Steve Haas Travel

Tag: Slovakia

  • Day 7, Tue 8/30: Dresden, Germany

    Day 7, Tue 8/30: Dresden, Germany

    [Wow, this internet is so much faster than the one in Prague!…actually the one in Vienna, too…]

    We set the alarm for 6am, packed up again, headed down for breakfast a little before 7, and were out the door about 7:40am.

    These were photos of our room in Prague that I took last night.

     They upgraded us to a suite, but it was just adjoining rooms where one of them was a living room. Nice enough to be sure, just an awkward layout. For as little time as we spend in our rooms, we don’t actually care about it that much. But Dan’s hotel’s status kicks in when they have the rooms available and they often upgrade without him asking.

     

     The view from our room, taken this morning. There was a decent sized tennis complex across the river. The river, by the way, is the Vitava.
     The Prague Hilton had this huge courtyard, with the rooms 8 floors up around it, to allow for more rooms with natural light I guess. That space there behind the staircase on the first floor is where we had breakfast. This was taken from a glass elevator that looked out into the courtyard.
    All that effort to make it to the train station on time and the train was 45 minutes late. Notice the “45 min” in the bottom right corner of the sign. We got there about 8:05 for an 8:27 train; they didn’t announce it was late until 8:21, and then it was only 5 minutes, which kept expanding. They finally announced the platform around 9:05, in the mean time we were just standing in front of the monitor in the station, watching the board. With about 100 others!
     The train wasn’t full; we had a compartment that sat 6 all to ourselves.
     Some pretty views from the train. It was a 2 hour ride to Dresden.

     

    We got to Dresden around 11:30am.  Why Dresden? It’s a good question. The primary thing we knew about it was it had been bombed to hell in WWII, and that they had done a nice job of reconstruction, especially since Germany was reunified. Dresden was in East Germany when they were split. We were originally only going to spend 1 night here but Dan’s colleagues at Bayer encouraged him not to rush it. There are a fair number of tourists here, but the vast majority of them are German. (Unlike in Prague and Vienna where we saw folks from all over the planet.)

    Dresden’s bombing became somewhat controversial after the fact, but at the time it was considered an important strategic target for the Allies. Dresden was the 7th largest city in Germany at the time. (Today, with a population of just over 1/2 a million, it’s #11.) It hadn’t been touched by the Allies despite being a major industrial, transportation and communication center, with lots of connections to other parts of Central Europe. Over 3 days in February of 1945, the Allies dropped 3900 bombs and incendiary devices, destroying 1600 acres and killing 22k-25k people. The Nazis propoganda machine blew that number up about 10x, and downplayed the importance of Dresden to Germany overall, which led to some of the controversy. After the war, Dresden became part of East Germany and was Communist until reunification.

    Dresden has been around for over 800 years and before Germany was unified in 1871, it was the seat of power for the Duchy of Saxony (Kingdom from 1806-1918), and Saxon royalty ruled here for many centuries.

    We walked to our hotel, about a mile. The entire way we hardly saw any traffic because there was a pedestrian mall that stretched essentially from the train station into the Centrum (downtown) and our hotel is right there in the center of the city. We can see the church below from one of our windows, because it’s at the end of the block.

    This is Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady. It’s the predominant building in the main square. That’s a statue of Martin Luther in the middle of the square, although in the photos above and below it looks like it may be right in front of the church. It’s not. Notice how small the people are by the church compared to those by the statue and you’ll see what I mean.

     

    This is almost the entire square and you get a better perspective of size, with the now small Martin Luther in the middle.

    This is of the back of the church. Notice the darker blocks here. And if you look again, and in the photos above, you’ll notice some dark blocks spread throughout the building in seemingly random places. Here’s the story:

    This church was destroyed in the bombing described above. After the war, it was left in ruins – literally, just as it was after being bombed – as a war memorial. And it sat that way for over 50 years. After reunification, they decided to have a go at rebuilding it, and used the original plans from 1720 which had been kept all this time. Where possible, they used actual material salvaged from the ruins. Hence the black blocks.
    Wild, eh?

    Here’s what was left of it after the bombing. The Martin Luther statue stood there all this time.

    Reconstruction started in 1994 and took 10 years.

     

     

     We, of course, took the option to go up, which you had to pay to do; the church itself was free.

    This hole here in the floor? The same hole in the middle of the dome 3 photos above.

    Dan having fun with the camera….

     Some pretty views of the town from above.
     See the awning in the shadows of the street towards the bottom of the photo? That’s our hotel.

     

     Martin Luther again from above. Those yellow tarps top left next to the red ones is where we ate lunch after. See the table below. (Although we sat at one farther in.)

     

     

     Dan kept saying “I can’t believe we’re eating at a burger joint in Germany” but he admitted more than once it was pretty good. He had an Italian burger – with Gorgonzola cheese among other things.
     Mine was French with Brie, and sweet potato fries. Both kinds of fries were delicious. The red sauce was a spicy something like you’d get with Asian appetizers. It was weird in that setting but worked well.
     Take note: Ketchup, and Fried Potato Sauce. Never get them confused. (And I love that the mayo bottle is bigger in a disgusting kinda way…)
     This is called the Procession of Princes and it literally outside out hotel door. It’s a mural painted on the wall of the royal palace showing all of the Saxon princes since around 1300. That’s not history I’m familiar with so didn’t recognize any of the names.

     

     This is a square around the Catholic church below, which we were going to visit, but we couldn’t figure out how to get in. The steps I’m on lead up to “the balcony of Europe.” (More on that later.) There was construction tape around the only entrance to the church we could see so something is going on. This was also destroyed in the war and reconstructed based on original plans.
    The full church, and that’s the opera house in the background.
     It was about 3:00 by this time and we went and checked into our room. They also upgraded us to a suite, although this is the real deal. We will be very comfortable. Too bad we don’t spend too much time in our room! The photo above is the first floor. There’s a half bath to your right.

     

     

     

     That’s where I’m sitting right now as I type :)
     We left about 3:30 to do the only museum we were going to today: The Albertinum, a nice little museum with a wide range of art (including a little modern…).
     Those stairs in the background also take you to the Balcony of Europe….
     This wasn’t a great museum, we were only there an hour. But there were a few pieces we liked. Especially this sculpture made of plywood.
     Dan thought she was whimsical.
     This was the huge entrance hall. You can see how crowded it was! Notice the baby on the floor on the far right just below center.
     Roman mosaic, probably around 200 AD.
     Dan likes it when we come across art of ancient civilizations that isn’t Egyptian, Greek or Roman. In this case, Assyrian. This stuff is about 2500 years old.

     

     

     Careful, we are entering the modern art arena. Dan thought this was whimsical as well. The upside down text is: No Rejection, No Annual Contract, No Credit Check.
     This was called Freedom.
    Dan couldn’t resist. Complements the black one from the Albertini in Vienna. (I keep wanting this museum – Albertinum – to be named after the same guy, Albert of Saxony, Maria Theresa’s son-in-law. But it was a different Albert of Saxony who was King about 100 years later. There was probably a relation there somehow, I just couldn’t track it.)
     This was a photo of Dresden after it was bombed. Dan ended up liking his reflection overlaid on it.

    We left the museum by the back door and took some steps up to Bruhl’s Terrace, AKA “The Balcony of Europe.” We thought that was an incredibly lofty nickname so kept making jokes about it, but it’s been used since the 19th century.  This was a pretty garden. You can barely see me standing on the other side if you look hard enough.

     It’s grainy because Dan used his zoom feature. This section by the river used to be the private gardens of the Count of Bruhl, hence the name.

     

     Elbe River.

     

    This is all still considered Bruhl’s Terrance.
     The Augustus Bridge is the oldest bridge in Dresden, built between 1907-1910. We crossed it to get to Neustadt below.
     This section of town was destroyed by a fire in 1685, and was referred to as “new town” when it was rebuilt. So not exactly new anymore, but it was adorable.

     

     Lots of shops and restaurants lined this park.
     There were several big fountains like this.
     We came into Neustadt to find a specific artsy area known as Kunstofpassage. On our way, we found ourselves going along this street that had a funky vibe that we really liked. Reminded us both of the strip on Telegraph in Berkeley. A pretty wide variety of ethnic food, including Italian of course, several Vietnamese, also Spanish and Turkish. And pot stores, despite weed still being illegal here. That image dead center is Mickey Mouse with pot leaves all around him.
    Lots of walkers and folks riding bikes. We love that.

    This is kind of blatant for weed not being legal.

     

     We found our destination.
     It was definitely funky, but we liked it.

     

     

     Gutters made into a water feature.
    This was opposite that, across the courtyard.
    We walked back to our hotel after that. We were pretty tired – walked over 11 miles – and had thought about getting a light dinner in the lounge and going out for dessert. We scratched the dessert part because we just didn’t want to go out again, despite getting back at about 7:15pm. The food in the lounge was good, we hung out there a bit while I prepped the photos and wrote some. (And thank god for high speed internet: So Much Faster than last night.) We came back to the room about 9pm, headed down to the spa area around 9:30 for sauna, hot tub and steam room. It’s now almost midnight and it’s bedtime. We have a full day in Dresden tomorrow, leaving for Berlin Thursday morning.
    PS: I don’t remember getting these notifications from TripAdvisor before this trip. Borders somewhere between cool and creepy….

     

  • Day 6, Mon 8/29: Prague Part 2

    Day 6, Mon 8/29: Prague Part 2

    We came back to the hotel early escaping a thunderstorm, but we were pretty much done with our day anyway. I thought “yay, I can get the blog up early and get to bed early.” Not a chance. We started with over 115 photos, and really only did 2 things! I finally got it down to about 70 and the internet here is dreadfully slow so getting them off our phones and uploaded here took awhile. Oh well. It’s a picturesque place that we wanted to remember so hopefully you will enjoy them, too. And if not, too bad  :)

    We both slept good but didn’t get up as early as we’d hoped. The plan was to take advantage of the hotel breakfast that starts at 6am so we could get on with our day before the crowds set in. We went down about 7:15 and left the hotel about 8:30. So much for that idea.

    This was on our way into the city center. We stayed about a mile away and took a different path in than we did yesterday. I probably took more of these shots than I needed to but I always enjoy them. What are you looking at exactly? Nothing in particular. I love the way certain blocks look that strike me as quintessential Europe and this was one of them. Minus the James Dean sign on the shop on the left that is.

    And this is another of those. You turn a corner and something appears. As we were approaching this I was like “hey, that looks like the Astronomical Clock.” Cuz it is. We had just approached it from a completely different direction so was surprised to walk into the same square we’d left last yesterday. So we started where we ended essentially.

    At 8:50am, there was a crowd already forming for the same reason we were there: the 9:00am show.

     The Apostles doing their thing. We managed to get a video of it, too, which you can check out here if you like.

    This guy was at the entrance to the Charles Bridge. Couldn’t figure out who he was, mostly I just thought he looked cool. Art had made a comment on our photos yesterday about them looking like a fairy tale, and everywhere I looked today, that’s what I saw. Doesn’t he look like a fairy tale king? Everything here really does sort of have that look about it.

    The entrance to the Charles Bridge. It is the oldest bridge in the city. Construction began in 1357 and it was finished in 1402.  It is famous for having 30 or so statues situated on it. (Don’t worry, we only took photos of a few!) It gets compared to a bridge in Paris that is also rich with statues but I like this one better. It’s older, has more history, and is only for use by pedestrians, although they did used to allow cars and trams. Much better this way.

    View of Prague Castle as we approach the Charles Bridge.

     

    We got there a little after 9am and the crowds weren’t out yet. You’ll see later it doesn’t stay that way.

    A bride and her groom getting their wedding pictures done here. Kinda cool.
     Several of the statues have areas like this on them that appear to be polished. They get that way from people rubbing on them for good luck.
     Empty. For now.
    A fun photo of Dan as we were approaching the end.
    Another of those “I just like this look” shots.  Across the bridge, on our way to the castle.
     The stairs up to the castle.
     I’m pretty sure we haven’t climbed this many steps since Montemartre in Paris in 2014. And pretty sure this was higher.

     

     This is the exit actually, but one of the first things you see. There were guards and military police stationed here and there throughout. The castle also had administration offices for the President of the Republic, similar to (now I don’t remember which palace) in Vienna.
     This and below is St. Vitus Cathedral, and really what you see all over the city. It sits fully inside the castle walls, and is surrounded by the castle structure on all sides. More on this later.

     

    This was in the Castle, Diet Hall it was called. It was the meeting place for the King at the time (or Queen if you’re Maria Theresa) and the other folks in his circle who made decisions for the town. There was a lot of history in this first section of our tour, and it was interesting to see how well this trip tied history together: so many connections between Vienna, Bratislava and Prague. The Habsburgs used this castle as the seat of their empire for a short period of time in the 1600’s. Maria Theresa and other Austrian monarchs also held the Bohemia crown as well as Austria and Hungary. Not shown here, there was a big painting of her on the left. But for the better part of 900 years, this was considered the seat of power for the Kingdom of Bohemia. The name of the first Bohemian king, year 1086? Vratislav. I had seen that reference in Bratislava, too, only there it was spelled Bretislav. But now we know where that name comes from.

     Decorated administration rooms in the castle.

     

     This was St. George’s Basilica, just behind St. Vitus, whose backside you see below. It was founded by Vratislav in 920. It was pretty simple inside, we didn’t take any photos.
     Construction on St. Vitus began in 1352 but proceeded very slowly, if for no other reason the architects would die before it could get completed. The 2nd architect was Peter Parler, who also did the Charles Bridge. It actually sat unfinished for several hundred years. Things got going again in 1844, and it was finally finished in 1929. It’s hard to tell what’s new and what’s old – they did a pretty good job of keeping everything in Gothic style, which is definitely 1300-1400’s. But I will say it’s one of the more impressive cathedrals we’ve seen. Starting with the premise that St. Peter’s in Rome is in a class by itself, we’d put this up there with Cologne, Westminster Abbey, or any of the three in Gent. Not a lot of explanations below, just a lot of photos.

     

     

     

     

     Tomb of Vratislav by the main altar.

     

    After the cathedral we went to watch the changing of the guards, which is a 10 minute ceremony that occurs every day at Noon. There were a lot of people gathered around when we got there 10 minutes before so we didn’t have the best view. But it was close enough and Dan was able to get some good shots, especially since “the change” (3 outgoing, 3 incoming) marched right in front of him and into the courtyard where we were standing.

     

     

     

    When he wasn’t shooing away overzealous tourists, he was standing in front of Dan blocking his view.

     

     And then 3 others – the change – marched by him again…
     We went walking around the castle grounds after and literally stumbled across this. We stopped here to rest on those steps you see below and heard some American tourists talking about the echo chamber that exists on this disc. Sure enough, when you stand directly in the middle and start talking, you hear a perfect echo of yourself. Step outside of it, and it’s normal. It’s a trip.

     

     Dan caught me doing a little stretching.
     These guys were in front of the government administration entry.
    A nice view of the cathedral in the background from this path.
     Outside of the castle complex headed towards town for lunch.
     Dan made reservations at a cute little place that was highly rated on TripAdvisor.
     Dan had roasted duck, similar potatoes as we saw yesterday.
     I had rabbit, potatoes, and spinach with lots of garlic. The gravy was excellent.
     Apple strudel again for Dan, although he liked yesterday’s better.
    This was called a honey cake. The flavor of the cake was somewhere between spice cake and graham cracker, with cream between the layers. They were both so big we split and half of each.
    Next we went to Petrin Hill. Well, hiked to Petrin Hill. It’s up, way up. By the time our day was done we’d walked 11.82 miles and 58 floors. A good chunk of those floors occurred here. It was essentially a park on a hill overlooking the city, not unlike the one yesterday, but more to do. First stop was a mirror maze, that also had a fun-house of sorts. I had said to Dan earlier today: at some point we’ll need to have someone take a nice photo of us. He says: we can do that at the mirror maze! I’ll admit, not exactly what I had in mind…but they’re fun…

     

     

     

     

     

    Next was an observation deck built to look like the Eiffel Tower. It was constructed in 1891. Earlier in the day we’d been talking about this thing he has for disasters. It usually starts with him saying “wouldn’t it be funny if…” and then this horrible thing comes out of his mouth that he would find exciting. When we were at the top level of this – as seen in the photo – it wasn’t open like the first level, you were enclosed except for a few windows. It was pretty crowded, noisy, and my claustrophobia was kicking in. And it was swaying. Just a little, but you could feel it. So there goes Dan: “wouldn’t it be funny if this toppled over? I wonder if anyone would survive.” Me: “No, it wouldn’t, and I need to go now…” I just walked down the stairs a bit, which were all outside and there was a terrific breeze blowing. Felt great. All that said, the view from the top was amazing and it was well worth the climb.

     

     This was from the first level. The ones that follow are all from the second level.

     

     

     That’s the Charles Bridge on the right. Can you see the people?

     

     We zoomed in to the Charles Bridge on the right. It’s a sea of people. This was about 3:15pm. We would need to cross that to get back to the hotel.
     Above and below are more of the grounds we covered as we were making our way to a monastery.

     

     

     

     Just another one of “those” shots as we made our way down out of the castle hill.
    Shortly after that it started to rain. By the time we got about 1/3 of the way over the Charles Bridge – which had pretty much cleared due to the rain – it was suddenly pouring and there was nowhere to go. When you’re already that wet there’s no real point looking for cover. We were only going to do one other thing and just decided the thunderstorm was a good excuse to call it early. We got back to the room about 4:30, went down to the spa to shower and take advantage of the hot tub and sauna.
     We came back up to the lounge for a light dinner and I stayed here to write the blog. Suddenly I realized it was 10:15 and they were trying to shut down so I finished in the room.

    It is 11:00pm on Monday and that’s a wrap for Prague. We leave for Dresden, Germany, tomorrow morning.

  • Day 5, Sun 8/28: Prague, Czech Republic

    Day 5, Sun 8/28: Prague, Czech Republic

    Dan slept pretty good. I just slept OK – kept waking up – but wasn’t concerned about it because I knew it would be a light day and I could make up some sleep on the train. I’d set the alarm for 6:30 to avoid our timing missteps the day before. We packed first, then went downstairs for breakfast. We left the hotel about 8:15.

     The traditional shot of the room, albeit a bit of a mess since we’d already started packing. Oh well :)
     From our window: one of Vienna’s main train stations, Wien Mitte, across the street. Very convenient.
      We got to the platform about 8:35, more than enough time. It went by fast. The train arrived around 8:50 and seemed to take off right after we sat down, but it was right on time. Just took awhile to get on and settle in; there were quite a few people getting off.
    We had started out in regular seats but after the first stop the table across from us freed up so we took it and it had for the remaining 3 hours of the 4 hour ride. Four hours on a train, unlike on a plane, somehow goes very fast.
    We crossed the border at the first stop and I snapped a map photo. This shows the whole itinerary: Vienna and Bratislava in the middle, Prague center left, Dresden and Berlin above that. The distance between Bratislava and Berlin is less than the distance between Sacramento and San Diego.

    We arrived right on time a little after 1pm. The Hilton we’re staying it is about a mile from the train station. We walked. Our room wasn’t ready yet do we just dropped our bags off and headed out to start exploring a bit and find lunch.

    The architecture here is fairly unique. We saw a fair amount of this intricate outside painting on some of the older buildings.

    One of the gates into Old Town.

    We found a cute little place that had an interesting Czech menu.

     

     


    I had fried pork belly. Think crispy but moist pork rinds with meat still attached. Kind of amazing. The purple stuff on the side was cooked cabbage and beets, also amazing. the white things above are something like mashed potato patties on the left and this interesting bread with no crust on the right. Great for soaking up that gravy.

    Dan had a beef goulash with the same bread I had, but it shows better here.

    The desserts looked too good to pass up, so we didn’t! I had the chocolate creme brulee. .

    Dan had apple strudel again. Why not? He really liked it!

    After lunch we made our way to Vysehrad, an old fortress on a hill that was about 2 miles away, well outside of the city center. We figured we could use the walk after 4 hours on a train and all that food. We took some random photos of building we liked along the way.

     

     

     This was a tunnel we came across after we’d climbed a pretty steep hill. Almost there! (And when did my hair get so gray? That’s just a trick of the light, right? Holy cow….)
     An old entrance to the fortress. Notice the iron gate. When we asked a woman working at the church about where the fortress was, she said something like “you missed it by about 600 years.” It’s clear as we were walking around this is just a park now. But a beautiful one, and we got some nice photos of the surrounding area.
     There’s also a church and a cemetery. This is in the cemetery.

     

     We couldn’t go in because there was a concert happening there this evening and they’d stopped allowing tourists in early.

     

     Prague Castle in the background. A little later, we walked down an alternate path that eventually connected with this one then took us down to the river.

     

     

     

     We walked around the river for awhile and eventually made it back to the center of the city. On our way we cruised through this street fair that was happening, focusing on vegan food as far as we could tell.
    This is the astronomical clock in the main square. It’s been in operation since 1410 and is the oldest operating clock of its kind in the world. We got here just in time for the 6 o’clock show, which consists of 6 of the apostles walking around behind those windows above the two dials. At Noon you get all 12. Tomorrow at some point I’m hoping to get up behind all that from within the town hall so more on all that when that happens.
     A closeup of the dials.
     The direction of the square we entered from….
     …and the direction we were heading.
     These are both still sort of in the main square, or at least in the adjacent one.
    By this time it was about 6:30 but we still needed to get our room and settle in so we went back to the hotel. Believe it or not, in the 4.5 hours or so we were out and about we walked nearly 10 miles; and that includes at least an hour for lunch. So we didn’t do much but we were kinda ready. Tomorrow will be a full day.

     

     

     

     

  • Day 4, Sat 8/27: Bratislava, Slovakia

    Day 4, Sat 8/27: Bratislava, Slovakia

    We each slept well and headed down to breakfast just after 7am. What started out as a leisurely morning thinking we had lots of time, ended up being a morning of bad timing and we missed trains and trams by minutes. All that to say: we didn’t get in to the city of Bratislava, an hour away from Vienna, until about Noon.

    The history of Bratislava is complicated. Like Estonia which we visited last summer, Slovakia has only been an independent nation since the fall of the Eastern bloc in 1993. When the Austrian-Hungarian Empire was broken up at the end of WW1, it ended up as Czechoslovakia. It changed forms several times between 1919 and 1993, but it’s simplest to say it was mostly Czechoslovakia during that time, then split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. Prior to World War 1, its population was 42% German, 41% Hungarian and only 15% Slovak. After WW1, the city name of Bratislava was adopted and the Czech and Slovak populations sort of took over. (That’s a huge over-simplification by the way.) Prior to 1919, the city was known as Pozsony or mostly Pressburg for over 1000 years. Where the name Bratislava comes from is not well documented, but it’s been around since about 900 AD, as a derivative of castles and/or rulers.

    It also has a very close connection to the Habsburg monarchy we’ve learned so much about this week, and was the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1536 to 1783. Maria Theresa is as well known and loved here as she was in Vienna, and was crowned in St. Martin’s here as Queen of Hungary, as were about a dozen other monarchs.

    Unlike Estonia, Slovakia doesn’t seem to have thrived as well since its independence. Definitely poorer, it doesn’t have nearly the charm that Tallinn did and but it does seem to be working at it.

     This is St. Michael’s Gate, a major entrance into the Old Town. Like many medieval cities, it was once entirely surrounded by a wall, with 4 gates at intervals to let people in and out. This is the only gate left standing. Originally built in the 1300’s, the decorative top was done in the 1700’s. No matter what, old by any standard.
     Looking back up at the clock on the gate tower, Old Town beginning behind me. This town has lots of public clocks we discovered.
     The town square, with the Old Town Hall in the background, where we went first. And another clock.
     Outside the Town Hall…
     …and the inner courtyard of the Town Hall. This was supposed to be the history of the city. We had great luck with these in other towns but this one was hard to follow. It was in desperate need of a professional curator. They tried hard, but we didn’t feel like we learned much. (Much of what I wrote in the intro we got later in the castle or from other sources.)
     We did get to go up to the clock tower and got some nice shots off the city form there.
     The steeple on the far left is St. Martin’s that I referenced earlier. We went there next but couldn’t go in because there was a local wedding going on. the big white building left of center in the background is the castle we went to after that.

    After we went in search of lunch and found a cute little restaurant that had an interesting local menu.

     Dan had potato gnocchi stuffed with smoked meat, ham it tasted like to me. Sauerkraut and onions in the middle.
     I had the mutton that came with roasted potatoes, carrots and parsnips. It was excellent, but oddly disappointing in that it tasted exactly like something I’ve made at home. The mutton tasted very much like beef to me.

     It was a hike up to Bratislava Castle, locally referred to as Hrad. This was already several hundred feet up front street level and there is still a ways to go. All those stairs came next.
    But we got some nice views once we were up there. The thing in the background – the flying saucer on stilts? It’s called a UFO Observation Deck. Supposedly the best views of the area up there, and a restaurant, but since we were now higher than that we didn’t feel the need to go.

     

     

    Full front of the castle. There has been a structure on this hill of some kind dating back 3500 years. Bratislava history dates it back to around 900 AD, having been through several renovations since. It was largely destroyed by fire in 1811 after being bombarded by Napoleon and left to ruin. In 1957, after much talk of destroying it, it was decided it would be restored. The results you see are renovating it back to the glory it was during the reign of Maria Theresa. This was one of her residences as Queen of Hungary and her daughter, Maria Christina, and her husband Albert of Saxony (of Albertini fame if you read our “Vienna Day 1” entry) lived here as well.

     

     They have put a ton money into restoring the castle, it’s essentially been completely renovated inside out, but keeping to the design from the mid 1700s. There’s a display outlining the reconstruction, with some remnants of some of the original pieces.
     A photo from 1898 showing the castle and St. Martin’s.
     If it looks brand new it’s cuz it is. It’s stunning though. The white, gold and red work well together and with the sun – especially as we were leaving there was a lot of it – really makes this feel light and airy.

     

     The inside courtyard.
     A painting from the original castle that had been restored. The documentation around how they did the restoration – including the before and after – was pretty interesting.

     

     A model of the front of the castle with a peak of the town in the windows in the back.
    Several rooms like this with a fair amount of art, several other rooms all part of the museum with a wide range of history documented, all the way back to Stone Age.
     We went up into the tallest tower and got some great shots of the Danube River.

     

     And some nice shots of the rest of the town as well.

     

     There was like 5 or 6 flights of these from the fourth floor of the castle to the tower lookout. We’d never seen stairs this steep before.
     We walked around town a little more and made our way over to the last stop before heading to the train station.
     St. Elizabeth’s AKA “the Blue Church.” Folks onTripAdvisor raved about it.
    It’s blue alright. Couldn’t get good shots of the inside because there was service going on.
    We caught the 5:38 train and were back to the hotel by 7pm. We had dinner in the lounge, then went down to the steam room about 8pm. We had planned on going out for dessert again but decided we were tired, and certainly didn’t need any more calories!
    Tomorrow we leave for Prague.
    Ah, almost forgot. So for the past couple of days, my siblings and I have been discussing our ancestry over Facebook. As I said in the Pre-Departure entry, the narrative we grew up with was we were mostly German with a good chunk of Austrian thrown in, and some “Bohonk” in there somewhere. As I studied a genealogy that was done in the early 1990’s based on birth records, I figured out the 4th generation – great-great grandparents to us – is only 12.5% German (but where Haas comes from), 25% Austrian and 50% Bohemian. We also knew that Granny, our mother’s mother, was from a place called Silesia in Austria. For some reason I always thought Silesia was a town. But I could never find it on a map anywhere. My sister Anne this week supplied the name of the town Granny was born in: Fulnek. According to Google Maps, that city still exists – in the Czech Republic. According to Wiki, it is in an area now referred to as the Moravia – Silesia region. Moravia was a name I saw referenced a couple of times in the birth records – on both sides of the tree as I recall. And I kept seeing that name today at the castle, usually as “Great Moravia“; it was a big deal about 1000 years ago.
    At any rate, the last thing we did at the castle was this exhibit called “The Legacy of Charlemagne” and it was a pretty interesting piecing together of a lot of European history over 1000 years. No photos were allowed but there was a map of the Austria-Hungary Empire as it was in 1914 just before WW1. Sure enough, Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia were all there. Granny was born in 1910. So yes, she was born in Silesia and it was part of the Austrian empire. None of those names exist anymore, but according to this map those areas are now completely within the current borders of the Czech Republic. What’s the capital of the Czech Republic? Prague.
    Excited.

     

  • Day 1, Wed 8/24: Vienna Part 1

    Day 1, Wed 8/24: Vienna Part 1

    We both slept well: Dan 7 hours, me 8. I haven’t slept that much in months. Hoping to catch up on sleep on this vacation and that was a heckuva start. We are on the 12th floor of this Hilton and the Executive Lounge is around the corner from our room so we just had breakfast there. Dan’s hotel status strikes again.

    Where we had breakfast. Typical Hilton European fair – fruit, cheese, breads, eggs, sausages, deli meats and salmon.

    This was in a park across the street from the hotel that we made our way through on our way to the city center.


    We stopped first at the Opera House – above, although this shot taken in the evening – to pick up our Vienna Passes. Just about every city we’ve visited has a museum pass of some kind. We always literally do the math to make sure we’re going to get our money’s worth, and for Vienna we will. Most of what we want to do in Berlin is either free or not on that particular pass so it didn’t make sense there. The nice girl at the pass shop gave us some tips on getting around that we will take advantage of. The “hop on hop off” bus comes with it and there was one ready to leave as we walked out. (In the far right of this photo you can see the yellow tip of one.) We had a good experience on one in Rome so decided to try it. It wasn’t what we were expecting – turns out here there are 5 different routes, and the one we got on took us on a path we didn’t expect outside of the city center. I’ll leave it at that. The good thing to come from it is we learned the Schoenbrunn Palace is not as far out as we’d imagined and that helps us figure out timing of things. We do that tomorrow.

    After we got off the bus we headed towards the historic city center. First stop was the Albertina museum. This museum is part of a huge complex of palaces and museums that I’ll discuss later in a photo of a model of the whole thing, which is pretty impressive.

    So this is the first thing we come across is this exhibit. Ruh roh. If you’ve been following us for awhile, you know our disdain for contemporary art. But it was paid for, so might as well. (PS: the only modern art we really like is in the Crocker! So if you’re in Sacramento and haven’t taken advantage of that, you should fix that…it’s well worth it…)

    And the epitome of what we hate about modern art. It follows Dan’s rule of “if I can do it, it doesn’t belong in a museum.”

     Despite the name on the exhibit, this was the only Warhol piece in it.

     

    So there were rooms of this Jim Dine guy, an American artist supposedly part of the same pop art movement as Warhol. This particular exhibit focused on his self-portraits, and it was titled “I Never Look Away.” Jim: perhaps that’s the problem. We were literally laughing as we walked through this one and the docent was amused that we were so amused.


    This was the study of Emperor Franz Stephan and Empress Maria Theresa. They had 16 children, several of them famous, including Emperor Joseph II (in the painting above), and of course Marie Antoinette. This table was a gift from her to them.

    We loved the intricate parquet floor in this room. We always marvel at the craftsmanship that goes into this stuff. All that design is made from slivers of wood delicately inlayed.
    The Albertina was founded as a museum by another daughter, Maria Christina. Her husband was a huge art collector and much of what’s here is from their personal collection. And it’s a good one. There were lots of names we recognized including Monet, Cezanne, Renoir, Matisse, Chagall, Degas, Picasso, and Miro (who we learned about in Barcelona), da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Rembrandt, Rubens and Raphael (although the latter 5 were all drawings, not paintings). Some of our favorites are below.

    And a new name for us: Sedlacek.

    We loved the look of this painting and especially the one below, both by a guy named Franz Sedlacek. The painting caught my eye first and then the name. Sedlacek is one of the fun names in my ancestry; the maiden name of my paternal grandmother’s mother as I recall. The style is called “New Objectivity.”

     

     Chagall
     Monet
     Renoir
    This was a stunning room.

     

    Still in the Albertina.
     Emperor Franz Joseph I believe, huge statue in front of the museum.
     There’s a nice park area to the side of it, behind some of the other buildings holding museums. We were going to the building in front of us next and were hoping for a back entrance. No such luck. It was a good walk around!

     Lots of guys on horses :) Don’t remember exactly where this was.

     This was the back of the Austrian National Library.
    The front of the Austrian National Library. This wasn’t on our list of things to do but it was on the Pass and we really just wanted to see the inside of the building.
     And we weren’t disappointed by the architecture one bit. This whole complex is brought to you courtesy of the Habsburg Empire, which ruled the region for about 600 years.

    This was a 3-in-1 museum: armory, musical instruments and ancient sculptures. We cruised through it pretty fast. The armor stuff was the most interesting, although there was rooms and rooms of this stuff so once you’ve seen one…

    We just kept marveling how incredibly uncomfortable all of that had to be :) In so many ways….


    The view coming out of the library. That’s Rathaus (City Hall) in the background, which was on our list for the day but we never made it over there. Oh well, 2 more days…we’ll work it in somewhere…

    We finally found the Hofburg Imperial Palace which we’d been heading towards all morning. But now it was lunch time, about 2pm. We went off the beaten path a bit for a bite at a Hungarian place.

    Dan’s was chicken in a paprika sauce and what they called dumplings, what I would call spaetzle. He just thought it was OK.

    I had beef goulash with Hungarian pasta, which was more like couscous. We both agreed this was the better dish.

    The entrance to the Imperial Palace. Most of this was an exhibit of the living quarters of Empress Elizabeth, one of the last, who was assassinated in 1898.There was also lots of china and silverware.

    You weren’t supposed to take photos but Dan snuck a few in. We loved this model of the area. In this shot, the Albertina is in the darkness of the top right. This building on the left in the foreground is the Natural History museum where we were this evening. The statue in the middle of two in the foreground is Maria Theresa, you’ll see it later. The building in the background in the light is the Library, which is also facing you in the photo below. The Imperial Palace is this square in the center left of the photo below.

     

    We actually take quite a few photos of explanations like this on our trips, it helps with the details of the blog later. They just never actually make it to the blog. Decided to leave this one in. Note that some of the buildings in this complex are still in use by the current administration.

     The beautiful state dining room. Dan tried to get a better shot on the other side. That’s how we learned photos were forbidden :)

    We liked this street shot; just off center is a large sculpture that we saw as we were leaving the restaurant for lunch off a side street. We were hoping to get a better shot but we were too far away.

    Next stop: St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Cologne is better :) (We are Such cathedral snobs…)

     

    We decided to do the catacombs tour. It started off a little snoozy – caskets of bishops, cardinals and royalty who’d been buried here over the last 600 years. Then we went into a different section and suddenly: bones, lots and lots of bones. Again, you weren’t supposed to take pictures but Dan snuck a couple in, it was just so dark they didn’t come out well. The first bones we saw – not in either of these photos – were of bodies that had been at caskets at one point, but the wooden caskets had deteriorated all around them leaving remarkably intact skeletons behind. This photo and the one below it are part of several mass graves from the thousands of people who died during the Plague from around 1350-1400.

    If you look really carefully you can just barely make out some of the skulls in the wall of bones in the background. Look top right edge not quite a quarter of the way down. There are several others you can pick out in the right lighting.

    Next was an elevator up the North Tower (the South was stairs but it was about to close). This portion of the room was tiled artfully, with an insignia mosaic.

     

     I believe the white building in the background right of center is our hotel.

    We went back to the hotel about 5:45 to rest and charge our phones. We hung out in the lounge and were there when they brought dinner. We weren’t too hungry but had some bread and cheese, Dan tried some of the deli appetizers. (Also the main course was hamburgers which didn’t look at all interesting.) That was pretty much our dinner. We went out again a little after 7, heading towards the Natural History Museum which is open until 9pm on Wednesdays.

    You saw this earlier in the model. That’s the statue of Maria Theresa in the middle of this complex.

     

     Again, we were more interested in the building than the exhibits.

     

     A giant spider crab, a gift from a Japanese Emperor to one of the Austrian Emperors, Franz Joseph maybe. Giant. No kidding. Can you imagine that thing showing up on your dinner plate?
     The ceiling above the stairs I’m walking down below.

     

     The other museum across the square. I don’t recall which one it is but I’m sure we’ll make it over there at some point.

     

     The National Library at night.
    We walked back to the hotel the long way through town. Stopped at a gelato place we’d seen earlier; excellent of course. We do love the ice cream in Europe. Dan had a work conference call at 9:30. I went down to the steam room and sauna and hung out there while he worked. There was no one else there so that was nice. It was the perfect way to end a full day. According to Dan’s iPhone, we walked 10.24 miles today. And I bet we do it again tomorrow :)
    It is now 1:10am. Dan’s already asleep. I’m headed there any moment. Here’s a bonus shot for hanging out with us today….

     

     

     

  • Departure: Monday/Tuesday, 8/22-8/24: Sacramento & Raleigh to Vienna

    [The majority of this was written in the lounge Tuesday afternoon during my 5 hour layover.]

    Monday was the first full day off I’d had since 8/6 and I was ready for it. I was afraid it would be difficult to disconnect from work but I filled the day and somehow that helped. 5am gym visit, 7:30 dentist (passed with flying colors, yay), quick trip to Ace to get an extra plug adapter, breakfast at Cornerstone, turn the electricity on in the now vacant unit downstairs and talk to the property manager; chiropractic adjustment and a massage after. Let the vacation begin!

    So of course we’re coming from different coasts. Dan went from Raleigh to DC, spent the night and did a little sightseeing. If he told me he was doing that, I’d forgotten. I get a text that says “we might come to DC instead of Philadelphia for Thanksgiving.” We’re always planning somewhere :) Thanksgiving was possibly Charleston or Savannah before we landed on Philadelphia. (See my first entry about maximizing time off around holiday…) So we’ll see where we end up!

    My start wasn’t nearly as exciting. My Uber driver magically showed up within a minute of submitting the order. A whopping 7 minute ride to the train station from home, but I just didn’t feel like dragging my luggage 1.2 miles. She dropped me off at the Starbucks at the entrance and I got something to sustain me for the trip since it was about 1:30, breakfast was at 9:30, and I wouldn’t eat again until I got to the lounge around 5:30.

    I intentionally got to the train early so I could get a table with plugs. I ended up having the whole thing to myself the whole trip, despite 3 stops along the way to pick up more passengers. I’d planned on watching Netflix on the 1.5 hour train ride but couldn’t get a connection so just listened to music on my phone. I’ve done this trip to Richmond half-a-dozen or more times but always for work, and always worked during the ride. This was the first time I just sat and looked out the window, enjoying my music. I can’t remember the last time I did that. I usually have music on in the background while I’m doing something else – paying bills, working, travel planning. It was very relaxing. More disconnecting.

    I got off the train at Richmond and transferred to BART. The map below shows the route. At some point while I was on BART I get a text from Dan that he’s taken off from Dulles, heading to London.

    The blue line is Amtrak; the yellow and red lines correspond to BART’s color system: the yellow line to MacArthur in Oakland, transfer to the red line to SFO. Gotta love Google Maps.  I left Sacramento on the train at 2:10 and got to SFO right at 5pm. Maybe a little longer than if I’d had to drive – who knows in rush hour traffic – but no tolls or figuring out what to do with my car. Cheaper than a one way rental. And relaxing. Can’t beat that.

    I got through security pretty easily – despite them holding back my laptop for reasons they didn’t explain and I panicked at first when I didn’t see it come through with my luggage. Made it to the lounge by 5:30 so pretty quick despite that.

    It was pretty crowded. I’m standing on one end of it where the coffee was; that lone high top table dead center in the photo with the diet coke can on top and bags underneath – that’s me. Right by the food. Convenient. It was literally the only table open.

    The food was finger sandwiches, with snacks and drinks out of view on the wall to the right. I just nibbled a little since I knew I would get dinner on the plane.

    We boarded on time but took off almost an hour late. A passenger got sick and had to deplane and they had to track down the checked luggage.

    Dan bought my ticket on an upgrade voucher he earned and got me into business class for cheap (which is why I had lounge access) and this was the setup. Pretty comfortable. I ended up not watching any movies – nothing really grabbed me – and just read or listened to music when I wasn’t sleeping or eating. The green thing is my Kindle.

    I have to say the food was pretty good. I don’t remember getting meals served in courses in economy! To the left is a very fresh salad of beets, green beans and lettuce, with a nice light dressing. To the right is boiled quail eggs with a mayo dressing, and a grilled asparagus salad that was excellent. And a roll.

    This tasted better than it looks, a portabella mushroom ravioli in a nice sauce with spinach.

    Dessert was an apple cheesecake with a killer salty caramel sauce. Pretty amazing.

    I usually try to stay awake on these flights as part of a strategy for managing jet lag: stay up as long as you can then crash on the other side. But I haven’t been sleeping well, only 4-5 hours a night for the past few weeks, where I do better with at least 6.5-7. So I decided to give in and managed to sleep 3-4 hours on the plane. It felt good.

     

    Two courses for breakfast: fruit above, “traditional English” breakfast below which is grilled tomato, mushrooms, grilled Irish bacon, eggs, hash browns, and sausage. This was like Noon Britain time, 4am Pacific. I won’t need to each lunch.

    This is one of my favorite things about landing and turning on my phone: getting the text from whatever country I’m in confirming that my cell service kicked in.

    Verizon has a “pay as you go” international option that I signed up for after the first trip we did and wouldn’t travel any other way. You don’t have to worry about whether or not your phone will work nor ridiculous roaming charges. I probably spend about $100 a trip on the additional charges this way. It’s worth every penny.

    These were followed by several from Dan, who was leaving breadcrumbs for me to assist getting from the Vienna airport to the hotel. He’s thoughtful that way :) When he was in town a couple of weeks ago he left euros for me so I wouldn’t have to worry about currency while I was on my way here if I needed anything.

    I got off the plane about 2pm. Dan had also alerted me that I would probably have to change terminals. We always land in 5 and so far I think I’ve always flown out of 5. He was right. So this time I got to take about a 7 minute bus ride to Terminal 3.

    The photo above and the two below are of the British Airways lounge in Terminal 3. Not nearly the size of the gargantuan one in Terminal 5 but comfortable still and the amenities are the same.

     

     

    This is the little care package (minus the coffee) that you get when you fly business class: eye shades, ear plugs, socks, pen, toothbrush and paste, lip balm, 2 kinds of moisturizer.

    It is coming up on 4:30pm. Another 2.5 hours before I have to board. What to do? I just checked and the massages are all booked. Will take a shower at some point and otherwise just relax.
    ____________________

    It is now 11:21pm in Vienna, which is another hour east so now 9 hours time difference from home. (Or 6 if you’re Dan). The rest of the trip was completely uneventful. The flight was just a little over 2 hours, left and arrived on time. There was food again, but sort of normal airline fair (jerk chicken and salad). It worked though.I had a hard time staying awake on this leg. Will be happy to hit the bed!

    This was the “breadcrumb” Dan had sent me earlier. The sign in the airport pointing you to the train that is a direct shot from the airport to the city center, 16 minutes. And it just so happens to stop at the station that is directly across the street from our hotel. Dan met me at the train station and walked with me back to our room. It’s good to be here.

    Tomorrow we start. Ready!