Thursday, June 16, 2011
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Snow Mountain
Last Saturday we drove an hour and a half southwest of Vienna into the Alps. Schneeberg (Snow Mountain) has some of the most dramatic, imposing scenery we have seen here. Puchberg, a small town nearby, seems largely geared to skiers, and we saw many a chair lift on slopes that we drove past. One narrow, winding road led us under a cliff crawling with rock climbers. The little road was cut into the cliff, and there were climbers directly above us as we drove through. Flashing through my mind was the memory of our dining room in Okinawa, where geckos made their way upside down across the ceiling, sometimes during our dinner hour; careless teenage geckos would occasionally lose their footing and drop onto the dining table. We were pleased to make it past the rock without a such an incident. The pictures below are of the Schneeberg area and Puchberg.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
"Sailing to Byzantium" (on Turkish Airlines)
Memorial Day weekend found us in Constantinople, Byzantium, Istanbul--different names for the city's different incarnations over the centuries--and it felt as if we experienced all three.
"Hello, Excuse Me!"
Like Cairo and Rome--but much more like Cairo--the residents of Istanbul have spent a couple of thousand years honing their sales skills. Would-be guides, tour vendors, ice cream vendors, water vendors, tea vendors, pretzel vendors, shoeshine vendors, chewing gum vendors, facial tissue vendors, cookie vendors, roasted chestnut vendors, roasted corn vendors...all work the crowds along with the pickpockets. Some hawked their wares from stands; others, plying carts or carrying their wares in large wooden trays, snaked through the tourists and local shoppers, shouting, cajoling, importuning, whining, moving slowly against the flow of the throng.
From our hotel we walked up a steep, short hill to reach the three most important sites in the old city: Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, and Topkapi palace. Huge white tour buses and yellow and white taxis by the dozen plied the narrow lane; when the buses would meet, one would have to back up, either up or down the hill to an intersection, until the other could wheeze past; men in blue shirts with arm bands whistled, waved, and shouted, directing the tangle of vehicles. Small and large bands of tourists--including the two of us--weaved in and out of the crawling traffic to get to the hill top, where we were beset by another kind of traffic: tour guides. Every 10 yards we would be accosted with "Hello! Excuse me!" "Where are you from?" One man followed this with "Are you from the States? I'm not selling anything!" This, as we became aware, would turn into a ploy to get a tourist to go to a carpet shop. When we would see a tourist stop and answer, we would next hear "I have a cousin there." The more the hawker felt he had established rapport, the harder, it seemed, the target would find it to get away. One evening, sitting in a restaurant, we watched one man who had stalked us pin down another couple for several minutes.
Two Cultures
Like the Bosphorus Straits, but through its history rather than geography, the Hagia Sophia joins Europe and Asia. For a thousand years a Christian church, and from 1453 a mosque, it dominates the city's skyline. The minarets around it, looking like missile launchers, visually echo the religious clashes that the city has seen over the centuries. The building's interior looks every bit a mosque: in the former chancel, a frame points the direction to Mecca, and tiles and shields with Koranic verses adorn the walls; the huge, dark interior is uninterrupted by transepts, side chapels, or altars. A few fragmentary frescoes are about all that remain from the Christian era. Low-hanging chandeliers provide circles of dim illumination, like so many halos for the vanished saints.
In sharp contrast to the decoration in the interior of the Hagia Sophia is the nearby Sultan Ahmed Mosque, built in the early 17th century on the site of the palaces of the Byzantine emperors and facing the Hagia Sophia. It is also known as the Blue Mosque, resplendent with blue tile--hence its name--and laid with rich carpets. It is beautiful; and (for my Pennsylvania readers) it is packed more tightly than Beaver Stadium at Homecoming.
Flying Corncobs
On a couple of occasions we sat on a bench to rest and people-watch in a small park adjacent to the Blue Mosque. At the center was a circular fountain with benches around it. Ice-cream vendors, roast-corn vendors, tourists, and locals strolled by--lots of children in strollers, women with their hair tightly wrapped in scarves, burqa-clad passersby in pairs, workmen heading home, families from the US and Europe, and flying water bottles and corncobs. The latter two elements of the spectacle were regularly launched over our heads into the fountain by little boys standing in the grass behind the benches. The invisible current on the fountain surface (caused by a drain?) gradually swirled the debris together into a gently rocking assemblage of blue-ringed plastic waterbottles and half-submerged, well-gnawed corncobs--rather like one of the floating islands of Lake Titicaca. Black and gray crowlike jackdaws patrolled the lawn, as bobble-headed pigeons did the walks, avian agents of the Istanbul Sanitation Department. Many Europeans and Americans--and every Turkish and Asian couple or family--strolling by the fountain paused to step over the little iron fence by the Keep Off the Grass sign to pose for a photo in front of the spouting water.
Palace, Mackerel, Sucking Face
Topkapi Palace is a sprawling compound. We visited it late on Saturday, and by that time I was foot-sore and leg-weary, mainly just wanting to be handed a gallon-bottle of beer with a straw and pushed in a stroller along with the thousands of infants and toddlers in the family groups that milled around us. I will mention only that, besides the tile work, architecture, and sea views, I enjoyed seeing the Muslim relics, especially the vials holding hairs from the Beard of the Prophet, and the bejeweled dagger featured in the 1964 movie Topkapi.
We crossed the Golden Horn two or three times by walking over the Galata Bridge. For the most part, the weekend was gray and breezy, and on the bridge it seemed even grayer and breezier. Hundreds of fishermen lined both sides of the bridge, long black poles bristling over the sides, wiggling and waving like the legs of a millipede. The bridge walkway was cluttered with the fishermen's lunch wrappers, paper cups and plastic bottles--and buckets, some half filled with water and swimming mackerel, others half filled only with shiny, twitching, gasping, bright-eyed mackerel who wished they were swimming. A walkway on the underside of the bridge was lined with fish restaurants, their most prominent offering being grilled mackerel on a bun. Appropriately enough, on the far side of the bridge we found dozens of shops selling plumbing supplies, displayed on banks as if it were the Spice Market, with chrome faucets and fixtures gleaming in the sun.
The Grand Bazaar was a maelstrom of humanity, and we were wholly entertained by it--almost like being drawn by a magnet. With some 4,000 stalls, the market is filled with sales chants and shouts, with dust, tobacco smoke, and the scents of spices and perfume. The crowds were noise and color in motion, and the wares, brightly lit, were even more colorful than the crowds. The nearby Spice Market sells a good deal besides that commodity, including a wide variety of clothing, candles, lamps, and on and on and on. Just outside the Spice Market are a few lanes where pets are sold: from goldfish to puppies to rabbits, but, cutest of all, leeches. They swim in half-filled, 5-gallon glass jars; they are about 2" long, black and wiggly--and just a bit creepy--with signs marketing them for "cosmetic purposes"--for facial wrinkles--though I am sure they make fine pets and, like most fish, are good listeners.
No Country for Old Men
For William Butler Yeats in "Sailing to Byzantium," Istanbul is a metaphor for what transcends the mortal world--"no country for old men." Visiting the city is a chance to be in timelessness--to be lost in 2,000 years of history. At moments it was like standing at the juncture of the cultural tectonic plates of Europe and Asia; and at other moments it was like being a mackerel in a bucket--with my hand twitching tightly around my wallet.
Filler
-- On Sunday we had lunch at the restaurant in Istanbul's 19th-century train station, the terminus for the Orient Express from Paris, which ceased operation only a few years ago. The modern terminal is a recent adjunct to the old station, and far smaller. Both were oddly deserted. The old station, with its Palladian windows, stained glass, and wood and brass furnishings, was quiet and peaceful, like a museum after closing hours...not 2,000 years old, but timeless nonetheless.
-- We were not even safe from sales pitches in the lobby of our hotel. When we first checked in, the clerk spent about 20 minutes showing us brochures for everything from belly dancing to boat rides, from whirling dervish ceremonies to Turkish bath rituals. Each day when we would leave, the desk clerk would ask what we had planned and then offer to get us a guide or tour for that activity, none of which we accepted. On Sunday night we mentioned that we planned to spend Monday morning, before our flight, strolling the Grand Bazaar; the night clerk told us to tell the morning clerk to call a friend of his to take us around the market--even though, he generously noted, the guide "speaks only Turkish and perhaps a bit of French." On Saturday afternoon we took a 90-minute boat tour of the Bosphorus--with the same company as in the hotel brochure--and paid about $8 a ticket at the dock; the hotel price would have been about $45.
-- Sitting on a sidewalk, leaning against a wall, a girl of perhaps 5, alone, played a toy keyboard, with a paper cup for donations.
"Hello, Excuse Me!"
Like Cairo and Rome--but much more like Cairo--the residents of Istanbul have spent a couple of thousand years honing their sales skills. Would-be guides, tour vendors, ice cream vendors, water vendors, tea vendors, pretzel vendors, shoeshine vendors, chewing gum vendors, facial tissue vendors, cookie vendors, roasted chestnut vendors, roasted corn vendors...all work the crowds along with the pickpockets. Some hawked their wares from stands; others, plying carts or carrying their wares in large wooden trays, snaked through the tourists and local shoppers, shouting, cajoling, importuning, whining, moving slowly against the flow of the throng.
From our hotel we walked up a steep, short hill to reach the three most important sites in the old city: Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, and Topkapi palace. Huge white tour buses and yellow and white taxis by the dozen plied the narrow lane; when the buses would meet, one would have to back up, either up or down the hill to an intersection, until the other could wheeze past; men in blue shirts with arm bands whistled, waved, and shouted, directing the tangle of vehicles. Small and large bands of tourists--including the two of us--weaved in and out of the crawling traffic to get to the hill top, where we were beset by another kind of traffic: tour guides. Every 10 yards we would be accosted with "Hello! Excuse me!" "Where are you from?" One man followed this with "Are you from the States? I'm not selling anything!" This, as we became aware, would turn into a ploy to get a tourist to go to a carpet shop. When we would see a tourist stop and answer, we would next hear "I have a cousin there." The more the hawker felt he had established rapport, the harder, it seemed, the target would find it to get away. One evening, sitting in a restaurant, we watched one man who had stalked us pin down another couple for several minutes.
Two Cultures
Like the Bosphorus Straits, but through its history rather than geography, the Hagia Sophia joins Europe and Asia. For a thousand years a Christian church, and from 1453 a mosque, it dominates the city's skyline. The minarets around it, looking like missile launchers, visually echo the religious clashes that the city has seen over the centuries. The building's interior looks every bit a mosque: in the former chancel, a frame points the direction to Mecca, and tiles and shields with Koranic verses adorn the walls; the huge, dark interior is uninterrupted by transepts, side chapels, or altars. A few fragmentary frescoes are about all that remain from the Christian era. Low-hanging chandeliers provide circles of dim illumination, like so many halos for the vanished saints.
In sharp contrast to the decoration in the interior of the Hagia Sophia is the nearby Sultan Ahmed Mosque, built in the early 17th century on the site of the palaces of the Byzantine emperors and facing the Hagia Sophia. It is also known as the Blue Mosque, resplendent with blue tile--hence its name--and laid with rich carpets. It is beautiful; and (for my Pennsylvania readers) it is packed more tightly than Beaver Stadium at Homecoming.
Flying Corncobs
On a couple of occasions we sat on a bench to rest and people-watch in a small park adjacent to the Blue Mosque. At the center was a circular fountain with benches around it. Ice-cream vendors, roast-corn vendors, tourists, and locals strolled by--lots of children in strollers, women with their hair tightly wrapped in scarves, burqa-clad passersby in pairs, workmen heading home, families from the US and Europe, and flying water bottles and corncobs. The latter two elements of the spectacle were regularly launched over our heads into the fountain by little boys standing in the grass behind the benches. The invisible current on the fountain surface (caused by a drain?) gradually swirled the debris together into a gently rocking assemblage of blue-ringed plastic waterbottles and half-submerged, well-gnawed corncobs--rather like one of the floating islands of Lake Titicaca. Black and gray crowlike jackdaws patrolled the lawn, as bobble-headed pigeons did the walks, avian agents of the Istanbul Sanitation Department. Many Europeans and Americans--and every Turkish and Asian couple or family--strolling by the fountain paused to step over the little iron fence by the Keep Off the Grass sign to pose for a photo in front of the spouting water.
Palace, Mackerel, Sucking Face
Topkapi Palace is a sprawling compound. We visited it late on Saturday, and by that time I was foot-sore and leg-weary, mainly just wanting to be handed a gallon-bottle of beer with a straw and pushed in a stroller along with the thousands of infants and toddlers in the family groups that milled around us. I will mention only that, besides the tile work, architecture, and sea views, I enjoyed seeing the Muslim relics, especially the vials holding hairs from the Beard of the Prophet, and the bejeweled dagger featured in the 1964 movie Topkapi.
We crossed the Golden Horn two or three times by walking over the Galata Bridge. For the most part, the weekend was gray and breezy, and on the bridge it seemed even grayer and breezier. Hundreds of fishermen lined both sides of the bridge, long black poles bristling over the sides, wiggling and waving like the legs of a millipede. The bridge walkway was cluttered with the fishermen's lunch wrappers, paper cups and plastic bottles--and buckets, some half filled with water and swimming mackerel, others half filled only with shiny, twitching, gasping, bright-eyed mackerel who wished they were swimming. A walkway on the underside of the bridge was lined with fish restaurants, their most prominent offering being grilled mackerel on a bun. Appropriately enough, on the far side of the bridge we found dozens of shops selling plumbing supplies, displayed on banks as if it were the Spice Market, with chrome faucets and fixtures gleaming in the sun.
The Grand Bazaar was a maelstrom of humanity, and we were wholly entertained by it--almost like being drawn by a magnet. With some 4,000 stalls, the market is filled with sales chants and shouts, with dust, tobacco smoke, and the scents of spices and perfume. The crowds were noise and color in motion, and the wares, brightly lit, were even more colorful than the crowds. The nearby Spice Market sells a good deal besides that commodity, including a wide variety of clothing, candles, lamps, and on and on and on. Just outside the Spice Market are a few lanes where pets are sold: from goldfish to puppies to rabbits, but, cutest of all, leeches. They swim in half-filled, 5-gallon glass jars; they are about 2" long, black and wiggly--and just a bit creepy--with signs marketing them for "cosmetic purposes"--for facial wrinkles--though I am sure they make fine pets and, like most fish, are good listeners.
No Country for Old Men
For William Butler Yeats in "Sailing to Byzantium," Istanbul is a metaphor for what transcends the mortal world--"no country for old men." Visiting the city is a chance to be in timelessness--to be lost in 2,000 years of history. At moments it was like standing at the juncture of the cultural tectonic plates of Europe and Asia; and at other moments it was like being a mackerel in a bucket--with my hand twitching tightly around my wallet.
Filler
-- On Sunday we had lunch at the restaurant in Istanbul's 19th-century train station, the terminus for the Orient Express from Paris, which ceased operation only a few years ago. The modern terminal is a recent adjunct to the old station, and far smaller. Both were oddly deserted. The old station, with its Palladian windows, stained glass, and wood and brass furnishings, was quiet and peaceful, like a museum after closing hours...not 2,000 years old, but timeless nonetheless.
-- We were not even safe from sales pitches in the lobby of our hotel. When we first checked in, the clerk spent about 20 minutes showing us brochures for everything from belly dancing to boat rides, from whirling dervish ceremonies to Turkish bath rituals. Each day when we would leave, the desk clerk would ask what we had planned and then offer to get us a guide or tour for that activity, none of which we accepted. On Sunday night we mentioned that we planned to spend Monday morning, before our flight, strolling the Grand Bazaar; the night clerk told us to tell the morning clerk to call a friend of his to take us around the market--even though, he generously noted, the guide "speaks only Turkish and perhaps a bit of French." On Saturday afternoon we took a 90-minute boat tour of the Bosphorus--with the same company as in the hotel brochure--and paid about $8 a ticket at the dock; the hotel price would have been about $45.
-- Sitting on a sidewalk, leaning against a wall, a girl of perhaps 5, alone, played a toy keyboard, with a paper cup for donations.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Zombie World
As the lunch hour drew near, we were having little luck spotting restaurants in any of the towns, though we did see a man cross the road in front of us carrying a dead chicken. Finally, in Riegersberg, we saw a sign to a castle, built in the 1730s, that advertised a cafe inside the compound. We had the small parking lot to ourselves; there were no other visitors in sight. Unlike the geometric, green and yellow fields of the countryside, the green of the castle grounds was weedy and clumpy, and the yellow was provided by dandelions that were scattered over it like so many pimples; the structure looked to be in poor repair, with the mortar between stones beginning to crumble and paint peeling on the doorways. After walking through a small courtyard, we saw another sign to the cafe and entered a dark anteroom through a huge, creaking door with a large, square lockplate and rusty handle. Still there was no sign of life. I tried a door labeled "Cafe" and found it locked. As we started to stroll back to the car, we heard the door creak open and turned around to see a young woman rubbing her eyes with her fists as if she had just awakened. I thought she might have been asleep in her coffin and had not planned to arise until sundown. We turned back and greeted her, and she led us through two more rooms onto a sunny lawn, where we sat at a table under a tree next to a black lagoon. Our lunch wraith--probably fearing the sunlight--disappeared back into the castle, leaving us to the shade tree and humming bees, buzzing insects, and birds singing in the local dialect; we remarked that it was like sitting in a cemetery without tombstones. Several minutes later she returned and handed us each a menu; it quickly became apparent that she spoke no German and no English, and, although we never determined whether she knew any language at all, we suspected that she might be fluent in Czech, and that the entire village was Czech--despite our certainty at being on the Austrian side of the border. To simplify communication, Linda and I, using a single menu, pointed one by one at menu selections. At each the waitress shook her head No, and then she pointed to one selection and said "Toast," thus exhausting her English vocabulary. Okay, two orders of toast. We turned to the drinks list with much the same effect: our only choice was coffee or water. While we waited for our order (which turned out to be a cold, though toasted, cheese sandwich with a thin slice of cold ham), I pondered how to communicate that I wished to use the restroom, which was not in sight. I rejected the idea of using hand gestures and other body language since I didn't want to frighten the waitress or get arrested; fortunately, she got the drift of my words, and she pointed toward a door and said "Links" (left), thus exhausting her German vocabulary. Then she handed me a 4-inch-long key to unlock the restroom door--which turned out to be another huge, authentic 18th-century entryway. (The facility, nonetheless, was clean and modern, though I was frightened to notice that there was no mirror.) We consumed our coffee, water, and Niederoesterreich cuisine. The charge came to 12 euros, and the waitress had to write the number down because, we gathered, she did not know how to say it in German. We exited, boldly striding out, not slowly walking backwards as good sense would have dictated.
Although I don't think we got to sample the best of Niederoesterreich cuisine, we were, I suppose, lucky to find something to eat. In German class on Monday, we mentioned to our teacher our surprise at the absence of humanity in the villages. She told us that it is typical of the Czechs in that area to retire to their homes on Saturday afternoons and simply stay indoors the whole time, even on a sunny, lovely Saturday in May. I suspect, however, that whatever they are doing indoors involves a dead chicken.
Filler
Maypoles. Each little village that we drove through had its own maypole, a wooden shaft like a telephone pole but twice as high, with what looked like a Christmas tree tied on at the top. According to our German instructor, the pole is erected and decorated with ribbons on May 1 while young men and women of the village dance around it to an oompah band. The poles must be guarded all night because it is customary for the young men from a nearby village to try to sneak in and cut it down. If they succeed, "the men of the village lose their power."
Fuel. Gasoline prices are about $9/gallon, though we are fortunate to get an Embassy discount that takes off the taxes, which amount to about half the gallon price. No such break for an oil change, however. At the Toyota dealership this week:
Oil (3.7 liters): $148.02
Oil filter gasket: $1.65
Oil filter: $13.15
Labor: $37.80
Disposal of old oil: $4.50
"Gratis Car Wash": 0.00
Tax: $41.01
Total: $246.13
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Krakow World
At the end of April, with our visiting friend Cheryl from Rome, we headed up the road to Krakow, Poland, via Brno and the Czech Republic. Much of our impression of Poland was of incongruity: the roads, the physical city itself, the hotel room, the markets. And it was not all a matter of modernity vs age, or prosperity vs poverty.
Make a U-Turn
The weather was sunny and pleasant, perfect for a car trip, which should have been as simple as changing a light bulb. We started out smoothly enough. For the most part, the highways between Vienna and Krakow are spacious and modern, akin to US interstates, with traffic--especially in the Czech Republic--about as heavy as I-95 in the Washington suburbs. As we followed the car's navigation system, however, we found ourselves on stretches of two-lane roads soon after entering Poland. Wending through small towns with their lights and busy traffic circles became a slow process. Our long detour started at Rybnik, a town whose name I will always remember, as I believe it to translate as "small frog." It was just a few miles before we would have reached a new four-lane highway, with a straight shot into Krakow. The navigation system was most insistent on our turning left, but our designated route was closed for construction. We struck off to the right. The navigation system sounded like it was about to wet its pants. Unable to come up with anything other than "Make a U-turn," it continued to repeat that utterance every 30 seconds for the next many miles in what came to sound like a tone of exasperation. Finally, with the aid of a road atlas, we found another main road, and the navigation system went into a long pout of icy silence. After a few more traffic jams involving looking about an hour at the anus of a cement mixer stopped in front of us, we made it into Krakow--green, modern, prosperous neighborhoods and businesses--and found our hotel and a parking lot, the latter being a significant achievement. (In general in the former Soviet Bloc, we have read, it is important to park only in lots that have locked gates and 24-hour attendants because of the prevalence of break-ins and car theft.) To reach the lot, we turned off the modern, well maintained streets onto a dusty, narrow street, cluttered with blowing newspapers and food wrappers; parked cars jutted onto the sidewalks and onto the pavement. The parking lot was small, with a high, creaky wooden gate; covered with gravel, the lot undulated like a river bed; lining the lot were crumbling brick apartment buildings with windows covered by weather-stained canvas. A bandy-legged man, of the same age and condition as the apartment buildings, operated as the navigation system for the parking lot. He seemed very much to enjoy hopping about the dips and rises of the lot, gesturing rudely and shouting at drivers who pulled in past him without waiting to be told where to park. I am certain that he was shouting "Make a U-turn!" at us in Polish as we pulled into a space.
Welcome to Tokyo
Weary from hours in the car, we walked several blocks back to the hotel, which was in the Old City, a matrix of one-way streets and pedestrian zones. Our room was another study in incongruity, as if decorated by a poor, uneducated person who had recently come into money. We found rich wood with lovely parquet floors in our two-room suite. In the parlor, however, the only picture on the otherwise stark, bare walls was a large oil portrait of an Japanese couple, the man in a suit and the woman in a kimono, and next to them sat a dog that looked like a golden retriever, only it was white. All three figures, most notably their faces, had minimal definition and no fine detail, very like a work I might have executed myself in 9th grade art class. The room contained a huge old wooden desk, a leather sofa, and two leather easy chairs, all suitable in the event we needed to call a board meeting. The bedroom was charming enough, though there was only a quilt for a cover. The lightbulbs all worked.
Simplicity and Excess
"More is Better" seems to be a dictum much admired in Krakow. The buildings in the castle compound were an eclectic mix of architectural styles, and in the Waclaw Castle itself all styles seemed to be jammed together. It was mesmerizing, confounding, frustrating. I could not help but stare up at it until my neck ached, trying to find the design, a pattern, some unifying quality. The castle grounds were in bloom--pink blossoms of Chinese magnolia and cherry trees were out in full, and the green lawns were decorated with geometrically shaped beds of tulips. Beyond the castle, the broad, slate-blue Vistula River wound slowly by with the sun dancing on its gently undulating surface.
Although many of the smaller churches are bare-bones Baroque, St Mary's had enough decoration for all of them. There, the excesses of Gothic and Baroque together were transfixing. It was as if a child had directed an unlimited number of highly skilled sculptors, artists, stone masons, and painters. From chancel to narthex, every square centimeter was decorated, and much of the church was brightly colored as well, from the crimson ceiling to the gilded statuary.
The heart of the old city was pleasant and inviting. A constant source of entertainment while we walked was finding amazing consonant clusters on signs--another source of excess. (The longest I could find was five consonants together without a vowel, though some 11-letter words had but one vowel in the middle, plus, perhaps, a 'y' in the mix.) Nearly every corner had a pretzel stand and every block a shop selling amber blobs identified as figurines. There was no distraction from beggars: not once during our stay did we see a gypsy or a panhandler--very unlike most European cities I have been in--though there were ample warnings concerning pickpockets. The market square was prosperous, its perimeter lined with restaurants, in front of which stood horse-drawn carriages for tourists; in the interior of the square were stands selling produce, sausages, honey, candles, toys, and pottery, and just beyond was an Easter market purveying decorated eggs, stuffed animals, and other fertility-themed goods.
As with the main streets and the street of our parking lot, some of the downtown neighborhoods also stood in contrast. An afternoon stroll to the Jewish quarter led us away from the market area through narrow streets with potholes and crumbling sidewalks, past dark red brick buildings with broken-out windows covered by dirty green tarps. At the old market was an array of tables selling days'-old produce and costume jewelry that may have adorned a charwoman at a wedding decades ago; one vendor offered a selection of ancient, battered suitcases, and an adjacent store sold used, beat-up washing machines.
The food was good; the Poles were friendly, and they usually accommodated us by speaking English. We walked enough to be foot-sore at the end of each day, and we spent both nights--sleeplessly--alternately under the quilt until we achieved roasting temperature, after which we would roll partially out from under it to freeze for a while and then roll back under. Inside at night the hotel was wonderfully quiet; outside, loud, drunken shouting and singing rose from the street below our window until around 1 a.m.
Back to Wiener World
The trip home took us on slow and winding roads through the mountains and villages of southern Poland. At the border with Slovakia, however, we found ourselves on a wonderful, recently built, four-lane highway, and we cruised along in a valley with the Slovakian Alps beside us, on to Bratislava before turning west for Wiener World and home. Of all the sights of Krakow, confounding, beautiful, complex, colorful, joyous, the one that has stuck with me is the portrait of the Japanese couple and the dog, no doubt because it remains a mystery as well as an incongruity. Perhaps they were would-be royal guests memorialized because they never quite made it to the hotel. I imagine all three of them in a Toyota, obedient to its navigation system, endlessly making U-turns at Rybnik.
Filler
Spring Idyll. Recent walks have taken us through neighboring villages, up to the top of Kahlenberg mountain, and along the banks of the Danube. The loveliest and longest of these was our walk from Grinzing to Kahlenberg. On Easter Monday we followed a narrow path labeled "State Wander Way #1," past vineyards, through woods, along a fast-moving stream, and past banks and banks of lilacs, whose scent filled the air. Amid all the natural renewal, hidden away just off the trail and deep in the woods, near the mountain top, we came upon a tiny and long-neglected cemetery more than 200 years old. A Belgian prince from the court of Empress Maria Theresa was buried there, along with a woman once considered the most beautiful in Vienna, who had died at age 20. The beautiful spring in the Vienna woods took on a new context, one with depth and peace and ephemerality and timelessness. At the top of the mountain we rested at an outdoor cafe, recuperated with beer, and enjoyed the view of Vienna and the Danube Valley below.
Customer Service. Wishing to arrange an oil change for our car, I called the nearest Toyota dealership. My call was answered by a blur of recorded German (I discerned only the word "Toyota") followed a brief snatch of a Third Reich marching song and then the voice of a irritated, officious woman who demanded to know my business. I asked whether she spoke English, and she replied "Wirklich!" ("Certainly!") and then transferred my call to a woman who spoke only German. I made it understood that I wanted to bring in our car for an oil change. I was transferred to someone who spoke English. I repeated my reason for calling and was met with a barked demand for the car's license plate number. I told her I would call back. I got on my shoes and grabbed my keys and descended three floors to our apartment garage, where I jotted down the number. I returned to the phone. I called the dealership and went through the same steps--martial music, crabby clerks, transfers--and provided the license plate number. Never once asking for my name or the kind of car, the woman then said, "What is the vehicle's identification number?" I told her I must go back to the garage again and get the paperwork from the car. She replied, "Never mind. You must bring it when you come in." The next available time for an oil change, I was told, is 9 days away. "Be here at 9 a.m. and wait for it." I accepted the appointment and conditions in the grateful tones of a man with a boot on his neck.
Make a U-Turn
The weather was sunny and pleasant, perfect for a car trip, which should have been as simple as changing a light bulb. We started out smoothly enough. For the most part, the highways between Vienna and Krakow are spacious and modern, akin to US interstates, with traffic--especially in the Czech Republic--about as heavy as I-95 in the Washington suburbs. As we followed the car's navigation system, however, we found ourselves on stretches of two-lane roads soon after entering Poland. Wending through small towns with their lights and busy traffic circles became a slow process. Our long detour started at Rybnik, a town whose name I will always remember, as I believe it to translate as "small frog." It was just a few miles before we would have reached a new four-lane highway, with a straight shot into Krakow. The navigation system was most insistent on our turning left, but our designated route was closed for construction. We struck off to the right. The navigation system sounded like it was about to wet its pants. Unable to come up with anything other than "Make a U-turn," it continued to repeat that utterance every 30 seconds for the next many miles in what came to sound like a tone of exasperation. Finally, with the aid of a road atlas, we found another main road, and the navigation system went into a long pout of icy silence. After a few more traffic jams involving looking about an hour at the anus of a cement mixer stopped in front of us, we made it into Krakow--green, modern, prosperous neighborhoods and businesses--and found our hotel and a parking lot, the latter being a significant achievement. (In general in the former Soviet Bloc, we have read, it is important to park only in lots that have locked gates and 24-hour attendants because of the prevalence of break-ins and car theft.) To reach the lot, we turned off the modern, well maintained streets onto a dusty, narrow street, cluttered with blowing newspapers and food wrappers; parked cars jutted onto the sidewalks and onto the pavement. The parking lot was small, with a high, creaky wooden gate; covered with gravel, the lot undulated like a river bed; lining the lot were crumbling brick apartment buildings with windows covered by weather-stained canvas. A bandy-legged man, of the same age and condition as the apartment buildings, operated as the navigation system for the parking lot. He seemed very much to enjoy hopping about the dips and rises of the lot, gesturing rudely and shouting at drivers who pulled in past him without waiting to be told where to park. I am certain that he was shouting "Make a U-turn!" at us in Polish as we pulled into a space.
Welcome to Tokyo
Weary from hours in the car, we walked several blocks back to the hotel, which was in the Old City, a matrix of one-way streets and pedestrian zones. Our room was another study in incongruity, as if decorated by a poor, uneducated person who had recently come into money. We found rich wood with lovely parquet floors in our two-room suite. In the parlor, however, the only picture on the otherwise stark, bare walls was a large oil portrait of an Japanese couple, the man in a suit and the woman in a kimono, and next to them sat a dog that looked like a golden retriever, only it was white. All three figures, most notably their faces, had minimal definition and no fine detail, very like a work I might have executed myself in 9th grade art class. The room contained a huge old wooden desk, a leather sofa, and two leather easy chairs, all suitable in the event we needed to call a board meeting. The bedroom was charming enough, though there was only a quilt for a cover. The lightbulbs all worked.
Simplicity and Excess
"More is Better" seems to be a dictum much admired in Krakow. The buildings in the castle compound were an eclectic mix of architectural styles, and in the Waclaw Castle itself all styles seemed to be jammed together. It was mesmerizing, confounding, frustrating. I could not help but stare up at it until my neck ached, trying to find the design, a pattern, some unifying quality. The castle grounds were in bloom--pink blossoms of Chinese magnolia and cherry trees were out in full, and the green lawns were decorated with geometrically shaped beds of tulips. Beyond the castle, the broad, slate-blue Vistula River wound slowly by with the sun dancing on its gently undulating surface.
Although many of the smaller churches are bare-bones Baroque, St Mary's had enough decoration for all of them. There, the excesses of Gothic and Baroque together were transfixing. It was as if a child had directed an unlimited number of highly skilled sculptors, artists, stone masons, and painters. From chancel to narthex, every square centimeter was decorated, and much of the church was brightly colored as well, from the crimson ceiling to the gilded statuary.
The heart of the old city was pleasant and inviting. A constant source of entertainment while we walked was finding amazing consonant clusters on signs--another source of excess. (The longest I could find was five consonants together without a vowel, though some 11-letter words had but one vowel in the middle, plus, perhaps, a 'y' in the mix.) Nearly every corner had a pretzel stand and every block a shop selling amber blobs identified as figurines. There was no distraction from beggars: not once during our stay did we see a gypsy or a panhandler--very unlike most European cities I have been in--though there were ample warnings concerning pickpockets. The market square was prosperous, its perimeter lined with restaurants, in front of which stood horse-drawn carriages for tourists; in the interior of the square were stands selling produce, sausages, honey, candles, toys, and pottery, and just beyond was an Easter market purveying decorated eggs, stuffed animals, and other fertility-themed goods.
As with the main streets and the street of our parking lot, some of the downtown neighborhoods also stood in contrast. An afternoon stroll to the Jewish quarter led us away from the market area through narrow streets with potholes and crumbling sidewalks, past dark red brick buildings with broken-out windows covered by dirty green tarps. At the old market was an array of tables selling days'-old produce and costume jewelry that may have adorned a charwoman at a wedding decades ago; one vendor offered a selection of ancient, battered suitcases, and an adjacent store sold used, beat-up washing machines.
The food was good; the Poles were friendly, and they usually accommodated us by speaking English. We walked enough to be foot-sore at the end of each day, and we spent both nights--sleeplessly--alternately under the quilt until we achieved roasting temperature, after which we would roll partially out from under it to freeze for a while and then roll back under. Inside at night the hotel was wonderfully quiet; outside, loud, drunken shouting and singing rose from the street below our window until around 1 a.m.
Back to Wiener World
The trip home took us on slow and winding roads through the mountains and villages of southern Poland. At the border with Slovakia, however, we found ourselves on a wonderful, recently built, four-lane highway, and we cruised along in a valley with the Slovakian Alps beside us, on to Bratislava before turning west for Wiener World and home. Of all the sights of Krakow, confounding, beautiful, complex, colorful, joyous, the one that has stuck with me is the portrait of the Japanese couple and the dog, no doubt because it remains a mystery as well as an incongruity. Perhaps they were would-be royal guests memorialized because they never quite made it to the hotel. I imagine all three of them in a Toyota, obedient to its navigation system, endlessly making U-turns at Rybnik.
Filler
Spring Idyll. Recent walks have taken us through neighboring villages, up to the top of Kahlenberg mountain, and along the banks of the Danube. The loveliest and longest of these was our walk from Grinzing to Kahlenberg. On Easter Monday we followed a narrow path labeled "State Wander Way #1," past vineyards, through woods, along a fast-moving stream, and past banks and banks of lilacs, whose scent filled the air. Amid all the natural renewal, hidden away just off the trail and deep in the woods, near the mountain top, we came upon a tiny and long-neglected cemetery more than 200 years old. A Belgian prince from the court of Empress Maria Theresa was buried there, along with a woman once considered the most beautiful in Vienna, who had died at age 20. The beautiful spring in the Vienna woods took on a new context, one with depth and peace and ephemerality and timelessness. At the top of the mountain we rested at an outdoor cafe, recuperated with beer, and enjoyed the view of Vienna and the Danube Valley below.
Customer Service. Wishing to arrange an oil change for our car, I called the nearest Toyota dealership. My call was answered by a blur of recorded German (I discerned only the word "Toyota") followed a brief snatch of a Third Reich marching song and then the voice of a irritated, officious woman who demanded to know my business. I asked whether she spoke English, and she replied "Wirklich!" ("Certainly!") and then transferred my call to a woman who spoke only German. I made it understood that I wanted to bring in our car for an oil change. I was transferred to someone who spoke English. I repeated my reason for calling and was met with a barked demand for the car's license plate number. I told her I would call back. I got on my shoes and grabbed my keys and descended three floors to our apartment garage, where I jotted down the number. I returned to the phone. I called the dealership and went through the same steps--martial music, crabby clerks, transfers--and provided the license plate number. Never once asking for my name or the kind of car, the woman then said, "What is the vehicle's identification number?" I told her I must go back to the garage again and get the paperwork from the car. She replied, "Never mind. You must bring it when you come in." The next available time for an oil change, I was told, is 9 days away. "Be here at 9 a.m. and wait for it." I accepted the appointment and conditions in the grateful tones of a man with a boot on his neck.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Spring Bits
Spring so far has brought us more warm, sunny days than windy, rainy ones, and the buckeye trees that pervade Grinzing are showing new leaves. The wine and beer gardens, their umbrellas opening like flowers, are beginning to beckon.
Lost in the Funhouse
The warm weather a few days ago encouraged visiting friends and me to stroll around the outside of Stephansdom, the huge central church in Vienna. Heavily damaged by fire at the end of World War II, the church bears signs of earlier conflicts as well, particularly the Turkish siege of the city in 1683. Evidence of that two-month siege is in the broken Gothic stone decoration along many of the windows and portals, and a Turkish cannon ball is still lodged high in a wall near the south tower. St John Capistrano, who rallied Christians with his fiery sermons against the Turks the year after they successfully besieged Constantinople in 1453, is depicted in stone on one side of the exterior of Stephansdom with his foot atop a fallen Turk, who gnashing his teeth in frustration. And there is more stone violence on the exterior: a medieval figure that the Viennese refer to as Toothache Jesus moans in silence on a cross, looking very much as if he is waiting for a molar to be extracted. Although Mozart was not buried in the church, along the outer wall is a gated recess with a sign indicating that he lay there in state while Vienna paid its respects; subsequently he was moved to a cemetery away from the city. We noticed a small, dark, locked stairway leading down from the recess, and we strolled away, wondering aloud where it led.
With thoughts of springtime bulbs deep in the earth, we entered the church and sought out a tour of the crypt. Soon we were further along in the dark nave, in front of a gated stairway leading down. A guide in a heavy winter coat unlocked the gate and let us enter, accompanied by only one other tourist, a Japanese woman. Since the three of us spoke English, the guide said he would do the tour in English. He had just shut the heavy wooden door to the stairs when a frantic, incessant pounding began, making me think that someone had been buried alive. The guide opened the door to admit a couple from Spain, who immediately demanded that the tour be given in Spanish. We proceeded--with the guide narrating in English, and the Spanish couple muttering at him in Spanish--through a cold, breezy corridor and descended more stairs, down about 20 more feet and 20 more degrees. In addition to holding bones, the dimly lit crypt was a graveyard for statuary and other stone decoration that had come loose or fallen into disrepair. Until sanitation requirements ended the practice of urban burials in 1745, thousands of parishioners--one large section was devoted to plague victims--were buried under and adjacent to the church. The experience was much like traveling through a House of Horrors at an amusement park, and I found myself wishing I were riding on a little train as we walked gingerly through the dark corridors and peered through cobweb-laced iron grids in tiny windows revealing faintly illuminated rooms with bone piles. At the end of the tour, the guide unlocked another mysterious door and ushered us to a staircase leading up--and up we went. We tourists representing three continents rose from the dead and popped out into Mozart's memorial niche and out the gate at which we had stood staring curiously an hour before, leaving the bones to awaiting the springtime of Judgment Day, when they will, no doubt, rise up like so many tulips.
The Prater
-- "in Just-
Sunday afternoon we visited the Prater, a huge green area near the Danube and downtown, and the site of a large amusement park that has been in operation about a century. Cotton candy, balloons, roller coasters, bungee jump rides, bumper cars, ghost houses, "Alpine" water fall rides, and a million colorful and musical adventures for children and inebriated adults.... Bare legs and shoulders were the norm, the white Teutonic skin turning pink as cotton candy in the bright Sunday sun. It was an e.e. cummings' idyll: The goat-footed balloonman, the god Pan, had whistled, and the children--and we--were following him around in a magic world.
Castle Road
Last Sunday we headed south from Vienna toward Graz, the second largest city in Austria, leaving the A-2 autobahn for a route referred to by one guide book as the "Castle Road." After about an hour of rather flat terrain, the scenery on the A-2 turned into what I had always pictured to be the Austrian countryside: Tuscany plus snow-capped peaks. Melodies from The Sound of Music streamed through my head. We turned off the autobahn to the small town of Hartberg, aiming to find one of the castles we had identified in the guide book. As we entered the town, it struck us as odd that there were not the usual signs pointing the way to an historic site. We stopped first at a tourist information office to ask the location of the castle and then drove on another half mile, as directed. We still could not find it. We parked the car and wandered down a small lane, where we came across a small museum; a lady there graciously directed us to walk up a nearby hill to find the castle. We saw only a modern hotel. And then we realized, finally, that the hotel was built atop an old stone foundation of what must have been the castle. The castle was buried, and it would not, like a bulb, be coming up again any springtime soon. We were, at least, rewarded with a medieval guard tower and part of an old town wall, and forsythia and a cherry tree in bloom. Hartberg is a charming town in its own right, like Melk, with cobblestone lanes lined with 17th and 18th-century buildings--shops, restaurants, and homes--an amusement park for history lovers.
Filler
Other Times, Other Worlds
-- Vienna's Clock Museum displays chronometers and clocks dating back to the Middle Ages. Most interesting to me were certain of the early 19th-century clocks, which combined physical and temporal perspectives: these clocks appeared in the tops of town halls and churches that were represented in landscape paintings, as if the clocks themselves were part of the paintings. There, too, was a huge blue ceramic Empire style floor clock that had belonged to Mme. Schratt, an actress friend and probably mistress of Emperor Franz Josef 130 years ago, when Empress Sisi sat on her ceramic dolphin throne, singing of lost time.
-- The Globe Museum offers in its rooms arrayed with globes made in earlier years a political and geographic history of the world, as it was seen and understood over a period of some five centuries. Somehow the pictorial distortions of the continents probably mirror the distorted understanding of the world than most people still have regarding other's religions and cultures.
As the fruit trees begin to bloom...
-- "Austria is a major producer of fruit juices which constitute an important export item, especially to the Arab world. Unfortunately these are almost all from fruit concentrate and are moderately nasty." Austria Blue Guide
-
Lost in the Funhouse
The warm weather a few days ago encouraged visiting friends and me to stroll around the outside of Stephansdom, the huge central church in Vienna. Heavily damaged by fire at the end of World War II, the church bears signs of earlier conflicts as well, particularly the Turkish siege of the city in 1683. Evidence of that two-month siege is in the broken Gothic stone decoration along many of the windows and portals, and a Turkish cannon ball is still lodged high in a wall near the south tower. St John Capistrano, who rallied Christians with his fiery sermons against the Turks the year after they successfully besieged Constantinople in 1453, is depicted in stone on one side of the exterior of Stephansdom with his foot atop a fallen Turk, who gnashing his teeth in frustration. And there is more stone violence on the exterior: a medieval figure that the Viennese refer to as Toothache Jesus moans in silence on a cross, looking very much as if he is waiting for a molar to be extracted. Although Mozart was not buried in the church, along the outer wall is a gated recess with a sign indicating that he lay there in state while Vienna paid its respects; subsequently he was moved to a cemetery away from the city. We noticed a small, dark, locked stairway leading down from the recess, and we strolled away, wondering aloud where it led.
With thoughts of springtime bulbs deep in the earth, we entered the church and sought out a tour of the crypt. Soon we were further along in the dark nave, in front of a gated stairway leading down. A guide in a heavy winter coat unlocked the gate and let us enter, accompanied by only one other tourist, a Japanese woman. Since the three of us spoke English, the guide said he would do the tour in English. He had just shut the heavy wooden door to the stairs when a frantic, incessant pounding began, making me think that someone had been buried alive. The guide opened the door to admit a couple from Spain, who immediately demanded that the tour be given in Spanish. We proceeded--with the guide narrating in English, and the Spanish couple muttering at him in Spanish--through a cold, breezy corridor and descended more stairs, down about 20 more feet and 20 more degrees. In addition to holding bones, the dimly lit crypt was a graveyard for statuary and other stone decoration that had come loose or fallen into disrepair. Until sanitation requirements ended the practice of urban burials in 1745, thousands of parishioners--one large section was devoted to plague victims--were buried under and adjacent to the church. The experience was much like traveling through a House of Horrors at an amusement park, and I found myself wishing I were riding on a little train as we walked gingerly through the dark corridors and peered through cobweb-laced iron grids in tiny windows revealing faintly illuminated rooms with bone piles. At the end of the tour, the guide unlocked another mysterious door and ushered us to a staircase leading up--and up we went. We tourists representing three continents rose from the dead and popped out into Mozart's memorial niche and out the gate at which we had stood staring curiously an hour before, leaving the bones to awaiting the springtime of Judgment Day, when they will, no doubt, rise up like so many tulips.
The Prater
-- "in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious..."Sunday afternoon we visited the Prater, a huge green area near the Danube and downtown, and the site of a large amusement park that has been in operation about a century. Cotton candy, balloons, roller coasters, bungee jump rides, bumper cars, ghost houses, "Alpine" water fall rides, and a million colorful and musical adventures for children and inebriated adults.... Bare legs and shoulders were the norm, the white Teutonic skin turning pink as cotton candy in the bright Sunday sun. It was an e.e. cummings' idyll: The goat-footed balloonman, the god Pan, had whistled, and the children--and we--were following him around in a magic world.
Castle Road
Last Sunday we headed south from Vienna toward Graz, the second largest city in Austria, leaving the A-2 autobahn for a route referred to by one guide book as the "Castle Road." After about an hour of rather flat terrain, the scenery on the A-2 turned into what I had always pictured to be the Austrian countryside: Tuscany plus snow-capped peaks. Melodies from The Sound of Music streamed through my head. We turned off the autobahn to the small town of Hartberg, aiming to find one of the castles we had identified in the guide book. As we entered the town, it struck us as odd that there were not the usual signs pointing the way to an historic site. We stopped first at a tourist information office to ask the location of the castle and then drove on another half mile, as directed. We still could not find it. We parked the car and wandered down a small lane, where we came across a small museum; a lady there graciously directed us to walk up a nearby hill to find the castle. We saw only a modern hotel. And then we realized, finally, that the hotel was built atop an old stone foundation of what must have been the castle. The castle was buried, and it would not, like a bulb, be coming up again any springtime soon. We were, at least, rewarded with a medieval guard tower and part of an old town wall, and forsythia and a cherry tree in bloom. Hartberg is a charming town in its own right, like Melk, with cobblestone lanes lined with 17th and 18th-century buildings--shops, restaurants, and homes--an amusement park for history lovers.
Filler
Other Times, Other Worlds
-- Vienna's Clock Museum displays chronometers and clocks dating back to the Middle Ages. Most interesting to me were certain of the early 19th-century clocks, which combined physical and temporal perspectives: these clocks appeared in the tops of town halls and churches that were represented in landscape paintings, as if the clocks themselves were part of the paintings. There, too, was a huge blue ceramic Empire style floor clock that had belonged to Mme. Schratt, an actress friend and probably mistress of Emperor Franz Josef 130 years ago, when Empress Sisi sat on her ceramic dolphin throne, singing of lost time.
-- The Globe Museum offers in its rooms arrayed with globes made in earlier years a political and geographic history of the world, as it was seen and understood over a period of some five centuries. Somehow the pictorial distortions of the continents probably mirror the distorted understanding of the world than most people still have regarding other's religions and cultures.
As the fruit trees begin to bloom...
-- "Austria is a major producer of fruit juices which constitute an important export item, especially to the Arab world. Unfortunately these are almost all from fruit concentrate and are moderately nasty." Austria Blue Guide
-
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Home to Wiener World
Just having returned from a visit to the US, I was reminded of how much I like travel but hate the process of getting somewhere. I had a terrific visit with my loving and generous family, yet I was glad to return to Wiener World, and not just because the flights here can be as colorful as the pastel city squares of many an Eastern European capital, though far more annoying.
Vienna is a funnel for Central Europeans traveling to and from New York, Washington, and U.S. points beyond. About a third of the passengers on my flight coming and going was comprised of people from Bosnia, Slovakia, and other Central European points whose airlines feed into Vienna. The people, young families, the middle aged, and the elderly, come from long broken and slowly mending economies, and many on my recent flight appeared to have little familiarity with air travel. I had a longer wait at the gate at Dulles, coming home, than I did departing from Vienna, and thus more time to observe. Some of the Central and Eastern Europeans loitered in the departure gate area at Dulles, staring as if amazed at electric lights. These visitors' appearance is sometimes an odd mix of fashion. One middle-aged man, who strolled continuously in front of me as we waited for the flight, wore a cherry red sports coat over a silver and white paisley shirt, tail out; blue jeans with knee pockets big enough to hold a supply of rolls and sausages to sustain him through the flight; and athletic shoes, though the beer belly suggested the footwear served other than athletic purposes. Like most of the men, he combed his slightly wavy iron-gray hair straight back. His eyebrows, probably never trimmed, had multiple steely curled wisps licking at his forehead, their length exceeded only by the hair growing out of his nose and from a large mole on his right cheek.
When I reached my seat row during the boarding process at Dulles, a man of about my age from Sarajevo (as I later learned), dressed in a jogging suit, was in my window seat. I was certain that he had boarded ahead of schedule, out of the order of rows called. I showed him my boarding pass, and he moved to the aisle seat. Normally I would have been more than happy to have the legroom of the aisle seat, but on this flight--ever the optimist--I planned to rest my head against the bulkhead in the hope of catching a bit of sleep. As soon as we had switched seats, my Bosnian companion plopped his right arm on the center armrest, covering the controls to my video screen, light, and audio system. Repeatedly during the flight I asked him to move his arm so that I could change the volume or change channels. For most of the night, his right leg leaned over well into the minuscule, cramped space I called mine, so as to use my left knee for his support and provide me unwanted bodily warmth. When our first meal was served, he stared at the tiny plastic cup of dressing accompanying our tiny salads and then poured it into his water; then he did the same with his coffee creamer. He started to scrape his pat of butter into the mix, but stopped when he realized that it might make the glass overflow. He stirred the mix with his fork and then drank it down. Then he ate the butter.
And the children.... Lawrence Sterne wrote that on the night Tristram Shandy was conceived, Tristram's mother famously asked her husband, at the exact moment of conception, whether he had remembered to wind the clock. The homunculus's discombobulation caused by the timing of the question, according to Sterne, resulted in Tristam's being born with a variety of character disorders. I mention this because several years ago a lineal descendant of Tristram Shandy's mother made her way to Slovenia, where she worked in a sausage factory. About three years ago, as she was being seduced atop a machine that inflated sheep stomach linings to bind the ground pork, she asked her lover, "What time is it?" Nine months later she delivered a child with porcine features and ovine character traits. Two years after that, that mother and child were on my flight from Washington to Vienna. For 6 hours of the 8 and a half hour flight, the child bleated, squealed, and screamed, counterpointing the music of his voice with the "bong" from his smacking the "call attendant" button. Dozing was impossible; I wished that I had taken the aisle seat.
I returned, happily, having been awake only 36 hours, and with my interior clock 6 hours off from Wiener World time--nothing that could not be cured by a week of alternating wine and coffee, much tastier and more comforting than a vinaigrette and coffee creamer in a glass of cold water.
Vienna is a funnel for Central Europeans traveling to and from New York, Washington, and U.S. points beyond. About a third of the passengers on my flight coming and going was comprised of people from Bosnia, Slovakia, and other Central European points whose airlines feed into Vienna. The people, young families, the middle aged, and the elderly, come from long broken and slowly mending economies, and many on my recent flight appeared to have little familiarity with air travel. I had a longer wait at the gate at Dulles, coming home, than I did departing from Vienna, and thus more time to observe. Some of the Central and Eastern Europeans loitered in the departure gate area at Dulles, staring as if amazed at electric lights. These visitors' appearance is sometimes an odd mix of fashion. One middle-aged man, who strolled continuously in front of me as we waited for the flight, wore a cherry red sports coat over a silver and white paisley shirt, tail out; blue jeans with knee pockets big enough to hold a supply of rolls and sausages to sustain him through the flight; and athletic shoes, though the beer belly suggested the footwear served other than athletic purposes. Like most of the men, he combed his slightly wavy iron-gray hair straight back. His eyebrows, probably never trimmed, had multiple steely curled wisps licking at his forehead, their length exceeded only by the hair growing out of his nose and from a large mole on his right cheek.
When I reached my seat row during the boarding process at Dulles, a man of about my age from Sarajevo (as I later learned), dressed in a jogging suit, was in my window seat. I was certain that he had boarded ahead of schedule, out of the order of rows called. I showed him my boarding pass, and he moved to the aisle seat. Normally I would have been more than happy to have the legroom of the aisle seat, but on this flight--ever the optimist--I planned to rest my head against the bulkhead in the hope of catching a bit of sleep. As soon as we had switched seats, my Bosnian companion plopped his right arm on the center armrest, covering the controls to my video screen, light, and audio system. Repeatedly during the flight I asked him to move his arm so that I could change the volume or change channels. For most of the night, his right leg leaned over well into the minuscule, cramped space I called mine, so as to use my left knee for his support and provide me unwanted bodily warmth. When our first meal was served, he stared at the tiny plastic cup of dressing accompanying our tiny salads and then poured it into his water; then he did the same with his coffee creamer. He started to scrape his pat of butter into the mix, but stopped when he realized that it might make the glass overflow. He stirred the mix with his fork and then drank it down. Then he ate the butter.
And the children.... Lawrence Sterne wrote that on the night Tristram Shandy was conceived, Tristram's mother famously asked her husband, at the exact moment of conception, whether he had remembered to wind the clock. The homunculus's discombobulation caused by the timing of the question, according to Sterne, resulted in Tristam's being born with a variety of character disorders. I mention this because several years ago a lineal descendant of Tristram Shandy's mother made her way to Slovenia, where she worked in a sausage factory. About three years ago, as she was being seduced atop a machine that inflated sheep stomach linings to bind the ground pork, she asked her lover, "What time is it?" Nine months later she delivered a child with porcine features and ovine character traits. Two years after that, that mother and child were on my flight from Washington to Vienna. For 6 hours of the 8 and a half hour flight, the child bleated, squealed, and screamed, counterpointing the music of his voice with the "bong" from his smacking the "call attendant" button. Dozing was impossible; I wished that I had taken the aisle seat.
I returned, happily, having been awake only 36 hours, and with my interior clock 6 hours off from Wiener World time--nothing that could not be cured by a week of alternating wine and coffee, much tastier and more comforting than a vinaigrette and coffee creamer in a glass of cold water.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
