Bratislava (and it takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry)

At the moment, I am on a train from Bratislava to Prague. I have to say that this is the first even semi-unpleasant trip I’ve had on a train while in Europe, but even it is not that bad. I like trains.

One thing that I keep noticing on the trains is that every time an announcement comes over the speakers, it starts in the native language – here, Czech – and lasts for about three minutes and then the English translation is given and inevitably, it’s something like, “Ladies and gentlemen, our next stop will be Brno.”

What? There’s no way that the three minute Czech soliloquy translates into “our next stop will be Brno.” What aren’t you telling me? My fear is that the part in Czech is something like, “Ladies and gentlemen and Czech comrades, if you understand what I’m saying then you speak Czech and should be proud and angry at those around you who are too ignorant to learn the language of a country before they come to visit it. You do not deserve to be punched in the nose. Everybody else, however, does deserve such a fate. When we get to our next stop, place your right thumb into your right ear. If somebody sitting close to you does not do this, then they obviously do not speak Czech, so you should punch that person square in the nose. Our next stop will be Brno.” For this reason, every time the train stops, I stick my right thumb in my right ear. Nobody has punched me in the nose yet, thus proving my theory.

Now, about Bratislava. Other than London and Paris, Bratislava was the first town in which I really wanted to spend more time. Part of that is that I only spent a day here – so maybe three days would have been too many – but one wasn’t enough. I did try to make the best of it, though.

I got to my hotel, and there will be more on this in another post, but the hotel was actually a botel, sitting on the Danube in the shadow of the Bratislava castle. The view from outside my window, with the water flowing by at sunset and again in the morning, was terrific, though I’m pretty sure that at some point during the afternoon, we hit an iceberg or something because the whole room jerked several inches. We didn’t sink, though, which is something I always look for in a hotel room.

The first thing I did after leaving my hotel was make it up to the Bratislava castle, which sits on top of a hill and is the focal point of the city. From what I think I remember reading, though I do make crap up a lot so take it with a grain of salt, when the Turks forced the Hungarians out of Budapest, they fell back on Bratislava as the new Hungarian capital and much of the castle derives from that time, though the site also has ruins dating back to the period when the area was dominated by Rome. It’s very beautiful, though it does look like a coffee table sitting upside down, and it gives fantastic views of the city.

I also spent some time strolling through and shopping in Old Town, which is similar to Zurich’s Old Town except much cleaner, much nicer and larger. There aren’t as many historic buildings as in Zurich, but the area has a ton of cafes with diverse culinary options. I ended up stopping at one café for dinner and had Wienerschnitzel and Slovak potato salad. (That’s what they called it; I just took their word for it.) I thought the veal was a little dry, but you rolls the dice and you takes your chances.

I didn’t really have a chance to do much else in Bratislava. I’d like to do more Eastern Europe, including Hungary and Poland, which aren’t terribly far away. Perhaps I’ll get to Bratislava again and spend a few more days here. For now, it’s on to Prague.

Vienna: It Waits For You

With no internet connection in my hotel while in Vienna, I haven’t been able to post much from here – only what I’ve managed to get done at McDonald’s. Gotta love the golden arches. They are like little American embassies located all over the world.

So what have I done in Vienna? Surprisingly little. One of the reasons is that I am only here for three days, ending on Thursday morning. The other reason is that I spent half of one of my two full days here in bed going through detox, but we’ll get to that.

When I first got here and connected with my hotel, I, as I usually do, dropped my stuff and walked around the neighborhood trying to see what I liked, what I didn’t like and getting ideas of places to go. You know who else lived in my neighborhood? Ludwig van Beethoven, who evidently lived here for a couple years shortly before he died. There’s a “Ludwig slept here” sign on one of the buildings and underneath the sign is a bar/restaurant named Ludwig Van’s. I don’t know about you, but I can’t hear the name Ludwig Van without thinking about A Clockwork Orange, so I just pictured the inside of it like the “bar” from the opening scene of that movie. I didn’t go inside to test the theory.

One problem with being in Vienna right now is that the city is under renovation. There are a few places that you need to go when you’re in Vienna and inevitably, when I got there, parts of places were covered in scaffolding and/or hidden from view. I had heard that one of the places that I needed to see was Stephansdom, so I went there first. It’s a church from the middle ages. I went inside, took some photos and walked around it for a while. I hope that underneath the scaffolding somebody is doing some cleaning because the outside could really use it.

Not too far away from Stephansdom is the complex known as the Hofburg Palace. Again, much of this was under construction or maintenance. Part of the complex, the Neue Burg, contains a museum, but not being in a museum mood at the time I was there, I didn’t go in. (As an historical aside, Hitler proclaimed the annexation of Austria from the balcony at the Neue Burg in 1938.) Again, I walked around, took some pictures, and enjoyed the beautiful afternoon.

I finally came around to being in a museum mood, however, and ventured over to the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Like many of the museums of Europe, this one contains your standard Ancient Egypt wing and Ancient Greece wing, etc. The highlight of the museum, and the area in which I spent most of my time, is the art collection. The museum has a tremendous collection of art from the Dutch Masters, as well as others, of course. I took lots of pictures and will post them on Facebook in the coming days. With respect to the one I selected to accompany the blog, I chose it because I liked it’s name. It’s Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s “Sommer.” (I assume that the actual name was whatever the word for “summer” is in Arcimboldo’s native tongue, but since the museum is in a German-speaking country, the name is “Sommer.”)

As all of you know, and are excited about I’m sure, Tuesday and Wednesday nights this week saw Champions League action in European football. Since I had to watch, I went to a bar called Die Bibliotek down the street from my hotel because I saw a sign outside saying that it would be showing various matches. I met a few Germans who were there to watch the Stuttgart match and we’ll just leave it at a good time was had by all. Because of the good time, however, I spent most of today recovering, so I did nothing in the morning.

In the afternoon, I went to the Belvedere Palaces, which were built in the early-18^th century. The buildings truly were magnificent, as was the courtyard in between the two main buildings. Again, I took lots of pictures, but they aren’t going to do justice to the botanical garden on the premises.

Okay, I suppose those are the highlights of my time in Vienna. As I write this, it is Wednesday night. Tomorrow morning, I check out and hop a train to Bratislava for a brief, one-night stay. On Friday, I head north for Prague. I’ll keep in touch.

Munich: Passing Thoughts

As promised, or I guess not really promised but suggested as possible, I thought I’d do a general post of Munich. Mainly just random thoughts and I’m not sure if I’ll have pictures to associate with the thoughts, but we’ll see.

I enjoyed Munich. Not as much as I enjoyed London or Paris, but it was still a good time. Foodwise, I found myself eating bratwurst and schnitzel. And, oddly enough, pizza because there was a really good pizza place right around the corner from my hotel. There was also a lot of beer, unsurprisingly. I kept my streak alive of drinking primarily native beers and I think that Paulaner was my favorite of Munich.

Munich has the biggest bicycle culture of any city I’ve ever seen (though I haven’t been to east Asia yet). The bicycle lanes take up half of the sidewalks and it seemed in places that there were more bicyclists than drivers or even pedestrians. Also, there were huge parking lots of nothing but bicycles. Good for the environment? Perhaps. But I don’t like bicyclists. That’s a story for a different blog, however.

English (and occasionally some form of sign language) was good enough to get around and get fed. Munich isn’t as English-friendly as a city like Paris, but the basics were understood by most. I have to say that my favorite thing about German is that my last name pops up all of the time unexpectedly, which I love.

The weather again was perfect. Without exception, every afternoon I have spent in Europe, going on twenty now, has been sunny or partly cloudy and in the 70s. Mornings have occasionally been grey and it’s getting a little cooler now that we’re closing in on October, but the weather has been unbelievably beautiful.

As I move east across Europe, I find that it’s getting darker earlier and earlier. Of course, part of that can be attributed to the time of year, but part of it also is because all of continental Europe, or at least all that I am visiting, are in the same time zone even though some of the cities are hundreds of miles apart. It’s sort of like the difference between Detroit and Boston. Even though they are in the time zone, it gets dark in Detroit at least an hour later than it does in Boston because of the distance. Brussels and Vienna are affected the same way.

Okay, as far as languages, this was the itinerary: English, French/Dutch, French, German, German, German, Czech, Czech, German, Dutch, English. Munich is the second of four German-speaking cities that I’ve stayed in and it’s finally growing on me. I’m not saying I’m learning any of it, I’m just saying that it doesn’t sound as strange to me as it did from the beginning.

Okay, that’s it for Munich, with the possible of an exception of a hotel review. As I write this, I’m in Vienna (with no internet access except at McDonald’s), so that’ll be the subject of the coming posts.

Later.

Hotel Arlette Am - A Review

I’m going to double-back for an entry here and do a brief review of the Hotel Arlette Am in Zurich. The first thing that I have to point out about it is how convenient it is with respect to the main (only) rail station in Zurich. From the spot where I got off of the train from Paris, Hotel Arlette Am is only a ten-minute walk away. As much stuff as I was lugging around, this was a big bonus.

Another bonus, and for the same reason, was that the hotel had a lift. Seeing as I was on the fifth floor, this again prevented me from having to carry heavy loads up lots of stairs.

I forget how much the hotel cost, but it seems to me that this one was on the higher end of the spectrum – in the neighborhood of $140/night. After complaining earlier about Paris being expensive, I learned that Zurich was probably even worse. I guess that’s what happens when you’re the richest country on Earth.

The hotel is between the train station and Central tram line, which borders the part of Old Town on the east of the river. Another A for convenience as the historic part of Zurich was all within a 20-minute walk of the hotel. That includes the Swiss Museum, Bahnhofstrasse and all of the buildings in the earlier pictures. As with the Hotel Mozart in Brussels, the hotel was in a perfect location for a tourist and was even closer to public transportation.

One strike against the Arlette Am was the nickel-and-diming. It was the first hotel that I stayed in that didn’t have free wi-fi. It turned out to be about $10 a day for the two days that I was there, but Zurich isn’t big on public options for free internet, so it was a price I felt compelled to pay. Also, the breakfast was pretty light, though the hotel had additional options to choose from, for a price. Figuring that if I was going to pay for breakfast, I wasn’t going to do it for hotel food, I opted out.

The staff was very friendly. I understand that the hotel is family-owned and operated. The people there were fluent in English and able to answer questions that I had about Zurich. Like at the Hotel Monte Carlo in Paris, I had to leave the key at the front desk when I left, which I find annoying, but it isn’t the biggest annoyance in the world.

The room was very clean and rather small. Kind of par for the course in the hotels that I’ve been staying in, though I think I can say that this room was cleaner than most. There also was absolutely no noise problem. As I’ve experienced everywhere, there was no air conditioning, but the window opened onto a street that was very quiet, at least at night.

The television had two English-language stations: CNN and MTV. I ended up watching a few too many MTV reality series and worry that my sanity will suffer because of it. We’ll see when I get back if I find myself compelled to watch Rock of Love.

Anyway, in summary, good hotel. Great location. Quiet and clean. Friendly staff. Pricey for what I’ve been spending, but not so bad for Zurich. Would have appreciated free wifi.

Fin.

More Munchen, More Munchen, More Munchen

I told you there would be another post about Munich and here it is. This time, I’ll hit Olympic Park, Schloss Nymphenburg and Allianz Arena. I may come back in another post with some passing thoughts, but we’ll see how that goes once I get to Vienna.

Olympic Park, as you can probably guess, includes a series of structures built for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Now, I don’t remember the 1972 Olympics, but other than Mark Spitz’s seven gold medals, everything I know about them is bad. First there was the September 5 massacre of Israeli athletes. The only thing I can recall about the Olympics is the Soviet Union’s ending of the United States’ perfect record in Olympic basketball after a very controversial call or calls. Those are the thoughts that I had in mind as I strolled around the area.

I have to say that most of the sports arenas on the complex look alike, and not attractive at all. I went by the Olympic pool complex to see where Mark Spitz made history. I also took an unguided tour of Olympic Stadium to see where Bayern Munich played its home matches during the height of its power. Both were sort of disappointing in person, but it was still an interesting experience.

I took an entire morning to go by Schloss Nymphenburg and never even made it into the Palace. The garden and paths around the building are not only beautiful but also immense, covering several acres. I don’t know much about the history of the place, so if you want to know more you can google it, but I spent a few hours strolling through the gardens and taking pictures. It appears to be very popular with the early-morning joggers and with good reason. I didn’t get a chance to visit the Palace or any of the other buildings on-site, but I needed to get to a soccer match.

As usual, I won’t go into too much detail on this site about the soccer match. I will say that it was between two second-division German clubs, TSV 1860 Munchen and FC Paderborn. It was held at Allianz Stadium, which is the home of Bayern Munich and, I believe, the site of the 2006 World Cup final, where Zinedane Zidane made his famous career-ending head butt. I know I haven’t been to many European football fields (five on this trip, so far), but I can’t imagine a more perfect place to watch a match. Every seat looks like it is right on top of the action, and that’s not easy in a place that sits 80,000. As before, there will be a review of the stadium on my soccer website if you are interested, and even if you aren’t.

Okay, that’s it for now. I’m going to enjoy the Austrian pastoral views from my train window as we close in on Salzburg.

Stay tuned.

Munich: They Have Beer Here

It seems like it’s time to post an intermediate entry about Munich. My time here is coming close to an end, but I should probably save myself something to do on tomorrow’s train to Vienna, so I’ll talk about Oktoberfest and the Deutsches Museum.

Part of the reason I scheduled my trip at the time that I did was so that I’d have an opportunity to attend Oktoberfest. Well, I did it and now I can cross it off of the bucket list. To me, Oktoberfest was like a state fair except that there are 14 or 15 tents holding thousands of people each full of people drinking beer and singing drinking songs. The fair part is pretty standard. There are booths selling German fair food – sausages, schnitzel and fish. There also are rides and general fun for the whole family. Inside the tents, in the traditional Munich beer hall tradition, there are hundreds of picnic tables with people drinking beers out of liter glasses and usually a band on a stage in the middle leading everybody in song.

During the day, there were lots of families, including small kids, enjoying the rides and eating the sausages and fish. Gradually, as it gets later, the park gets more and more crowded and eventually is filled with people who have been drinking for several hours and there are plenty of the typical signs of people who have been drinking for several hours. I won’t go into those signs here.

I enjoyed some food (1/2 meter Bratwurst anybody?) and then made my way into a tent on Friday to enjoy some liquid refreshment. I met some people and went through a few liters of beer, and generally had a good time, but it wasn’t all I had hoped. Perhaps if I was with some good friends. Perhaps if I was a bit younger. Perhaps if I was just in a mood to get really drunk. I don’t know. I just left thinking that it lacked something. Of course, I went back the next day to try again, but the results were the same. It was a good time, but I’m not counting the minutes until I return.

The Deutsches Museum was unlike any other museum I’ve been to here in Europe. Most of the other museums were full of art and/or historical artifacts. Being Germany, the Deutsches Museum concentrated on technology and industry. There were sections on aviation, astronomy, textiles, power machinery and printing/paper technology. It also included an excellent planetarium. Again, it wasn’t the Louvre, but it turned out to be very interesting in its own right.

Okay, I still have to write about Olympic Park, Schloss Nymphenburg and the fussball match I went to Allianz Arena. I’ll go into those in another post in the near future. Auf Wiedersehen!!!

Munich: First Trip to the Fatherland

Okay, I’ve been in Munich for a day-and-a-half and it definitely is different from all of the other cities that I’ve visited here in Europe. Part of that may be because my hotel is a little bit out of the way from all of the tourist activity. I’m not sure why it’s so dead in my neighborhood because it is walking distance from Oktoberfest, yet once it gets dark, the neighborhood dies.

I have now had beer at Oktoberfest, so I can mark that off of the bucket list. I’ve been in the early afternoon and in the early evening and it is two completely different scenes. Early on, it’s still packed, but there’s room at all of the tents and you can still get beer and there’s plenty of room at the food stands. In the evening, the tents are packed and the field is packed with drunken idiots and it’s kind of difficult to work your way through the crowds at times. I’m planning to go back tomorrow morning, just to check out the morning crowd and to get myself a good morning buzz, but afterwards, I think I’d like to see some more of Munich away from all of the beer.

Walking back to my hotel, I saw a sign advertising an anti-capitalism protest here next week. Hmm . . . socialists in Munich . . . what could POSSIBLY go wrong?

I did manage to get a little bit around town to take some pictures of old buildings – if you haven’t noticed from past posts, I like old buildings – but it’s hard to get good shots of a lot of buildings in Munich because the buildings are in amongst newer, tall buildings so it’s hard to get a good angle for a picture. Any way, I’ve tried.

This is just a start. I’ll check back in with more Munich later.