosted by a pleasant young man who had noticed the red “Viking Cruise” tags on our baggage. We thought he might be a fellow traveler, but no, he turned out to be none other than the cruise manager, Frank, himself on business in town, who made things easy for us in finding the address and a taxi to take us there.
We were soon on board and duly registered, and over a buffet lunch met up with a couple from Arizona who recommended a visit to the Documentation Center of the Nazi Party Rally Grounds: it was here that Hitler staged his now infamous pre-war national rallies, to summon the sinews of all good Germans to support his odious cause. A taxi brought us there, and we were astounded by the sight of the immense stadium building
which would have dwarfed the Coliseum in ancient Rome if it had ever been completed. It wasn't. Proportionate to Hitler's demented ego, the massive ruin survived him, having never once been put to use.
The Documentation Center was, as promised, a detailed and painstaking documentation of the intended role of this architectural relic, and of the city of Nuremberg in promoting the Nazi agenda through its annual rallies. The permanent exhibition is aptly named “Fascination and Terror”, though it’s hard, these days, to understand the “fascination” of the shrill rants of that loathsome little man with the absurd moustache. To watch the story of the spell he cast on countless numbers of his fellow citizens in order to lead them into war and genocide is to be puzzled, all over again, by the perversity of human nature. Most pleasing was to see the numbers of German museum visitors and the seriousness with which they gave their attention to this dark episode in their past.
The center was well worth the visit, then. Perhaps the best view came at the end of the carefully planned museum tour, where the visitor is led out onto a cantilevered platform, reaching out over a corner of what was to have been the vast amphitheater, where the multitudes were to gather to salute the Fuehrer and venerate the Vaterland…
Such grandiosity! As Byron wrote, “Look on these works, ye mighty, and despair.” “Ozymandias.” Did I get the quote right? Pretty close I think.
Back to the boat for a quick shower—it’s unbelievably warm here for this time of year, and the shower was a necessity—and off to the general assembly of our fellow passengers where our own leaders gave forth about the details of our cruise, including our friend the cruise manager, Frank. Then a good, four-course dinner in the spacious dining room at the stern of the boat and, afterwards, a quick tour of the boat in the gathering dusk, and a brisk walk along the bank of the canal which will lead us, soon, into the Danube.
An early bed tonight, as soon as I have finished and saved this entry.
MONDAY
Another short night of sleep for me. It must be the time change. I woke at half past three and managed only to doze until 5:30, when I climbed up to the upper deck for my half-hour’s meditation. I guess one of the benefits of the practice is that I don’t lie there and fret too much when I can’t sleep. Instead of “tossing and turning,” I watch the breath. If I manage to do it right…
A good buffet breakfast in the dining room, just the two of us at a small table at the back. Very pleasant. Then back to the cabin for a shower and change ready for the 8:30 departure, on three buses, for a tour of Nuremberg.. The tour took us first to where we went yesterday, the Nazi rally area where we saw, this time, not only the coliseum-like structure with the newly-added Documentation Center, but also the vast Zeppelin Field where the great marches took place and where Hitler strutted his stuff before the adoring masses. You could almost hear the roar of ten thousand ghosts.
The tour led us on, actually driving into that vast, unfinished stadium we viewed yesterday from above, and then into the city of Nuremberg, where we learned a great deal about the history from our able tour guide. An important part of that history, of course, is its role as host to the trials of the WWII Nazi war criminals, and the prison where the most prominent among them were executed. It was here that Hermann Goering escaped the hangman’s noose by poisoning himself three hours before he was due to make his final appearance on the scaffold. We made a stop at that famous courthouse,
and afterwards drove past the site of the executions. A little ghoulish, perhaps, but a healthy reminder of the history. And a challenging thought for Buddhists: is it justifiable for us, as a society, to do away with such monsters as Hitler and Goering? Is it perhaps even necessary, to purge the world of their presence?
We drove on. Passing by the medieval gates and moats that once protected the city, we stopped in the shadow of the ancient wall and de-bused for a tour of the castle, with its great view down over the panorama of city roofs.
Our walking tour took us down to one of the landmarks of the city, the Golden Founatin,
now no longer a fountain but a delight of gilded fantasy. From there, we were free to wander through the market place and the old town for an hour before returning on the buses to our boat. The ship set sail, if that’s the right term for what is basically an elaborate canal barge, while we ate our lunch, and is now proceeding through a series of locks in the direction of Regensburg.
This afternoon we watched the dramatic process of raising the twenty thousand ton boat a matter of some eighty feet to reach the higher stretch of canal above.
Later, we hear, the locks will lead us in the opposite direction, downhill—the waterman’s way to cross a mountain. For me, now , a good snooze to catch up on last night, and to escape the heat. It has been unusually hot for this time of year all day, as indeed it was yesterday. Global warming, I guess.
Post-snooze: a great nap—an hour’s good sleep, and I woke feeling much refreshed. Went up to the top deck around five o’clock and was grateful to find the it has cooled considerably. Sitting at the ship’s bow, I caught a pleasant breeze off the water as we moved gently along between the banks of the canal,
and enjoyed the gorgeous view: green rolling hills and farmlands, groves of trees and the occasional neat little village, small groups of houses and farm buildings and churches topped by spires or those Bavarian onion domes. Couldn’t stop taking pictures of this wonderfully picturesque landscape.
I took a shower and changed in time for the official greeting ceremony in the lounge, with free (!) champagne. (They really get you on the incidentals here!) There was a brief welcoming speech in German from our Captain, translated by our friend Frank, the cruise manager who had by happy chance met us at the train station, followed by introductions to the other department heads, including our executive chef.
Then it was time for the “Captain’s Dinner”—a five-course affair which started with a cold hors d’oeuvre and led through consomme and a hot hors d’oeuvre to the entree (I chose the veal, Ellie had fish) and a good dessert. Altogether, an excellent meal.
We took a moonlight stroll on the lower deck and stayed around for a short while to watch the evening’s entertainment—a glass-blowing demonstration which proved to be a good deal more entertaining than we might have thought. The glass-blower was extraordinarily adept and easy with his craft, and his patter was consistently cheery and interesting. His father, from whom he evidently learned his skill, goes across to the US frequently to pass on his skills at the Dale Chihuly school in the state of Washington. Despite the interest, though, we did not manage to hold out to the end, but chose instead to retire to our cabin for a reasonably early bed at 10:30PM.
From Passau - May 23, 2007
A Sadness
There is a sadness
greeting someone
I will never know.
He stands on the far
side of the Danube,
fishing, early morning
in dark shirt and padded
vest; I on the deck
of a tourist cruise
ship, passing. Raising
an arm in slow salute,
I wave, and he, too,
raises his, in silent
answer, man to man
across the stretch
of water. There
he is; here, I,
fellow travelers
in the flow of time,
just as, between us
the big river flows.
Oh, yes, a sadness,
in the closeness
and the distance
between men and men.
And a frustration, too. It's really hard to get online, and harder still to get the pictures posted. I plan to do what I can with the text, and add in the pictures when it gets easier. Here's the update:
TUESDAY
We woke at the same time this morning, for a change, and Ellie and I got up for a walk together. We had hoped to stroll along the canal bank, but today there was no access because we were moored at a lock; and soon we found that the spacious upper deck was denied us, too, for reasons unknown. So we settled instead for a half hour’s meditation on the lower deck, up front, and enjoyed the feeling of the rising sun gradually warming our faces. Not to mention the smell of bacon rising from the galley.
A buffet breakfast, again. They do a great job of it. The only problem is keeping the selection to manageable proportions for the waistline. Then a quick shower—we have discovered that the bathroom is perfectly commodious (to use a favorite word of Ellie’s)—and off to an 8:45 start to board buses for the first leg of the day’s journey. We reached Kehlheim in short order, and were led on a walking tour through the town
by a former town councilman whose English was, well, sufficient, but not proficient. A somewhat garrulous but well-meaning gentleman, he offered a little more in the way of statistical detail than we would have wanted, or could expect to remember.
Kehlheim’s history, in other words, proved instantly forgettable, but it was a pleasant little town to visit, quite picturesque, and it was good to take a walk. Our trek led us through to the other side of the town, and our first glimpse of the Danube: distinctly green, not blue, but otherwise quite lovely. We boarded an excursion boat—not ours—and cruised upriver through the spectacular Danube Gorge, admiring the great limestone cliffs on either side, watching herons fly, and enjoying the songs of countless other birds on either bank.
We made a stop, beyond to gorge, to visit the ancient Weitenburg monastery with its thousand year-old brewery. The church proved to be one of the finest examples of Baroque architecture I have ever seen:
the altar piece is a magnificent sculptural representation of St. George, patron saint of the monastery, astride a nearly life-sized rearing horse with, to his right, the maiden in distress and to his left the dragon he is about to slay with his great lance. An unusual scene to find behind the altar, and powerfully theatrical in its three-dimensionality. Of special appeal, to me, were the sculptural effects around the base of the cupola,
with extraordinary puffy clouds created out of stone supporting the figures of four archangels—not to mention numerous putti. The two artist brothers, architect and painter/sculptor—sorry, I’ve forgotten their names—whose first great project this was, included their good selves in the whole scheme of things, the one in three dimensions, grinning, leaning down over the balustrade, the other a painted portrait, next to him, in the “heaven” of the ceiling.
A good dark beer in the courtyard
of the monastery, thanks to the monks, and a good long walk along the river bank to where our buses were parked, the closest road access point to the monastery. A bus ride, then, up to a high promontory above Kehlheim, an a brief photo op stop to catch the view
and the great round “Liberation Tower”
atop the hill. Then on to Regensburg by bus, to meet up with the Viking Spirit again, now docked for the first time on the Danube.
Regensburg proved to be a delightful town,
with steep narrow cobble-stone streets, a thousand squares and courtyards,
medieval buildings, and the remains of a massive Roman wall. The Roman had a large encampment at a fortress here, and their heritage is still in evidence. I chose to leave the tour at a certain point in the center of town, seeking connection at an internet café—and finding only frustration. Met up with Ellie again to visit what had once been the Jewish quarter—a contemporary memorial to those lost, and a stairway down to what we heard was an underground city, now accessible only by advance request. We wandered around town a little further, before returning to the boat just in time to escape a welcome rainstorm.
Weakening in my resolve to economize, I ante’d up for an online connection on board, and managed to post yesterday’s entry—though I remained frustrated because I needed more time to organize the pictures and didn’t have time or leisure at my disposal. Ellie and I had thought about eating out, in town, but the rain helped change our minds, and we settled for dinner on board and an evening stroll through the city sreets,
post rain. We returned to the ship to get to bed in decent time—only to be woken an hour later by a blinding light from the cabin window. I suppose we were passing through another lock. A nuisance, because it was hard to get back to sleep. Oh, and during the night, Ellie managed to upset a glass of water over her duvet.
This morning, as I write this, we have just docked at Passau.
From Vienna - May 24, 2007
WEDNESDAY
After breakfast, given that our tour start was scheduled for later than usual, Ellie opted for a solo walk in the city of Passau, whilst I stayed aboard to bring the log up to date and post it to the blog. I noted with pleasure, along the way, that Cardozo had posted the usual Tuesday conversation back in Los Angeles, and regretted not having the time to read it or respond. I did note, too, that several responses had come in to earlier postings, from Munich, Nuremberg and elsewhere—and again regretted not having time or access to respond. Ah, well…
Our boatload of tourists separated into five groups and set off at ten o’clock, each with a local tour guide, as usual. Ours arrived somewhat flustered: her morning had not gone well thus far, and she spent a good deal of time bringing us up to date with her personal history—which did not bode well, in my book, for a useful and informative tour. Alas, my foreboding proved all too accurate as we walked through the narrow streets and alleys—the only word, again, is “picturesque”—of this small city at the juncture of three rivers: the Danube, the Inn, and the Itz. Here's the apothecary at Passau:
Our party began to lose interest, not surprisingly, and the tour disintegrated into an unruly mob. On a couple of occasions, as we crossed paths with other groups, Ellie and I debated defecting from our group to a different one, but we saw it through, and ended up with all five groups reassembling in the cathedral square,
the Domplatz, and crowding into the cathedral for a promised concert on what was billed as the largest pipe organ in the world.
We found seats near the altar end of the nave and waited patiently—actually, reviewing our pictures for the day—for the concert to begin. We were treated first to a seven minute lecture, all in German, by a professorial type who seemed oblivious to the fact that the vast part of his considerable audience could not understand a word of what he said. No translation, thankfully, was offered. That would have made it a fourteen minute lecture, and no more interesting than the snatches I gathered from the German in between semi noddings-off.
And then the concert. Ah. Forgive me, friends, I have little knowledge of music, and frankly even less of church organ music, but this seemed to me the most self-indulgent display of mediocre virtuosity that I had ever heard. The organist dashed with ham-fisted verve through a couple of classical works—including Bach’s famous “Toccata and Fugue”—and burst into his own “Improvisation.” I repeat, I know nothing of music and therefore have no right to judge, but I swear, for all the world, it sounded to me like Victor Borge doing his best parody of pompous grandiosity. But I’m being unkind, I know… I had a hard time suppressing the giggles before dozing off, mercifully, into rapt inattention—if that’s not too terrible an oxymoron.
Am I sounding a wee bit cranky today? Chalk it up to a number of days of travel, and less sleep than I’d like. Did I mention that I was woken by a searchlight penetrating my poor brain a little before midnight last night? Yes, I see I did. Forgive me for repeating myself--one of those dreaded signs of aging.
Anyway, having suffered through the “Orgelkonzert,” (I kid you not!) Ellie and I decided to pass on lunch on board and found a little restaurant in town, where we enjoyed a sampling of the local delicacy, Spargel—white asparagus, that is—and a fine chef’s salad, before foraying at Ellie’s insistence into the shops. Notably, a women’s clothing store, where she was able, after long indecision, to find the light blouse and top she has been missing, having packed for Arctic Germany and discovered... well, heat wave. We also made a stop at a glass jewelry shop, where Ellie found a lovely pair of earrings, a pendant and a ring, all at fairly reasonable prices. PaL took his revenge at the local Cuban cigar shop, and is looking forward to a quiet moment topsides.
Gelato on the way back to the boat, and a sudden, short rain shower. After which, some much needed down time with an old Dick Francis novel on the middle level of the boat, where there is shelter from the occasional gentle rain. Frank, our genial cruise manager, gave his usual evening preview of the day to come, and we had dinner together with our new friends Tom and Danette, from Indiana—managing to consume two large carafes of house red between us.
After dinner, a breath of air on deck, photo-ops of the spot where the three rivers meet,
and a visit to the bridge,
where our captain tolerated some rather boozy behavior from a small crowd of passengers, gathered to admire the electronic gadgetry that helps him steer the vessel through the night. I left for bed rather earlier than Ellie, and spent a while with the ever-entertaining Dick Francis.
THURSDAY
What a blessing is a good night’s sleep, for a cranky writer! I went to sleep at ten thirty or so and woke at a quarter to seven, with only a couple of quick pit stops during the night.
At dawn we were still cruising down the river, pulling in to the landing site at Melk as we finished breakfast,
and gathering on shore shortly afterwards for a brief introduction to the village and monastery from Frank:
(I thought you'd like to see his picture. Note, on the wall of the ferry house behind him, and in the next picture in relation to the heads, the high water marks of the major flood years of the Danube!)
From the river bank we walked into the village of Melk and on to the monastery. Another glorious morning, cool enough this early, and again I was awed by the sheer multitude of luscious green trees on either side of the alley that led to the village, and the cheerful songs of so many birds. It’s something we miss in Los Angeles, and something that really lifts the spirits.
The town of Melk proved busy and, inevitably, picturesque.
A market town, though clearly the majority of its business is geared to the tourists attracted by the “Stift”—the abbey that towers on the hill above it. We climbed the steep hill and assembled at the front gate for our turn to be escorted inside, just one of numerous groups visiting this centuries-old home of Benedictine monks.
Thirty of them, we heard from our tour guide, still live there, operating a school in one of the great buildings surrounding the many elegant courtyards. It’s a complex piece of architecture, quite majestic in scale, with long, white corridors reaching in every direction, vaulted ceilings, and many great halls. Highlights of the visit included the great marble hall,
the library with its countless shelves of venerable leather-bound tomes;
(and note, by the way, that the painted ceilings in both areas are flat!) and a spectacular circular stairway
leading down to perhaps the most ornate of baroque-style chapels I have ever seen.
Over-the-top glorious, rich in golden carvings, marble sculpture, paintings and frescoes. A sumptuous feast for the eye—and a reminder of those centuries of devotion to the glory of God.
From Melk, the boat soon brought us into a different realm of glory—the vine-covered slopes of the Wachau Gorge,
where we cruised from village to village through a breathtaking landscape dotted liberally with a historical wealth of castles, monasteries and churches.
All accompanied by an excellent commentary from our cruise manager Frank, who kept us informed as to the fascinating unfolding of dates and events that all of us will immediately forget. As I sit here writing these notes shortly after dawn the following morning, I have already forgotten the names of those memorable little towns.
Leaving the (picturesque!) Wachau valley, we cruised south, arriving in Vienna shortly before dinner. After docking, we were served an early meal—too early a dinner, after a lunch delayed by the spectacle of the valley!—we boarded our buses to drive into the city for a concert by the Residenzorchester at the old Stock Exchange. The drive took us along a good part of the Ring, rousing memories of my last visit to this wonderful city, some fifty years ago. I came here as a student for a summer course at the University of Vienna, with a small group of friends from Cambridge—and managed to have a good educational experience which had nothing to do with the course.
One memory: that old Austro-Hungarian Count I used to meet at a wine cellar I frequented in the evening, who would shake a finger in my face and tell me, “Sie sollen nicht Journalist werden”—"you must not become a journalist.” I often wonder what my life would have been like if I had not followed his advice and been a little less precious, at that time in my life, about my talent as a writer--had I gone into journalism instead of into academia. A useless speculation, of course, but one that reminds me poignantly of the distance in time between those youthful days and now.
The concert was a series of wonderful old chestnuts by Mozart and Strauss. The Mozart was, as always, elegant beyond words; and the Strauss was made tolerable by a little hamming on the part of the performers. Great fun. A “Gulaschsuppe” was awaiting us on our return to the boat, and we spent a while up on the deck with a group of good people from Kentucky. Small world department: two of the women had attended the University of Iowa when I was teaching there, back in the 1960s…
After breakfast, given that our tour start was scheduled for later than usual, Ellie opted for a solo walk in the city of Passau, whilst I stayed aboard to bring the log up to date and post it to the blog. I noted with pleasure, along the way, that Cardozo had posted the usual Tuesday conversation back in Los Angeles, and regretted not having the time to read it or respond. I did note, too, that several responses had come in to earlier postings, from Munich, Nuremberg and elsewhere—and again regretted not having time or access to respond. Ah, well…
Our boatload of tourists separated into five groups and set off at ten o’clock, each with a local tour guide, as usual. Ours arrived somewhat flustered: her morning had not gone well thus far, and she spent a good deal of time bringing us up to date with her personal history—which did not bode well, in my book, for a useful and informative tour. Alas, my foreboding proved all too accurate as we walked through the narrow streets and alleys—the only word, again, is “picturesque”—of this small city at the juncture of three rivers: the Danube, the Inn, and the Itz. Here's the apothecary at Passau:
Our party began to lose interest, not surprisingly, and the tour disintegrated into an unruly mob. On a couple of occasions, as we crossed paths with other groups, Ellie and I debated defecting from our group to a different one, but we saw it through, and ended up with all five groups reassembling in the cathedral square,
the Domplatz, and crowding into the cathedral for a promised concert on what was billed as the largest pipe organ in the world.
We found seats near the altar end of the nave and waited patiently—actually, reviewing our pictures for the day—for the concert to begin. We were treated first to a seven minute lecture, all in German, by a professorial type who seemed oblivious to the fact that the vast part of his considerable audience could not understand a word of what he said. No translation, thankfully, was offered. That would have made it a fourteen minute lecture, and no more interesting than the snatches I gathered from the German in between semi noddings-off.
And then the concert. Ah. Forgive me, friends, I have little knowledge of music, and frankly even less of church organ music, but this seemed to me the most self-indulgent display of mediocre virtuosity that I had ever heard. The organist dashed with ham-fisted verve through a couple of classical works—including Bach’s famous “Toccata and Fugue”—and burst into his own “Improvisation.” I repeat, I know nothing of music and therefore have no right to judge, but I swear, for all the world, it sounded to me like Victor Borge doing his best parody of pompous grandiosity. But I’m being unkind, I know… I had a hard time suppressing the giggles before dozing off, mercifully, into rapt inattention—if that’s not too terrible an oxymoron.
Am I sounding a wee bit cranky today? Chalk it up to a number of days of travel, and less sleep than I’d like. Did I mention that I was woken by a searchlight penetrating my poor brain a little before midnight last night? Yes, I see I did. Forgive me for repeating myself--one of those dreaded signs of aging.
Anyway, having suffered through the “Orgelkonzert,” (I kid you not!) Ellie and I decided to pass on lunch on board and found a little restaurant in town, where we enjoyed a sampling of the local delicacy, Spargel—white asparagus, that is—and a fine chef’s salad, before foraying at Ellie’s insistence into the shops. Notably, a women’s clothing store, where she was able, after long indecision, to find the light blouse and top she has been missing, having packed for Arctic Germany and discovered... well, heat wave. We also made a stop at a glass jewelry shop, where Ellie found a lovely pair of earrings, a pendant and a ring, all at fairly reasonable prices. PaL took his revenge at the local Cuban cigar shop, and is looking forward to a quiet moment topsides.
Gelato on the way back to the boat, and a sudden, short rain shower. After which, some much needed down time with an old Dick Francis novel on the middle level of the boat, where there is shelter from the occasional gentle rain. Frank, our genial cruise manager, gave his usual evening preview of the day to come, and we had dinner together with our new friends Tom and Danette, from Indiana—managing to consume two large carafes of house red between us.
After dinner, a breath of air on deck, photo-ops of the spot where the three rivers meet,
and a visit to the bridge,
where our captain tolerated some rather boozy behavior from a small crowd of passengers, gathered to admire the electronic gadgetry that helps him steer the vessel through the night. I left for bed rather earlier than Ellie, and spent a while with the ever-entertaining Dick Francis.
THURSDAY
What a blessing is a good night’s sleep, for a cranky writer! I went to sleep at ten thirty or so and woke at a quarter to seven, with only a couple of quick pit stops during the night.
At dawn we were still cruising down the river, pulling in to the landing site at Melk as we finished breakfast,
and gathering on shore shortly afterwards for a brief introduction to the village and monastery from Frank:
(I thought you'd like to see his picture. Note, on the wall of the ferry house behind him, and in the next picture in relation to the heads, the high water marks of the major flood years of the Danube!)
From the river bank we walked into the village of Melk and on to the monastery. Another glorious morning, cool enough this early, and again I was awed by the sheer multitude of luscious green trees on either side of the alley that led to the village, and the cheerful songs of so many birds. It’s something we miss in Los Angeles, and something that really lifts the spirits.
The town of Melk proved busy and, inevitably, picturesque.
A market town, though clearly the majority of its business is geared to the tourists attracted by the “Stift”—the abbey that towers on the hill above it. We climbed the steep hill and assembled at the front gate for our turn to be escorted inside, just one of numerous groups visiting this centuries-old home of Benedictine monks.
Thirty of them, we heard from our tour guide, still live there, operating a school in one of the great buildings surrounding the many elegant courtyards. It’s a complex piece of architecture, quite majestic in scale, with long, white corridors reaching in every direction, vaulted ceilings, and many great halls. Highlights of the visit included the great marble hall,
the library with its countless shelves of venerable leather-bound tomes;
(and note, by the way, that the painted ceilings in both areas are flat!) and a spectacular circular stairway
leading down to perhaps the most ornate of baroque-style chapels I have ever seen.
Over-the-top glorious, rich in golden carvings, marble sculpture, paintings and frescoes. A sumptuous feast for the eye—and a reminder of those centuries of devotion to the glory of God.
From Melk, the boat soon brought us into a different realm of glory—the vine-covered slopes of the Wachau Gorge,
where we cruised from village to village through a breathtaking landscape dotted liberally with a historical wealth of castles, monasteries and churches.
All accompanied by an excellent commentary from our cruise manager Frank, who kept us informed as to the fascinating unfolding of dates and events that all of us will immediately forget. As I sit here writing these notes shortly after dawn the following morning, I have already forgotten the names of those memorable little towns.
Leaving the (picturesque!) Wachau valley, we cruised south, arriving in Vienna shortly before dinner. After docking, we were served an early meal—too early a dinner, after a lunch delayed by the spectacle of the valley!—we boarded our buses to drive into the city for a concert by the Residenzorchester at the old Stock Exchange. The drive took us along a good part of the Ring, rousing memories of my last visit to this wonderful city, some fifty years ago. I came here as a student for a summer course at the University of Vienna, with a small group of friends from Cambridge—and managed to have a good educational experience which had nothing to do with the course.
One memory: that old Austro-Hungarian Count I used to meet at a wine cellar I frequented in the evening, who would shake a finger in my face and tell me, “Sie sollen nicht Journalist werden”—"you must not become a journalist.” I often wonder what my life would have been like if I had not followed his advice and been a little less precious, at that time in my life, about my talent as a writer--had I gone into journalism instead of into academia. A useless speculation, of course, but one that reminds me poignantly of the distance in time between those youthful days and now.
The concert was a series of wonderful old chestnuts by Mozart and Strauss. The Mozart was, as always, elegant beyond words; and the Strauss was made tolerable by a little hamming on the part of the performers. Great fun. A “Gulaschsuppe” was awaiting us on our return to the boat, and we spent a while up on the deck with a group of good people from Kentucky. Small world department: two of the women had attended the University of Iowa when I was teaching there, back in the 1960s…
In Vienna - May 26, 2007
FRIDAY
Woke up early and went up to the top deck for a half hour’s meditation and catching up with yesterday’s events on the laptop while Ellie was still sleeping. Stopped by the reception desk to discover that the online connection was not working: we were berthed between two sister ships, I was told. A fine excuse. Anyway, I made a cup of coffee instead, and a cup of tea for Ellie and headed back to the cabin to get ready for the day.
After the usual excellent breakfast, the buses arrived on the quay for our introductory tour of the city—and indeed did a complete circuit of the Ring streets, which circle the city where the old wall used to stand. These streets lead past virtually all the major monuments, so it makes for a pretty easy sight-seeing trip: in a single loop, you take in the Opera and the Burggarten, the Hofburg and the Heldenplatz, the major museums and the Rathaus—not to mention the statues of Mozart and Strauss and Schiller and Goethe and Franz Josef and Maria Theresien…. Vienna is surely one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, with great, wide boulevards interspersed with narrow alleys filled with wonderful surprises. At every corner, it seems, some great composer lived here: Mozart and Vivaldi, Beethoven, Bruckner, Schoenberg and, well, of course, there’s always Salieri and Strauss. Our guide was endlessly informative and fluent in her English.
After the Ring, our bus tour brought us to the Belevedere, where we had just an hour to spend in the galleries. Of special note was the wonderful collection of Gustav Klimts and the Egon Schieles, unsurprising, of course, in this part of the world, where they once lived and worked, but a feast for the eyes nonetheless. Ellie and I were particularly taken with some of the Schiele paintings,
of which we have seen few before, and somewhat regretted the loss of the wonderful drawing from her parents' collection—a loss, at least, to the family, and a gain for the Los Angeles County Museum. We found a few minutes, at the end, for some choice medieval paintings and sculptures, and marveled at their meticulous detail.
The tour dropped us off at the city center, in front of the Stephansdom, and we joined out friends Tom and Danette and parted from the Viking gang for our own afternoon walking tour of the inner city. We spent only a few minutes inside the dark, gothic cathedral with its occasional rococo flourishes, where only worshippers were permitted past the railings designed to keep tourists in the back. Understandable. Re-emerging into the light, we wandered past Mozart’s house in the shadow of the cathedral, and found a great lunch stop in the Neumarkt.
Ellie and I shared a good salad and a ham and asparagus plate—and tasted some of Tom’s excellent fried cheese.
Deciding against a prolonged visit to the Jewish Museum, given the shortage of time, we wandered on through the narrow streets and came upon an auction house filled with fascinating treasures. At another time, we might have been tempted by some of the wonderful glass objects—and Ellie by the jewelry! On toward the Hofburg, passing up on the (expensive!) visit to the Spanish Riding School but stopping for a photo-op at the stables. Then on through the palace and back to the Ring, with another stop for a well-deserved rest—and a respite from the heat—under the shady trees of the Burggarten.
Speculating about a huge conservatory structure at one edge of the garden, we discovered it to be the “Schmetterlinghaus”—the Butterfly House—and succumbed to the temptation to investogate. It proved to be exactly what it said—a hothouse filled with all kinds of colorful specimens of butterfly, some brilliant, some quite huge, all fluttering here and there and settling on the lush leaves of the plants and on the (plastic!) orchids sprayed with honey to attract them.
We left sweating from the heat and humidity inside, but grateful for a small, if unexpected adventure.
A couple of blocks from there to the Opera, to find that access was allowed only on official tours. To console ourselves, we found the Sacher Hotel, instead, immediately behind the Opera, and indulged in the famous Sachertorte (delicious!) and an exceptional cup of coffee.
Ellie was so excited that she forgot to take her handbag with her when she left. Fortunately, it was still there when we rushed back to find it.
We navigated the subway—very easily, in fact—back to the Vorgartenstrasse, the closest stop to the harbor, and found a convenient gelato establishment to compound our excess of only one hour before. Then back to the Viking Spirit in time to relax in the sun—and the wind!—with our friends over the complimentary bottle of Veuve Cliquot that is left for top-deck passengers like ourselves!
An evening of celebration on board. More complimentary champagne and a round of toasts, with the captain and the tour managers making the tour of the cabin for individual thanks and toasts. Then, from Frank, a lengthy set of debarkation instructions, and an excellent “farewell dinner,” followed by a sparkler parade of all members of the crew, and introductions and grateful applause from the guests as each of the crew individually took a bow. Got to bed too late, too well fed, too sated with champagne, too tired—but at least with a sense of pleasurable camaraderie.
Woke up early and went up to the top deck for a half hour’s meditation and catching up with yesterday’s events on the laptop while Ellie was still sleeping. Stopped by the reception desk to discover that the online connection was not working: we were berthed between two sister ships, I was told. A fine excuse. Anyway, I made a cup of coffee instead, and a cup of tea for Ellie and headed back to the cabin to get ready for the day.
After the usual excellent breakfast, the buses arrived on the quay for our introductory tour of the city—and indeed did a complete circuit of the Ring streets, which circle the city where the old wall used to stand. These streets lead past virtually all the major monuments, so it makes for a pretty easy sight-seeing trip: in a single loop, you take in the Opera and the Burggarten, the Hofburg and the Heldenplatz, the major museums and the Rathaus—not to mention the statues of Mozart and Strauss and Schiller and Goethe and Franz Josef and Maria Theresien…. Vienna is surely one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, with great, wide boulevards interspersed with narrow alleys filled with wonderful surprises. At every corner, it seems, some great composer lived here: Mozart and Vivaldi, Beethoven, Bruckner, Schoenberg and, well, of course, there’s always Salieri and Strauss. Our guide was endlessly informative and fluent in her English.
After the Ring, our bus tour brought us to the Belevedere, where we had just an hour to spend in the galleries. Of special note was the wonderful collection of Gustav Klimts and the Egon Schieles, unsurprising, of course, in this part of the world, where they once lived and worked, but a feast for the eyes nonetheless. Ellie and I were particularly taken with some of the Schiele paintings,
of which we have seen few before, and somewhat regretted the loss of the wonderful drawing from her parents' collection—a loss, at least, to the family, and a gain for the Los Angeles County Museum. We found a few minutes, at the end, for some choice medieval paintings and sculptures, and marveled at their meticulous detail.
The tour dropped us off at the city center, in front of the Stephansdom, and we joined out friends Tom and Danette and parted from the Viking gang for our own afternoon walking tour of the inner city. We spent only a few minutes inside the dark, gothic cathedral with its occasional rococo flourishes, where only worshippers were permitted past the railings designed to keep tourists in the back. Understandable. Re-emerging into the light, we wandered past Mozart’s house in the shadow of the cathedral, and found a great lunch stop in the Neumarkt.
Ellie and I shared a good salad and a ham and asparagus plate—and tasted some of Tom’s excellent fried cheese.
Deciding against a prolonged visit to the Jewish Museum, given the shortage of time, we wandered on through the narrow streets and came upon an auction house filled with fascinating treasures. At another time, we might have been tempted by some of the wonderful glass objects—and Ellie by the jewelry! On toward the Hofburg, passing up on the (expensive!) visit to the Spanish Riding School but stopping for a photo-op at the stables. Then on through the palace and back to the Ring, with another stop for a well-deserved rest—and a respite from the heat—under the shady trees of the Burggarten.
Speculating about a huge conservatory structure at one edge of the garden, we discovered it to be the “Schmetterlinghaus”—the Butterfly House—and succumbed to the temptation to investogate. It proved to be exactly what it said—a hothouse filled with all kinds of colorful specimens of butterfly, some brilliant, some quite huge, all fluttering here and there and settling on the lush leaves of the plants and on the (plastic!) orchids sprayed with honey to attract them.
We left sweating from the heat and humidity inside, but grateful for a small, if unexpected adventure.
A couple of blocks from there to the Opera, to find that access was allowed only on official tours. To console ourselves, we found the Sacher Hotel, instead, immediately behind the Opera, and indulged in the famous Sachertorte (delicious!) and an exceptional cup of coffee.
Ellie was so excited that she forgot to take her handbag with her when she left. Fortunately, it was still there when we rushed back to find it.
We navigated the subway—very easily, in fact—back to the Vorgartenstrasse, the closest stop to the harbor, and found a convenient gelato establishment to compound our excess of only one hour before. Then back to the Viking Spirit in time to relax in the sun—and the wind!—with our friends over the complimentary bottle of Veuve Cliquot that is left for top-deck passengers like ourselves!
An evening of celebration on board. More complimentary champagne and a round of toasts, with the captain and the tour managers making the tour of the cabin for individual thanks and toasts. Then, from Frank, a lengthy set of debarkation instructions, and an excellent “farewell dinner,” followed by a sparkler parade of all members of the crew, and introductions and grateful applause from the guests as each of the crew individually took a bow. Got to bed too late, too well fed, too sated with champagne, too tired—but at least with a sense of pleasurable camaraderie.
The Buda Diaries... - May 28, 2007
(from Budapest)
SATURDAY
Still cruising toward Budapest as we woke. Despite the feeling of a cold coming on, I put in my usual pleasant solo time up top—a brief meditation and an update for this travel log. A cup of fruity hot stuff instead of my usual English tea—I normally avoid anything that masquerades as “real” tea—and woke Ellie in time for a shower and breakfast in the dining room.
At 7:30, Frank’s voice on the p.a. system invited our presence on deck to witness the ship’s arrival at its final destination.
And indeed Budapest was a very fine site, with the captain guiding us down past Margitsziget, Margaret’s Island, the playground of the residents of the city; on past a splendid view of the Parliament on the Pesht side of the Danube and the royal palace and castle district on the Buda side, to the right. A quick change as we docked, and out for a last official guided tour of the trip, boarding the familiar line of three buses at the quayside.
The tour was a good introduction to the city. On the Pesht side, we drove inland through a commercial district to the new football stadium and the venerable old east railroad station, then on to the “Hero’s Square” with its monumental buildings and statues, the great plaza swarming with gypsy women anxious to sell us maps, guide books in English, hand-knitted traditional Hungarian blouses… A short stop for photos, then down the major tree-lined boulevards, past embassies and the art and music schools, ending up at the river again with a different view of the parliament buildings, this time from the land. Then across the Margaret bridge to the Buda side, through narrow streets, and up the steep incline to the group of palaces, castle walls and churches, where the parapets offer a spectacular view of the entire city of Budapest and the Danube River.
P beginning to feel very under the weather with his cold by the time we returned from the tour for lunch, but managed to tuck into a delicious Hungarian goulash before retreating for an afternoon of rest and recuperation. We had been scheduled to join another bus tour out to the country to a diamond factory and an art colony, but alas, I lacked the energy and decided to remain back on the boat for a good rest. We did manage, Ellie and I, a long walk through the back streets of the city closest to the boat, and began to scout out the area where we’ll be spending the next couple of days, after we leave the Viking tour. It’s a less well-tended city than some others that we know—like Vienna, for example—but we attributed that in part to the continuing recovery period from the communist regime. There’s a lot of work to be done to bring it back to what was clearly its original beauty.
Instead of our customary daily briefing with Frank at 6:45PM, we gathered for “A Time to Say Goodbye.” P nursed his cold with a glass of single malt scotch whiskey, and we all got a bit sentimental about the journey, our fellowship on board, and the pleasure of the cruise. At the end, Frank invited us all to celebrate with hugs all around, and we gladly complied. A last dinner with Tom and Danette, served by our always friendly and efficient waitress, Ivana,
and a fond farewell to them: they leave at 4:30 tomorrow morning. Then a few moments on deck, and an early bed for P, with hopes for better health in the morning.
SUNDAY
I woke feeling much better than last night, but earlier than I would have liked. Made my way to the upper deck with the laptop, intending on a half hour’s meditation before writing down the events of Saturday. Shortly into my meditation, though, I felt drops of rain on my head and didn't want to risk giving the computer a shower, so I chickened out and found a space under the shelter of the bridge to get on with the log.
Not an exciting beginning to the day: we had to squeeze everything back into our bags again for the next leg of the journey, and Viking nicely organized a taxi for us to the Keplinsky Hotel in the center of Budapest—on the Pesht side of the river. During the ride, one of my two batteries and a memory card apparently slipped out of my camera case, and we were surprised and delighted that the driver took the time to bring them back to the hotel. Chalk one up for the Budapest taxi driver.
We were soon unpacked and spent a while trying to agree on an itinerary for the afternoon. P still feeling very much under the weather—this is now unambiguously a nasty cold—but not wishing to waste precious time on our vacation. We decided that a thermal bath might be just the ticket, and headed out in the direction of the Gellert Hotel, a spa that had been highly recommended to us.
First, though, a lunch stop at the Gerbeaud restaurant close to the hotel, and a long, slow walk down mostly narrow side streets, admiring some fine examples of both art nouveau and art deco buildings.
Well at least the bones are there, for the most part. The details have often weathered badly through both weather and war, and many of the buildings are in a sad state of disrepair. Again, I suspect, also a heritage of the communist period. We encounter many signs of poverty in our wanderings, from ill-kept, dusty parks populated with obviously suffering humans, to crumbling buildings and dirty streets.
Speaking of which, the Gellert spa, when we reached it, seemed no exception to this rule. Talk about faded grandeur! We ante’d up what we thought was a rather expensive entry fee at over $15 a person, but then were asked to fork up another 10,000 forints (about $60) for a towel for each of us—1,000 for the towel and 4,000 deposit. We didn’t have that kind of cash with us, and the women at the cashier’s desk tried in vain to make our credit cards work. Lacking any sign of success, we had to make a side trip to the nearest ATM, and returned with cash in hand.
The baths were certainly pleasurable. We stayed mostly in the big thermal mineral bath, where at least three dozen people didn’t seem to be too much of a crowd.
The adjacent swimming pool proved too cold for this sick soul, so we passed on that, but we did find a spot in the sun by the outdoor pool to relax for a while amidst the holiday crowd. (It’s Whit Sunday over here, in Catholic country, a big festival, it seems, for children, and there were many of them with their parents at the baths, contributing a pleasantly joyful energy to the afternoon.)
We headed back to the hotel around six o’clock, with P’s energy visibly wearing thin along the way. I was grateful when Ellie suggested staying in our hotel room for a light dinner, rather than going out to one of the many local restaurants. Our hosts had already left us a nice assortment of hors d’oeuvres, so all we had to do was order a soup and salad—which we watched as Serena Williams vanquished a French Open rival on the television. We opted not to watch a movie, which would have cost us some $30. Everything here seems incredibly expensive, though the revenues from the tourist dollars are not evident either in the appearance of the city nor, so far as we can tell, in the lives of many of the people. The results of the inefficiency and waste of the old communist system are everywhere in evidence, and we wonder how the less fortunate Hungarians survive—particularly, we have heard, the pensioners, who earned little under the post-war regime and who, today, receive pathetically small retirement income from the government.
Ready for bed. The air conditioner in this expensive hotel is not working, and it seems hotter than hell in here. Still, it’s not hard to remember that our woes are small by comparison. Malfunctioning air conditioning? What a tragedy!
SATURDAY
Still cruising toward Budapest as we woke. Despite the feeling of a cold coming on, I put in my usual pleasant solo time up top—a brief meditation and an update for this travel log. A cup of fruity hot stuff instead of my usual English tea—I normally avoid anything that masquerades as “real” tea—and woke Ellie in time for a shower and breakfast in the dining room.
At 7:30, Frank’s voice on the p.a. system invited our presence on deck to witness the ship’s arrival at its final destination.
And indeed Budapest was a very fine site, with the captain guiding us down past Margitsziget, Margaret’s Island, the playground of the residents of the city; on past a splendid view of the Parliament on the Pesht side of the Danube and the royal palace and castle district on the Buda side, to the right. A quick change as we docked, and out for a last official guided tour of the trip, boarding the familiar line of three buses at the quayside.
The tour was a good introduction to the city. On the Pesht side, we drove inland through a commercial district to the new football stadium and the venerable old east railroad station, then on to the “Hero’s Square” with its monumental buildings and statues, the great plaza swarming with gypsy women anxious to sell us maps, guide books in English, hand-knitted traditional Hungarian blouses… A short stop for photos, then down the major tree-lined boulevards, past embassies and the art and music schools, ending up at the river again with a different view of the parliament buildings, this time from the land. Then across the Margaret bridge to the Buda side, through narrow streets, and up the steep incline to the group of palaces, castle walls and churches, where the parapets offer a spectacular view of the entire city of Budapest and the Danube River.
P beginning to feel very under the weather with his cold by the time we returned from the tour for lunch, but managed to tuck into a delicious Hungarian goulash before retreating for an afternoon of rest and recuperation. We had been scheduled to join another bus tour out to the country to a diamond factory and an art colony, but alas, I lacked the energy and decided to remain back on the boat for a good rest. We did manage, Ellie and I, a long walk through the back streets of the city closest to the boat, and began to scout out the area where we’ll be spending the next couple of days, after we leave the Viking tour. It’s a less well-tended city than some others that we know—like Vienna, for example—but we attributed that in part to the continuing recovery period from the communist regime. There’s a lot of work to be done to bring it back to what was clearly its original beauty.
Instead of our customary daily briefing with Frank at 6:45PM, we gathered for “A Time to Say Goodbye.” P nursed his cold with a glass of single malt scotch whiskey, and we all got a bit sentimental about the journey, our fellowship on board, and the pleasure of the cruise. At the end, Frank invited us all to celebrate with hugs all around, and we gladly complied. A last dinner with Tom and Danette, served by our always friendly and efficient waitress, Ivana,
and a fond farewell to them: they leave at 4:30 tomorrow morning. Then a few moments on deck, and an early bed for P, with hopes for better health in the morning.
SUNDAY
I woke feeling much better than last night, but earlier than I would have liked. Made my way to the upper deck with the laptop, intending on a half hour’s meditation before writing down the events of Saturday. Shortly into my meditation, though, I felt drops of rain on my head and didn't want to risk giving the computer a shower, so I chickened out and found a space under the shelter of the bridge to get on with the log.
Not an exciting beginning to the day: we had to squeeze everything back into our bags again for the next leg of the journey, and Viking nicely organized a taxi for us to the Keplinsky Hotel in the center of Budapest—on the Pesht side of the river. During the ride, one of my two batteries and a memory card apparently slipped out of my camera case, and we were surprised and delighted that the driver took the time to bring them back to the hotel. Chalk one up for the Budapest taxi driver.
We were soon unpacked and spent a while trying to agree on an itinerary for the afternoon. P still feeling very much under the weather—this is now unambiguously a nasty cold—but not wishing to waste precious time on our vacation. We decided that a thermal bath might be just the ticket, and headed out in the direction of the Gellert Hotel, a spa that had been highly recommended to us.
First, though, a lunch stop at the Gerbeaud restaurant close to the hotel, and a long, slow walk down mostly narrow side streets, admiring some fine examples of both art nouveau and art deco buildings.
Well at least the bones are there, for the most part. The details have often weathered badly through both weather and war, and many of the buildings are in a sad state of disrepair. Again, I suspect, also a heritage of the communist period. We encounter many signs of poverty in our wanderings, from ill-kept, dusty parks populated with obviously suffering humans, to crumbling buildings and dirty streets.
Speaking of which, the Gellert spa, when we reached it, seemed no exception to this rule. Talk about faded grandeur! We ante’d up what we thought was a rather expensive entry fee at over $15 a person, but then were asked to fork up another 10,000 forints (about $60) for a towel for each of us—1,000 for the towel and 4,000 deposit. We didn’t have that kind of cash with us, and the women at the cashier’s desk tried in vain to make our credit cards work. Lacking any sign of success, we had to make a side trip to the nearest ATM, and returned with cash in hand.
The baths were certainly pleasurable. We stayed mostly in the big thermal mineral bath, where at least three dozen people didn’t seem to be too much of a crowd.
The adjacent swimming pool proved too cold for this sick soul, so we passed on that, but we did find a spot in the sun by the outdoor pool to relax for a while amidst the holiday crowd. (It’s Whit Sunday over here, in Catholic country, a big festival, it seems, for children, and there were many of them with their parents at the baths, contributing a pleasantly joyful energy to the afternoon.)
We headed back to the hotel around six o’clock, with P’s energy visibly wearing thin along the way. I was grateful when Ellie suggested staying in our hotel room for a light dinner, rather than going out to one of the many local restaurants. Our hosts had already left us a nice assortment of hors d’oeuvres, so all we had to do was order a soup and salad—which we watched as Serena Williams vanquished a French Open rival on the television. We opted not to watch a movie, which would have cost us some $30. Everything here seems incredibly expensive, though the revenues from the tourist dollars are not evident either in the appearance of the city nor, so far as we can tell, in the lives of many of the people. The results of the inefficiency and waste of the old communist system are everywhere in evidence, and we wonder how the less fortunate Hungarians survive—particularly, we have heard, the pensioners, who earned little under the post-war regime and who, today, receive pathetically small retirement income from the government.
Ready for bed. The air conditioner in this expensive hotel is not working, and it seems hotter than hell in here. Still, it’s not hard to remember that our woes are small by comparison. Malfunctioning air conditioning? What a tragedy!
The Buda Diaries 2 - May 28, 2007
MONDAY
Ah, yes, that air conditioner. They sent a pair of technicians up at ten o’clock at night to see it they could fix it for us. First problem: the panel that gave access to the inner workings of the machine was blocked by a protruding picture frame, so firmly attached to the wall that it took all of the technicians’ skills and perhaps a half hour of labor to get it off. Then, no luck. The telephone rang. The deputy manager for the night shift. Abject apologies. Our problem turned out to be a serious one, that might take days to fix. He would like to offer us an alternative room, and we could move there this very night, if we so chose.
Travel weary, exhausted from the day, and ready to believe that the heat would break for at least the duration of the night, we opted for an open window and a move tomorrow. And we received, this morning, another call, this time from the manager himself, with the renewed offer of a new room (we accepted, repacked with some disgruntlement) and begging us to accept a “gift” in compensation. We accepted… and left before the gift arrived.
A good breakfast, and a long consultation of the maps and tour books on Ellie’s part, whilst P hied himself to the business center to post yesterday’s handsome piece, with pictures! (The ethernet connection in the room is not functioning, and this is a holiday weekend: Whit Sunday, Pentecost, followed by a national holiday today) so it won’t be fixed before tomorrow at the earliest. We are learning quickly that there is a good deal of malfunction in Hungary.
Ellie’s research paid off handsomely. It’s good to have some sense of purpose in a foreign city—aside from wandering from tourist site to tourist site, and for us in Budapest the theme has definitely become the art nouveau and art deco architecture. First, though, a visit to the synagogue, the second largest in the world, which we had been warned would certainly be closed on a national holiday. Pentecost? I doubted it.
We found it open, and mobbed with tourists joining guided tours in English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese… Amazing. The building is clearly of great historical as well as architectural interest, having survived WWII virtually intact. At least the exterior. The interior was gutted, used as a stable and a barracks, with—irony of ironies!—the Gestapo headquartered in the capacious balcony. Left in a shambles after the defeat of the Germans in 1945, it regained its stature as a working synagogue even though the restoration process did not start until 1991, with funds from the Hungarian government aided by a foundation led by the actor Tony Curtis—originally a Hungarian Jew.
Today, it is splendidly restored to its original state, a glowing tribute to those who put so much time, love and money into the process. Our guide gave us an excellent history of the building, and much information about the Jewish quarter that surrounds it. She led us around the side of the building to a cemetery, where the date of death on every grave marker is 1945.
The fate of the Hungarian Jews is particularly poignant, since they were the last to have been subjected to the Nazi treatment, and only in the last days of the war. Walled into a ghetto around their synagogue, the Jews of Budapest died either by random execution or by starvation, and many were left lying in the streets—a health hazard the Germans resolved by allowing them all to be buried in this tiny cemetery, six thousand of them in the space of seven weeks.
We also visited the Holocaust Memorial Tree behind the synagogue,
along with a memorial to Raoul Wallenberg and numerous others, Hungarian and other Christians, who risked their very lives to save the lives of others. Upstairs, in the museum, we found an exhibit in memory of one resistant Jew, along with numerous large-scale photographs of that grim period in European history. All in all, a sobering and moving highlight of our trip.
Then we roamed the streets—first the old Jewish quarter—armed with maps to locate buildings of special interest. We found them for the most part, as usual, dingy and in sad disrepair.
The money is simply not available to restore them. Even in the richer area, up toward the city park, where many foreign embassies are located, walls seemed to be crumbling, details lost to the effects of pollution, paint peeling. We took a lot of pictures, and stopped for a very indifferent lunch at a restaurant in the lively Franz Liszt Square, where restaurants jostle with each other for space on the busy sidewalks under the shade of a multitude of umbrellas and trees. The adjacent
Franz Liszt music school is supposedly a remarkable example of nouveau architecture, but when we ventured in for a look inside (a rich, teasing glimpse) we were rudely expelled with the explanation “Closed building”—despite my indication of our interest in the architecture.
Further north, at the edge of the city park, a rather spectacular memorial
to those who lost their lives in the 1956 revolution against the Soviets—but sadly ill-kept, the purposefully claustrophobic spaces between its vertical steel beams filled with trash and, worse, human waste. You had the impression of people shitting and pissing callously on a heroic moment in their own history, as though despising the freedom it was intended to gain, and which they have now finally achieved.
A stop at the Kunsthalle, nearby, after admiring the “biggest hourglass in the world”
—a monumental sculptural piece that is supposed to keep time for centuries to come. P found a comfortable seat while Ellie perused the bookshop. We were grateful to have happened on this convenient and comfortable shelter when the rain started, minutes later, a veritable downpour that flooded the huge square outside. It lasted only a few minutes, so we were able to continue our architectural adventure
on the way back south towards the hotel, ending up with a long walk down Andrassy,
reputed to be the Champs Elysees of Budapest, where we passed a film crew busy making a period movie—shades of Hollywood, where massive movie trucks often impede your driving in familiar locations.
Back at the hotel, we found our “gift”—a small plate of fruit, to compensate us for our pain and suffering—and I luxuriated in a soak in the capacious bath. Then down to the lobby for our complimentary glass of Hungarian wine, before heading out to a restaurant we had spotted earlier in the Jewish quarter, the Spinoza. A very nice, very Hungarian meal—goulash for P, breast of goose for Ellie—with a glass or two of Tokay, served by a charming young waiter who forgot to bring one of our courses—but did not forget to charge us for it at the end! Very sweet about it, though. And when, on our return to the hotel, I discovered that I had left my sweater there, they gladly offered to drop it off at the hotel.
Ah, yes, that air conditioner. They sent a pair of technicians up at ten o’clock at night to see it they could fix it for us. First problem: the panel that gave access to the inner workings of the machine was blocked by a protruding picture frame, so firmly attached to the wall that it took all of the technicians’ skills and perhaps a half hour of labor to get it off. Then, no luck. The telephone rang. The deputy manager for the night shift. Abject apologies. Our problem turned out to be a serious one, that might take days to fix. He would like to offer us an alternative room, and we could move there this very night, if we so chose.
Travel weary, exhausted from the day, and ready to believe that the heat would break for at least the duration of the night, we opted for an open window and a move tomorrow. And we received, this morning, another call, this time from the manager himself, with the renewed offer of a new room (we accepted, repacked with some disgruntlement) and begging us to accept a “gift” in compensation. We accepted… and left before the gift arrived.
A good breakfast, and a long consultation of the maps and tour books on Ellie’s part, whilst P hied himself to the business center to post yesterday’s handsome piece, with pictures! (The ethernet connection in the room is not functioning, and this is a holiday weekend: Whit Sunday, Pentecost, followed by a national holiday today) so it won’t be fixed before tomorrow at the earliest. We are learning quickly that there is a good deal of malfunction in Hungary.
Ellie’s research paid off handsomely. It’s good to have some sense of purpose in a foreign city—aside from wandering from tourist site to tourist site, and for us in Budapest the theme has definitely become the art nouveau and art deco architecture. First, though, a visit to the synagogue, the second largest in the world, which we had been warned would certainly be closed on a national holiday. Pentecost? I doubted it.
We found it open, and mobbed with tourists joining guided tours in English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese… Amazing. The building is clearly of great historical as well as architectural interest, having survived WWII virtually intact. At least the exterior. The interior was gutted, used as a stable and a barracks, with—irony of ironies!—the Gestapo headquartered in the capacious balcony. Left in a shambles after the defeat of the Germans in 1945, it regained its stature as a working synagogue even though the restoration process did not start until 1991, with funds from the Hungarian government aided by a foundation led by the actor Tony Curtis—originally a Hungarian Jew.
Today, it is splendidly restored to its original state, a glowing tribute to those who put so much time, love and money into the process. Our guide gave us an excellent history of the building, and much information about the Jewish quarter that surrounds it. She led us around the side of the building to a cemetery, where the date of death on every grave marker is 1945.
The fate of the Hungarian Jews is particularly poignant, since they were the last to have been subjected to the Nazi treatment, and only in the last days of the war. Walled into a ghetto around their synagogue, the Jews of Budapest died either by random execution or by starvation, and many were left lying in the streets—a health hazard the Germans resolved by allowing them all to be buried in this tiny cemetery, six thousand of them in the space of seven weeks.
We also visited the Holocaust Memorial Tree behind the synagogue,
along with a memorial to Raoul Wallenberg and numerous others, Hungarian and other Christians, who risked their very lives to save the lives of others. Upstairs, in the museum, we found an exhibit in memory of one resistant Jew, along with numerous large-scale photographs of that grim period in European history. All in all, a sobering and moving highlight of our trip.
Then we roamed the streets—first the old Jewish quarter—armed with maps to locate buildings of special interest. We found them for the most part, as usual, dingy and in sad disrepair.
The money is simply not available to restore them. Even in the richer area, up toward the city park, where many foreign embassies are located, walls seemed to be crumbling, details lost to the effects of pollution, paint peeling. We took a lot of pictures, and stopped for a very indifferent lunch at a restaurant in the lively Franz Liszt Square, where restaurants jostle with each other for space on the busy sidewalks under the shade of a multitude of umbrellas and trees. The adjacent
Franz Liszt music school is supposedly a remarkable example of nouveau architecture, but when we ventured in for a look inside (a rich, teasing glimpse) we were rudely expelled with the explanation “Closed building”—despite my indication of our interest in the architecture.
Further north, at the edge of the city park, a rather spectacular memorial
to those who lost their lives in the 1956 revolution against the Soviets—but sadly ill-kept, the purposefully claustrophobic spaces between its vertical steel beams filled with trash and, worse, human waste. You had the impression of people shitting and pissing callously on a heroic moment in their own history, as though despising the freedom it was intended to gain, and which they have now finally achieved.
A stop at the Kunsthalle, nearby, after admiring the “biggest hourglass in the world”
—a monumental sculptural piece that is supposed to keep time for centuries to come. P found a comfortable seat while Ellie perused the bookshop. We were grateful to have happened on this convenient and comfortable shelter when the rain started, minutes later, a veritable downpour that flooded the huge square outside. It lasted only a few minutes, so we were able to continue our architectural adventure
on the way back south towards the hotel, ending up with a long walk down Andrassy,
reputed to be the Champs Elysees of Budapest, where we passed a film crew busy making a period movie—shades of Hollywood, where massive movie trucks often impede your driving in familiar locations.
Back at the hotel, we found our “gift”—a small plate of fruit, to compensate us for our pain and suffering—and I luxuriated in a soak in the capacious bath. Then down to the lobby for our complimentary glass of Hungarian wine, before heading out to a restaurant we had spotted earlier in the Jewish quarter, the Spinoza. A very nice, very Hungarian meal—goulash for P, breast of goose for Ellie—with a glass or two of Tokay, served by a charming young waiter who forgot to bring one of our courses—but did not forget to charge us for it at the end! Very sweet about it, though. And when, on our return to the hotel, I discovered that I had left my sweater there, they gladly offered to drop it off at the hotel.
The Buda Diaries 3 - May 29, 2007
TUESDAY
I have not been reading email while away—I have left that chore to my excellent assistant, Cardozo. I have, however, been reading comments on the blog and have been delighted, as always, to hear from Carly, who has been following our journey from afar and offering tips gleaned on his own visits to some of the cities along the way. I have been searching eagerly in Budapest for the Esterhazy torte that he mentions—but so far, no luck. Maybe this afternoon, our last before leaving for England tomorrow. Thanks to Carly, anyway, for the hint.
True to his word, our friend at the Spinoza had brought back my sweater to the hotel, and we picked it up from the concierge on our way to breakfast. Always good to be reunited with something that was lost. We enjoyed an excellent breakfast, as usual, and left in decent time for our day’s tour. First stop, the city market, open today for the first time since our arrival because of the holiday weekend. Ah yes, the shops are open. Having spent the past two days desperate for a cough drop—my cold has tail-ended into a nasty and persistent cough—I am finally able to go to a pharmacist for some relief. Never did cough drop taste so good, I promise you!
The way to the market led down the now-familiar Vaci Utca (pr. Vatsi Utsa, so far as I can tell,) the main north-south tourist drag that parallels the Danube, and we made a mercifully brief stop at a Marks & Spencer-type department store where Ellie had spotted, through the window, a couple of blouses that appealed to her, and which she was now able to try on—and buy. We also kept an eye open for an inexpensive carry-bag to accommodate that seemingly ever-expanding load of our travel gear, and found one, eventually, at the market itself, whose upper level was devoted to non-edibles.
The interior of the building that houses the market proved to be a huge, open structure, with a complex of iron-work beams and stairways. The ground floor was filled, wall-to-wall, with market stalls selling every imaginable type of fruit, vegetable, meat and baked ware
(alas, not an Esterhazy torte to be found!)—a rich and colorful display that demanded countless pictures on the digital camera. We spent perhaps an hour there, enjoying the bustling sights and sounds, not to mention the intense variety of smells. A feast, then, for the senses, as markets are wont to be.
Map in hand, we wandered afterwards in the direction of the Museum of Applied Arts, a building
designed by the dean of art nouveau in Budapest, Odon Lechner, and a truly beautiful example of the genre, inside and out.
We skipped the current exhibit on Tiffany and Galle, but spent enough time within to get a good sense of the space, then headed north again for lunch in Raday utca, a long, narrow, attractive street shaded with sidewalk restaurant umbrellas that we had come upon by accident on the way down. We each chose a salad, both of them as simple and tasty as anything we have had for lunch since our arrival here. Then a long walk back through the side streets to our hotel for a nap, to recover for what is likely to be our last outing, to the area just north of where we are staying.
Post nap, we did indeed set out in the intended direction, and found a different Budapest from the one we have so far explored—this one clearly more affluent than the other areas. We made an initial stop at St. Stephen’s Basilica, with a wonderful, spacious,
light-bathed and decoratively paved plaza stretching out before the steps leading up to the west end entry. Inside the cathedral, an evening mass was in progress, and visitors were permitted only a sidelong view, but we could see enough to be impressed by its grandeur.
Out on the plaza again, we headed north through streets lined with buildings that were evidently better tended than those we are now used to seeing in this city—though small signs of the wear caused by both human and natural agencies are still visible, just patched over rather more successfully. We reached the splendid Szabadsag Square, with its many trees and lovely shaded walkways and its mostly magnificent surrounding buildings, then turned back south briefly to visit the masterwork of the architect Odon Lechner, the former Postal Savings Bank,
whose façade boasts intricate painted floral motifs and multiple reliefs, and whose roofs and parapets offer a fantastic display of colorful tile and ceramic flourishes. Impossible to photograph well, in part because of the height and angle of the building, in part by the wealth of deciduous trees that surround it with their greenery.
Back through the Szabadsag Square toward the river, then south a couple of blocks to the Gresham building, recently renovated as the luxury Four Seasons Hotel, another great example of the architecture,
and one that shows what can be done. Ellie is convinced that the whole city will be “radiant” in a few years. Maybe. We stopped at the (cheaper!) restaurant, and had a very pleasant supper sitting at a window table,
watching the sun set over the Buda side of the city. A huge police presence that we attributed—wrongly as it turned out—to the need for security at such a tourist mecca.
Then, after supper, we ran into the Queen of Spain. Really. I was waiting for Ellie in the lobby, watching a growing crowd of dark-suited men and elegantly dressed women whom I assumed to be part of some kind of business convention—along with a number of large men with bulging suit jackets and communications earpieces. When Ellie joined me, there was a stir and a parting of the crowd as this nice-looking women made her appearance from a stairwell and started greeting members of the assembled party with a gracious courtesy. “That’s the Queen of Spain,” Ellie said immediately. You could have fooled me. I wouldn’t have the first idea what she looked like, so I scoffed somewhat at the idea. Shortly after, though, the crowd flowed out of the hotel and into a parade of waiting cars, which sped off with two dozen police cars in escort. Naturally, I inquired of the hotel staff who this might be and he told me it was “the Spanish royal couple.” We had missed the king but what the heck; we saw the Queen of Spain, no more than an arm’s length from our very selves. No pictures, though, Sorry. I didn’t have the presence of mind to get the camera out. Besides, those security goons might not have been too pleased.
Excited, we got lost on the way back to our hotel. But did find it. And got to bed in decent time in preparation for the next step of the journey: England.
I have not been reading email while away—I have left that chore to my excellent assistant, Cardozo. I have, however, been reading comments on the blog and have been delighted, as always, to hear from Carly, who has been following our journey from afar and offering tips gleaned on his own visits to some of the cities along the way. I have been searching eagerly in Budapest for the Esterhazy torte that he mentions—but so far, no luck. Maybe this afternoon, our last before leaving for England tomorrow. Thanks to Carly, anyway, for the hint.
True to his word, our friend at the Spinoza had brought back my sweater to the hotel, and we picked it up from the concierge on our way to breakfast. Always good to be reunited with something that was lost. We enjoyed an excellent breakfast, as usual, and left in decent time for our day’s tour. First stop, the city market, open today for the first time since our arrival because of the holiday weekend. Ah yes, the shops are open. Having spent the past two days desperate for a cough drop—my cold has tail-ended into a nasty and persistent cough—I am finally able to go to a pharmacist for some relief. Never did cough drop taste so good, I promise you!
The way to the market led down the now-familiar Vaci Utca (pr. Vatsi Utsa, so far as I can tell,) the main north-south tourist drag that parallels the Danube, and we made a mercifully brief stop at a Marks & Spencer-type department store where Ellie had spotted, through the window, a couple of blouses that appealed to her, and which she was now able to try on—and buy. We also kept an eye open for an inexpensive carry-bag to accommodate that seemingly ever-expanding load of our travel gear, and found one, eventually, at the market itself, whose upper level was devoted to non-edibles.
The interior of the building that houses the market proved to be a huge, open structure, with a complex of iron-work beams and stairways. The ground floor was filled, wall-to-wall, with market stalls selling every imaginable type of fruit, vegetable, meat and baked ware
(alas, not an Esterhazy torte to be found!)—a rich and colorful display that demanded countless pictures on the digital camera. We spent perhaps an hour there, enjoying the bustling sights and sounds, not to mention the intense variety of smells. A feast, then, for the senses, as markets are wont to be.
Map in hand, we wandered afterwards in the direction of the Museum of Applied Arts, a building
designed by the dean of art nouveau in Budapest, Odon Lechner, and a truly beautiful example of the genre, inside and out.
We skipped the current exhibit on Tiffany and Galle, but spent enough time within to get a good sense of the space, then headed north again for lunch in Raday utca, a long, narrow, attractive street shaded with sidewalk restaurant umbrellas that we had come upon by accident on the way down. We each chose a salad, both of them as simple and tasty as anything we have had for lunch since our arrival here. Then a long walk back through the side streets to our hotel for a nap, to recover for what is likely to be our last outing, to the area just north of where we are staying.
Post nap, we did indeed set out in the intended direction, and found a different Budapest from the one we have so far explored—this one clearly more affluent than the other areas. We made an initial stop at St. Stephen’s Basilica, with a wonderful, spacious,
light-bathed and decoratively paved plaza stretching out before the steps leading up to the west end entry. Inside the cathedral, an evening mass was in progress, and visitors were permitted only a sidelong view, but we could see enough to be impressed by its grandeur.
Out on the plaza again, we headed north through streets lined with buildings that were evidently better tended than those we are now used to seeing in this city—though small signs of the wear caused by both human and natural agencies are still visible, just patched over rather more successfully. We reached the splendid Szabadsag Square, with its many trees and lovely shaded walkways and its mostly magnificent surrounding buildings, then turned back south briefly to visit the masterwork of the architect Odon Lechner, the former Postal Savings Bank,
whose façade boasts intricate painted floral motifs and multiple reliefs, and whose roofs and parapets offer a fantastic display of colorful tile and ceramic flourishes. Impossible to photograph well, in part because of the height and angle of the building, in part by the wealth of deciduous trees that surround it with their greenery.
Back through the Szabadsag Square toward the river, then south a couple of blocks to the Gresham building, recently renovated as the luxury Four Seasons Hotel, another great example of the architecture,
and one that shows what can be done. Ellie is convinced that the whole city will be “radiant” in a few years. Maybe. We stopped at the (cheaper!) restaurant, and had a very pleasant supper sitting at a window table,
watching the sun set over the Buda side of the city. A huge police presence that we attributed—wrongly as it turned out—to the need for security at such a tourist mecca.
Then, after supper, we ran into the Queen of Spain. Really. I was waiting for Ellie in the lobby, watching a growing crowd of dark-suited men and elegantly dressed women whom I assumed to be part of some kind of business convention—along with a number of large men with bulging suit jackets and communications earpieces. When Ellie joined me, there was a stir and a parting of the crowd as this nice-looking women made her appearance from a stairwell and started greeting members of the assembled party with a gracious courtesy. “That’s the Queen of Spain,” Ellie said immediately. You could have fooled me. I wouldn’t have the first idea what she looked like, so I scoffed somewhat at the idea. Shortly after, though, the crowd flowed out of the hotel and into a parade of waiting cars, which sped off with two dozen police cars in escort. Naturally, I inquired of the hotel staff who this might be and he told me it was “the Spanish royal couple.” We had missed the king but what the heck; we saw the Queen of Spain, no more than an arm’s length from our very selves. No pictures, though, Sorry. I didn’t have the presence of mind to get the camera out. Besides, those security goons might not have been too pleased.
Excited, we got lost on the way back to our hotel. But did find it. And got to bed in decent time in preparation for the next step of the journey: England.
To Cirencester - May 31, 2007
WEDNESDAY
A day of travel. Our flight was not due to leave until 12:30, but we were up early and got most of the packing done before breakfast to leave time for a final walk around Budapest before leaving the Continent. A cold, windy morning—and a striking contrast to the heat we have had since arriving here. And once out of the hotel, another brush with the Queen of Spain! I had been listening to the clamorous protest of numerous car horns from our hotel room, and down on the street we discovered that the northbound streets out of the square had been completely blocked off, much to the ire of commuter drivers. Police at the major intersections had been holding traffic for a good fifteen minutes, and nerves were frayed to breaking point. I joked to Ellie that it was probably the Queen of Spain—and indeed it was: a few minutes later, her motorcade swept past, with dozens of police cars in escort. Ah, well. Thinking back to the palaces we have visited, it seems that we still afford the aristocracy special treatment!
We left the hotel mid-morning, and made it out to the airport with alarming speed: our taxi driver seemed oblivious to the fact that there were other drivers on the road, and worked his will with a vengeance, cutting off other cars and speeding past them with abandon. The airplane ride, after that, seemed a relatively mild experience. Landing at Heathrow in pouring rain and dragging the suitcases around the endless airport corridors and stairways, through immigration and customs—that was something else. Oh, I didn’t mention, did I, that Ellie put her back out this morning, and was in agony all the way?
By the time we reached the car rental desk, found the bus to the remote lot, fooling around all the while with the damn international cell phone we had rented, that refused to function for us, I was in something of a stew. Once out on the road, however, having negotiated the side roads (left hand side, stick shift!, still pouring rain) to the Motorway, I settled back down, Ellie managed to get the phone to work (by dint of calling America to get help from the rental company) and we called my sister Flora only minutes before our arrival. Her detailed instructions led us through the back streets of Cirencester to her beautiful new Cotswold stone home on the historic Coxwell Street. So different from what we have been seeing!
A lovely reunion. Flora’s house has been lovingly remodeled, combining the charm of the old with the convenience of the new. After the house tour, we sat around and talked for a long while over a delicious soup and a variety of salads my sister had prepared—a welcome and refreshing change from all the rich foods we have been eating for the past couple of weeks. Then we watched a brief video of a charming performance by our grand-nephew, Hugo (did I get that right? My sister’s daughter’s son) who at the age of ten already aspires to be an actor—and to judge by this piece, certainly has the chops. It was a funny, quirky, amazingly confident act. A few minutes of a tacky British reality show (title? The one about the people being shut up in a house together for weeks, until they all go crazy, or drive the audience crazy, whichever comes first.) And bed in good time. Ellie, in serious pain, has a lot of difficulty getting off to sleep.
A day of travel. Our flight was not due to leave until 12:30, but we were up early and got most of the packing done before breakfast to leave time for a final walk around Budapest before leaving the Continent. A cold, windy morning—and a striking contrast to the heat we have had since arriving here. And once out of the hotel, another brush with the Queen of Spain! I had been listening to the clamorous protest of numerous car horns from our hotel room, and down on the street we discovered that the northbound streets out of the square had been completely blocked off, much to the ire of commuter drivers. Police at the major intersections had been holding traffic for a good fifteen minutes, and nerves were frayed to breaking point. I joked to Ellie that it was probably the Queen of Spain—and indeed it was: a few minutes later, her motorcade swept past, with dozens of police cars in escort. Ah, well. Thinking back to the palaces we have visited, it seems that we still afford the aristocracy special treatment!
We left the hotel mid-morning, and made it out to the airport with alarming speed: our taxi driver seemed oblivious to the fact that there were other drivers on the road, and worked his will with a vengeance, cutting off other cars and speeding past them with abandon. The airplane ride, after that, seemed a relatively mild experience. Landing at Heathrow in pouring rain and dragging the suitcases around the endless airport corridors and stairways, through immigration and customs—that was something else. Oh, I didn’t mention, did I, that Ellie put her back out this morning, and was in agony all the way?
By the time we reached the car rental desk, found the bus to the remote lot, fooling around all the while with the damn international cell phone we had rented, that refused to function for us, I was in something of a stew. Once out on the road, however, having negotiated the side roads (left hand side, stick shift!, still pouring rain) to the Motorway, I settled back down, Ellie managed to get the phone to work (by dint of calling America to get help from the rental company) and we called my sister Flora only minutes before our arrival. Her detailed instructions led us through the back streets of Cirencester to her beautiful new Cotswold stone home on the historic Coxwell Street. So different from what we have been seeing!
A lovely reunion. Flora’s house has been lovingly remodeled, combining the charm of the old with the convenience of the new. After the house tour, we sat around and talked for a long while over a delicious soup and a variety of salads my sister had prepared—a welcome and refreshing change from all the rich foods we have been eating for the past couple of weeks. Then we watched a brief video of a charming performance by our grand-nephew, Hugo (did I get that right? My sister’s daughter’s son) who at the age of ten already aspires to be an actor—and to judge by this piece, certainly has the chops. It was a funny, quirky, amazingly confident act. A few minutes of a tacky British reality show (title? The one about the people being shut up in a house together for weeks, until they all go crazy, or drive the audience crazy, whichever comes first.) And bed in good time. Ellie, in serious pain, has a lot of difficulty getting off to sleep.
A Day in the Country - May 31, 2007
THURSDAY
Ellie is sick, alas. Not only is she still in dire pain with her back, she has now inherited by Budapest cold and was in misery all day long. While she braved the day for as long as she could, by dinner time she crashed, and decided to stay home.
Otherwise, a lovely day—what else?—in my merrie olde homeland. The weather was mostly rotten, of course, with but few bright patches of sun between the showers. But it was wonderful for spend time with my sister, whom I see too rarely these days, since we live on opposite sides of the globe. She made me a tasty bowl of her own special porridge—that’s oatmeal, for readers across the pond—spiced up with ginger, and Ellie mixed up a bowl of granola.
After breakfast, we walked literally around the corner from this charming little street
and found ourselves immediately in the center of Cirencester, in the shade of the parish church. Ambling down the main street,
we made a detour at a nice little art gallery and turned back into the park behind the church,
with its vestiges of the ancient Roman wall and the abbey that once stood there. Once again, I found myself awed by the trees—great sycamores and oak tree, chestnut and a good few venerable copper beeches,
contrasting the innumerable shades of green with their coppery glow. Centuries of growth—and centuries of work transforming sunlight for the benefit of our species. They deserve out thanks, and our reverence.
And then the lawns—endless, and endlessly green! The rain brings benefits, too.
Back in town, we visited the church--with a special interest in this Clothier tomb
(I think you can read the text of the poem from this picture, if you enlarge it with a click: it's worth a shot! A very "metaphysical" poem.) Flora led us to a favorite coffee shop where we dallied over latte and carrot cake, and Ellie and I made an extra stop at Boots the chemist to acquire the wherewithal to fight that cold and aching back. One thing I’m unable to find anywhere, it seems, is a travel-sized can of shaving foam. I refuse to cart around those great, heavy things they make in my already overladen suitcase.
At Flora’s house, we had a very pleasant lunch and took ourselves off for a nap. Then ventured out once more, headed for the local Costwold Water Park where, we had learned, the artist Patrick Dougherty had created an environmental art piece. We discovered it there—a primitive dwelling shape, an igloo or a teepee, its walls and roof elaborated into complex patterns by gathering live willow shoots from the roots, then bundling and twisting them together.
Shades of Andy Goldsworthy, we thought. And why should there not be others working in the same manner? My take was that Goldsworthy would not have chosen to destroy the natural material even as he manipulated it. Flora point out that the reeds—many of them broken in the process—would eventually grow back. Maybe. But even so, I prefer the idea of a more quickly replaced ephemerality—the notion that we should take care to leave no trace where our path has taken us.
Interesting, though. And we thoroughly enjoyed the long walk around the lake, a former gravel pit now allowed to fill naturally with water and made available to the public as an expansive park.
Who could resist those lovely trees and hedgerows, the song of the birds at the lake’s edge, and the families of ducks and moorhens enjoying the prerogative of the water’s surface?
This is pretty much when Ellie crashed. When we got back home, she opted out of our planned pub dinner, so Flora and I went out ourselves to a place she recommended, where we found the food to be excellent, but the service… well, lacking. This was an expensive little place, highly mentioned by Les Routiers, so we expected something more, well, sophisticated than a young man who had obviously never heard of single malt Scotch and was too young to serve it anyway; and an undoubtedly well-meaning young Latvian woman, hugely pregnant and rather shabbily attired, who could not explain what the “confit” meant, in “duck confit” and, when asked about the bream, was able to say that it was “fish.” Asked about the preparation of this fish, she offered that it was “cooked.” It was clearly someone’s night off and, okay, they deserve it. But when I pay as much money as that, I reserve the right to expect at least minimally professional service. Does that make me a food snob? Ah, well.
Ellie was already in bed and quasi-sleeping when we got back. Flora and I watched a little of the television special on the infamous Camilla Parker Bowles, but after that I thought better of getting hooked on a program I’d never see the end of and went off to bed, hoping to find Ellie better in the morning.
Ellie is sick, alas. Not only is she still in dire pain with her back, she has now inherited by Budapest cold and was in misery all day long. While she braved the day for as long as she could, by dinner time she crashed, and decided to stay home.
Otherwise, a lovely day—what else?—in my merrie olde homeland. The weather was mostly rotten, of course, with but few bright patches of sun between the showers. But it was wonderful for spend time with my sister, whom I see too rarely these days, since we live on opposite sides of the globe. She made me a tasty bowl of her own special porridge—that’s oatmeal, for readers across the pond—spiced up with ginger, and Ellie mixed up a bowl of granola.
After breakfast, we walked literally around the corner from this charming little street
and found ourselves immediately in the center of Cirencester, in the shade of the parish church. Ambling down the main street,
we made a detour at a nice little art gallery and turned back into the park behind the church,
with its vestiges of the ancient Roman wall and the abbey that once stood there. Once again, I found myself awed by the trees—great sycamores and oak tree, chestnut and a good few venerable copper beeches,
contrasting the innumerable shades of green with their coppery glow. Centuries of growth—and centuries of work transforming sunlight for the benefit of our species. They deserve out thanks, and our reverence.
And then the lawns—endless, and endlessly green! The rain brings benefits, too.
Back in town, we visited the church--with a special interest in this Clothier tomb
(I think you can read the text of the poem from this picture, if you enlarge it with a click: it's worth a shot! A very "metaphysical" poem.) Flora led us to a favorite coffee shop where we dallied over latte and carrot cake, and Ellie and I made an extra stop at Boots the chemist to acquire the wherewithal to fight that cold and aching back. One thing I’m unable to find anywhere, it seems, is a travel-sized can of shaving foam. I refuse to cart around those great, heavy things they make in my already overladen suitcase.
At Flora’s house, we had a very pleasant lunch and took ourselves off for a nap. Then ventured out once more, headed for the local Costwold Water Park where, we had learned, the artist Patrick Dougherty had created an environmental art piece. We discovered it there—a primitive dwelling shape, an igloo or a teepee, its walls and roof elaborated into complex patterns by gathering live willow shoots from the roots, then bundling and twisting them together.
Shades of Andy Goldsworthy, we thought. And why should there not be others working in the same manner? My take was that Goldsworthy would not have chosen to destroy the natural material even as he manipulated it. Flora point out that the reeds—many of them broken in the process—would eventually grow back. Maybe. But even so, I prefer the idea of a more quickly replaced ephemerality—the notion that we should take care to leave no trace where our path has taken us.
Interesting, though. And we thoroughly enjoyed the long walk around the lake, a former gravel pit now allowed to fill naturally with water and made available to the public as an expansive park.
Who could resist those lovely trees and hedgerows, the song of the birds at the lake’s edge, and the families of ducks and moorhens enjoying the prerogative of the water’s surface?
This is pretty much when Ellie crashed. When we got back home, she opted out of our planned pub dinner, so Flora and I went out ourselves to a place she recommended, where we found the food to be excellent, but the service… well, lacking. This was an expensive little place, highly mentioned by Les Routiers, so we expected something more, well, sophisticated than a young man who had obviously never heard of single malt Scotch and was too young to serve it anyway; and an undoubtedly well-meaning young Latvian woman, hugely pregnant and rather shabbily attired, who could not explain what the “confit” meant, in “duck confit” and, when asked about the bream, was able to say that it was “fish.” Asked about the preparation of this fish, she offered that it was “cooked.” It was clearly someone’s night off and, okay, they deserve it. But when I pay as much money as that, I reserve the right to expect at least minimally professional service. Does that make me a food snob? Ah, well.
Ellie was already in bed and quasi-sleeping when we got back. Flora and I watched a little of the television special on the infamous Camilla Parker Bowles, but after that I thought better of getting hooked on a program I’d never see the end of and went off to bed, hoping to find Ellie better in the morning.
From Harpenden: A Shock - June 1, 2007
What a shock! I caught my wife sleeping with another guy, and I have the evidence to prove it. Here it is:
The culprit? Joe, our grandson. Age five. Here's the mug shot:
And here's his twin sister, Georgia (another Georgie, by coincidence!)
And his BIG sister, Alice, eight. who apparently wouldn't sit still for long enough, yesterday, for a face shot--have to remedy that!
What a joy to see them all! And what a surprise to find Joe curled up in bed with us this morning. I felt Ellie shoving me over during the night, but I attributed this to her usual imperious territoriality in the bed department. I was not aware of our night visitor until this early morning, when I awoke.
Anyway, yesterday: we left Harpenden shortly before noon, a little earlier than planned because I was a bundle of nerves about the coming long drive (on the left hand side, shift stick, no rain!) through unfamiliar country roads from Cirencester to Harpenden. As usually happens, the anxiety disappeared as soon I was back in the driver's seat, and we stopped for a quick coffee in Burford, a charming village in the Cotswolds where Joe and Georgie and Alice's great aunt, Jenny lives--but unfortunately we had no number for her.
A while later, on the road, we were looking for a convenient, quick lunch stop and on impulse turned off, following a brown historical road sign to Waddesdon Manor, which proved to be a far bigger commitment than we had imagined. The ancestral home since the mid-19th century of the British branch of the Rothschild family, built in imitation of an 18th century French chateau. The exterior is hardly modest, as you can see from these pictures:
and the interior is extravagant almost beyond belief--the Rothschild's collections of elaborate and rare French furniture and knick-knacks, Sevres porcelain, and art works of all shapes and sizes. My favorite: a small "fete galante" painting by Watteau. There was more, far more than we could have hoped to take in on so brief a visit, but we enjoyed the glimpse. Then on through ten thousand roundabouts and sometimes heavy traffic to Harpenden and the grandkids!
Ellie took on grandmotherly responsibilities while Matthew joined me in returning the rental car to Luton airport. Bringing it in two hours later than the required time cost us an extra day's rental fee: Hertz allows a twenty-nine minute grace period. Generous. Then back to Harpenden via taxi, a good Scotch with Matthew and Thai hors d'oeuvres on the lawn with the family, before dinner and a rather early night. Then, of course, in the middle of the night--the betrayal!
The culprit? Joe, our grandson. Age five. Here's the mug shot:
And here's his twin sister, Georgia (another Georgie, by coincidence!)
And his BIG sister, Alice, eight. who apparently wouldn't sit still for long enough, yesterday, for a face shot--have to remedy that!
What a joy to see them all! And what a surprise to find Joe curled up in bed with us this morning. I felt Ellie shoving me over during the night, but I attributed this to her usual imperious territoriality in the bed department. I was not aware of our night visitor until this early morning, when I awoke.
Anyway, yesterday: we left Harpenden shortly before noon, a little earlier than planned because I was a bundle of nerves about the coming long drive (on the left hand side, shift stick, no rain!) through unfamiliar country roads from Cirencester to Harpenden. As usually happens, the anxiety disappeared as soon I was back in the driver's seat, and we stopped for a quick coffee in Burford, a charming village in the Cotswolds where Joe and Georgie and Alice's great aunt, Jenny lives--but unfortunately we had no number for her.
A while later, on the road, we were looking for a convenient, quick lunch stop and on impulse turned off, following a brown historical road sign to Waddesdon Manor, which proved to be a far bigger commitment than we had imagined. The ancestral home since the mid-19th century of the British branch of the Rothschild family, built in imitation of an 18th century French chateau. The exterior is hardly modest, as you can see from these pictures:
and the interior is extravagant almost beyond belief--the Rothschild's collections of elaborate and rare French furniture and knick-knacks, Sevres porcelain, and art works of all shapes and sizes. My favorite: a small "fete galante" painting by Watteau. There was more, far more than we could have hoped to take in on so brief a visit, but we enjoyed the glimpse. Then on through ten thousand roundabouts and sometimes heavy traffic to Harpenden and the grandkids!
Ellie took on grandmotherly responsibilities while Matthew joined me in returning the rental car to Luton airport. Bringing it in two hours later than the required time cost us an extra day's rental fee: Hertz allows a twenty-nine minute grace period. Generous. Then back to Harpenden via taxi, a good Scotch with Matthew and Thai hors d'oeuvres on the lawn with the family, before dinner and a rather early night. Then, of course, in the middle of the night--the betrayal!
England - June 2, 2007
Okay, it's a day for family pictures. A glorious day in England. All sun. No cloud, no rain. Just clear blue skies, warm sunshine. We all piled in the family Toyota Previa
and drove over to Knebworth Manor, the family home of the Lytton dynasty. Admired the manor house
--from the oustide only--and the lovely gardens.
(Alice--the promised face shot.)
(PaL with son and daughter-in-law.)
(Ellie, with Alice and Georgie.)
I'm not sure why, but my eye has been drawn especially to the trees on this visit.
Perhaps it has grown weary of palm and eucaplyptus! We roamed along the dinosaur trail,
nicely done; had a good lunch (I couldn't resist the bangers and mash!) in the tea room; and wandered on down to Fort Knebworth, an elaborate and delightful playground for the children.
In the evening, a wonderful dinner in the back garden: Matthew's hors d'oeuvres (bacon-wrapped asparagus, grilled squash chunks) and his risotto and pork steaks, along with Diane's salad. And to bed. An uncomplicated, wonderful family day.
and drove over to Knebworth Manor, the family home of the Lytton dynasty. Admired the manor house
--from the oustide only--and the lovely gardens.
(Alice--the promised face shot.)
(PaL with son and daughter-in-law.)
(Ellie, with Alice and Georgie.)
I'm not sure why, but my eye has been drawn especially to the trees on this visit.
Perhaps it has grown weary of palm and eucaplyptus! We roamed along the dinosaur trail,
nicely done; had a good lunch (I couldn't resist the bangers and mash!) in the tea room; and wandered on down to Fort Knebworth, an elaborate and delightful playground for the children.
In the evening, a wonderful dinner in the back garden: Matthew's hors d'oeuvres (bacon-wrapped asparagus, grilled squash chunks) and his risotto and pork steaks, along with Diane's salad. And to bed. An uncomplicated, wonderful family day.
A Family Day - June 3, 2007
A day with the family at home in Harpenden. Breakfast. Inflatable pool for the kids.
Lunch. A walk in the country.
Dinner. Pleasure. Exhuastion!
Lunch. A walk in the country.
Dinner. Pleasure. Exhuastion!
Changes - June 4, 2007
Perhaps spurred by the thought that I'll be back in the United States tomorrow, I checked in to the New York Times today for the first time in three weeks. It seems that virtually nothing has changed in the important things--things like war and peace--except that relations with Russia have deteriorated since we left. Do we blame Putin, for his insistence on making a grab for the power that his country and its satellites once wielded in the world: or Bush, for his arrogant bellicosity? Does it matter who deserves the blame? The world, it seems, is still in the deathly grip of men who are incapable of change, and for whom the old--and by now widely discredited--models of power, territoriality and ownership are still the governing principles.
I note from Bob Herbert's column that Al Gore has a new book out, attacking the Bush administration's assault on reason in favor of an extreme and misguided ideology. Good for him. Gore, I mean. As Herbert is at pains to point out, the world would look very different today if the man who won the most votes in the 2000 presidential elections had actually moved into the White House. With regard to running again this year, Gore tells Herbert that he now realizes that he's "not a very good politician." Just what we need, in my view. I wish he'd heed the many voices begging him to run. He's the most fully qualified, the most visionary, and the least compromising of the lot.
All this from Harpenden, Herts., UK, where I sit looking at my adoptive country from a useful distance. It has been good, honestly, to be away. It has felt like there is still some sanity in the world, though perhaps not much. There are many huge changes that we must make, if we're all to survive the results of our own base impulses.
I note from Bob Herbert's column that Al Gore has a new book out, attacking the Bush administration's assault on reason in favor of an extreme and misguided ideology. Good for him. Gore, I mean. As Herbert is at pains to point out, the world would look very different today if the man who won the most votes in the 2000 presidential elections had actually moved into the White House. With regard to running again this year, Gore tells Herbert that he now realizes that he's "not a very good politician." Just what we need, in my view. I wish he'd heed the many voices begging him to run. He's the most fully qualified, the most visionary, and the least compromising of the lot.
All this from Harpenden, Herts., UK, where I sit looking at my adoptive country from a useful distance. It has been good, honestly, to be away. It has felt like there is still some sanity in the world, though perhaps not much. There are many huge changes that we must make, if we're all to survive the results of our own base impulses.
Six AM - June 5, 2007
... British time, and off to the airport. Thanks to all for the welcome comments, whether published or unpublished. See you all soon. Cheers, PaL
Six AM, Again... - June 7, 2007
... this time, Pacific Daylight Savings Time. I'm back at my study desk in Los Angeles, overlooking that familiar view of our back yard and, beyond, of Hollywood. The fountain is gurgling its familiar tune, the birds are singing. Home. It's at once a strange and a welcome feeling, after a good while away: so this is where I live, when I'm at home. It doesn't yet seem quite real, and my mind is having a hard time adjusting.
But first--and this is perhaps why--I need to get back to the last day of our European trip, Tuesday, Greenwich Mean Time. The grandchildren were back at school,
in their nice green uniforms, and Matthew was able to take a day out of his busy work schedule to join us for a day in town. London, that is. I used to know it well, but it has changed a lot since the years I lived there, in the late 1950s. These days, if you want to understand the meaning of the word "cosmopolitan," London is the place to be. It teems with every human race and every human language. Back then, in my young, post-Cambridge days, you could still feel something of the insularity of England, even in its capital.
Expensive! Unbelievable! Now that the dollar is worth a scant half of a pound sterling, you double the price of everything to come up with its dollar equivalent--and the prices themselves look the same. Ten pounds--twenty dollars--for a lunch is barely adequate. Ah, well, no point in dwelling on the obvious. Everywhere in Europe seemed expensive. And to think there was a day when Americans crossed the Atlantic for a cheap vacation!
London. With Ellie's cold and the prospect of a long day's travel ahead of us, we decided on a leisurely day, with just a couple of easy destinations. We took a morning express train from Harpenden, and were in London within half an hour. Then on by the still-easy and convenient "tube" to South Kensington station, whence we walked the few blocks up through the museum area to Hyde Park.
Still green, still filled with magnificent trees, still serene despite the traffic.
Our destination was the Serpentine Gallery, where we have seen interesing work before, and we were not disappointed by the current exhibit of Paul Chan--an unusual and effective use of the medium of video. Chan projects his images from above onto the floor or a tabletop, where they end up looking more like moving silhouettes rather than the familiar video images. The overall impression is of things falling--leaves, chairs, motor cars, kitchen appliances, cell phones, everything imaginable... and people. Human shapes, some almost too tiny to be recognized at first, others larger, falling across the surface of the floor. My eye kept watching for their appearance at the edges and following their drift, even as my mind was drawn irresistibly to that dreadful day at the World Trade Center in New York. Mixed in among all the other falling objects, the human shapes took on a sudden, almost tragic poignancy each time they appeared. Reflections about time, the unending passage of time, the equivalence of all things, including ourselves, their disappearance beyond the edges of our consciousness...
We walked back through the park and admired the renovations to the Albert Memorial--Victoria's inordinately grand tribute to her lost love--and past Kensington Palace,
the erstwhile home of the ill-fated Diana, still much in the news because of the NBC broadcast of images of the accident in which she died. A great debate in England at the current moment: her death can still cause controversy. Hoping for a good pub lunch, we stopped off at a pub--the wrong one, it turned out, for a good pub lunch--and had a beer there before finding a small Italian restuarant on a side street that offered a better menu.
After lunch, we wandered on through the back streets of Kensington toward the museum. It's an attractive area, with grand squares, elegant mansions and tiny mews--the old stables turned in post-carriage days into small but appealing--and highly "desirable"--living quarters.
By the time we reached the South Ken underground station again, there was time only for a quick stop at the Victoria and Albert Museum gift shop, then back to the tube and a train from Kings Cross back to Harpenden. We had wanted to get back in time to pack, because we'd need to leave early for our flight from Heathrow.
A leisurely last dinner with Matthew and Diane
at a local, very fine restaurant, and time for a good talk and promises of a return visit with the family as soon we we could all manage it. Five thousand miles is too great a separation for grandparents from their growing grandchildren...
As for the flight, well, it was uneventful. Enough said. More later, when I get myself back onto Pacific time.
But first--and this is perhaps why--I need to get back to the last day of our European trip, Tuesday, Greenwich Mean Time. The grandchildren were back at school,
in their nice green uniforms, and Matthew was able to take a day out of his busy work schedule to join us for a day in town. London, that is. I used to know it well, but it has changed a lot since the years I lived there, in the late 1950s. These days, if you want to understand the meaning of the word "cosmopolitan," London is the place to be. It teems with every human race and every human language. Back then, in my young, post-Cambridge days, you could still feel something of the insularity of England, even in its capital.
Expensive! Unbelievable! Now that the dollar is worth a scant half of a pound sterling, you double the price of everything to come up with its dollar equivalent--and the prices themselves look the same. Ten pounds--twenty dollars--for a lunch is barely adequate. Ah, well, no point in dwelling on the obvious. Everywhere in Europe seemed expensive. And to think there was a day when Americans crossed the Atlantic for a cheap vacation!
London. With Ellie's cold and the prospect of a long day's travel ahead of us, we decided on a leisurely day, with just a couple of easy destinations. We took a morning express train from Harpenden, and were in London within half an hour. Then on by the still-easy and convenient "tube" to South Kensington station, whence we walked the few blocks up through the museum area to Hyde Park.
Still green, still filled with magnificent trees, still serene despite the traffic.
Our destination was the Serpentine Gallery, where we have seen interesing work before, and we were not disappointed by the current exhibit of Paul Chan--an unusual and effective use of the medium of video. Chan projects his images from above onto the floor or a tabletop, where they end up looking more like moving silhouettes rather than the familiar video images. The overall impression is of things falling--leaves, chairs, motor cars, kitchen appliances, cell phones, everything imaginable... and people. Human shapes, some almost too tiny to be recognized at first, others larger, falling across the surface of the floor. My eye kept watching for their appearance at the edges and following their drift, even as my mind was drawn irresistibly to that dreadful day at the World Trade Center in New York. Mixed in among all the other falling objects, the human shapes took on a sudden, almost tragic poignancy each time they appeared. Reflections about time, the unending passage of time, the equivalence of all things, including ourselves, their disappearance beyond the edges of our consciousness...
We walked back through the park and admired the renovations to the Albert Memorial--Victoria's inordinately grand tribute to her lost love--and past Kensington Palace,
the erstwhile home of the ill-fated Diana, still much in the news because of the NBC broadcast of images of the accident in which she died. A great debate in England at the current moment: her death can still cause controversy. Hoping for a good pub lunch, we stopped off at a pub--the wrong one, it turned out, for a good pub lunch--and had a beer there before finding a small Italian restuarant on a side street that offered a better menu.
After lunch, we wandered on through the back streets of Kensington toward the museum. It's an attractive area, with grand squares, elegant mansions and tiny mews--the old stables turned in post-carriage days into small but appealing--and highly "desirable"--living quarters.
By the time we reached the South Ken underground station again, there was time only for a quick stop at the Victoria and Albert Museum gift shop, then back to the tube and a train from Kings Cross back to Harpenden. We had wanted to get back in time to pack, because we'd need to leave early for our flight from Heathrow.
A leisurely last dinner with Matthew and Diane
at a local, very fine restaurant, and time for a good talk and promises of a return visit with the family as soon we we could all manage it. Five thousand miles is too great a separation for grandparents from their growing grandchildren...
As for the flight, well, it was uneventful. Enough said. More later, when I get myself back onto Pacific time.
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