Austria 2007 Log

We left Hawaii on the evening of June 26th. 

Our brief stop in Ireland was good.  We were three hours late because of a weather delay in our departure from New Jersey.  Our Irish host picked us up at the Shannon airport early on June 28th and took us to his home in Galway where he and his wife laid out a nice breakfast for us.  Then we had a pretty good nap followed by dinner.  We left Galway for Dublin airport by bus at 0115 the following morning. 

We arrived in Vienna Saturday, June 29th, and were met by the couple with whom we were supposed to have exchanged homes in Vienna last year, Renate and Peter, until my need for back surgery forced cancellation of that plan.  Renate is the sister of Silvia, our exchange hostess on this trip.  They brought us to the home of Silvia and Wolfgang where we’ll be staying and where we were met by our hosts' beautiful, BIG and very buxom daughter, Nadine.  We had picked up Cornelia,  the equally attractive, petite daughter of our drivers, on the way.  Nadine gave us a run-down on the appliances and other things in the apartment and then we all went to lunch in the Vienna Woods on a mountain overlooking the city.  Beautiful place. 

The following day Renate and Peter departed for Australia on their 21st home exchange which involved their use of a motor home there.  I thought that must be pretty close to a record until a few weeks later we met a woman from Washington, D.C., who was on her 30th home exchange. 

The public transportation system in the city is so good it's not worth the trouble of driving on unfamiliar streets and trying to find a parking space.  We bought monthly passes good for buses, trolleys and the subway system for a little over $65 each and have been putting them

to good use.  We only drive for trips out of the city or for trips to the supermarket when we expect to have to carry a lot of things.  With our passes we just step onto all these forms of transport without any preliminaries like showing the pass, sticking it in a machine, etc., etc.  If asked for the pass by a transport police and unable to show it the fine is pretty stiff, but we've yet to see one of these police.  The only shortcoming to the public transport is that there is no air conditioning so it gets really stuffy on hot days. 

Everyone we've encountered has been very friendly and helpful, and almost everyone speaks at least some English while the better educated speak better English than most Americans. 

Our apartment is in a particularly green part of the city and we enjoy walking around here.  Shops and a large 7-11 type store are just around the corner and a couple of bus lines stop within 100 yards of us.  Interestingly, and in great contrast to the ideal in Hawaii, lawns are not manicured but have a bit of an unkempt look about them a bit reminiscent of the small town where I grew up and which had a lot of German/Austrian influence. 

Sunday Mayumi went to mass and then we caught a tram to the city center to see the St. Stephen's  Cathedral http://www.sacred-destinations.com/austria/vienna-stephansdom.htm and the Caupchin Church which contains the crypt of the Habsburgs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Crypt  (12 emperors, 18 empresses and lots of relatives).  We walked around the opera house http://www.wien.info/article.asp?IDArticle=3091 and then bought the one month pass good for the subway, trams, and buses.  Later I managed to get us on a properly numbered bus but headed in the wrong direction.  No sweat, just an interesting extra ride. 

The following day we took public transit to the Westbannhof U-bahn station and walked along Mariahilfer Strasse, one of the main shopping streets but totally plebian, to the Museums Quartier http://www.luxurytraveler.com/mqvienna.html where we visited the Leopold Museum http://www.vienna-life.com/culture/culture_details/29-Leopold_Museum.   That museum currently has a show of the works of Kolo Moser.  I saw a couple of pieces I wouldn't mind having in our home but... 

Tuesday, July 3rd, we slept in, still trying to adjust to the twelve hour time difference.  Early in the afternoon we struck off on our first driving expedition into the countryside.  Cultural delinquent that I am, this is my favorite activity on these trips.  We drove around in the wine growing hills just to the north west of Vienna.  It's quite surprising to come across some of the elaborate and large old homes in out-of-the-way places and small villages.  Returning to the city I missed a turn and accidentally found a faster way back to our flat.  Unfortunately, I wasn't trying to get to our flat at the moment but to a supermarket.  No problem really but educational. 

The car we have as part of our exchange is a new Skoda; made in the Czech Republic.  It is smallish and has a manual transmission.  It handles like a sports car and is a lot of fun to drive. Gasoline costs a bit over $6.00/gallon.  In the U.S. we're not familiar with the Skoda name, but they're comparable with Krups as ironworks and weapons manufacturers.   Skoda developed Semtex, the first plastic explosive.  Now there's a drink in the Czech Republic called Semtex that's similar to Red Bull, supposedly a high energy drink.  I'll bet trying to bring a can of Semtex back through U.S. customs would cause a stir. 

Wednesday was another day of wandering in the countryside.  Although it was July 4th, it was darned cool - just under 60 F, windy and raining intermittently.  We headed off to the town of Baden, the most fashionable town in the 18th and 19th centuries and full of neoclassical homes.  During WWI it became the headquarters of the Austrian army and during the decade following WWII it was used as a Soviet army headquarters.  Beethoven spent a great deal of time in Baden and there are some funny stories about him there.  We must have hit the town on a day when the shops are closed because the place was marvelously quiet and beautiful.  Later we headed out of town on a country road and eventually came across a huge monastery called Heiligenkreuz or Holy Cross, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heiligenkreuz_Abbey  a monastery of the Capuchin monks and one of two built by Leopold III.  It's especially beautiful and I think that may be because it's not so overstated as are many such places.  Later we stopped for lunch in a nice place where the proprietress was very friendly.  She said her son is studying in Canada. 

I brought my little laptop computer with me but can't use it because the Internet connection here is somehow locked to the host's computer.  That would be fine except for two details.  First, all of my addresses, URLs, financial data, and correspondence files are on the laptop so I've got to keep referring back and forth and can't easily transfer things from one to the other.  Second, the keyboard is driving me nuts.  The y and z keys are reversed, the @ is a really funny combination of keys, the / is a shifted 7, the punctuation and diacritical marks are all different than on our keyboards, and there are a couple of extra symbols that we don't use such as the one for the Euro and the German letter used in place of a double s.  There are more peculiarities, too, but you get the point.  It's just enough to slow mz fairlz rapid tzping quite a bit. 

Thursday, July 5th was a pretty full day.  We began by finding a copy shop where I had to fax a copy of my driving license to our hosts in Ireland for their insurance company and then went to a bank to exchange money.  That resulted in a bit of an unpleasant surprise - a $60 commission to exchange $2,000, and I understand 3% is pretty much the going rate.  From the bank we headed to a large, three story book store to pick up a tour book of Austria and then to the Jewish Museum http://www.virtualvienna.net/community/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=343  .  A short walk through the central part of the city with its wonderful shops took us to the Hofberg http://www.wien.info/hofburg/hofburg-e.html , the immense royal palace which houses numerous museums and the Spanish Riding School http://www.srs.at/index.php?id=265  among its eighteen wings, 2,500 rooms and nineteen courtyards.  We saw the museum of the Spanish Riding School and visited the Austrian National Library http://www.panoramas.dk/fullscreen5/f52-vienna-library.html  (this is a fascinating site) which, at a minimum, competes with that of Trinity College in Dublin.  We also walked through the royal apartments, saw the extensive collections of cutlery and dinnerware and visited the Empress Elizabeth Museum.  That gal gets a bad rap from the Austrians and was killed by an Italian who drove a file into her chest.  Later we stuck our noses into an antique shop and had a nice chat with the proprietor who was born in Uzbekistan, grew up in Russia, migrated to Israel, and has lived in Vienna for the past twenty five years.

The following day we took a tour to Prague, capitol of the Czech Republic.  The tour company we chose usually runs these tours with mini-buses but they had an overflow so we went in a small car, just us, a young woman from Boston and the driver/guide.  Unfortunately Prague is a four hour drive from Vienna.  Oh, yeah - it takes four hours to get back, too!  This wasn't my idea, but it wasn't unpleasant.  The guide was pretty good. 

On Saturday we visited the Schloss Schonbrunn, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6nbrunn_Palace  the summer palace of the Habsburgs.  It's only about five miles from the Hofburg, their full-time palace, so that made the Schloss Schonbrunn one of the world's greatest exercises in conspicuous consumption with its 1400 rooms, one thousand servants, etc., etc., and so on.  We saw a small portion of the royal apartments including the chamber where Mozart gave his first concert for the Empress Maria Theresa at the age of six and the ballroom where President Kennedy met Chairman Kruschev.  Later we visited the imperial coach collection and the Palm House and took a ride through the immense gardens of the palace which contain, among other things, the world's oldest zoo. 

We're staying in a part of the city that used to be a village called Dobling.  Just to the north is another section called Grinzing.  Grinzing is famous for old fashioned, open air restaurants serving only a few dishes but noted for their new wines.  We went to one Saturday evening.  We sat at a small trestle table and were soon joined by a friendly couple from Potsdam, Germany.  As we sat under the grape vines we were serenaded by strolling musicians who were accompanied from time to time by wine fueled patrons of varying levels of vocal skill including one irrepresible woman of about seventy who was pretty good and at the same time was pretty funny. 

Vienna is an exceptionally dog tolerant city.  Dogs are permitted in restaurants and the restaurants provide water bowls for the dogs.  People bring their dogs into all kinds of businesses except food shops where they leave them leashed outside.  You even see them on the subways and buses.  As a result of all this the dogs seem somehow more civilized; we've rarely seen a dog acting other than completely calmly. 

Sunday, July 8th, was a day of rest.  We drove to Klosterneuburg, http://www.eu2006.gv.at/en/Media_Service/programme/foreignminister/klosterneuburg.html?month=5&day=1 site of another of Leopold III's magnificent monasteries, but I managed to dodge the bullet on this one.  Instead we had breakfast in a sidewalk cafe nearby and spent an hour or so driving around the town and the immediate area including up into the hills around the town for some great views.  By 1:00 p.m. we were back "home" in time for a good, solid snooze.  In the evening we went on a search for a restaurant.  Austria closes up pretty tightly on Sundays; all the supermarkets and most of the restaurants are closed along with all types of stores.  Home Depot?  Forget it!  We did find an Italian restaurant and had a pretty good dinner.  The Italian restaurants are useful to us as they're the only ones where we have a chance of understanding any of the menu at all. 

The following day we hit museums with a vengeance.  We returned to the Hofburg and visited a butterfly museum (live butterflies), the Treasure Chamber where, among other things, we saw the actual crown of the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire; an emerald weighing over 2,700 carats; the Collection of Arms and Armor where I discerned that a whole lot more armor was made for show than for warfare; the Collection of Ancient Musical Instruments where I wished more than in any of the other sections that the descriptions had been in English; and the Ephesus Museum made up of artifacts of Greek culture in Turkey.  We did have the ever present audio guides, but their descriptions only cover the major items.  The Habsburgs must have had great legs and hearts because that huge palace is filled with staircases.  They about whipped me.  After a short rest at home to get our legs and backs working again, we went to a restaurant recommended by our exchange partners.  It was just the sort of place the mind's eye conjures up when thinking of Austria, and we had a pretty good meal of goulash and stone mushrooms, a kind of mushroom that doesn't grow in the U.S. 

On Tuesday, the 10th, we headed for the countryside again but this time with a map.  Didn't make any difference...we still got lost.  By now I think we have tire tracks on every road in the Vienna Woods.  We're struck by how brightly colored the flowers are here and can only attribute it to the greater daily range of temperatures.  On this day it was overcast and raining slightly throughout the day and that lent its own particular charm to the long views from the higher elevations.  The density of the trees in the woods is another striking feature along with their height.  On such a gloomy day it grew quite dark in some of the heavily wooded areas.  In other places there would be a village every one, two or three kilometers along the road, sometimes with only half a dozen homes, and all look quite prosperous.  In a very large proportion of the homes it's obvious that economy was not the first consideration in design, and they are really very attractive with great attention paid to their appearance. 

On Wednesday we left Vienna at the crack of dawn for the Salzkammergut, the lake and mountain region to the east and southeast of Salzburg.  There we drove through picture perfect Alpine villages and spent the night in the village of Hallstatt in a 500 year old guest house.  Mayumi's favorite feature was the 6'x4'x2' ceramic stove that she used as a back rest during dinner as the weather was a chilly 51 F - on July 11th - and rainy, too.  The first eleven photos on the following web page show Hallstatt: http://eurobuildings.info/wallpapers/austria_jp.html 

Thursday we went to Salzburg and spent the day there and had a very nice hotel for the night, leaving very early the following morning.  The tourists were tripping over each other.  The city has a population of 140,000 and has 24,000,000 tourists annually.  We looked for Julie Andrews singing, "The Hills Are Alive..." but no luck. 

We got back to Vienna and our flat shortly before noon on Friday.  After a short rest we headed off by tram and U-bahn to the center of the city for some serious window shopping.  I've got to say, the prices would knock your socks off.  Of items for which we knew stateside prices from our own previous purchases, we can say with confidence the prices in the shops in that part of the city are 50% higher and more.  Having said that, there is some fabulous jewelry on display that we wouldn't even think of buying and would have no idea how to price fairly.  There were also some shops selling really cheap clothing and costume jewelry.  As expensive as real estate must be in that area it was quite surprising. 

There are very few flies in Austria and I've developed a theory about them; each one is assigned to a specific restaurant.  And they are particularly partial to American tourists, too. 

Saturday, July 14th, was another go-go day.  We began with a visit to the Naschmarkt, a half-kilometer long strip of food sellers.  http://geoimages.berkeley.edu/worldwidepanorama/wwp305/html/BernhardVogl.html  (This is another moveable view.)  The variety of food-stuffs available is staggering and we saw tropical fruits on display that we rarely see even in Hawaii such as dragon fruit, durian, jackfruit and many others we couldn't identify.  Great care is given to making the display of the food attractive, too.  Many stalls sell prepared foods and there are lots of places with tables where you can sit for a meal.  Pastry sellers abound, of course.  It's just a fascinating place.  On Saturdays the Naschmarket is extended by the Fetzentandler or second hand sellers, in essence another couple of hundred meters of garage sale, so we checked that out, too.  Later we went to the Art History Museum.  http://www.khm.at/homeE/homeE.html  (Spend a few minutes working with this site if you like art.)  If you ever come to Vienna and you're a real art lover, give yourself at least a couple of days in this place.  It's huge, containing not only the fourth largest collection of paintings in the world, but also Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities.  The largest collection of Bruegels' paintings is here along with collections of Tintoretto, Veronese, Titian, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Rubens and many others.  The building itself is a work of art.  As our guidebook says, "In a city filled with museums, the Kunsthistorichesmuseum stands head and shoulders above the rest."  I'm a believer even if I can't pronounce it. 

Sunday was a day of rest.  Mayumi attended mass in one of the several churches within walking distance of our flat.  One of the things I enjoy here is the frequent, daily sound of church bells.  I guess they've nearly been banned in the U.S., but they feature prominently in the aural ambience here.  Later we went for a short drive.  Just a few blocks up the street we're living on are several elaborate consulates and large, beautiful homes and we drove a bit farther afield before returning home for a good siesta.  Later we walked to a nearby cafe for an early dinner before an evening of reading and BBC. 

Monday, July 16th, began with a trip to the Prater.  Well, actually, only to that portion called the Volksprater which is a very large amusement park.  The Prater was once an imperial hunting grounds but was opened to the public in 1766.  In 1896-7 a 218 foot high ferris wheel was built there which is still in use.  The passengers are carried in compartments the size of boxcars on some older European rail lines.  From the park we went to the U-bahn station where one catches the trains for the airport to ensure we knew the procedure prior to our departure in two days since that station was on our route anyway.  Next we went to the coffee shop of the Sacher Hotel for their renowned Sacher Torte.  We had an excellent seat and watched people stroll by for an hour or so and then checked out the public areas of the hotel itself.  Pricey!  A double room on July 31st will run from $490 to $7,600.  Anybody know the way to the YMCA?  But what a history and what elegance!  Then we walked around the side streets checking out the little shops before returning "home." 

Tuesday we spent tying up loose ends, cleaning the flat, getting the car washed and making other preparations for our departure from Vienna.  In the evening we returned to the Sacher Hotel coffee shop where we sat in the sidewalk cafe portion for an hour or so watching the parade of passers-by and then strolled up Kartner Strasse checking out the street performers and the crowds watching them before returning to spend our last Viennese night. 

Wednesday morning, July 18th, we boarded a bus with our small bags and got to the U-bahn station for the brief ride to the stop that is also the terminus for the city-airport train, a sixteen minute ride.  As usual for me, I got us to the airport far earlier than required, so we had a nice, long wait prior to our flight = no sweaty panic last minute rush in my view = lots of  boredom in Mayumi’s view. 

We thoroughly enjoyed Vienna and Austria.  Beautiful, gracious, friendly, accommodating, interesting and more.  Photos of this leg of our trip are on-line at www.shutterfly.com.  Sign in using hocuspocus for a password, select the Austria 07 album, and click on View as a slideshow.