EUROPE 2015 VOL VI

We’re at 30,000 feet, on our way home, and I haven’t even finished our two weeks on the river(s), never mind Switzerland and Paris.  It would seem I have more to write about than I thought.   

In truth things are beginning to fade.  My notes say "Bratislava", and the only specific things I can dredge up are St. Martin's Church (which we saw) and St. Michael's Tower which we saw from a distance.  The only problem with that previous sentence is my notes say St. Stephan's church while my research about it being a "coronation church" says it was St.  Martin's Cathedral.  Well you will get some history and you may assign whichever name you prefer.  I have cryptic notes about the Ottoman Empire and Habsburg kings and queens and this was the church that was used for coronations well in to the 19th century.  Well, may not so much history as this is what I remember.

As with so many of these towns, there were cobbled streets aplenty, but here they were in desperate need of maintenance.  Wherever you looked there were stones missing, those that remained were cracked and crumbling and there was a general air of decrepitude in the public spaces.  There were some fun pieces of public art scattered around the old town.  The was one pleasant square, and one dreadful square, which I expect came from the Soviet era.  The main shopping street was mostly cafes and bars and shops selling postcards.  

The Brits have a lot to answer for in Eastern Europe.   Between the low cost airlines making air travel cheap, and with value of the pound being so strong in many Eastern European countries there are plenty of paces that are still very affordable.  You can spot the latest in spot for hen parties and stag weekends by observing how much they cater to the young British traveller.  At first it was Amsterdam, where groups of partying young people gained a reputation for getting drunk and falling in the canals.  Then came Prague, where we saw an assortment of young women (would be brides and their entourage) parading around in the most ridiculous get ups, drunk at 11:00 in the morning.  Take a walk around Bratislava and you see their impact.  There is an English pub and the Irish bar never mind the fish and chips shop and a bakery selling sausage rolls.  I was told that the parties have now moved on to Croatia and Yugoslavia.  Guess if you want to party you need to be on the lookout for somewhere a little cheaper, with plenty of liquor, and a constabulary which will turn a blind eye on your shenanigans.    
 

From Bratislava we were to sail down the Danube with an anticipated arrival in Budapest of 10:00 p.m.   This was not to be.  As you are now probably aware, the river, the other boats and barges, and docking space have an enormous impact on river cruising.  So it was, our anticipated arrival slipped from ten, to eleven, to midnight.  Why the fuss you ask.  The city is renowned for the illumination of its iconic buildings and bridges along the waterfront and the cruise companies play off this with special drinks and whatnot as the boat pulls in to port.  I am honor bound to report that, when the arrival time kept slipping, I gave up and went to bed.   As a consequence I have no pictures of the lights, but I am sure that Frank and Carol took more than enough to compensate for my lack of enthusiasm.  

Although we have arrived at our final destination we still have one last day of sightseeing and a final night on board.  First thing in the morning they schlep us on to a bus for our final city tour.  Budapest is a big city and not especially conducive to a walking tour for the senior crowd.  It was mostly a drive by experience, with a stop at Heroes Square and Castle Hill, but really, they just whet our appetites to see things more in depth.  Guess that statement could be true for all the stops on our cruise.  It was a good way to get acquainted with lots of places.  But there just isn't, nor should there be, adequate time to really get to know somewhere.  

Lunch time arrives and we are back on board.  We check in with some of the  other folks on the cruise as to their plans for the afternoon.  The ultimate decision if to visit one of the public baths for which Budapest is famous.  The city sits on a reservoir of thermally heated water which has been in use since roman times.  (no, no they don't really recycle it, which is how that sentence reads to me, they just make use of the ongoing supply.)  Throughout history, as in dating back to pre roman times the residents have built baths for both therapeutic and bathing purposes.  One of the reasons this practise continues, we were told, is that medical care is extremely expensive in Hungary and therapeutic bathing by the general public is the first line of defence in what ails you.  I certainly would advocate for the benefits of a long leisurely soak in cleansing the mind and body. 
 

There are six or seven public baths in the city and we choose the Gellert Baths for their famous Art Nouveau architecture.  Five of us pile in to a taxi which magically pulls a fifth seat out of the trunk space.  Where it was and how we all actually got in there is a mystery to me, but we did.  This should not be confused with the taxi we caught back which overcharged us and made four people sit in the back seat.  Ah, free enterprise and tourists, they are not always a fair match. 

These baths are housed in enormous building that reminded me of a cross between a European train station and a gymnasium.  A great, big, cavernous space with shops and offices occupying the outside walls and the central area totally unoccupied.  I want to say the ceiling was glass, filling the place with plenty of natural light, with tile or ceramic floors.  The only way to be sure though, is to go back, which probably won’t happen anytime soon.  You go up to the ticket window, dark wood with brass fittings, purchase your ticket and you are given something that looks like a plastic (s)watch with no face.  Then it is down in to the bowels of the building along white tiled corridors, up and down staircases and around corners until you are dumped, rather unceremoniously, into the ladies changing room.  For an extra price you can have a private cubicle for changing etc, but we opted for the public space.  Pretty typical changing room, banks of lockers on either wall, a bench running down the center and dozens of ladies, in various stages of undress, speaking nearly as many different languages.   

The first obstacle, how to work the lockers.  Remember the watch with no face?  It is a device for locking and unlocking the lockers, as well as the exit door when you are ready to leave.  You place it against a square metal plate on the exterior of the closed locker and presto-chango, your belongings are secure.  I immediately unlocked said locker in the same fashion, just to be sure it really worked, and it did.  Next task, find the others in public area.  There are at least six pools, of various sizes and temperatures filled with people soaking in the waters.  Having decided to soak, not swim, I at least still had my glasses on and did not have to wear a bathing cap.  But keeping my hair from curling up in to and afro and my glasses from steaming up, was another matter entirely. 
  

The first thing I find is what appears to be an Olympic size swimming pool with a water aerobics class under way.  If this were Ashland it would be filled with little old white haired ladies bobbing along to music from the 80’s.  In Budapest, not so much.  There are all sorts, young and old and more unusually lots of men.  The instructor, on the edge of the pool is a man(!!) and not at all hard to look at, if only my glasses wouldn’t steam up.  I find my friends in a moderately warm pool and we relax and admire the phenomenal architecture and decoration. 

Ultimately we go in search of hotter water and an exploration of the facility.  There are pools ranging from 28 – 40 degrees centigrade (82 - 104). There are facilities for massage and sauna, inhalation therapy and tooth gum shower, therapeutic gymnastics and physiotherapy advertised.  Some of the cubicles look like something out of a 1930's sanatorium, which I guess this is/was.  All in all an experience. 

 

Things I have learned that don’t seem to have a place in what I have been writing:

1. As in most places in this world Skin heads and Nazi sympathisers can be found in Germany. In Cologne when they attempted to have a demonstration in the Cathedral Square the church tuned off all the lights which normally illuminate the square and all the local businesses followed suit.  No light no demonstration.
2.  In Miltenberg when faced with a similar event the priest started ringing the church bells and all the other churches also joined in. The demonstrators were unable to hear the speeches and gave up and went home. 
3.  The Danube River runs from West to East, from the Black Forest to the Black Sea. 
4. RV parks . . . both the Danube and the Rhine are lined with RV parks. Most of them look like permanent installations of smallish caravans, no big buses or little tents. Picture a moderate sized trailer with a tent like structures attached to the front to create a screened in porch. In front of the tent, pots of flowers, a couple of deck chairs and a German gentleman in shorts reading his morning paper. You now have a picture of camping on the Danube. 
5. All the paintings and decorations in the churches were used as a way to tell the Bible stories to the illiterate.  A prime example, we saw somewhere was Pontius Pilate portrayed as a Turkishman.  The painting was done  during the ottoman siege of what is now Austria.  To show Pilate as Turkish was to demonstrate he was a bad person

Europe 2015 ISSUE V

The Kiss - Gustav Klimt and yes we saw it.

It’s a Tuesday (and it isn’t Belgium) and we have a truly full day ahead of us.  In the morning we dock at Emmersdorf, which is nothing more than a wide spot on the river with a place to pull up buses for a quick transfer to Melk Abbey. I’m guessing that all the cruise lines had a hand in creating these little, middle of nowhere docks, along the rivers.  Cruise ships must be big business for some of these tiny little hamlets and at times there are so many ships stopping that they “park” side by side.  This means walking across multiple gangplanks from one ship to the next to get to the shore.  Coming back on board after a day of touring you need to pay attention to just how many ships you do or don’t cross. If they all happen to be Viking Cruise Lines you could end up trying to get in to someone else’s stateroom, they all look identical!  Fortunately, the night we came back from our winery tour, we were the first ship!!

Melk Abbey Entrance

 

Melk Abbey is one of the more memorable stops on our trip, though it will be tough finding somewhere more impressive than Kinderdijk.  The Abbey sits at the top of a hill and makes quite an impressive sight as you approach down the Danube.  We are now in Austria, having left Germany behind, and Slovakia and Hungary are yet to come.  There are no signs saying now entering Austria, one might expect a line in the water like it appears on a map.  But then that might require a line down the middle of the river and what with changing boundaries and changing alliances my idea of a perfect demarcation just doesn’t hold water.  .  But, our phones (which have been next to useless to date . . . another story entirely) immediately tell us “welcome to international roaming, to make calls in Austria dial . . . )  

Melk Abbey

 The abbey, initially established in 1089, was rebuilt in the early 1700’s by some member or other of an Austrian royal family.  It is a baroque fantasy in white and gold.  The monks describe it as a testament to God; meant to reflect heaven on earth.  Obviously Heaven is all sorts of bright and shiny, with blue skies and angels singing praises, and everyone is dressed in long flowing robes and of course, we are all white and pink and rosy as well.  This is meant to be

in sharp contrast to the gothic cathedrals which predate the Baroque style, which are rather dark and depressing, with little light and constructed of heavy ponderous stone.  The building is enormous (three floors of twenty rooms each) and currently houses around 20 monks, a library, a school and a museum.  I gather from the tour that even when it was at its height at least a portion of the facility was reserved for royalty rather than members of religious orders.  As a consequence the spaces we see are quite sumptuous with all the “modern” conveniences, like a fireplace/heater that is accessed by the serving staff from a “utility” hallway.  No need to disturb the occupants to stoke the fire.  

The Abbey belongs to the Benedictines, often referred to as the Black Monks.  Black refers to color of their habits, which suggests, to me, that the Grey Friars wore grey.  A school was established as early as the 12th century and as with most abbeys the monks were dedicated to copying and illuminating manuscripts.  The scriptorium, (a place for writing) which was the precursor to the current library, was the center for these activities.  Monks sat at benches six to eight hours a day copying manuscripts.  The library has over 100,000 volumes and when it was rebuilt, in the Baroque style, all the volumes were rebound in a common style.  Part of the Baroque style demanded that all elements (including the books) share a sense of symmetry and harmony of size and design and so, if you are royal, and have the money you re-bind an entire library.  The story goes that when Umberto Eco visited here he was so taken with the library that it inspired him in the writing of “The Name of the Rose”.  

Rooftops of Melk

 CRUISING MELK TO KREMS

Ship traffic, the depth of the river, the docking facilities all have an impact on where we stop and how much time is available to explore the various “ports of call”.  Another variable, did everyone turn in there “boarding pass” upon returning.  Any time you leave the ship you must take an id card with your name, the name of the ship and the phone number of the cruise director.  Upon returning it is to be handed in at the front desk where it is immediately filed is a drawer by suite number.  Ready to leave port. Look in the drawer, if every suite has its card, all is well.  An empty slot means someone either didn’t make it back on time, or as in the case off the Church family, forgot to turn it in.  Periodically you will hear announcements “will Mr & Mrs so and so please contact the front desk” and everyone knows exactly what has happened and a frantic search for Mr. & Mrs. So and so will ensue by anyone who thinks they remember who might actually belong to that name.  I asked

Edvard Munch

Manuela, our cruise director, what happens if someone simply doesn’t show up.  The ship will wait as long as their schedule will permit but will ultimately sail with or without the so and so(s).  At that point it becomes their responsibility to rejoin the cruise using whatever transportation they can find to reach the next port.

     

More Munch

In Vienna we opt for a tour which includes a visit to the Belvedere Museum and a chance to get up close and personal with some works by Klimt and Edvard Munch.  Unfortunately it also meant we did not get much of a look at the old town.  I have this rather romantic notion of what Vienna should be, coffee houses and sacher torte or maybe a Viennese pastry (whatever that is supposed to mean).  Some opera or classical music, a little Haydn or Mozart or perhaps Schubert.  The closest we got to experiencing any of that was the gratis concert courtesy of Viking.  Guess I will leave Vienna on my list for another day.  

 

Klimt

 

Things I have learned that don’t seem to have a place in what I have been writing:

1. As in most places in this world Skin heads and Nazi sympathizers can be found in Germany.  In Cologne when they attempted to have a demonstration in the Cathedral Square the church tuned off all the lights which normally illuminate the square and all the local businesses followed suit.  No light, no one can see, no rallies.  
2.  In Miltenberg when faced with a similar event the priest started ringing the church bells and all the other churches joined in.  The demonstrators were unable to hear the speeches and gave up and went home.
3. The Danube River runs from West to East, from the Black Forest to the Black Sea.  
4. RV parks . . . both the Danube and the Rhine are lined with RV parks.  Most of them look like permanent installations of smallish caravans, no big buses or little tents.  Picture a moderate sized trailer with a tent like structures attached to the front to create a screened in porch.  In front of the tent, pots of flowers, a couple of deck chairs and a German gentleman in shorts reading his morning paper. 

MISCELLANY

 

 

If anyone knows what this is please let me know.  It appears to be a illustration of a square block or maybe a building in one of the towns we visited but what exactly it is I'm sure I don't know.  

  

Always wanted to get my money from a Geldautomat, who needs an ATM, Cash Point or "Hole in the Wall".  I could go for some automatic gold.