Feeding our travel addiction, we left for Prague on July 4... our adventures over the last several days in fast forward: staying at the Red Chair, a wonderful little pension in Old Town, we wandered lost thru the cobblestone alleys, polishing off a LOT of beer/wine and food along the way... cruised the boardwalks alongside the river, meandered across the Charles Bridge admiring the artisans' work, hiked up to Prague Castle, hitting the requisite sections of this vast empire... perched ourselves on a wall looking down at the brazillion (you must have heard that Bush anecdote by now) red rooftops studded with church spires, trammed down south to this hillside park, surrounded by thunderclouds and anorexic lightning... then boarded a train yesterday for the 7 hour trek to Budapest.
Once here, ensconced at the Intercontinental (pure luxury) we funiculared up to the Buda castle, watched a human chessgame *very cool* and crept through a cave labyrinth tightly gripping lanterns to guide our way, polished off lots more very good beer and wine at a fabulous terrace overlooking the city, ate at a fine restaurant where we were the only guests andcatered to by the owner as we savored cognac soup, wienershnitzel, venison, roast pork and more wonderful wine and beer... cruised through the town squares into a sea of shaved heads with itsy bitsy ponytails and lots of chanting...a Hare Krishna outdoor convention...replete with a life sized plastic Ghandiesque statue, a gleaming red dot emanating from said forehead... we are now ready to board our cruiser ship today for a 2 week jaunt up the river to Amsterdam.Bratislava is Prague out of focus...certainly a city of contrasts: in one moment a babushka covered woman wearing 'how the other half lives' clothing, trudging along with 2-handled, frayed raffia bags, in the next, a Kate Moss lookalike with purple-tipped, buzzed hair, hoop earrings as big as saucers and sporting a chic and very expensive leather mini skirt. A splendid, immense cathedral butts up to a house with missing windows, decaying bricks pushing through peeled back plaster. The square typical of those Old Towns all across Europe... cobblestones, fountain, cafes, flower beds, decorative street lights, then.... looking up... metal sculptures of acrobats, 25 feet apart, each perfectly balanced on a taut wire strung from one side of the street to the other. Smack in the middle of the sidewalk in need of repair, a bronze statue of a sewer cleaner climbing out of a manhole.
Trendy boutiques are interspersed with the Slovakian version of mom and pop stores. Old and new, ordinary and bizarre, the expected and then suddenly a surprise...Vienna oozes architectural lavishness...incredible edifices.... emperors and their ladies, angels and winged charioteers carved into every available crevice, framed by Corinthian columns gilded in gold... and occasionally, a crowning statue, perched dead center, of a bronze, rearing horse, a warrior at its side, placating and cajoling... wide avenues, affluence everywhere... in the back of our minds a restless thought: the disproportionate number of leaders in the concentration camps having come from this Austrian culture. Still hard to fathom...
Wandering around the city, we came across a fabulous market... every kind of goody imaginable... dried and fresh fruits, high end produce, vinegar stalls (with droppers to place a speck on one's wrist... fig vinegar a definite winner), olives stuffed with garlic or peppers or grape leaves or herbs... take away food or sit down terraces everywhere...a clear, middle eastern influence. With a few chosen Arabic words (held over from Egypt), we impressed our lunch waiter, chalking up another point for American travelers everywhere.
Last night a concert in a small palace... 9 of the 40 who play in the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. The lead violinist marvelous, bow dancing across the strings. A ballet duo performed, she beautiful albeit anorexic, he twirling her in the air, we unable to fathom how the violinist and cellist behind would not even flinch when her foot would swipe through the air no more than a centimeter or two from their faces.
Off to Melk.
Similar to the Nile, riverboats on the Dánube jockey for position and stack side by side at each itinerary-designated port. Between stops, gliding down this well-traveled artery, we pass tree-lined banks, terraced vineyards... obsolete, battered castles...
fairy tale villages spoking out from their ever present 'center of town' churches...transiting the myriad locks (68, we're told) that take us from one needed water level to another.This is a picnic-friendly country with a multitude of sun/bathing seekers crowding the banks, RVs and tents packed closely together on the roads close behind.
Town centers with their outdoor cafes and abundant shops beckon each time we disembark. Churches transform into cathedrals in the bigger towns and cities: gothic, dark, immense vaulted ceilings, exquisite stained glass...stunning in their size and simplicity. We never get cathedraled out; these such powerful examples of the unifying force of medieval Christendom. The Abbey church (not a cathedral...evidently there is no residing bishop....) at Melk astounding... standing in the middle doing a slow pirouette (sp?)...a shipmate whispered, "Do you think anyone ever voiced, at some point during the reconstruction, that this might be a bit much?" A vast understatement.
Clumps of curly Q leaves sprout everywhere, clinging to every column...statues, pulpits, paintings and sanctuaries compete for space... every inch of the ceiling boasts bordered frescoes. Gold gilding is everywhere. This baroque masterpiece is at once breathtaking and uncomfortably ostentatious. All this to tell the unfolding story of the monks' victorious battle for virtue. An oddly decadent way ro depict this theological message...Re: the cathedral in Passau...there we were, seated in a sea of churchgoers, tourist and local, eagerly anticipating the acoustic wonder of one of the world's largest church organs...when we heard what sounded like heavy chains dropping from above... looking up behind us we saw the organist frenetically darting back and forth on the balcony, throwing up her hands and finally announcing something in German to the crowd...this followed by a rising, not happy murmur. The woman seated to our right looked over at us and simply said, "kaput!" Apparently the light above the organ crashed down,leaving bits of glass embedded between the keys. So much for our concert. The adventure continues!
We crashed a wedding in Regensberg. Strolling down the road connecting the river (canal, at this point) to the domplatz, we spotted a parade of top-hatted gentlemen in tails w/ brass buttons, each carrying an old fashioned straw broom. Using a smattering of German along with accompanying hand gestures, we asked a local frau what this group represented... our clearly unsuccessful comprehension of her quasi charades/German response caused her to exclaim in exasperation, "Mary Poppins!" and begin to hum the wedding march. She beamed broadly as we conveyed understanding with our Aha's... we quickly shadowed the chimney sweeps to St. Peter's Cathedral, where they were welcomed joyfully by the milling crowd. Four more sweeps joined in, these the poorer cousins with faces blackened in soot, beggars' robes hanging loosely and ladders in hand.
They lined both sides of the entrance to the church alongside their society brethren, and as the last song belted out by the neighborhood choir and band waned, the invitees poured into the cathedral, emptying the plaza. (This a tradition that invites a bit or research...)Two solitary figures remained outside: the bride and who we perceived to be the best man. They kept peering down the street, looks of impatience woven with a wee bit of worry on their faces....we envisioned a 'runaway groom' scenario...when over the cobblestones a '59 aqua cadillac came rumbling, groom in the passenger seat, grinning from ear to ear. This turn of events surely saving the bride from certain ruin, we took this as an opportunity to explore the rest of this wonderful city. Great little shops and cafes, monuments, fountains and ambiance. We then drifted back to the pier where several townspeople had finished setting up stalls for a festival, an annual event that neatly coincided with the pronouncement a day earlier that Regensberg had been declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO. We had to help toast the occasion. By late afternoon we were deep in celebration, and as our ship coasted off towards Nuremberg, the wedding party passed by continuing their celebration on a local ferry. I missed this particular sighting as I was making sangria in our cabin. There are priorities...
"Nuns' Little Farts"...that's the nickname for these biscuit type cookies here in Franconia (Franconians still holding a bitter, long memory of being usurped by the Bavarian princes moons ago...a local anecdote: Bavaria may have its hills, but we Franconians have much more horizon.)
Mornings continue to be serene and cool; tufts of fog blanket the river early on...as low as 50 degrees, steadily rising as the day wanes, often approaching 90. Then cools off again as we float into darkness around 8. The scenery barely changes... flatlands around Budapest have turned into hills, but the scenery is picture postcard beautiful everywhere.
In this area vineyards are rampant, planted vertically to let the cold winds blow through. "Ein trocken weisswine und ein bier, bitte!" We have our important culinary linguistic needs down pat. We experienced an intriguing wine tasting in Nuremberg, where we happened upon another local beer fest. Stalls lined the pathways and eked into the fields...the oddest things for sale: white out, carrot peelers, balloons shaped like cell phones. Weird.
But the grilled bratwurst sandwiches with sweet mustard and french fries made up for the flea market... and were a much needed respite after our jaunt into the city ro visit the unfinished Congress first, followed by Zeppelin Field, notorious for its Nazi Party rallies...along with the courtroom where the famed trials took place. Frightening to realize that a very viable Nazi element still lurks.... friend with whom we are traveling recounted a story where they were in a restaurant somewhere in Germany where an intoxicated group of locals were dining nearby. Suddenly one of the men stood up and shouted "Heil, Hitler!"...hand gestures and all... a deadly
pall, then all diners went back to their own conversations, as if nothing had occurred at all. Ouch.
Bamberg is like a little Venice, absolutely gorgeous...and Rothenberg undoubtedly one of the best preserved walled towns in Germany.Must hustle back to the ship, where only four tables/chairs are situated under shady umbrellas on the top deck. We strategize every morning how and when to grab one of 'em. We used to run the ship, but are now beginning to get outfoxed. And we need our card playing, drink holding table....
As we strolled back to the ship (pronounced 'sheep' by our friendly neighborhood cruise manager....) along the boardwalk by the pier at Rudesheim last night, a R.O.U.S (c'mon, think Princess Bride) raced across our path, flying over the feet of one of our travelin' buddies. I never realized I was a soprano...
Particularly intriguing considering that this high note (scream, actually) differed greatly from our voices only a few moments earlier during our myriad singalongs with each subsequent live band working their proprietary beer halls as we wandered the ever present cobblestoned streets... These groups, mostly male/female duets, seem to have a penchant for Elvis or ABBA, both ever so conducive to showcasing our karaoke talent. The looks conveyed by the 'within earshot' passerbys ranged from "They're having so much fun!"
to "Veritable sirens, those two....and perhaps they should relocate to the cliff of the Lorelei where they can continue to kill off sailors rather than us townspeople... "§$%& unappreciative lot, these carousers....
Such a lively town, Rudesheim, where our adventure began with a ride up a cable car in the late afternoon, gently swinging over an oasis of vineyards...with a spectacular view of the Rhine and its adjacent villages from the bar at the top. Life just doesn't get any better....
They're baaaack.... overflowing Dam Square here in Amsterdam.... the same Hare Krishna convention...of course they're following us...
We are at the end point of our trip - two nights here and we head for home.
We strolled the red light district last night, "goods" a bit rough around the edges... (and we could only wince as we envisioned the chastity belts encased in the Medieval Torture Museum a week or so ago, those having the added amenity of serrated edges... use your imagination....this same museum highlighting the original exercise machines...a.k.a. stretching racks...)This has been quite the experience with gaudy, greedy residences of the bishop princes' escalating the opulence at Versailles with 3-D statuaries coming out of the ceilings via the frescoes... to castles perched one hillside after another on the Rhine, great wines and beers... pretty, half-timbered houses...the magnificent, immense cathedral in Cologne... the precious, priceless, hand-calligraphed Bible in the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz with gorgeous illuminations next to one of the 49 first edition printed ones...a feat that has changed the world (China deserves first credit...but how could a printing press be useful if one's language carries thousands of characters??!!)
...And permeating all of this the constant barrage of news of the travesty in Israel, Lebanon and Gaza... we are grateful for thoughtful travel opportunities that have disintegrated our hometown blinders...we only wish this kind of education into open-mindedness could be afforded to all to counter the ethnocentrism and blind following that is all too alive and well in this world.
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