The ongoing saga of David D. Levine's writing and other adventures.
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I'm a geek, fan, and writer who lives in Portland, Oregon.
For more information about me, please see my
web page. If you have questions, comments, or just want to chat, you can send me e-mail. Or you can post a comment on my LiveJournal. |
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Word count: 0 Step count: 8309 + 13,055 + 11,575
Sunday 5/13Awoke in Dresden, had another fabulous Hildegard von Bingen breakfast, and had the hotel van take us to the train station. In the bathroom at the station, a guy in full plate armor came clanking out of the next stall, no shit swear to God. We bought baguettes at Crobag (Croissant + Baguette -- ugly name, pretty good sandwiches) to eat on the train.
Then... Berlin!
The Berlin Hauptbahnhof (main train station) is huge, modern, multi-level, shiny, crowded -- this is The Big City! We're hearing a lot more languages and accents and seeing a lot more colors of people on the street than we did in any previous city, even Vienna. It took us a while to even get out of the station, what with fighting crowds everywhere, standing in line at the TI to buy transit passes, and stopping at a grocery store in the station for tomorrow's breakfast (concerned that neighborhood stores might not be open on Sunday, though this didn't prove to be a huge problem). We took a taxi to our hotel, actually an apartment (Apartmenthaus Karlito), picked up the key in the cafe downstairs, and moved in. It's a nice little place, clean and bright, with a tub, kitchen, plenty of elbow room, but alas no laundry facilities.
Our first stop after getting settled was the Flomarkt am Mauerpark (Flea Market at the Berlin Wall Park), a Saturday-Sunday thing not too far from our apartment. It was a HUMUNGOUS flea market, like a 300-family rummage sale with food stands (we had a savory "pastry snail" from a busy Turkish vendor) and eight bouncy castles. It just went on and on and on. And they do this every weekend?
Overwhelmed, we walked toward the nearby U-Bahn (subway) station, which had been a "ghost" station before the Wall fell. This was one of the stations on the East side of the wall that West Berlin subway trains ran through without stopping. They were boarded up, guarded, and went completely unchanged from 1961 to 1989. But just before we got there we encountered the Ost-West Cafe (so called because it's near the former Wall, also because it features Turkish and German cuisine) and decided to stop for coffee. It was really crowded, a good sign, and the food options looked good, so we ordered dinner: juicy chicken skewers with grilled potatoes and vegetables for me, tortellini in yogurt sauce and red lentil soup for Kate.
After dinner, we walked past the Berlin Wall Memorial (but did not have time to give it the attention it deserved) and into the station, which is now active but looks rather old-fashioned. Then back to the apartment for a quiet evening of plotting out our Berlin touristing and doing some wash in the sink. Oh the glamour.
Monday 5/14Awake 8:00 (but both of us were awake for a while in the night - no more coffee after 2:00 PM for me!). We had yogurt with muesli and honey in the room for breakfast, then a very nice cafe au lait at the cafe downstairs (which is also the hotel front desk, to the extent we have one).
We'd had ambitious plans to start at the zoo, work eastward following Rick Steves' touristing plan, and hit the Reischstag early before the crowds got too terrible. But as it was past 9:30 by the time we finished our coffee, this was clearly not going to work. Instead we took the U-Bahn to the Wall memorial we hadn't had the energy for yesterday, then to the Underground Berlin tour office, planning to get tickets for the 1:00 tour. However, tickets for the 11:00 AM tour were available, so we jumped on that. Having an hour to kill before our tour, we spent the time at a nearby mall, getting cash from an ATM and browing in a bookstore and Real (a variety store rather like Target, where Kate bought a washcloth -- for some reason, most hotels here do not provide washcloths).
Our Underground tour was most unlike the Underground tours we've taken in Seattle and Pendleton. This one was a tour of a WWII air raid shelter, one of the few still in existence, now fitted out as a museum. Our excellent tour guide gave a great overview of how the shelter was built and used as well as general information about life in Berlin during the war. He didn't stint on difficult details, such as the fact that the shelters were built by slave labor and that every remaining male in the city was pressed into service (on pain of death if they refused) for the final defense of Berlin, thousands of old men and boys sacrificed in a battle that everyone knew was pointless. A very informative and interesting tour, if somewhat depressing.
We took the S-Bahn (light rail) one stop, then U-Bahn one stop to a restaurant called Zum Schusterjungen for a "DDR-style" lunch. It felt strange to take two trains just one stop each, but that would have been a 30-minute walk; this is a BIG city. Maybe it's because we didn't sleep well last night, but I feel like we're kind of running on fumes here, and Berlin is not the town to take it easy. We ordered schnitzel with spargel (asparagus -- it's spargel season, it's on every menu, we can't evade it) for Kate, "farmer's breakfast" (omelet with fried potatoes, onions, a bit of bacon) for me, quite nice. "Not much bacon in that omelet," said Kate. "Well, you can't go to a restaurant that offers East German cuisine and complain about the lack of meat..."
After lunch we headed to the famous Brandenberg Gate, taking a tram to Alexanderplatz, then bus to Brandenberg Tor. But at Alexanderplatz I noticed that we were right near the base of the big Fernsehturm (East Germany's answer to the Space Needle) and went looking for the penny-smashing machine that was supposed to be there. We found two machines at the base of the tower, another at a souvenir shop nearby. It wasn't easy to find our bus stop at sprawling Alexanderplatz, but eventually we found it and made our way to Brandenberg Tor. We knew it was an important historic site because we saw Mickey Mouse in a Jedi robe and many other costumed characters, mimes, street vendors, and other such individual enterpreneurs there to bilk the tourists.
The Reichstag was nearby, so we walked over to check out the line. Hey, the line isn't too bad, let's go in! Well, it turned out that the line was short because they have changed the system: you now have to make a reservation online beforehand (and it's booked up for three days in advance, six weeks for a guided tour). I tried a couple of times from my phone, but the website kept erroring out.
We walked down Unter Den Linden, which was Berlin's Broadway before the War, was entirely on the East side of the Wall under Communism, and is now busy and mostly under construction. Kate visited here in 1981, before the Wall fell, and says that at that time there was essentially no one here. We found another penny machine at a souvenir shop on Under Den Linden, but the one at Madame Tussaud's was gone. The bookstore Berlin Story now has a 5 euro charge for its small museum and film, but we paid it for a chance to sit down. Not a bad little museum actually, but I didn't really have the brain to appreciate it.
Kate and I may be the only people outside of Germany who have a fondness for the Trabant, East Germany's cheap little two-stroke car. This is because we saw the movie Go Trabi Go! right before a trip to France during which we nicknamed our rented Peugot "Trabi." So, even though we'd never before seen a Trabant in the flesh, we were thrilled that there was one in the museum that you could actually sit in. Man, what a piece of junk!
When I was a teenager I believed that the Communists were not as evil as they were portrayed, that it was simply a different economic system and that they were demonized by the US for propaganda purposes. After what I've seen in museums here and in Prague, I now believe that they really were that bad. Clearly there was a reason that so many people risked their lives (and often lost them) trying to escape.
While Kate was shopping in the Berlin Story bookstore I tried again to reserve a visit to the Reichstag, trying the German site since the English site seemed to be having consistent errors. I did get through to submit a request, and after several CAPTCHAs and web forms and an exchange of emails I managed to get a reservation for 9:00 PM Wednesday. It's supposed to be quite something.
I also used the Time Out Berlin app on my phone (it's free!) to locate a good restaurant nearby. "Cafe No!" is the one restaurant in a couple of blocks of monolithic government buildings, a character-filled little bistro that emphasizes wine but also has a few food offerings. Kate had Maultaschen (German ravioli, sort of) and I had Flammkuchen (German pizza, sort of) which seemed to be the house specialty, and oh heavens was it good. It would be hard not to be good with sour cream, bacon, and onions, but even so it was particularly fine, with a delicate thin crust and a smokey flavor. I balanced that out with a "vitamin schpritz": freshly pressed carrot, apple, and orange juice with fizzy water, a twist of lemon, and honey, very nice.
After dinner, we were glad to find that the U2 subway ran straight from a stop very near the restaurant to a stop very near the hotel, so no long walks and no transfers, huzzah. We stopped at a corner market for some yogurt for breakfast, fell over for an hour or so, got up to write up some notes, then fell over again.
Tuesday 5/15Awake 8:00-ish, yogurt for breakfast, out the door 9:00-ish. After the last few days of man's inhumanity to man (Nazis or Communists, take your pick, Berlin has plenty of both) we wanted to look at some pretty pictures, so we headed to the neighborhood of Schloss Charlottenburg, about an hour away by transit, for a group of three museums nearby. Even with two iPhone apps to help, there were way too many transit options and we finally settled on a route that was perhaps less efficient than it might have been but involved fewer transfers than the others. Even so we had some difficulty finding the stop for our bus (I think we wound up taking a different bus than we'd planned because we happened to find ourselves at its stop).
One thing about Berlin: it's an interesting mix of pre-War, post-War, and post-Reunification architecture. As we look around we have been really noticing the few 1800s and 1900s buildings, buildings of a type that are the vast majority in Vienna and Prague. Dresden was completely flattened in 1945 and has rebuilt only a few key buildings in the old style, so that it gives a generally newish appearance that feels very normal to an American. But Berlin has saved or reconstructed enough old buildings that you can't help but realize that it's an old city that has lost more than 90% of its architectural heritage. And there are construction cranes everywhere.
Our first museum today was the Scharf-Gerstenberg, focusing on the surrealists. It had fine examples of Klee, Ernst, Magritte, and Dali, also Hans Bellmer whom I'd never heard of before but whom I liked, and a sometimes-over-informative audio guide. In another area, the former stables of Schloss Charlottenburg, were proto-surrealist works by Goya and Piranesi and a huge Egyptian gateway. As the audio guide said, "what could be more surreal than a giant Ancient Egyptian monument in the middle of an art gallery?" but in fact the reason it's here is that this building was the temporary home of the Egyptian Museum while it was being renovated, and though the renovations are complete there's still no room in the new space for this huge piece. It will be moved to its final home when the Egyptian Museum's fourth wing is finished, in 2025.
For lunch we had a simple sandwich and soup at a nearby bakery/cafe called Back Zeit or some such. Then we headed to the second museum, the Berggruen, which features Picasso, Cezanne, and Klee but was, alas, closed for renovations. So we headed to the third museum, the Brohan, with its fine collection of Art Nouveau (AKA Jugendstil) and Art Deco furniture, lamps, tea sets, and suchlike. I love this style so much, with both Nouveau and Deco combining natural and mechanical forms, and it's a shame that it was only really in fashion for a decade or so.
By that point we had completely hit the wall, so we dragged ourselves back to the apartment and fell unconscious for about two hours. We have been touristing very, very hard for the past three and a half weeks, not to mention the emotional burden of all those Nazis and Communists, and we're definitely getting kind of crispy around the edges. We rested in the apartment for the remainder of the afternoon, until it got kind of dinner-time-ish.
We walked a ways to the Hackesche Hofe, a collection of connected courtyards housing many delightful little shops, and browsed there for a while before deciding to head out in search of dinner. We investigated several restaurants, but we decided that what we really wanted was to eat what native Berliners eat, which is currywurst and doner kebap. Currywurst, at least the way we had it, is a curried sausage, cut up and drowned in a curry sauce, served with French fries (which are in turn drowned with ketchup and mayonnaise), and eaten with a little wooden fork, and it was disturbingly tasty. Doner kebap is kind of like gyros, but Turkish rather than Greek, served in a quarter-flatbread with a variety of sauces and condiments, and also very good in a not-good-for-you way. These are the local equivalent of the ubiquitous American burger-and-fries and we couldn't possibly leave Berlin without having tried them. "I can really see the appeal," says Kate.
It was beginning to rain then, so after a brief stop at a bakery for some bread for tomorrow's breakfast we headed back to the apartment for a quiet evening.
Maybe we'll take it a little easier tomorrow. (Ha.)
Now for the photos, though I haven't been taking a lot of photos in Berlin (100 photos from Dresden and Berlin combined so far, vs. 500 in Prague and over 1000 in the Czech towns). With the streets so crowded there haven't been a lot of good opportunities to haul out the camera and take a moment for the right shot. Also the light has generally been terrible. Also we've been spending a lot of time in museums and other spaces that don't allow photography. Also most of Berlin, interesting though it is, is not terribly photogenic. Berlin is one of the most heavily graffiti'd places I've ever been. I don't know if the graffiti on the Wall is a cause of this or a symptom of it, but there's hardly a wall, bank machine, or lamp post that isn't completely covered with scrawls (generally ugly and inartistic, to my eye) in marker and spray paint. Even the bathrooms of quite nice restaurants are a riot of graffiti. Still, I did find a few nice shots, so here they are.
Posted 05/15/2012 12:32 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
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Our Dresden hotel, the Hotel Privat (AKA Das Hotel Nichtrauscher AKA The Non-Smoking Hotel) is lovely in every way except that it is a little further away from the city center than our previous hotels -- a bit of a hike to the nearest tram stop, and that tram doesn't connect directly to much of anything. But it has the best breakfast spread we've seen yet, including American-style bacon, 2 kinds of scrambled eggs, 3 kinds of sausage, lox, chocolate quark (yummy), and Hildegard von Bingen's Dinkel-Habermus (hot spelt cereal) with a selection of toppings including flax seed, chestnut meal, and "bertram" (Anacyclus pyrethrum, AKA pellitory, Spanish chamomile, or Mount Atlas daisy -- didn't taste like much but it's supposed to be good for you). Google Translate insists that Dinkel means "spelled" and had no idea what "bertram" was -- it took quite a bit of web research to track that one down.
Perhaps because of our slightly-away-from-downtown location, perhaps because Dresden was bombed to bits in 1945 and remained in the loving lack-of-care of the Communists for over 40 years therafter, we've been seeing a lot more ratty-looking buildings here than elsewhere. I've been noticing that a particular feature of our neighborhood is the obviously-closed-for-many-years kiosk (you know, the kind that sells newspapers, cigarettes, and candy), which I suppose is an economic niche that just collapsed some time ago. On the other hand, there is tons of new construction and renovation going on.
Just about everything here, no matter how old it looks, was completely flattened in 1945 and rebuilt afterwards (in some cases quite recently). Dresden raises interesting questions of "what is 'real,' anyway?" and "if they could rebuild the Frauenkirche in four years, why did it take 50 years to finish the National Cathedral in Washington DC?" (I think the answer to the latter question may be "because they didn't have to spend any time arguing about the design.")
Our first stop today was the Residenz (the big castle complex of the princes of Saxony) and its famous Green Vault. We hadn't known a lot about it going in, but everything we read assured us it was not to be missed, and the fact that the only admission was via timed tickets was confirmation of that. So we showed up a half-hour before the ticket booth opened, and waited as the mob of people awaiting tickets grew and grew. Because of our position at the head of the mob we got tickets to the first admission at 10:00.
Oh. My. Freaking. Gawd. What an amazing collection of Stuff. The Green Vault is the treasury of the Electors of Saxony, especially Augustus the Strong, who collected the absolute best and most valuable items from all over Europe for a couple hundred years. Highlights included an entire room of carved ivory objects (concentric spheres, chains, delicate twining columns, etc.), dozens of objects carved from rock crystal as fine and smooth and clear as blown glass, a pair of drinking vessels depicting the celestial and terrestrial globes that moved across the dining table under their own power (clockwork?), a huge allegorial bas-relief made entirely of semiprecious stones, cups and ewers assembled from translucent amber slices, sculptures of gold and silver built around ostrich eggs and nautilus shells, delightful miniature court scenes, and a room with millions of dollars in gems including a unique green diamond the size of a walnut. All of it definitely over the top, but most of it in something resembling good taste.
The treasury rooms themselves, the Historical Green Vault, are beautiful and valuable, and that's the part of the exhibit that requires timed tickets (and no coats or bags, and passage through a double-doored airlock). After seeing all that, we stopped for lunch at the nearby Paulaner bierstube, offering Munich cuisine (weisswurst and schweinshaxen), then returned to see the rest of the Residenz. We saw the New Green Vault, which has fewer objects than the Historical but arranged in a modern museum-style display so you can see all sides of them, the Gallery of the Electors with portraits and busts of the princes of Saxony going back two hundred years, and the Turkish Room with armor and tents either looted from the Turks or designed to look like it.
The Residenz has an excellent collection and informative signage on the exhibits, crap directional signage, and no maps at all, either on paper or on the wall. This led to a long, frustrating search for the Fuerstenzug, a thing we had been told we really should see but which wasn't on any of the signs and for which we got varying and confusing directions from various museum employees. Turned out it wasn't part of the museum at all, but was outdoors on a long wall a couple blocks away. It was a gigantic (maybe one and a half football fields long) tile mural depicting a mounted procession of the Electors of Saxony, beginning in the 1500s and going up to about 1880, each in characteristic costume for their era and with a collection of hangers-on. I'm afraid it reminded me more than anything else of the opening sequence of "Peabody's Improbable History," but it was definitely worth the trip.
There was more to the Residenz, but by then we were pretty fed up with the difficulty of finding things within it, so we hit the bookstore and then headed off to Dresden's Technical Museum. This museum, housed in a former camera factory, is mostly focused on the history of photographic, sound, and computer technology, especially those bits of it manufactured in Dresden. The photography and sound exhibits are nicely laid out and labeled (all in German), but the computer section was basically just a large room with hundreds of typewriters, calculators, and computers in roughly chronological order (nonetheless, I think I liked that part best). Okay, now I believe we're in former East Germany. Almost all of the gadgets on display were from brands I've never heard of, some of them looking distinctly Soviet.
One of the coolest bits was the typewriter display, which included the Mercedes Addelektra, an electric-powered wide-carriage machine having a large receiver spool behind the device (obviously it was designed to type on a continuous roll), a separate numeric keyboard below the main one, and a bunch of little movable odometers ranged along the top of the keyboard. It looks to me as though you could set it up to automatically total the values you typed in each column. Kind of a primitive mechanical version of Excel. Another, extremely old, typewriter typed on the back of the paper, so you wouldn't know what you'd typed until you were done with the page. In a recent episode of The Amazing Race, the racers had to transcribe some text on a manual typewriter, and part of the challenge was figuring out to type a lowercase L for the numeral 1. We laughed at Those Kids Today, but I must confess that some of those old machines would be just as daunting to me.
The museum also included a large display of computers from the Robotron company (it's still in business), and the name made me snort every time I saw it. "In your struggle to save humanity, be careful to avoid electrodes in your path!" And at the top of the building, for some reason, was a six-story observation tower with a very cool spiral staircase and a view of the museum's residential/industrial neighborhood.
We had a bit of a snack at the museum cafe, then headed back to our hotel for a nap, but we decided to stop for dinner at the place we changed trams. It was a hip, happenin' neighborhood of mostly fast food and bars... there must be a university nearby. We wound up at Reise-Kneipe, a "travelers' bar" with an international menu, where I had a "fruity cashew-lentil curry" and Kate an assortment of "international tapas," both very nice. The only downside was that they left the door open; it's been a chill, gray day, though at least the threatened rain never fell.
After dinner we walked to the nearby train station (the closest one to our hotel) in search of information about tomorrow's train. We determined that this station does not have any trains to Berlin except very early in the morning, but we were able to buy tickets from the machine for a train tomorrow at a convenient time from the main train station. After that we went back to the hotel and fell over. Tomorrow, Berlin!
Posted 05/13/2012 05:36 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Posted 05/11/2012 13:01 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
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Circumstances have militated against blogging for the last couple of days, so this will be a rather scattered catch-up post.
The other day at dinner we recognized the song that was playing, something in English, but couldn't quite place the singer. I used the Shazam app on my phone to identify it: Andy Williams. For the entire rest of that dinner we were treated to Andy Williams covers of such entirely inappropriate sixties classics as "Killing Me Softly" and "Fire and Rain." Kind of head-'splodey.
We have seen a lot of castles in the last couple of weeks. You know the expression "good fences make good neighbors"? It's the same with castles... or, perhaps, "bad neighbors make good castles." This hunk of the world has been a border region, coveted by German-speaking and Czech-speaking peoples (with occasional incursions by the Turks, Swedes, and Russians) for many centuries, which means that every good defensive point has a castle built on top of it. If you like castles, I can recommend the Czech Republic as a place to visit. A lot of these castles have been used as locations for fantasy movies.
We toured the Museum of Communism, which was extremely informative if a bit depressing, then walked through Wenceslas Square where so many demonstrations took place in 1968 and 1989. Seeing those videos made me think about our 1960s demonstrations and the Occupy movement. The oppression those protests were against was mushier than the oppression the Czechs suffered, the protests less unified, the results more ambiguous. The Iraq War protests may have eventually led to Obama's election, but the results of that election have not been as much as we (progressives) had hoped. Fundamentally, I think the difference is that the US is more diverse and decentralized in both good and bad ways.
At the Mucha Museum we learned about Alfonse Mucha, the greated Art Nouveau artist you've probably never heard of. A contemporary of Toulouse-Lautrec's, Mucha produced some brilliant lithographs and advertising posters, particularly for Sarah Bernhardt, with a delightfully lively line and expressive faces. I liked his earlier funnier stuff, i.e. the commercial work he turned out in Paris and New York, more than the nationalistic stuff he did after he returned to his homeland and worked to develop the Czechosolvakian state. He even designed the money, as well as a fabulous window at St. Vitus Cathedral.
We visited the House of the Black Madonna, a cubist building, and I was surprised to find it appeared quite conventional to my eye. I suppose it may have been more of a shock at the time. Had coffee at the cafe there, along with a "cubist pastry" which looked rather more Escher than Picasso.
At the Communist Museum and also at some junk shops we stopped in, we bought some Communist-era pins, including one commemorating the Lunokhod-1 moon rover (it landed in 1970) and another from the Tesla lightbulb factory. This Tesla company was a major Czech electronics manufacturer during the Communist era; it was named after the inventor, not founded by him, but the pin is still a very cool thing to have. I also bought an old Czech identity document, like the ones in the Czech movie Identity Card (Obcansky Prukaz) that we saw in the Portland International Film Festival the other month.
Kate's knee is much improved.
Our favorite restaurant in Prague was probably the Cafe Lounge (yes, that's its name), where we had a dinner so lovely we came back for breakfast the next day. Also some of the best coffee we've had on this entire trip, and that's saying something. They even made me a flat white, a coffee drink I haven't seen since Australia! Other good meals were at Pizzeria Grosseto (Italian) and Noi (Thai). Most of the Czech restaurants we ate at in Prague were, unfortunately, not nearly as good. Or maybe we're just getting a little burned out.
By the time we left Prague I knew and could use reliably the Czech words for yes, no, please, thank you, excuse me, and hello, though I never got a handle on the word for goodbye. I could read and recognize many more words on signs, including men, women, bakery, cafe, restaurant, exit, and danger, and sound out a lot of words that turned out to be cognates or near-cognates from English, French, or German. I could even pronounce words that would have seemed impossible before, such as zmrzlina (ice cream), and spot typos in signs. However, all of this was mere politeness on my part, as just about everyone we dealt with in Prague spoke English. I was not too surprised to get English from the clerks at the hotel and train station, but it was surprising to me how many waiters and waitresses had very good English. I guess there have been a lot of English and American tourists here since the fall of Communism, because it's still pretty darn cheap.
At one point in our perambulations we came to a police checkpoint, where bored policemen were searching every car trunk and looking under each car with mirrors before allowing it to proceed. The cause turned out to be the American embassy, a block away, which made me sick to my stomach. This kind of oppression is more suitable to the Russians than the Americans, and the more we do it the more it is necessary. But even if I were President, I have to admit that once you've started this kind of pointless repressive "security" it's difficult to stop. The improved public opinion that results from the relaxation of security will not appear for some time, producing a window during which security has been relaxed but public opinion is still low, making a security incident more likely. Kind of like starting medication for depression -- there's a window during which you're still depressed, but now have enough energy to actually do things, creating a risk for suicide.
Prague's Municipal House, a concert hall and civic center, is a beautiful Art Nouveau building, well worth a visit. The old part of the train station was also clearly beautiful in better days but is currently in very sad shape. I hope they get it fixed up soon.
We had reserved tickets to a play on Thursday night via the web, but when we went to pick them up we found that we were supposed to have picked them up within one week of ordering them and our reservation had been canceled. After a certain amount of kerfuffle (it's not at all clear whether or not we actually paid for them in the first place) I finally wound up just buying two new tickets; the balcony (with the best view of the English supertitles) was sold out, but after consultation with her manager the box-office clerk sold me two orchestra seats with the seat number crossed off and "extra seat in balcony" hand-written in. And, indeed, that's where we were seated, in two folding chairs at the end of the first row... though when the curtain went up the front row was almost completely empty and we and the one other couple there moved closer to the middle. Whatever.
The play, The Builders, was one we'd seen before, in Glasgow, and were looking forward to seeing again, albeit this time in Czech with English supertitles. At least that's what we thought. However, as we entered the theatre we noted that the program book and posters all featured large splatters of blood, which didn't suit the charming domestic comedy we remembered. As it turned out, what we got was a completely different play, a blood-splattered charming domestic comedy. Alice and Manfred, a normal though somewhat neurotic couple, are slowly driven mad by the illegal and dishonest Russian workers who are taking forever to renovate their house. The action escalates from hiding a body after an accidental death, to killing a worker in a quite legitimate fit of passion, to cold-blooded murder, to a gleeful killing spree... with lots of laughs, and the audience applauding the last few deaths quite vigorously. Much of the comedy was physical (including a very impressive swinging-from-the-chandelier bit) and although the supertitles were sometimes missing or out of sync with the action, together with the performances they were good enough for us to appreciate a lot of the verbal comedy as well. We enjoyed the performance greatly.
And so we bid farewell to the Czech Republic. I've enjoyed my time here but it will be good to get back to a place where I can kind of speak the language. We've been on the road for three weeks now, with one more week to go, and we're tired but still enjoying ourselves.
Shared a second-class compartment on the train to Dresden with a Czech family, and got picked up by the van from our hotel as arranged by email the night before (though we had to call them to figure out where the van was waiting for us). Our room at the Hotel Privat (AKA Das Nichtraucher Hotel) is clean and tidy, a bit bigger than the one we had in Prague, and the Internet is free though it's provided through a dongle that plugs in the electical socket rather than via wireless. Fortunately I can set up my Mac to rebroadcast the signal via wifi to our other devices.
Once we arrived and got our bearings, we asked at the front desk if they would call and make a reservation for a tour of Volkswagen's "glass factory." As it happened, there was an opening on the 5:00 English tour so we headed right there, with a stop on the way for a quick bite of sausage and bread.
The Volkswagen factory in downtown Dresden is the final assembly plant for the Phaeton, their most luxurious car. Every Phaeton is built to order, hand-assembled in a calm, quiet, and efficient factory with wood floors and indirect lighting for the employees' comfort. Driverless carts shuttle parts and tools from place to place, and the assembly line consists of a sliding floor, which moves the car under assembly continuously and sedately from one station to the next. At other points in the process the car is gently picked up and carried from above by a monorail. I could describe it as the factory of the future, but it's really more like the factory of the past, updated, because everything is done by hand. The whole thing, including the very impressive factory building itself and the guided tour we took, is marketing for Volkswagen but I enjoyed it a lot. Our tour guide, a German-speaking Texan from Pflugerville, was a hoot.
At the Texan's suggestion, we took the tram a couple stops to Weissgasse, which turned out to be a kind of high-end food court right off the Altmarkt square -- many restaurants all in one place, though outdoors and each of them independent. We chose the one that had the biggest crowd and had a very nice dinner, "fitness salad" of grilled turkey on grilled vegetables for me and a scampi tagliatelle for Kate. On our way to the tram stop after dinner we found ourselves in an American-style shopping mall, where Kate had fun browsing in a large book store.
You'd never guess that this entire town was basically reduced to rubble in 1945 and spent the time from then until 1989 under the Communist boot. About which more later, I'm sure.
Photos later.
Posted 05/11/2012 12:31 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
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For the first day or so after we arrived in Prague, I felt as though we had entered another country (probably Poland) and that we needed to use a different language or change money or something. But no, it's still the Czech Republic. Though I still speak very little Czech, I can say yes, no, please, thank you, and hello, and I'm beginning to recognize many common words like danger, exit, menu, and potato. And, as is typical for me, my accent is much better than my vocabulary or comprehension. It really makes me cringe when I hear American voices right now, especially when they attempt to speak Czech.
Kate woke up way early this morning, so when I woke up she was rarin' to go. After a quick hotel breakfast, we headed out to Prague Castle early so as to beat the crowds. Today is a holiday here, celebrating the liberation of Czechoslovakia from the Nazis, and we expected that would bring out the Czechs in droves, never mind the usual mobs of tourists.
Prague Castle is the castle that all those other castles we've visited so far were just training for. Imagine if Buckingham Palace also included Westminster Cathedral, Number Ten Downing Street, and Parliament, plus several other churches and administrative buildings. It's an ancient fortress, the site of the holiest relics of Czech Christianity, and the current seat of government (though Vaclav Havel refused to live there when he was president). There are numerous museums, a couple of significant art galleries, and tons of restaurants and shops on the castle grounds, and four tram stops along its length. You might think it's a long way down to the corner to get a packet of crisps, but that's just peanuts to Prague Castle.
I'm glad we had those other castles and churches to warm up; they gave us the background and context of Christian and Czech history we needed to understand what we were seeing. We knew who Wenceslas was, both as a monarch and as a saint, and also have learned to recognize St. John of Nepomuk, who was thrown off a bridge in Prague and hence has a statue on just about every bridge in the country. St. Wenceslas's remains are in St. Vitus' Cathedral at the heart of the castle, as are St. John's (in perhaps the gaudiest tomb I have ever seen). We understood why the enormous tiled stove in the Old Diet Chamber had no visible door for adding fuel (stoves in palaces are stoked by servants moving between the walls of the rooms) and who the Rozemberks and the Habsburgs were. We sought out and found the window from which the victims of the Second Defenestration of Prague were flung (a fall they survived, thanks to either the Hand of God or a fortuituously-placed pile of manure, depending on who you listen to).
But there is plenty of unique stuff here as well. We saw burial garments -- actual clothes from the 14th century! -- and King Ottokar's scepter (which will make the heart of any reader of Tintin go pitter-pat), and a bookcase of land records from way, way back, and a creepy statue of Vanity (a rotting, skeletal figure in green stone, being eaten up by snakes and lizards) and a grand staircase with very wide steps which was used by horses entering the grand ballroom for tournaments (the same grand ballroom in which kings were crowned and Czech presidents inaugurated).
There's more to Prague Castle than any two tourists, no matter how dedicated, can cover, and after seeing the steet of tiny houses -- formerly peasants' residences, now a mix of historical exhibits and souvenir shops, where Kafka lived for a time -- we found ourselves at the far end from where we'd come in and decided to declare victory and pull out. After a long walk downhill, we found lunch at Hostinek U 3 Zlathych Trojek (Pub of the Three Golden... well I'm not sure what they were... ampersands, maybe), an unprepossessing establishment offering good solid Czech-style pub grub.
God knows how, but at that point we still had energy, so we hopped a tram to the funicular. This steep little train line runs up the hill to a big park overlooking the city, and was included in our transit passes. There was a line to get on, due to the many locals wanting to picnic or what-have-you in the park on the holiday, but it moved pretty quickly. This is, I believe, the only funicular railroad in the world with a stop in the middle. Each of the three stops was identified by a large sign, just like in the subway, which I've never before seen on a funicular (usally it's pretty obvious whether you're at the top or the bottom).
At the top of the funicular we found the Petrin Tower, a sort of miniature Eiffel Tower offering even better views of the city than the park itself. I climbed it, leaving Kate to rest her wounded knee on a bench. There was a smashed penny machine on the first level but, sadly, it was out of order. On the way to the top I began to sense a slight but disturbing sway, but the tower's a hundred and twenty years old and hasn't fallen once so I pressed on. The top level was crammed with teenagers, but I was able to snap a few photos and retreat without serious incident. Another of the park's sites, the Mirror Maze, was also supposed to have a penny machine but the admission charge was in the vicinity of fifteen bucks and there didn't seem to be a gift shop or any other part of the structure that could be accessed without pay. We walked partway down the hill, on a very pleasant tree-lined path, to the midpoint station, and after failing to get onto a couple of standing-room-only trams we finally managed to cram ourselves into one and got to the bottom.
Somehow we were still not too tired to tourist further, so we took another tram to the Charles Bridge, which could be seen from the tower to be heavily touristed but we wanted to know what the fuss was about. It turned out to be a pedestrian-only stone span, featuring many sketch artists, souvenir stands, and statues of saints (and a marker at the exact point where St. John of Nepomuk was martyred) and though there was a crowd it was a pleasant one. At the far end we found the Old Town Bridge Tower, with a great view, a film on the history of the bridge, an upper room with the original timbered ceiling and a small museum of objects of dubious authenticity, and no penny machine (there used to be one, the staff said, but it had broken down and been removed some time ago).
(How do you ask about a penny-smashing machine when there's no word for it in the phrase book and gestures are ambiguous? You do a Google image search on your smart phone and show the clerk a picture of some smashed pennies. We paid a bunch up front for 8GB of data for our iPhones in Europe -- expensive, but not as expensive as paying by the megabyte ad-hoc -- and it's been amazingly useful. A smart phone is a universal translator (Google Translate app and a couple of bilingual dictionary and phrasebook apps), a map of a strange city that's labeled in English, covers the entire city including the obscure or untouristed bits, and has a blinking you-are-here dot (Google Maps app), a communication device with the rest of your party (we use text messages, much cheaper than voice calls), and an intelligent guide to the local transit systems (most cities have at least one free transit app, which provides routing advice, up-to-the-moment timetables, and often a map to the nearest transit stop) and restaurants (bigger cities have a variety of restaurant guide apps, some in English).)
Okay, now we were pooped. From the bridge we walked a few blocks to a restaurant that looked good in the guidebook but, as so often happens, failed to impress from the sidewalk. But on the way we passed the restaurant Rainer Maria Rilke, which had lots of positive reviews pasted in its window, and decided to stop there. My main dish, a spicy melange of beef, peppers, and mushrooms, was very good, though not as good as some of the meals I've had in Europe (which sets the bar pretty darn high); Kate's trout was not quite so good. But the desserts, honey cake and apple strudel, redeemed the meal. It was probably the most expensive meal we've had in the Czech Republic, but at about $75 for the two of us it was not completely out of line and I don't regret it.
And with that, and a stop at a convenience store on the way home to pick up kleenex and a few other necessities, we finally called it a day.
Posted 05/08/2012 14:17 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
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Today was our first day in the Czech Republic without Monika, or as I put it "the day the training wheels came off." However, most of the waiters and other service professionals here in the Big City speak at least some English and/or German so we haven't had any serious difficulties.
There are as many people in this hotel as in some entire towns we visited with Monika. Breakfast was not of maximal quality but had a fabulous selection, including chocolate granola.
The first order of business today was to do laundry, and rather than run several cycles through the tiny sink and festoon the room with wet undies, we took the subway to one of Prague's few laundromats, located in an American-style shopping mall in the city center. Unfortunately, there was only one working dryer. So rather than wait an hour and a half for our turn at it, we took our wet wash back to the hotel and festooned the room with wet undies.
By comparison with the charming little medieval and Renaissance towns where we've spent the last week, Prague is dirty, noisy, crowded, and dangerous. But it shares with Vienna a capital-of-empire vibe, a plethora of shops and restaurants, and endless stunning architecture none of which you have ever seen before (except perhaps in a movie, pretending to be someplace else).
Lunch was at Cafe Savoy, which taunted us with a menu in which the dishes were titled in French but described in Czech. However, we had a delicious (albeit somewhat expensive) lunch in exquisite surroundings.
After lunch we decided to hit the Jewish Museum, a loose-knit collection of sites in the former Jewish quarter. Most of the Jews were kicked out and the buildings torn down at the turn of the 20th century, but a handful of synagogues and an old cemetery remain. Even these survive to the present day only because the Nazis decided to keep them as a "museum of an extinct race."
Our first stop was the Pinkas Synagogue, whose walls are covered with the names, dates, and towns of residence of 80,000 Bohemian and Moravian Jews killed by the Nazis. Eighty thousand names -- three large rooms with every wall covered in quite small writing. Twenty thousand names more than the Vietnam War memorial wall in Washington DC. Most of them came from Prague. Most of them died in 1941 and 1942. Only 10,000 Jews returned to Prague after the war.
The Pinkas Synagogue was turned into a Holocaust memorial in the 1950s. After the Prague Spring in 1968, the Communists erased the names. Following the fall of communism, the eighty thousand names were again hand-written on the walls. It took four years.
Kate and I have suffered some tragedies recently -- two close friends passed away unexpectedly earlier this year. If two deaths hurt this much... how could anyone possibly inflict this unimaginable level of pain?
Exhibits in other parts of the distributed Jewish Museum hint at how it happened. The Jews were never more than tolerated in Prague, their rights to live and work and marry always restricted and often curtailed. The Old Jewish Cemetery is crammed with stones, which hints at the bodies buried ten and twelve deep because the Jews were not permitted to bury their dead elsewhere. Documents on display in the beautiful Spanish Synagogue record how the Nazis required Jews to turn in their gramophones and skis, each properly packed and with a copy of Form C. The noose was tightened and tightened and tightened, and the illusion was maintained right up until the last minute that the Jews would be allowed to return home.
Looking at the many artifacts of Jewish life and religious practice on display, I realized that the prohibition against graven images means that most Jewish objects are decorated with Hebrew text and very little else. To the non-Jew, everything in Jew Town was opaque and mysterious, densely covered with unreadable, perhaps even mystical, symbols. This may be part of why they hated and feared their Jewish neighbors.
In the bathroom mirror of the restaurant where we had dinner I saw a face very much like some of the photographs of Czech Jews we'd seen in the museum (Sigmund Freud was one).
Two of my grandparents were born in the US, and the other two came here from Russia well before WWII. I don't know of any relatives who died in the Holocaust, and I'm not a very observant Jew. But I think all of us, Jew and Gentile, black and white, gay and straight, need to remember that human beings did this to other human beings, and make sure it doesn't happen again.
Finding dinner was a bit of a goat-rope. First we went to a restaurant right near the museum that sounded great, but it was not yet 6:00 and the menu only included some uninspiring sandwiches and salads. The next place we tried, a bit of a hike away, was smoky and unappealing. To get to the third place we walked all the way back to the first one and past it (though it was now after 6:00, we didn't want to go back in), but the third place was not only a smoking zone, it looked closed. Fortunately our fourth choice, a Burmese/Thai/Indian place called Orange Moon, was right across the street, open, nonsmoking, and smelled good. Service was quick and friendly, prices reasonable, but, alas, the two Burmese dishes we ordered were merely okay.
Took a tram back to the hotel. Shortly before boarding, Kate's knee went out on her (it has done this before) so she limped back to the room. I hope it'll be better after a good night's rest.
Most of the laundry is mostly dry. I hope it, too, will be better after a good night's rest.
Posted 05/07/2012 12:55 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
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The light in the hall outside our room stopped working some time yesterday, meaning that we had to use a flashlight to get down the stairs to breakfast, but nobody seemed to notice. For this and other reasons, we thought we might be alone in the hotel but there were two middle-aged British ladies at breakfast, and they said a friend of theirs had tried to book and been told it was full. (?) Certainly there were many more rooms and tables than we saw people. Maybe they only staff up to a certain level out of season?
Bread rolls here are long and narrow (I keep thinking they're bananas), rather hard, and tightly curled inside, like croissants though not so rich. If you get a hot dog from a street cart, they spit one of these rolls lengthwise on a 1" diameter spike and then put the sausage in the hole. I broke a roll open at breakfast and suddenly felt the physicality of the old expression "to break bread with someone" for the first time...
"Letni" (summer), seen often on signs, seemed vaguely familiar and I couldn't figure out why... until I realized it's Intel spelled backwards.
For our first stop this morning, we visited a stone circle near the town of Holasovice. I thought it was fascinating until we discovered that it was built by hippy-dippy neo-pagan "psychotronic technicians" in 2008. Nuclear reactor cooling towers on the horizon provided an interesting contrast. Next we visited Holasovice itself, with its "Farmer's Baroque" village green. This is what a typical village square would have looked like in the mid-1800s, with its fish pond, frogs, scale for carts, tiny church, and enormous maypole. (Okay, that last would only have been there in certain months of the early 1800s.)
Next we went to Prachatice, with its fancy-pants medieval town square (they had a lot of money and power back in the day -- salt traders from Salzburg were required to stop here, by royal decree) and National Museum of Czech Puppets and Circus. There we saw a great collection of puppets both old and new (including a family puppet theatre with its own painted orchestra pit, a king and queen very reminiscent of the ones from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, and many many devils) and quite a bit of historical circus and magicians' equipment (including a life-sized wax mermaid who breathed).
We considered stopping for lunch in Prahatice, but pressed on to Pisek, where Monika inquired of a local as to what might be open on a Sunday and we were directed to U Reineru (The Reiners'). Their English menu had a sense of humor, including sections labeled "All Breaded Up and Fried in Oil" and "From a Bull or a Cow, or maybe from a Hog" (I'm pretty sure these were deliberate, not errors). I ordered the "Reiner Cutlet" because I figured that if they put the family name on it, it's probably good. Also ordered spinach, because, hey look, a vegetable! Took forever to arrive, but it was good when it did: breaded fried pork cutlet with ham and cheese inside and more cheese on top. Num.
I realize that everything I've been eating in Europe is delicious because I've been allowing myself to order dishes prepared with copious quantities of The Miracle Ingredient. ("Fat! It makes everything taste better!") God knows how much weight I'll have gained by the time we get home (4-7 miles of walking every day will help, of course) but I'm confident I'll be able to get back on the eating-right horse and get in shape fairly quickly. Well, after Wiscon, anyway.
Pisek has an excellent museum with an eclectic collection of regional history and prehistory, a Gothic hall with the original black tile floor, a lapidarium of local stones, and -- for some unknown reason -- an extensive collection of coffeemakers. It's a good thing we had Monika because the text was all in Czech; also, she was able to give us some essential background info. We gave the museum a "quick canter," as suggested by the Rough Guide, and it was well worth it.
Drove to Prague, said goodbye to Monika and Peter, and checked into Hotel Petr (room quite small, otherwise nice). Walked a couple blocks to the nearest Metro stop, where we bought transit passes and looked in a bookstore for a good restaurant guide, since we'd found no Prague restaurant app and Yelp doesn't know about this place. (TripAdvisor has some info but the app is not very well designed.) The Time Out book we bought agreed with other info we'd seen that Bar Bar, an artsy bar and restaurant, was good, so we took the tram two stops to that. Cool artsy decor, nonsmoking area, menu with many vegetarian options, and in the men's room I used a urinal identical to Marcel Duchamp's infamous "Fountain," the like of which I have never before seen in the wild. Kate had tagliatelle with zucchini, sun-dried tomatoes, arugula, and capers; I had ratatouille with grilled polenta. Vegetables, yum.
After dinner we returned to the room to plan out our time in Prague. Tomorrow, I think, we will do laundry. Oh, the adventure.
Posted 05/06/2012 14:05 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
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A few stray notes from yesterday... As we walked around the town, we saw many, many young people (many with large bottles) flowing toward the music festival. It's very clear that we made the right decision to switch hotels. Also, although the hotel desk clerk told us she didn't know this was happening, it's just today, maybe it will end this afternoon, we got a copy of the program: the festival has been going on for three days already and runs until 1:30 AM every night. So... nice try, lady. I'd like to think that even without Monika we might have managed a solution, but Monika certainly made everything better and easier. Well worth the fairly large amount of money we're paying for her services and Peter's.
I also ought to note that wherever we have traveled in the Czech Republic we've found clean toilets, good toilet paper, plenty of hot water and water pressure, and free wi-fi. (The only hotel we've stayed at so far in this trip that lacked free wi-fi was in Bologna.) This definitely does not feel like a third-world or second-world country.
Breakfast was what we are coming to realize is a fairly standard Czech breakfast (rather similar to the Dutch, actually): corn flakes, yogurt, bread and rolls, an assortment of meats and cheeses, good coffee. The breakfast room was well hidden at the back of the restaurant, and our waitress was the same blonde from last night. Still no decaf.
After breakfast, drove to Cesky Krumlov, an amazingly picturesque medieval castle town, thoroughly infested with tourists. Every few steps revealed another beautiful vista, often with a castle or church tower perfectly framed at the end of a narrow alley. Perched on steep slopes at a tight bend of the river, you're always rounding a curve or looking down on some other part of the town. It's a popular place for weddings, and while we were there we saw many bridesmaids, and a bride arrived in a fabulous antique car. Also, there are bears (named Franz Josef and Maria Theresa) living in the moat.
For lunch: "wild goulash" with bread dumplings at the Hotel Barbora. Very tasty, but... wild WHAT, exactly? Fruit dumplings for dessert, with crumbled cheese.
After lunch, wandered around the town on our own, then met Monika for a tour of the Baroque castle theatre. This theatre is a real treasure, unique in the world -- built and equipped in the late 1700s, used once, and then apparently never used again, it's the best-preserved theatre of its vintage anywhere. Many of the original sets, costumes, props, and other equipment are here as well. The light in the theatre simulated candlelight and was astonishingly dim. Given that these operas were 4-6 hours long, it must have induced a rather dreamlike state. Also, I realized that opera glasses not only magnify, but like a telescope they also gather more light, thus giving the viewer more of a chance to see the performers' expressions (this is, admittedly, just a guess on my part).
Our tour (in English, with an excellent guide) included the under-stage area, with the mechanisms that could affect a complete scene change in 6-10 seconds. Because candles were used for illumination, blackouts were not possible -- instead they used fireworks to blind the audience briefly, and when their eyes cleared the new scenery would be in place. It must have been spectacular. It also explains why so many other theaters of the period burned down...
When we came out of the theatre it was beginning to rain, so we bid a fond farewell to lovely Cesky Krumlov and drove to Hluboka castle, the second-biggest castle in the Czech Republic. Hluboka is the seat of the Schwarzenbergs, whose arms include a severed Turk's head with a raven plucking its eyes out, a gruesome symbol of a famous victory over the Turks which appears on many Schwarzenberg properties. A Schwarzenberg is today the Czech Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Hluboka is a national treasure, very popular with Czech and foreign tourists (and, apparently, another popular site for weddings, though we didn't see any during our visit). The exterior is remarkably white and clean and well-preserved, festooned with deer heads (stone heads with real antlers, each with a label indicating who shot it and where). The inside is a dark and overwhelming gnarl of densely carved wood, paintings of nobles, Murano glass chandeliers, tapestries, suits of armor, and all that other castle-y stuff. It was very impressive and, again, showed more taste than San Simeon (at least it was consistent), but dark and oppressive -- I'd much rather live at Schoenbrunn.
It was raining pretty hard now, so we declined a walk around the castle grounds and drove back to our hotel. After a short nap, I looked on TripAdvisor and found a nearby restaurant called "Life Is Dream" (in English) with exactly one review, but that review said "one of my favorite restaurants in not just The Czech Republic but in all of Europe." The restaurant's online menu seemed a little strange, maybe even over-the-top, but it promised vegetables so I talked Kate into it. After some difficulty getting ourselves into the non-smoking section (most restaurants in Ceske Budejovice are smoking, so this was a plus) we managed to order... we'll, I'll just quote from the English-language menu. Appetizer: "Rocket spring rolls: Rocket leaves with parmesan, peanut butter, rolled in Parma ham and sprinkled with pine nuts." My main dish: "Leni's dream: For all those conscious of a healthy diet, we take the opportunity to offer you a protein bomb. Fat free turkey meat prepared in a spicy yogurt crust served on a bed of red lentils with lots of excellent but often forgotten vegetables -- beetroot, celery, white radish, soybeans and buckwheat." Kate ordered a lamb pilaf and corn on the cob.
I must say that I have never eaten anything quite like that dinner. A very unusual combination of flavors, but tasty.
The check arrived in a tiny leather treasure chest surrounded by hard candies and cough drops.
Posted 05/05/2012 12:54 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
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Woke up 6:00 or so. Down to breakfast a bit before the official opening hour but they accomodated us anyway. Packed up, met Monika, dragged the bags out to the car while she took care of the bill, drove away.
Passed fields of bright yellow canola and gleaming solar panels, both due to EU renewable-energy regulations.
Stopped in Pehlrimov, "town of records," to visit the House of Records and "Czech Golden Hands" museum. This museum displays many of the world's biggest, smallest, most, etc. objects (well, maybe only the Czech Republic's biggest etc.) as well as a collection of unusual items made by Czechs, such as dozens of objects made entirely of matches (including a playable guitar!), a working steam engine made of glass, and many Muppet-like crocheted dolls of figures from Czech history (including the Golem of Prague)! The photos below show me standing in front of the largest macaroni mosaic, and Kate adding a few stitches to the longest scarf (138 kilometers and still growing!).
Next, a brief stop at an incredibly cute little red castle, on an island in a manmade lake, called Cervena Lhota. This is the Pond District of Bohemia, where the land was too swampy to farm, so hundreds of years ago the water was diverted into many manmade ponds, thus creating a large carp-farming culture and a great deal of usable dry land. Carp are ever-present here, both on the menu and in the art. In Nativity scenes here, one of the shepherds is typically bringing the baby Jesus a carp (!?).
Traveling with Monika and Peter, our guide and driver, is like having a mom and dad who will take you to Gator Land, stop for ice cream whenever you want, and never make you kiss your stinky old aunt. They deal with navigation, parking, hotels, admissions, etc. for us and we do the fun stuff. One could get used to this...
In Trebon, we ate at a very nice restaurant, one of a pair called "Supina & Supinka" (Fish Scales & Little Fish Scales), where they claimed something identified on the English menu as "carp chips" was the speciality of the house. Somewhat dubiously, I ordered it. It was amazing! You could put this fabulous seasoned breading on a rock and it would be delicious.
You know how you finally figure out where everything is in the con hotel right around the time the con is over? That's how it is on this trip with the streets, the transit system, the language, etc. in each new city.
Also, I've really been feeling the truth of the adage "No matter where you go, there you are." Here we are in this very strange place and yet I am very conscious that I'm still me, with all my neuroses and attitudes, breathing air in the same way and otherwise interacting with my environment in the same way. Also, the birds are still birds, the trees are still trees, and the people are fundamentally still people. Not a unique insight, but it's what I have to offer today.
After lunch we touristed in the little town of Trebon: visited the castle (mostly archives inside, not open to the public), climbed the bell tower, walked around the town, strolled around the pond and across the dam. Then drove on to Ceske Budejovice (aka Budweis, home of the original Budweiser beer) -- at 100,000 people, the largest town we've visited in the Czech Republic. Its town square was large and bright -- exactly what the town squares in all those small towns we'd visited (nice though they were) want to be when they grow up.
Our hotel, Solne Brany, was lovely, centrally located... and right across the river from a major music festival which, we discovered (and despite the desk clerk's professions of ignorance) goes until 1:30 AM both days we're here. Even with the windows shut and with the (probably sedate by comparison with later) afternoon music it was too loud to think straight. After considering the efficacy of earplugs, we called Monika and asked her to deal with it, then went for a walk. 45 minutes later, just as we were about to check out a restaurant for dinner, Monika called: they found someplace else. We decided to check the restaurant before heading back to hotel #1, and were intercepted by someone (a local? another tourist?) who said two other places nearby were much better.
Back at hotel #1, we found that Monika and Peter had already snagged our bags... except for the CPAP bag. Fortunately ("Ave Maria!" cried the desk clerk) it was eventually found. Hotel #2, Hotel Zatkuv Dum, was just a few blocks away as the crow flies or the pedestrian walks, but a half-hour drive due to one-way and pedestrian streets. We inspected the room before committing, it passed muster, and we were out the door heading for dinner while Monika and Peter were still doing paperwork at the front desk. They get a BIG tip.
At dinner I proposed a toast to Kate: "here's to surviving a crisis." "It was a problem, not a crisis," she replied. "We have Staff, we sic'd 'em on it, and they dealt with it." One could, as I say, get used to this. Of course, maintaining staff like this on a daily basis (and in the US, as opposed to Eastern Europe which, though it's not as cheap as it used to be, is still pretty darn cheap) is more than even we could afford.
For dinner we wound up at "U 3 Sedlaku," a pub that's been on this spot since 1897. With Pilsner Urquell on tap and a menu in German featuring lots of schwein und wurst, I would describe it as a typical Bavarian beer hall, but I do get the impression it is actually a very typical Czech beer hall. I had poppy-and-sesame-crusted pork medallions with grilled vegetables, which was fab, and -- though I don't usually drink beer -- a Pilsner Urquell, because how could one not.
After dinner, wandered the streets for a bit in search of our bearings and dessert. Wound up at the very pleasant terrace restaurant of our own hotel (#2) where we noted one of the dessert options was "zakvicky", which all of our sources translated as "coffins." Naturally, we had to order it. It turned out to be two small, indeed coffin-shaped, pastries made of a stiff light batter having a lot in common with meringue, topped with whipped cream and chocolate syrup. Alas, there was no decaf.
If that was the worst problem we face this trip, we're doing great.
Posted 05/04/2012 13:34 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
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Got two short story acceptances in yesterday's email, but I think I need to admit I'm not going to get any more writing done on this trip. Just too much mental energy is consumed by traveling.
Awake a bit before 7. Breakfast in hotel: corn flakes, muesli, and yogurt laid out on bar; plate of ham, sausage, and cheeses and basket of breads brought by waitress. Something smelled really good, probably roasting pork for tonight's dinner. (The frying fish later in the day was not nearly so appetizing.)
After breakfast we walked to a nearby bakery to pick up some local treats, and saw the Prettiest Sandwiches Ever in the display case. I'm very glad we have German, it's far more common than English here. I think I know the Czech word for "thank you" now, let's see if I can add "good day" without losing it...
Met Monika outside the hotel at 9:00. Walked around the town, saw the outside of the castle (3rd largest in the country) and the pond (a manmade lake from the 10th century, where carp are raised), and visited the town's brand-new museum of tapestry. They repair ancient tapestries here as well as making new ones, as they have done for centuries. Similar techniques of cleaning, spinning, and weaving to what we saw yesterday, but even more old-fashioned and hand-made. All information was presented in Czech by the guide but Monika translated the important bits.
For lunch, after considering several options we went back to the bakery next to our hotel for a couple of those pretty little baguettes, plus a cappuccino and a strawberry milk, then had a brief lie-down before we met up with Monika at the castle for the 1:00 tour. The interior of the castle is all Renaissance and Baroque, with many portraits of the former residents (it was owned by a total of 3 families in its history, but was grabbed by the state along with all the other nobles' property in 1945), electrical fixtures dating from the 1880s, an impressive decorative grille covering the well, and an amazing circular concert hall. In this case the Czech guide was supplemented by a handout in English as well as Monika's translation. After that we needed another nap.
We met Monika again at the city museum at 3:30. We started off with their famous mechanical Nativity, the crown of their collection of Nativity scenes, the holder of the record for world's largest mechanical Nativity. It dates from 1935, I believe, and is almost fifty feet wide all told, four or five feet high, and populated by hundreds of figures three or four inches high, most of them moving. It was like those Christmas shop-window displays with the moving elves, only raised to the third or fourth power. Tacky, yes, but actually quite charming.
The rest of the museum was also rather charming, an idiosyncratic collection including artworks by local artists, information on local famous people including artist Holub Ludens and opera singer Ema Desinnova, two rooms showing typical homes of the bourgeoisie and farmers in the mid-1800s, a collection of guild signs, a couple dozen stone saints, an entire 19th-century pharmacy interior, a room full of smashed airplane bits from a WWII air battle that took place near here, and an extensive collection of Lada sewing machines. We never even saw the collection of painted marksmen's targets. In this museum we had an English-speaking guide, but most of the artifacts were fairly self-explanatory... and for those we did not understand, the guide generally responded "we don't know what that is either!" We're always the ones to ask the difficult questions...
After the museum, we had an early dinner at an Indian restaurant, very good Indian for a small town in the Czech Republic. Yes, we should be partaking of the local cuisine, but we've been in Europe for two weeks, we'll be in the Czech Republic for another week, and we wanted VEGETABLES.
Spent the evening blogging and lazing about. Tomorrow we hit the road again, to Ceske Budejovice (aka Budweis)!
Posted 05/03/2012 12:39 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
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Awake 7:00. Very nice breakfast provided by hotel, table service with choice of Continental, British, American, French, and "Fitness" (muesli, yogurt, corn flakes, fruit). "Butter is 'maslo' and cream is 'smetana'. What's yogurt, 'nietzsche'?" "Yogurt is 'yogurt' in every language. It's a loan-food." Huge disparity in size between teaspoons and tablespoons (all over Europe, but really noticeable here).
The overall flavor of Czech is not that dissimilar to German. I keep feeling at some level that if I just listened harder it would start to make sense.
Met Monika at 9:00; she presented us with a couple of prune kolachky (Danish), which were delicious. Drove off through pretty country on another gorgeous sunny day; stopped briefly for pix of a gorgeous castle over a river valley. Passed many lovely small villages and a line of bunkers built in the 1930s to defend against the Germans and/or Austrians -- they were state-of-the-art and might have held, but the area was ceded to Hitler without a shot being fired.
Stopped in Slavonice, a Renaissance town with Baroque facades on all the buildings (a local noble had his castle re-done by an Italian architect and everyone with money in the region decided to copy him). The facades tend to be quite flat, with black-and-white graphics depicting either the facade of a much fancier building or biblical/mythological scenes (in one case, Genesis verses linked to the New Testament). Inside the tourist info office you can see some of the original wall frescoes. Passed Dacice, with not just one but three statues honoring the sugar cube, which was invented here (this is beet country, though due to EU regulations there is today no sugar production here). Saw maypoles in each town square we passed, each looking like a Christmas tree on a stick.
Came next to Telc, another Renaissance town, this one with porticoes like Bologna, and visited the castle there. It had an interesting little rococo sepulchral chapel, and many fairy-tale movies have been filmed here. Did a little shopping in downtown Telc; Kate bought an amber bracelet and earrings. We also looked at garnets ("Granat" in Czech) -- Czech garnets are small, that and their color explains the name, which is clearly related to "pomegranate."
For lunch, according to Google Translate, we had pizza with ketchup, floodplain, and ermine. No idea what the last two were in reality, but the tomato sauce was indeed very much like ketchup... pretty good though. (Later: niva (floodplain) and hermelin (ermine) are both cheeses.) I keep seeing the word "potreby" (necessities, gear, supplies) on signs and being reminded of "Potrzebie" (non-word from Mad Magazine). It turns out the words are, in fact, related (see Wikipedia for details).
Drove to Strmilov, an otherwise-unremarkable town which is the home of the only remaining weaving mill in the Czech Republic. Kate learned of its existence from someone's blog and asked Monika to set up a tour. It's a family-run mill with only 4 employees and equipment from the 1930s. We got a tour from Dad (5th generation) and son Philip (6th generation), all in Czech with Monika translating. Many of the Czech spinning and weaving terms were unfamiliar to her, but from context we could tell her the English terms. It was very similar to Pendleton and other mills we have visited, but smaller and a lot more old-fashioned. Also they roast their own coffee. We bought a lovely blanket for 980 CKR ($50).
As we drove to Jindrichuv Hradec, the largest town we've seen since Vienna, a light drizzle began to fall. Our hotel, "Penzion Na 15. poledniku" ("Pension at 15 degrees," named for the latitude line a few dozen meters away) is a smallish guest house, our room tucked under the eaves on the 2nd (US 3rd) floor, with a great view of the church. We spotted a stork in a nest atop a chimney nearby.
TripAdvisor and other websites were very little help in locating food nearby, and there was not a lot of foot traffic downtown. One hotel restaurant looked good but was full with a Chinese tour group. We didn't want pizza or Chinese. We finally found the White Lady hotel restaurant, which looked good. As seems to be fairly typical in these tourist towns, the waiter had a smattering of German and English (mostly German) and the menu was multilingual (Czech, German, English). Appetizer: potato pancakes with smoked meat inside, nummy. Main course: I ordered the "Devil's Bite," which was described as pork with spicy peppers wrapped in a potato pancake and served with shredded cabbage. What arrived was pork and mushrooms in a (curry?) cream sauce with caraway seeds, no potato, no vegetable. Perhaps I would have been better off if I had not tried to order in Czech? Weirdly, when we looked at the menu again (thinking it might be the thing next to what I'd pointed to) we could not identify anything on the menu that might have been what I got. It was tasty though, I'm satisfied, and dinner for two cost only 350 crowns ($17). Hey, what would be the point of travel if it didn't include a few surprises? The whole production did take quite a while, we didn't get back to the room until 9:00.
Posted 05/02/2012 13:16 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 0 Step count: 11,188
Awake 7:00. Yogurt for breakfast, finished packing, cleaned up apartment, whipped out a quick blog post (no time for photos though), locked up, downstairs right at 9:00 just as our Czech guide Monika (and Peter the driver) showed up.
Some adventures getting out of town through May Day parades and associated traffic. Passed Hundertwasser's incinerator on the way out of town. Many windmills (of the modern, power-generating variety) and cute little dorfs in the Austrian countryside. Tchaikovsky and Strauss on the CD player, later pop (but NOT American pop for a change, unless you count a heavily-accented "Girl from Ipanema"). Czech border had a structure but no staff, we drove right through.
This is Lichtenstein country; the same wealthy family that now owns the country of that name originated and made their fortune here, largely by sucking up to the Habsburgs (and by being cunning financiers). First stop was a Lichtenstein colonnade with a view of the countryside below. This whole area was known as The Garden of Europe, lovingly managed by Lichtenstein gardeners since the 1300s and a major horticultural school. It was a Lichtenstein hunting range between the summer and winter palaces.
We then visited both palaces, one in the town of Valtice, the other in Lednice (on its own extensive grounds). At the former I entered the bathroom and was asked by the lady in the booth for 5 crowns (25c). The smallest thing I had was a 100-crown bill ($5) and she could not deal with it. Fortunately Monika (on the other side of the same booth!) could cover for me.
Our visit to the summer palace in Lednice began with the Baroque (!) stables, which were not kept up well by the Communists (who seized all the nobles' property in 1945), then proceeded to the main house, in "English Gothic" style (looking rather like my college campus except that it was uniformly stuccoed in an unfortunate golden/peach color). We also saw the extensive gardens, greenhouse, decorative Oriental outbuilding, 19th-century faux Roman aqueduct, and faux Moorish minaret, and happened on a couple of very large birds (one a golden eagle) and a mob of about 20 very large dogs (Irish wolfhounds).
Lunch at "My Restaurant" (associated with "My Hotel" which seems to be a chain). With the help of an English menu, managed to order salad with grilled goat cheese, lamb with spinach, veal with peas and carrots; a little heavy (this will be par for the course, I think) but good. Standard operating procedure here seems to be that after you order you receive a plate with your napkins, forks, and knives. We had no idea how to tip until Monika appeared and told us it's 5-7%.
After lunch we proceeded to Mikulov, a delightful old town with medieval and Renaissance elements, where we visited the castle and the old Jewish quarter and stopped for ice cream. All so very picturesque! I took over 200 photos and couldn't bear to cut them down to less than 20 (below). It was a very sunny and warm day, but with a nice breeze that kept it from getting too hot. These little hill towns are reminiscent of our time in rural France.
In Znojmo (pronounced "znoymo") we took an underground tour of the extensive crypts that were carved out under the town beginning in the middle ages, used for food storage and retreat from invaders. Today they are basically completely empty, so the tour has dressed up some rooms with skeletons, giant papier-mache bats, etc. Interesting combination of genuine historical interest with cheap tacky tourist trap.
After returning to the surface, we walked through mostly empty streets (due to the May Day holiday) up to St. Catherine's Rotunda, a fortress and chapel dating from the 900s, with a fabulous view of the town (including unique town hall tower and two picturesque churches) and the river valley below. Then to our hotel, Althansky Palace, which shows every sign of having been an actual palace in the last century -- a lovely hotel, with wifi and everything. Monika checked us in and then said goodbye until 9:00 tomorrow. I think we have enough Czech to get us through until then. Monika and Peter keep carrying our bags for us... I feel kind of weird about that.
Had a bit of a lie-down, then looked into dinner. TripAdvisor and others recommended Na Vecnosti, a vegetarian(!) restaurant nearby (the "(!)" is because Znojmo is not a large town by any means). We found it and it was open (despite the holiday -- which, come to think of it, explains the shortage of staff we've been seeing). English menu, German-speaking waiter, our minimal Czech, it all worked out... though it took a while to figure out that the "special menu" card was not a set menu of five courses but the daily specials for the five weekdays. Anyway, we had an "Arab salad," halubky (Czech gnocchi) with cheese and fried onions, and a couscous dish with tofu, stewed plums, and cashews. All quite tasty, though even at a vegetarian restaurant the side dishes on offer were all potatoes, bread, and rice with not a green vegetable in sight. Also, for future reference, one cider for the two of us would have sufficed.
Posted 05/02/2012 13:00 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
We have wifi at today's Czech hotel, so I'm posting these photos from our last two days in Vienna while I can. No telling what kind of connectivity we'll have going forward.
I haz a snake. Also a skull.
I think it's a hair dryer, but I wouldn't put my head in it.
Goofus and Gallant, 15th-century style.
Kate contemplates the world from a Vienna cafe.
Corridor at the Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste. The shadow on the stairs at the end makes it seem much longer than it is.
Austrian Parliament.
Everyone wants their picture taken with the Goddess of Justice.
St. Stephan's Church, known as "Steffie," ensnared in a web of tram wires.
Bathroom at Kunst Haus Wien, AKA the Hunderdtwasser museum.
Hunderdtwasserhaus.
Hunderdtwasserhaus.
Rolling courtyard in front of Hundertwasserhaus. (What's that British phone box doing here?)
Box seats at The Sound of Music. (I think our seats, in the orchestra, were better.)
Curtain call at The Sound of Music.Posted 05/01/2012 12:33 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 0 Step count: 11,179 + 10,188
Haven't had a spare hour to blog lately, but we depart this morning (in about half an hour!) for the Czech Republic and I don't expect to have a lot of wifi there, so here's a quick dump of my notes from the last two days.
Sunday 4/29Awake 8:00. Worst Toilet Design Ever has a little shelf (not just flat but slightly dished) where the poo piles up and then theoretically the flush pushes it off; apparently this is standard in Germany and some other countries. Both Kate and I had the Nespresso coffee pod handle come off during brewing -- you really have to twist it in there -- fortunately there was no injury and not much mess. Today being Sunday, most stores are closed and we only have yogurt for one more morning so we considered going out for breakfast, but most places nearby don't open until 10 so we ate the last yogurt (Fage with strawberries and honey-soaked walnuts, yum) and we'll worry about tomorrow tomorrow. Wrote a couple postcards while Kate stared at maps & guidebooks planning out the next 2 days... I'd be lost without her.
Made our way to the city museum, but as we arrived we realized it was nearly noon and it would be stupid to go in without lunch. First couple of places we tried were closed but "Wein Isst" app found us Curry Up! (Gusshausstrasse 16), a Sri Lankan/Indian place where I had a thali with turkey curry, dal, carrot salad, some kind of eggplant thing, something delicious with coconut and cabbage(?), rice, curled-up cone of papadam, 6.50 euros. Yum!
The museum itself was fascinating combination of historical artifacts, recent artifacts, articles of fashion, new artworks, and snarky commentary about Vienna and its history right up to the present day. Even the staircase had a label (it was, after all, an artifact from 1958) and there was a dress on display in the original elevator. Three huge models of the city at different times (2 of them made at the time they depicted) helped me understand the way the city grew; even in the late 1800s the inner city was surrounded by a substantial wall and a wide swath of parkland for defensive purposes, with suburbs outside that. There is still a lot of open space in that ring....
After that, we decamped to Cafe Schwartzenberger for coffee and pastries in a very civilized environment. We went in thinking that would probably be it for the day, but after finishing our pastries we thought we had enough energy for one more museum, the one with Bosch's Last Judgement, even if there wasn't time or energy for the whole thing. And, although we had some difficulty finding the place, we were able to see just about the whole thing including a good chunk of time with the Bosch. So many of those images are familiar, though the whole thing isn't. Fom there we made our way back to our own neighborhood and a restaurant called Spatzennest, a homey neighborhood kind of place right next to St. Ulrich's church, where I had Styrisches Wurzelfleisch: stewed pork with root vegetables (well, carrots), potatoes, and a huge mound of fresh grated horseradish, in the Styrian style (Styria is a state of Austria). Kate had a grilled turkey salad which was, frankly, tastier than my dinner though not as typisch. After dinner we went back to the room and had a romantic evening, hence no blogging nor writing.
Monday 4/30Breakfast in nearby Cafe Kreuzberg (ham, cheese, and bread for me; ham with a fried egg on it for Kate). We've been hearing American pop music in nearly every restaurant, bar, and shop; exceptions: opera in one restaurant in Bologna, German rap booming from a car on the street in Vienna, reggae in a cafe (which still read as American pop to me but Kate pointed out it was not American).
We decided to go our separate ways today. Kate determined that her distance glasses were not in her bag, probably left at Schwartzenberger Cafe yesterday so that was her first stop (they were there, all right -- whew!). Our 72-hour transit passes had expired, but Kate texted me to warn me about it and I bought a new one at a nearby tobacconists.
I've noted this before, but the German word Not (pronounced "note" and meaning "emergency") leads to such amusing signs as NOTHAMMER on a hammer. In France, the triangular "!" sign is pronounced "Dude!"; here I think it's "Achtung!"
Made my way to the Kunst Haus Wein, AKA the Hundertwasser museum. Very glad to be wearing the Keen sandals on the uneven floors... my feet can feel the variations. The place reminds me of the Ghibli Museum as much as anything. Hundertwasser was a genius (artist, architect, built his own boat, world traveler, designer of stamps and flags) but was probably rather difficult to live with (argumentative, opinionated; 2 wives for a couple years each; also, most of his buildings, flags, license plates, etc. were never produced). Had lunch at very pleasant museum cafe: Tagesmenu (daily menu) of Spargelcremesuppe (asparagus cream soup, it's in season), Gebratene Huhnerbrust (roast chicken breast) mit Letscho (sauteed tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, and peppers) und Reis (rice).
Walked from the museum to Hundertwasserhaus itself. Only visible from outside, of course, and mobbed with tourists. What you can see is more of a compromise than the museum, I think; very glad to have seen the museum first. Looking at the outside really does not convey what H. was trying to do.
Another hot sunny day with surprisingly cold air streaming from doorways as I pass; not air conditioning, I think, but thick stone and masonry walls. Our apartment, too, is very cool even on a hot day.
Remembered on the tram heading away from Hundertwasserhaus that I'd forgotten to look for the penny-smashing machine there. Hopped off, caught the same tram back, found machine, it was working. Yay!
At Dr.-Karl-Renner-Ring exchange point, did not get on next bus, instead used Google Maps to find nearest bank (just behind Parliament) to change some money for the next leg of the trip. Teller explained that to change dollars to crowns she'd have to go through euros and I'd have to pay the exchange few twice, so I just got 250 euros out of the ATM and changed 200 of those to crowns. Might or might not have been cheaper this way, who knows, but at least we have some Czech cash now. The whole transaction was conducted in German, feeling rather smug about that.
Dinner at Wirr, the same cafe near our apartment where we'd waited for our hot to show up. I had "orientales Gröstl mit Rindfaschiertem" = a dry curry of potatoes & ground beef, actually quite nummy. Then off to the Volksoper (not the Stadtoper, not the Volkstheatre) for the opening night of The Sound of Music!
There were quite a few dirndls in the audience. It was a very nice performance, though there were... differences. The performance was in German with English supertitles, though only about half the lines and lyrics were supertitled. Sometimes the supertitles were the familiar lyrics, other times just the gist. "The hills are alive" lyric was sung in English, none of the rest. The song "Do, Re, Mi" was the weirdest: instead of do, re, mi it was C, D, E, F, G, A, H (D as in D-train, E as in elephant, F as in fluttering flag, etc.) For the climactic performance our theatre in Vienna was transformed into a theatre in Salzburg, with us as the audience and Nazi soldiers in the aisles and boxes -- quite effective. The curtain call was very European, with rhythmic clapping (until the kids came out, when the audience dissolved into enthusiastic kvelling) and after the first set of bows the curtain closed and the performers slipped out from behind the curtain for additional bows (a true curtain call).
Tram home, packed, fell over. Photos soon, I hope.
Today, the Czech Republic!
Posted 04/30/2012 23:43 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 0 Step count: 14,639
After the same breakfast as yesterday, we went out into the local neighborhood in search of a few practical things: shampoo, a better map, pens, expectorant ("schleimloesend" = "slime solvent" in German). We wandered into some interesting little shops, including book shops, and found most of what we needed and a few other things. Made and ate sandwiches in the apartment while we marked up our new map with the places we would like to visit.
We headed out to the Minoritenkirche to see the full-size mosaic replica of Michelangelo's Last Supper. On the way, we stumbled across the Theseus Temple, which was built to house the sculpture of Theseus and the Centaur which is now on the main stairway of the Art History Museum (we saw it day before yesterday) and which currently contains a plaster cast of a 2000-year-old olive tree. Then we wandered through a district of monumental buildings which were once part of the administrative and cultural center of the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire. We crossed the street called Dr.-Karl-Renner-Ring, which I insisted on calling "Carl Reiner Ring" and of which I said "didn't the police break up a Karl Renner Ring just the other week?" Kate said "why don't you ever inflict these puns on your blog?" so here it is.
Eventually we found the Minoritenkirche and the mosaic, which from ground level is so fine you almost can't tell it's a mosaic. Apparently Napoleon intended to capture the original and commissioned this mosaic as a placeholder, but he never got around to finishing the job so the placeholder remains here We then wandered through incredibly crowded shopping streets, where shops formerly By Appointment to the Emperor now serve anyone with more money than sense, to the incredibly baroque St. Peter's Church, with a tromp l'oeil dome and a massive sculpture of the martyrdom of St. John of Nepomuk, showing him being thrown off a bridge in Prague.
Next we visited the very large and impressive St. Stephen's Cathedral, which was also extremely crowded. Did not climb the 450-foot tower, but instead paused for coffee and pastry in one of Vienna's many fine cafes. We'd intended to visit the Imperial Crypt next but, realizing we'd seen it on our last visit, decided to give it a pass this time. Then we visited the Albertina, an art museum famous for its Durers, though sadly only a small portion of the permanent collection is on display at any time and currently none of the Durers were to be seen. However, they did have an excellent collection of Impressionists from Monet to Picasso and a large display of Klimt's sketches, so it was well worth the visit.
By then it was time for dinner, so we went to Le Bol (Neuer Markt 14), a casual French restaurant, and ordered a couple of very nice salads ("Salade Provenciale: Knuspriger Parmaschinken, gebratenes Gemuese, Tomaten, Gurken, Radieschen auf Vogerlsalat" and "Salade Oscar: Gerauecherte Entenbrust auf Ruccola, Honig, Orangen, Nuesse, Aepfel und Croutons"). Reading a menu that described French dishes containing Italian ingredients in German rather broke our brains; I think we may have ordered in Japanese. On departing I said "merci, vielen dank" and the waitress replied "thank you."
Having eaten a fairly light dinner containing actual vegetables, were were sufficiently energized to tackle the Riesenrad, or Giant Ferris Wheel. The Prater amusement park in which the wheel is located reminded me greatly of the Fun Forest of sainted memory in Seattle. There were two smashed-penny machines nearby, but they were both, unfortunately, completely jammed. We had about a 30-minute wait for a 20-minute ride on the wheel, together with about a dozen other people in a car about eight feet by twelve. Many of the interesting things to be seen from the wheel were other amusement park rides, including the rare experience of looking down on a normal-sized Ferris wheel. In the gift shop after our ride, we found another penny machine, this one working, and another working machine at a souvenir stand on our way out of the park. We considered stopping at a cafe for coffee and dessert on our way home, but it proved to be too smoky.
Nice to have a fairly relaxed day like that every once in a while.
By the way, many people have commented on my photos. Thank you! I think the most important lesson is that to get good photos you have to take a lot of photos and throw the not-so-good ones away. I took almost 200 photos today of which these are the very best.
Posted 04/28/2012 14:22 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 78 Step count: 14,334
One of the good things about having an apartment instead of a hotel is that you can have whatever you want for breakfast. One of the bad things is that you have to buy and prepare it, and clean up after yourself. It took longer than we expected this morning to walk to the store and buy a few basics, also we were embarrassed when we did not know (or forgot) to weigh the bananas before checking out. And what did I say as the cashier handed me my change? "Gratza" (half way between "grazie" and "danke"), oy. Despite this tic, my German is much better than my Italian and I can communicate quite well. I notice that some (not all) of the people we pass in the street have distinct Austrian accents (imagine someone sounding like Arnold Schwarzenegger's non-body-builder cousin). I could fake such an accent in English but I'm not sure I could do so in German.
After breakfast (Greek yogurt with banana, chopped walnuts, and honey), we used the amazing "qando" app (really, if you are coming to Vienna you must have it) to plot out our transit route to Schoenbrunn Palace. It worked like a charm. The palace itself is overwhelming, the grounds incredibly vast... allees wide as a football field... sculptures that would be the highlight of some small museums just acting as side pieces on larger works... a 45-minute walk to the Glorietta, a small (by comparison) building high above the rest of the grounds, with a great view of the palace and the city.
We had coffee and lunch at the Glorietta cafe (whose decor features a frieze of cow skulls): Schinkenfleckerl ("pasta with ham Austrian style") and Gulaschsuppe. A bit on the expensive side, but really very good for a cafe inside a tourist trap, and the waiters were not college kids but older men, very professional. We wandered through the palace's two (!) hedge mazes before touring the palace itself. Wow.
Only 40 of the palace's 1440 rooms are on the tour. San Simeon shows what you can do with effectively unlimited money, but this shows what you can do with taste and effectively unlimited money. The only downside of the tour was that the rooms were decorated as they had been in a variety of times, leaving me with a completely muddled idea of who was emperor when.
Our ticket also included the Crown Prince's Garden, but by the time we finished the palace tour Kate was all out of spoons (her knee is doing better but it still takes more energy than usual for her to walk) so I shepherded her home for a nap. While she napped I ran a load of laundry, updated my notes, checked finances and phone usage, etc.
I wanted schnitzel for dinner. We looked online, found nearby Schnitzel Sisters that sounded fab, but after much wandering in its supposed vicinity we determined to our satisfaction that it had been replaced by a sleazy-looking Asian restaurant. Alas. Another online search found "Zu den 2 Lieserln" (Burggasse 63), which was also recommended by our host at the apartment. It looked closed, but a small sign led around to the side where we found an airy courtyard under two trees. We had Almdudler (an "herbal soda" that reminded me somewhat of Irn Bru though not so orange), Wiener Schnitzel, goulash, potato salad, sauerkraut... OMG YUM. We really shouldn't have eaten all of that, but just couldn't stop!
Too pooped to tourist any more, we went back to the apartment by way of an ATM (they don't seem to give receipts here). The apartment is equipped with a DVD and VHS player, so we looked at the video collection and found Go Trabi Go, a 1980s East German film we saw at the Portland International Film Festival and would love to see again, but it's unavailable on video in the US. This was a non-subtitled VHS tape so we didn't get much of the dialogue, but it's a pretty broad comedy so it was still enjoyable. We watched about half of it before heading for bed.
Posted 04/27/2012 13:17 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 134 Step count: 12,880
Awakened by alarm at 7:00 after Very Strange Dreams. Washed up, packed up, mailed postcards, checked out, had breakfast (sausages replaced with some kind of yummy cheese-egg-polenta-pesto thing, plus scrambled eggs). I made a complete sentence, with a subjunctive verb and everything ("Vorrei un cappuco"), which I'm overly proud of though the server knew what I wanted before I said a word. Now I can forget Italian again for another few years.
Cab to airport, checked in for flight, through security, all painless. The Bologna airport was very recently renovated; the security lines were equipped with a return thingie for bins, like the ball return at a bowling alley. I had hoped to make a blog post at the airport, but though my phone had a strong signal from the airport's free-with-SMS-authentication wifi (amusingly, the network name was "Marconi," a local boy and the name of the airport), my computer only had a weak signal from a password-controlled airport network. I've never seen such a difference between the two devices; I wonder if the "Marconi" network is somehow limited to mobile devices. I could have blogged with my phone, I suppose, but there are limits to what I'm willing to do with that little keyboard. Spent the time going through my Bologna photos, anyway.
Took off on time and had a lovely flight with great views of Venice, the Alps, and Vienna from the plane. We had little sandwiches from Trzesniewski at the Vienna airport for lunch, then spent about an hour at the airport all told, getting bearings, calling the owner of the apartment we'd rented to arrange a rendezvous, and determining the best way to get there. We wound up buying a Vienna transit/discount card at the airport TI, then took a cab (saving 10% on the cab fare with the card).
As the cab entered the city, driving past huge ornate building after huge ornate building, I was inversely reminded of our Eastern Oregon trip last year when each town we visited was smaller than the one before. Venice has a lot of history, but it's really quite a small town even by comparison with Bologna, never mind mighty Vienna.
We waited at Cafe Wirr with free wifi, a cappucino, and a "Bio Krainer mit susser Zenf" (organic sausage with mustard, and a crusty roll) until the apartment owner's mother showed up to let us in. Then we had to look for a bank machine so we could pay the balance on the apartment in cash. Then the Guys came to replace the water heater, which just happens to have failed right before we arrived, and someone had to be here until they were finished. I could not get on to the apartment's wifi with the provided password, but an Ethernet cable to the router worked so I was able to make a blog post that way. Unfortunately I had to sit within two feet of the router to do so, and there's only one electrical outlet there so I couldn't have Internet and charge the laptop at the same time.
While I was posting, Kate was researching, planning, and plotting as she does. Eventually we decided to go out, have dinner, and hit the Kunsthistorisches Museum (open late on Thursdays), so we called the owner's mother to come and watch the Guys. His fiancee also showed up; I asked her about the wifi, also another key, and she said she'd look into it.
We headed out in search of food... looked at the nearby Schnitzelwirt but somehow it didn't appeal... wound up at Dots Experimental Sushi (Mariahilfer Strasse 103) where we had an expensive but very intriguing dinner of shrimp chips with an onion dipping sauce (unfortunately similar to Lipton French Onion Soup dip); mango salad; and three "experimental sushi" rolls: rainbow roll ("unbeschreiblich gut," said the menu), spicy duck roll, and green chicken roll. All three rolls were very good; I think the spicy duck was my favorite.
German is so much more comfortable than Italian even for me, and for Kate it's like slipping into a warm bath. But I'm appalled to find myself saying "grazie" (etc.) to Germans... I could barely remember Italian in Italy, but now it refuses to leave!
During dinner we used the restaurant's free wifi to download some Vienna-specific apps, including a transit app (qando) that told us how to get to the museum. The first thing we did when we got there was to see the Klimts: in honor of Gustav Klimt's 150th birthday, the museum has erected a scaffold so that you can climb up and get a good look at some wall murals he'd painted back in the 1890s, 12 meters above floor level. Then we wandered through the picture gallery, seeing lots of well-known favorites including a bunch of Breughels (particularly cool to see his Tower of Babel), several of Archimbolo's faces made of vegetables and such, and a whole room of Durers. There was far more than could be seen in an hour and a half, but we left satisfied.
The qando app, Vienna card, and Kate's memories of the Munich transit system got us home in good time. When we arrived we found our requested extra key, the correct wifi password, and a working water heater, yay.
Tomorrow, Schonbrunn Palace!
Posted 04/26/2012 13:58 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 0 Step count: 13,753 + 14,091
Tues 4/24 - Venice-BolognaAwake 6:00, and Kate had been up since 4. Packed up, ate, made little sandwiches of the breakfast rolls and the cheese we bought the other day, then paid up and checked out (3 euros per person per day Venice city tax must be paid in cash, because our host has to put it in the slot at City Hall every day in cash. "Boca de leone," I said (referring to the ancient Venetian tradition of dropping anonymous denouncements of fellow citizens in the mouth of a carved lion) and got a laugh.
Dragged our bags through rainy and increasingly crowded streets to the train station. We were way early for our 10:52 train and thought we might be in time for the 9:52, but alas, there is no 9:52, so we waited. Tried to use the bathroom, paid 1 euro to get in, found it full of women, scrambled out in terror; I think the men's was under construction and both sexes were using the same facility, but the signage didn't help at all.
Slept most of the way to Bologna. We took a cab to our hotel (it would have bene a 30 minute walk otherwise). Our room wasn't quite ready but we were offered cappuccino while we waited, which we accepted gladly. How civilized! After settling in (the room accessed via one of the most claustrophobic little elevators EVER),we headed out to get our bearings. Highlights of our little walking tour included: many cool old arcades (most of the sidewalks in the old town are covered with these medieval porticos; see photos below); courtyard of University of Bologna, one of the Western world's oldest, with crests of doctoral students and subjects of their theses; enormous San Petronio basilica (5th largest church in the world) with Cassini's Meridian (an extremely long sundial that was once used to calculate the distance to the sun) and many amazing/appalling artworks, also a Foucault pendulum; streets of classy shops; and a cool old deli and other food shops. The weather was sunny but unfortunately cold and very windy, the city much noisier than Venice, and of course there are cars. We tried to scope out a place for dinner but the places we checked weren't open yet or we couldn't find them. Back to room, fell over until 6:30.
When we awoke from our nap, we asked the front desk clerk to call some of the better restaurants we'd identified for a reservation. The first one he called didn't answer their phone, and the second was fully committed... but then they called back a minute later and said they could squeeze us in at 7:30. Yay! With 45 minutes to kill, we checked out a nearby church with 2 gazebo-tombs (!?) outside. We also walked past Drogherie della Rosa, a very highly regarded restaurant in a former pharmacy which we hadn't found before. They were open and gave us a reservation for tomorrow night, yay! Then, on the way to our restaurant for tonight, Kate tripped on an uneven bit of sidewalk and bruised her already-bum knee. Bummer.
Osteria al Quindici (Via Mirasole 15)'s decor was heavy on owls and the number 15. The owner offered us the choice of an English or Italian menu; Kate asked for one of each, but apparently the Italian menu is him, so we got two menus in something resembling English. We managed to order and get ice for Kate's knee. The meal consisted of a pre-appetizer (we didn't ask for it, it just came) of white beans on crostini; an appetizer of fried bread (2 kinds, puffy (crescentine) and flat) with ricotta and caramelized balsamic vinegar; tagliatelle with ragu (the classic Bolognese dish); garmigna ("hipster-earring-shaped" pasta, unique to Bologna) in a sausage-based sauce that looked like the Bolognese but tasted distinctly different -- this is the real dish of which Chef Boy-Ar-Dee is the shadow eaten by the people in the cave in the story of the people in the cave by the Greek guy -- green salad (it's a vegetable, it comes after the pasta); a very simple grilled steak, very rare, with rosemary & peppercorns. I don't think that last was what we ordered, but damn it was good.
Limped back to the room about 10:00, poor thing. Very tired, no wifi, so no writing and no blogging.
Weds 4/25 - BolognaWoke up about 8. Had breakfast in the hotel's basement breakfast room, with a similar selection to Venice but laid out for a crowd (with additions: pain au chocolat, sausages, cold cuts, cereal, fresh fruit, yogurt, etc.). Could not avoid conversation with Americans at next table; American accents seem so harsh to me now.
Today is a holiday, so some places were closed, there were buskers on the sidewalk, and more pedestrians than yesterday. Went out looking for a cane for Kate, but when we found an open pharmacy, one of the few open on the holiday, it was too crowded to deal with, so Kate just decided to hobble along as best she could.
We visited the Museum of the History of Bologna at Palazzo Pepoli: very new, huge, packed with interesting info... all in Italian, but we could puzzle a lot of it out. We left there in time to catch the transit of the sun at Cassini's Meridian at 13:15, but we stopped for gelato on the way and when we arrived the church was closed for lunch (we arrived at 13:13 and the posted closing time was 13:15, but they might have closed half an hour before that... we'll never know).
The first place we tried for lunch was booked up, but a place down the street called Clive T. (Via Clavature 17) looked good and was: pumpkin tortelloni in a balsamic reduction was fabulous, cotoletta Bolognese (breaded veal cutlet with ham and cheese) and grilled vegetables were not as amazing but still good.
After lunch we visited the city's two famous medieval towers, half-covered in scaffolding but still impressive. Then we went to the San Stefano church complex but found it closed for lunch until 3:30 so headed to the Archaeological Museum with a brief stop at a bakery on the way. Passing through Piazza Galvani, I wondered if the statue on the pillar might be him, and indeed it was, holding a pair of frog legs and all. At the Archeological Museum we found that the entire second floor (Etruscans and Romans) was closed, but we saw a great collection of plaster casts of Roman sculptures and a lot of plundered Egyptian artifacts ("provenienza ignota"), but somewhere around the 5th Dynasty Kate admitted she was too pooped to go on.
On the way back to the hotel we passed gelateria Cremeria Funivia (Piazza Cavour 1/de). Noting the line out the door and well into the street, we decided that this would probably be a good choice for our last gelato in Italy. It was tough to choose flavors; Kate's choices of chocolate cake and strawberry were better than my coffee and "Contessa" (almond and amaretto) but they were all good.
We napped until about 6, then visited the hotel's roof terrace (under construction, but no workmen today on account of the holiday) and a bookstore before our dinner reservation at Drogheria della Rosa (Via Cartoleria 10).
As soon as we sat down we got the question "flat or fizzy?" (meaning: of course you will be having mineral water, do you want still or sparkling), which we expected, but then two small glasses of white wine and a "piccolo antipastini" of mortadella, prosciutto, and salami appeared, which we'd neither ordered nor expected. The waitress then asked us, in English, if we knew what we'd like to order. We pointed out that we had no menus and she said "I'll be your menu." (My guess is that the menu at Italian restaurants in Italy is consistent enough that many people just walk in and say "I feel like tortellini con pesce today" and the restaurant either can make it or can suggest something else, so there are no printed menus except for the tourists.) In any case, we had tortellini in brodo, eggplant ravioli with tomato and basil, a roast Guinea hen, and slices of very rare steak with salt and rosemary -- all fantastic, and accompanied by roast potatoes and mixed vegetables. A sweet dessert wine then appeared unbidden. For dessert we split an orange semifreddo with candied hazelnuts and a strawberry sauce, which was divine. Three different people then asked if we wanted coffee, wine, or grappa. We told them all no, but the last one (the owner, I think) came by with two tiny glasses of the house special grappa, with tiny strawberries floating in it, which was flavorful but too powerfully alcoholic for me to finish. We finally staggered home around 10:00. What a meal!
Again, no writing nor blogging, as we had to rise early the next morning. This entry was not written until we arrived in Vienna, but that's a tale for another blog post.
Posted 04/26/2012 12:41 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 128 Step count: 13,708
The host at our hotel blamed her husband ("men!") for failing to pick up yesterday's breakfast things, the same (as yet unseen) husband who failed to write down the reservation, though it was her name on the confirmation email. I theorize that there is no husband; Madame and her "sister" are actually lovers and the supposed husband is, like our friends' imaginary French maid Fifi who never, ever does any work, a nonexistent being whose purpose is to be blamed for things (nb: I do not really believe this).
Walked to the train station to get tickets for tomorrow's train to Bologna. Wound up with a ticket from the machine, but not a reservation. However, a human being assured us there would be no trouble getting a seat. Hope so.
Proceeded from the station by vaporetto to San Marco (after standing in a longish line at the vaporetto ticket booth, along with throngs of tourists just arrived by train). There we used a trick we'd been informed of by our walking tour guide: usually after you wait in the long line to get into the basilica, if you have a suitcase or backpack you are shunted off by the guard to the bag check a block away, then you return and are let in. So if you have a backpack, you go straight to the bag check, check your bag, and walk in without ever waiting in line. Rick Steves also suggests this trick, and it works, though I'm a bit uncertain it's ethical.
Once inside the basilica, we immediately turned right and went up the stairs to the balcony with the bronze horses (5 euros extra, and well worth it) before viewing the interior of the basilica itself; as we walked, we listened to Rick Steves's basilica-tour podcast for some background info. The main body of the basilica was crowded, crowded, crowded with a glacially-moving horde of tourists, most of whom were ignoring the signs about no photography, but it was still very impressive. We left right at noon and, after flailing around together in a futile search for lunch, decided to split up for the afternoon.
I wanted pizza, and went to a nearby restaurant that was supposed to have good pizza, though my online sources couldn't quite decide whether it was a pizza place or an Irish pub. It turned out not to be either, but I still got a quite nice panini with turkey, brie, and peppers. I still don't know the name of the place; many establishments here have no visible name at all.
After lunch I proceeded to Palazzo Grimani for the Canaletto exhibit. They had several dozen pages from his sketchbooks, about a dozen paintings, and two of his camera obscuras -- yes, he cheated, he traced his research sketches using a camera obscura. But he did design and build the instruments himself. This exhibit made it plain how much of a commercial artist he was, kind of like Thomas Kincaid in some ways; he painted what his wealthy clients (mostly English) wanted, and many of his paintings were nearly identical to each other. But I love his architectural details, and it was way cool to see three-hundred-year-old views of places I'd been myself just yesterday, not looking very much different. I stayed in the Canaletto exhibit until, to my surprise, the museum closed at 2:00, but I dashed through the rest of the palazzo on the way out and it was quite intriguing.
I headed off from there in search of the only penny-smashing machine in the city of Venice (there's one other on the mainland) and, somewhat to my surprise, actually found it, at a shop specializing in Beatles memorabilia that I'd passed several times before, all unknowing. After I'd smashed a couple of two-Euro-cent coins for Janna, it had begun to rain and, after considering my options, I decided to take the vaporetto back to the hotel for a nap. I texted Kate on the way to find out where she was, and she said she was near the Rialto bridge. Just then the vaporetto stopped at the Rialto station and I got off, and through the exchange of many texts we managed to find each other. Kate took me to a very good coffee shop (Cafe del Doge) and pizza place (Antico Forno, Ruga Rialto 970/973) she'd found for an afternoon pick-me-up. Somewhat refreshed, we went off in the rain for some shopping, but I don't think we wound up buying anything. We also passed by the Frari Church, for which we had another Rick Steves podcast audio guide, and stopped in. Glad we did -- it was packed with amazing art and architecture.
We had an... unusual... dinner at a place called Taverna Capitan Uncino (Santa Croce 1501), where Kate had "pizza fantastica" (it was okay) and I ordered "tagliatelle alla Buzzara" which I thought the waiter described as "shrimp with brown." I envisioned shrimp meat with brown butter, but what I got was tagliatelle with two enormous prawns in the shell and a half-dozen mussels likewise. On the principle of "eat the thing with eyes" I attacked the crustaceans with my fork and managed to get a decent quantity of meat out. The sauce was spicy and quite tasty, the tagliatelle perfect, but all in all that meal was more of an adventure than a satisfying culinary experience.
Back to the hotel around 9:00 for notes, writing, etc. Tomorrow we depart for Bologna. We're not quite ready to leave Venice -- there's so much we haven't seen yet -- but I'm getting rather tired of seafood.
Posted 04/23/2012 14:25 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
I just realized that I have been remiss in posting the names and addresses of the places we've been eating for others' reference. Here's the missing information, and I'll try to do better going forward.
Our hotel (it's been lovely): B&B Aquavenice, Rio Tera S. Leonardo 1371.
Thursday dinner (seafood risotto): Trattoria Misericordia, Fondamenta Misericordia Canaregio 2515.
Friday lunch (ravioli with pumpkin): Osteria da Carla, Corte Contarina San Marco 1535
Friday dinner: a variety of chicchetti bars including All'Arco (yummy eggplant thing), Do Collone (bacala), and ProntoPesce, Pescheria Rialto San Polo 319 (smoked swordfish mini-sandwich).
Saturday dinner (broccoli flan): Osteria Da Rioba, Fondamenta della Misericordia Sestiere Cannaregio 2552.
Sunday dinner (pistachio-crusted lamb): Anice Stellato, Fondamenta de la Sensa Sestiere Cannaregio 3272.
Posted 04/22/2012 23:59 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 199 Step count: 14,527
Got to bed at a more reasonable hour last night, then rose refreshed at 7:30 for an 8:00 breakfast before our 9:00 walking tour appointment. Alas, there were no fresh baked goods in our brekfast, due to the store not being open that early, but we got hot chocolate instead of the coffee, and also had yummy Greek yogurt (from Greece!) with honey and walnuts, which we'd bought at the store yesterday.
We walked and took a traghetto (stand-up cross-canal gondola ferry, 50c per person) to the rendezvous point for our "backstreets" walking tour, hosted by an expat American who escaped her crazed US lifestyle and now gives tours to fund her slower Venetian life. Interesting contrasts with yesterday's Venetian native; this one knew less about the city, more about what we'd find different about it. Highlights of the tour included the original city center with its "pillar of trvth;" a gondola-building yard (the building looking rather Swiss, due to the shipbuilders all coming from the Alps where the trees are); St. Trovaso church with two nearly identical entrances, built to keep two feuding families apart; Ponte dei Pugni bridge nearby, featuring marble footprints where battles between those same two feuding families traditionally began; the canal Katherine Hepburn fell into in the movie Summertime, and the little shop nearby that featured prominently in that movie; erased family crests over the doors of wealthy families' houses were ground off by Napoleon's soldiers, but if you see a ground-off winged lion, that was a sign of participation in a coup and was removed by the families themselves; "aqua alta" (exceptional high tide) comes up through the sewer grates and floods the streets, but if there were no grates the flagstones would just come up instead.
After the tour, had a very nice lunch: I had an extraordinary selection of vegetable antipasti and very light "gnocchi gigante. We then toured the Accademia, which our guide told us is free this week, and saw some really extraordinary paintings (especially some Bellinis of amazing color and clarity), until we got overwhelmed by the repetition of the same Biblical subjects over and over. We took the vaporetto home about 4:30, for a change returning to the hotel before we were completely exhausted. The views from the vaporetto were really cool and distinctly different from what we'd seen on shore. After taking Kate to the hotel (we have only one key), I ran to the store for more yogurt, then came back for a nap.
For dinner we had an 8:00 reservation (we'd asked our guide on the chiccetti tour to call ahead for us) at the other restaurant that had been fully booked on Thursday, so we have triumphed completely over all the restaurants that taunted us that day. We split the following dishes: an assortment of fish and vegetable chiccetti, the highlight of which for me was tandoori-style tuna; tagliatelle with a sauce involving ground duck; juicy lamb chops crusted with ground pistachios; rosemary-roasted potatoes; sesame carrots; tiramisu (a strange, rather liquid version that our waitress claimed was especially authentic); and cappucino. Got back to the hotel at 10:30, where I wrote a couple hundred words on the novel and got to bed by 11:00.
Posted 04/22/2012 13:52 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 161 Step count: 16,140
Stayed up until midnight again -- we've got to stop meeting like this -- before a 7:30 alarm for 8:00 breakfast. Breakfast was the same as yesterday, but without the corn flakes (did they read my blog?).
Walked to Fundamento Nove where we caught a vaporetto (boat bus) to San Michele cemetery, a completely square island where all Venice's dead are buried... at least for a while, until they are dug up and the bones interred in a common ossuary. Saw some interesting monuments in the Orthodox section.
From there we took another vaporetto to Murano, the island of glassmakers. First we visited the church there, which claimed a Bellini triptych which we never found (the light was terrible in any case). By then we were hungry and stupid, so we snagged a couple of panini, then went to the Museum of Glass, with a special exhibit of the work of the Ercole Moretti studio and many other beautiful pieces dating back to antiquity. What is it about glass that makes so many glass sculptures resemble sea creatures?
After the museum I spotted a little park and we rested there for a bit under a wisteria arbor. A kids' birthday party was going on, with Blindman's Bluff and other screaming jollity, under a banner reading AUGURI ("greetings").
We wandered around, stopping into various glass shops, and bought some beads for our friend Janna and an Ercole Moretti plate for ourselves. At the Mazzega glass factory, we ran into our tour guide from yesterday, leading another tour. She told us "you must come upstairs to see Paradise" and unhooked a chain to let us upstairs to the private showroom, an area as big as the rest of the establishment put together and filled with marvelous glass... huge pieces, some probably worth tens of thousands of dollars, including three-dimensional representations of some Picasso pieces. Wow, what a delightful bit of kismet!
Very tired and sore then, we went back to our hotel (Google's walking directions across a body of water included the usual "kayak across the Pacific Ocean" instruction, except that in this case the referenced ferry actually existed) with a stop at a fabulous-looking bakery for a lovely light piece of cheesecake (a nice bit of protein, given that a panini was the only thing we'd eaten since a fairly light breakfast) and a grocery store for cheese and yogurt to add to tomorrow's breakfast.
Fell over for an hour, then headed out for dinner. The pizza place we'd had in mind got bad reviews on TripAdvisor; the next place we tried sounded great but was "closed for maintenance." Then we tried one of the places that had looked wonderful on Thursday but was booked solid, thinking we might have a shot because it was earlier in the evening. They did manage to squeeze us in, barely, and we had a fabulous dinner: carrot, green apple, and leek soup; broccoli flan with Parmesan fondue and poppy seeds; five-color ravioli with prawn cream; and a very nummy vegetable lasagne.
Finally, back to the hotel to sort photos, do laundry, write, and blog. A great day.
Posted 04/21/2012 13:34 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 163 Step count: 18,572
Awake around 7:00 after 7 solid hours of sleep. We seem to be on Venice time, though still a bit tired and low on brain. I refuse to credit the homeopathic anti-jet-lag pills that our friends Bo and Don recommended (though I did take them), because I don't believe in homeopathy even if it works.
We were a bit disappointed to find last night that there were no blinds on the windows. This morning I realized: we are in Venice, so there are shutters instead (they are green, of course). Also should have remembered before I did that the pull string in the shower that doesn't seem to do anything is actually an "I've fallen and I can't get up" switch that triggers an audio alarm outside. I hope it was only audible in our room but, if not, I'm sure they're used to it by now.
Breakfast was delivered to the room right at 8:30: coffee, steamed milk, croissants with powdered sugar on the outside and apricot jam on the inside, cute little crusty bread rolls, several kinds of packaged rusks, some packaged cookies (?) that we didn't open, butter, jam, honey, Nutella. Continental breakfasts are not tidy; we wound up with powdered sugar and bread crumbs everywhere. There was also one small packet of corn flakes (though no bowl). I ate them in my coffee cup, with hot steamed milk, an experience I do not intend to repeat. There was also a largish clear plastic tumbler which is, I think, intended as a trash basket, and sugar in two varieties: "classico" (white) and "tropical" (brown).
After breakfast we wandered in a generally southeasterly direction toward an antiques-and-beads store Kate knew about, with many a diversion along the way. One highlight was the church of Santa Maria Formosa, where the portrait of kindly San Giovanni Bosco had offerings of cactus and amaryllis and plug-into-socket devotional candles (1 euro). At some other altars you could pay 50c to flip the switch on a preinstalled electric candle. S. Maria Formosa also featured an impressively large (adult-sized) baptismal font which we dubbed the "holy hot tub." Every altar was decorated with many many ornate silver hearts with "GR" and other initials; no one could explain these. Morning snack: panini "club rustico" with speck (ham), mushrooms, cheese. Found a lovely little hidden garden between Piazza San Marco and the lagoon, with grass and trees and benches, an oasis of tranquility just steps from hordes of tourists. Nearby was a hotel(?) with a covered gondola dock and a drawbridge that obviously hadn't been closed in years. When we did find the antiques shop it was closed, alas.
"Eat the thing with eyes" and "embrace not knowing" are our watchwords.
The famous Piazza San Marco was extremely crowded, with big lines to get into the basilica and campanile, but nonetheless we had to stop in. Then we headed to tucked-away-in-a-back-street Osteria da Carla, recommended by the "TapVenice" app, for lunch: cichetti assortment, pasta with zucchini & scallops, ravioli with pumpkin -- yum. After lunch we visited Teatro Fenice (Phoenix), an ornate opera hall that has lived up to its name, having been destroyed several times, most recently by a 1996 fire, and rebuilt each time. The building was impressive, also the original architect's model from 1790, but the audio tour was interminable, being delivered exceptionally slowly and with repetitious redundancy that repeated itself a lot. We theorized that the English-language audio was made exceptionally clear, so that it might serve for all those whose native languages were not covered, at the cost of brevity for native English speakers. Came out of the theatre to discover we'd missed a downpour (excellent timing!) and decided to head back to the room for a nap, with a brief stop at St. Stephen's to view the impressive ship-like ceiling.
After our nap we met our tour guide for a private "chicetti crawl" we'd booked online ahead of time. Chicetti is basically Venetian tapas, an assortment of small dishes. We visited four or five different chicetti bars, sampling various small and delicious things on bread and drinking prosecco and "spritz" (a popular Venetian aperitif combining Aperol, white wine, and sparkling water), chatting with our guide about Venetian life and history on the way and finishing up with gelato. Had a bit of difficulty finding our way back to the hotel as the sun set, but being lost is just part of the Venice experience (and it's an island, how lost can you really get?).
Posted 04/20/2012 14:21 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 161 Step count: 10,015
Stayed up until 1 AM the night before the trip dealing with various issues (mostly ebook-related... paper books weigh more, but they don't crash) and woke up at 5:00 with mind spinning, so started this long long day with 4 hours' sleep.
The good news is that we did this flight in business class on Air France. We cashed in every Alaska frequent flyer mile we had, and then some, to do it, but it was well worth it -- long-haul upgrades are your best air-miles investment. On our first leg, from PDX to LAX, a fellow business-class traveler was Claire Coffee, the actress who plays the Hexenbiest in Grimm.
At LAX, getting from our Alaska gate to the Air France lounge took an entire hour (including a brief visit to Alaska's lounge, bus to the other terminal, check in at the Air France ticket desk, and getting through security) which didn't bode well as our layover in Paris, also involving a change in terminals, was only a little more than an hour all told.
Our five-hour layover in the Air France lounge went really quickly, mostly dealing with various computer issues and some email -- including an agent rejection, alas. The agent liked the book but "I just don't believe I could sell this. There aren't really any YA editors with any understanding of hard-ish SF, and even if I found someone, I can't see this getting through acquisition somewhere." Argh.
On the LAX-Paris flight, I watched Mission Impossible 4 (silly fun), slept about 6 hours, did a little reading. Air France's food in Business Class was actually delicious, and we made it across huge DeGaulle airport (1.52 miles' walk, according to my pedometer), through passport control and security, and to our gate with time to spare. Whew! Hearing the babel of languages at CDG reminds me that travel forces us to question our assumptions ("of course everyone talks like me, eats like me, dresses like me, lives like me") -- you learn that there are other ways to do things that you had never even realized you were doing at all.
Another excellent meal (technically a snack - it was small and cold - but it had 3 courses and it was delicious) on the plane to Venice. We never did get looked at by Customs; I think I saw some guys in Douane vests talking with each other at CDG as we walked past. It was raining when we arrived, so we decided to take the bus (quick and cheap) into Venice rather than the boat (slower and more scenic, but not so nice on a gray day). The walk from the bus stop to the hotel was a bit of a slog, especially with wheelie bags over those picturesque stepped bridges, but WOW we are really here at last!
The hotel was a bit surprised to see us (our host muttered darkly about her husband not writing down our reservation in the book; I suspect those two will Have Words later) but they did honor our reservation and set us up in a charming little room with mini-fridge and bidet. We threw down our bags, brushed our teeth, and went out in search of dinner. We found several really nice-looking, popular restaurants but they were Fully Committed; most of the rest were either too touristy (multi-lingual menus, obnoxious touts) or too underpopulated or both, or else chicceti bars which we didn't have the brain power to deal with. The good news is that the search gave us a lovely walk and I got to appreciate the way the character of the light changed minute by minute as the sun went down.
We wound up at a restaurant on a side street, with a multilingual menu but decently crowded and had a nice vibe, where we had a very nice dinner of tomato and onion bruschetta, grilled veg antipasto (Kate had sardines as well), seafood risotto (tentacles!) and a lovely assortment of fried seafood (Italian tempura). We did let ourselves get upsold into a pretty pricey dinner but still a lovely start to the trip.
Tomorrow, we tourist in earnest.
Posted 04/19/2012 14:54 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Last night's SFWA Pacific Northwest Reading Series reading in Portland, the first once since I took over from Mary Robinette Kowal, went off smashingly. The crowd was a bit smaller than last time, perhaps because this one was on a Monday rather than a Tuesday, but those who attended had a fabulous time.
Tonight (Tuesday) the series returns to the Seattle area with another reading at the Wild Rover Restaurant and Pub, 111 Central Way, Kirkland, WA 98033. New York Times Best-selling author Kat Richardson hosts and reads, along with Ted Kosmatka and Shanna Germain. The reading begins at 7:00 and is free and open to the public. For more information and to RSVP, please see http://www.sfwa.org/for-readers/sfwa-northwest-reading-series/.
Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend the Kirkland reading this time, because tomorrow morning we are flying off to Venice!
We'll be spending a month in Europe on what we're calling the "Fallen Empires Tour:" Venice, Bologna, Vienna, several towns in the Czech Republic, Prague, Dresden, and Berlin. I must confess I'm a little freaked out that this is finally happening after so many months of planning, but I expect we'll have a blast. I hope to blog frequently, with photos, during the trip, but that will depend on the availability of time, energy, and wifi. Take good care of the US while we're gone.
Posted 04/17/2012 13:55 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
On Thursday I was one of the judges for the Design A Martian Habitat Contest for students grades K-12. My part of the process was to look over each entry and provide a few comments as well as a grade from 0.0 to 4.0 for Originality, Feasibility, Science and Engineering, Essay, and Total. My comments and grades, along with those of the other judges, will be used in the final determination of the winners. At least two judges will grade each entry.
There were a lot of entries. I got through about half of the ones from the grade 5-8 section. Most of those were from grade 5.
I was very impressed. Almost all of the entries identified the most pressing issues for human survival on Mars and provided plausible solutions to those issues. Many of the essays were very well written and most were accompanied by a vivid and enthusiastic illustration of the habitat design. My hat's off to these kids.
Even the best essays, however, contained occasional phrases that, for all their sincerity, made me laugh out loud. (And I must emphasize that some of these came from essays I graded highly.) So here's a "greatest hits" composite essay with all the bits that were just too much fun not to share. Every sentence below came from an actual entry, with spelling, capitalization, and punctuation exactly as shown...
INTRODUCTION MY MARS HABITAT
by David, grade 5Mars is the coolest place on earth. Mars is an amazing planet and we need to be prepared for Whatever its surface beholds.
Jonah is going to Mars. He brings food, water, air, metal, tools, spacesuit, more air, plants to make more air with, and his guitar. First, he goes to Phobos. Phobos is like rocks.
And off they traveled in to the unknown bounders of space only to find the planet mars ...
AIR, WATER, FOOD, AND GRAVITYThe astronauts brought big, warm puffy coats and lots of blankets to keep them warm; they also brought materials that would make the bad air from outside turn into good air that they could breathe only in their air tight shelter.
Astronauts will gather water from the ice caps. They will collect the ice and bring it down to a vat of hot water. The ice will melt and the astronauts will have water. I would test it to see if you could drink it. I would take all the chemicals out of it.
They will get gravity by using the gravity box that NASA has lent them. They will also wear heated clothes that look kind of like a space suit but not as fat looking.
I would bring a food supply that would last years. I will need apples, water, meat and a refrigerator to store food. I would also bring beans.
Since Mars's atmosphere is thinner than ours and since the UV rays and solar radiation would burn them bad I thought they could just wear thick hats and cloths and allot of sunscreen while their outside so they wouldn't have a problem with that.
Because of the low pressure they have most of there things attached to the ground, they also need a (n) electric compressor.
Since low pressure can give u a headache they are going to have to bring allot of Aspirin. And since it can make your ears pop they are going to bring a lot of gum and gummy bears and gummy worms.
Jonah didn't bring his friends. Sometimes it's dark.
DESIGN OF THE HABITATThere is no breathable air on mars. So after they finish the space station they will take bottles of oxygen and spray the whole building. All doors are sealed shut unless they are opened.
The astronauts shot electricity into the atmosphere to separate fhe oxygen from the other gasses. They store it in an underground tank. There is a plug with a rope attached to it that hangs out into the science lab. To release oxygen, you pull on the rope. There are strips of rubber strapping the plug to the tank, so if you let go of the rope, the plug snaps back into place. [I gave this one high marks. Low tech = reliable!]
There is going to be a cafeteria on the middle floor, and astronauts will have mini fridges in their room. There is a connection from the cafeteria to the food cellar where the cook can pull up food.
In the bathroom you have to Deposit your waste into a bucket, then poor it in to the waste shoot. Your waste then goes down to the burning room where it is burned. This produces heat for the Base.
Since I already explained about the bathrooms, the water, and the food I will explain about the beds. They are not bunk beds but they are just regular single beds. Every astronaut gets their own bed. In the morning they have to go all the way to the dressing rooms to get dressed. [I suspect the writer of this paragraph has to share a bedroom.]
I was thinking like in the airplanes have oxygen masks you could hang them every where in your headquarters. You would be safe wherever you walked!
They would do all of their experiments and more in their lab which is part of their home and they would aloes bring all the tools they would need for the experiments, like test tubes, spoons, gloves ext.
There is a door to the janitors closet ( for spills and puke etc. )
Jonah wants to talk to people on Earth. He wants to set up Skype because of his laptop. He will hook up to his solar panels. He will need a special antenna. He will have to build it. It will have to be really big. It will take Jonah seven days to build it. He will grow food and air from plants. He will go and get rocks and make dirt for the plants. Now he is ready to talk to Earth.
EXPLORATIONFor science experiments, they could study the rocks. They would go out in their astronaut suits and grab a rock. When they got back inside they could study it.
This is special iron. Every time you hit it, it blows up.
the second thing they saw was the space ranger that they have heard many stories about but never dreamed they would see it in person but now there it was all dusty,
'We need to see if we are not alone. So we need to go back inside and get more air for are tanks. "Then we can go and see if there is anyone else here on This stinking planit named mars."
CONCLUSIONWhen astronauts go to mars they need to be prepared. Mars is a far away planet. But then again, not so far away.
My conclusion is that if you go up to Mars you should be prepared. This essay will make sure of that. If you don't have all of these things you will probably not be happy. I hope you take this into consideration.
Posted 04/14/2012 09:39 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
I'm off to Seattle (blogging from the train at the moment, actually) where I will be one of the judges for the Design A Martian Habitat Contest for students grades K-12. I've never done this sort of thing before, so it should be fun!
This will be a flying visit and I'll be heading home tomorrow.
Posted 04/12/2012 09:38 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
The greater Pacific Northwest is home to Ursula K. Le Guin, Kay Kenyon, Jay Lake, Nancy Kress, Brent Weeks, Ted Chiang and Ramona Quimby. Although Ramona isn't known for her Science Fiction and Fantasy escapades, the rest are, and will be celebrated as part of the Pacific Northwest Reading Series. These free quarterly events provide the Northwest Science Fiction and Fantasy community a chance to gather, network and enjoy readings from local authors.
Each event starts with notes from the host, a leading local author, who has selected two of their favorite writers to complete the evening's theme. In turn, each is given time to read from their latest work, interpreting and explaining their concepts and vision. In addition, space is provided for networking and conversation.
The next quarterly reading in Portland will be on Monday April 16, from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM, at McMenamins Kennedy School, 5736 N.E. 33rd Ave. Portland, OR 97211. New York Times Best-selling author Lillith Saintcrow will be hosting and reading, along with with Ted Kosmatka and Shanna Germain.
The next day the series proceeds to Seattle, on Tuesday April 17, also from 7:00 to 8:30 PM, at the Wild Rover Restaurant and Pub, 111 Central Way, Kirkland, WA 98033. New York Times Best-selling author Kat Richardson hosts and reads, along with Ted Kosmatka and Shanna Germain.
Both events are free and open to the public. For more information and to RSVP, please see http://www.sfwa.org/for-readers/sfwa-northwest-reading-series/
Posted 04/09/2012 12:25 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
In my experience, compact fluorescent bulbs generally have a five to ten year guarantee and generally do not last nearly that long. I always save the package (or at least the guarantee and anything it calls for, typically the UPC) and the receipt, and write the installation date on the base of the bulb when I install it. Whenever one burns out, I check the date against the guarantee; if it's less than the guaranteed lifetime I put the receipt and UPC in an envelope and send them to the manufacturer, who usually sends me one or more coupons for free light bulbs. They cost as much as twelve bucks a package, so it's worth the effort for me.
Posted 04/07/2012 23:24 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 12440 | Since last entry: -180
My story "The White Raven's Feather" is now available on the Daily Science Fiction website.
Also, the anthology Armored, including my story "The Last Days of the Kelly Gang," is now available at bookstores everywhere and as a DRM-free ebook.
Finally, you can hear a radio interview with me on Talk of the Gorge.
Posted 04/05/2012 21:29 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 12620 | Since last entry: 503
Heading off later today to the Bay Area for FOGcon. I'll be on the following program items:
Friday 4:30 PM, Salon B/C: Designing Alien Bodies. Aliens are probably going to have very different biology than humans do. How do bodies evolve from their surrounding environments? What might be different if an alien evolved in a waterless wasteland, or a chlorine swamp, or in the goo-powered city we designed at FOGcon 1? Ann Wilkes (Moderator), Carol Dorf, M. Christian, David Levine. Friday 9:30 PM, Sacramento: Mars Wants Our Genitals. Humanity has often been described as exogamous -- if it's strange, and new, we want to have sex with it. This was simple enough when it was the people from the group down the river who spoke strangely -- but what will it mean as we move out into the universe? Writers have already gone there -- James Tiptree Jr.'s "And I Awoke And Found Me Here By The Cold Hill's Side", for example. How will we relate to a universe whose expectations of sex (if they exist at all) may be very, very different from ours? Shannon Prickett (Moderator), Mary Anne Mohanraj, Steven Schwartz, David Levine, Jean Marie Stine. Saturday 8:00 PM, Salon B/C: Ask a Pro. Ask a professional writer anything you like about craft, business, or whatever you want to know. David Levine (Moderator), Nalo Hopkinson, Rachel Swirsky, Jean Marie Stine, Nick Mamatas. Sunday 1:00 PM, Santa Rosa: Reading 11. Daniel Marcus, David Levine, Chaz Brenchley.Posted 03/29/2012 07:57 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 12117 | Since last entry: 7043
Some of you have heard me read from my story "The Last Days of the Kelly Gang," AKA the Steampunk Ned Kelly Power Armor Story. It's longish, so I've never had the opportunity to read the whole thing and I always end on a massive cliffhanger.
This had a purpose. The purpose is to make you salivate to buy the story on the day it comes out. And that day is here!
Armored, a big fat anthology of power-armor stories edited by John Joseph Adams and published by Baen, is now available "wherever fine books are sold," as they say. (Also, presumably, where crappy books are sold, but please don't hold that against it.) I recommend that you buy it from Powell's. You can also buy the ebook directly from Baen in a wide variety of DRM-free formats.In addition to my story, Armored includes stories by Tobias Buckell, Genevieve Valentine, Jack McDevitt, Simon R. Green, David Barr Kirtley (I love that one), Michael A. Stackpole, Alastair Reynolds, Tanya Huff, Carrie Vaughn, Daniel H. Wilson, and others. And if that isn't enough to convince you to buy it, you can check out the editor's website for the book which includes several sample stories, interviews with the authors, and more.
Ding! Ding! Salivate, little readers, salivate! And buy!
Posted 03/27/2012 13:09 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 5074 | Since last entry: 4274
The deadline for Hugo Award nominations is March 11, and I hope that you will consider my stories "The Tides of the Heart" (fantasy short story, from Realms of Fantasy) and "Citizen-Astronaut" (SF novelette, from Analog).
You can read them for free here:
The HTML files are plain old web pages that you can read in any browser. The EPUB files are ebooks that you can download and read on your computer, phone, tablet, or ebook reader; they are completely free and unencumbered by DRM. The MOBI files are ebooks for the Kindle ebook reader; they are also completely free and unencumbered by DRM.
- Tides of the Heart (HTML)
- Citizen-Astronaut (HTML)
- Tides of the Heart (EPUB)
- Citizen-Astronaut (EPUB)
- Tides of the Heart (MOBI for Kindle) NEW!
- Citizen-Astronaut (MOBI for Kindle) NEW!
This is the first time I've done an ebook conversion, so if you have any feedback on the formatting, appearance, navigability, readability, or other quality of the ebook, please email me.
Enjoy!
Posted 03/07/2012 09:51 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 800 | Since last entry: 800
I'm on the SF Signal podcast! I haven't listened to it yet but I had fun recording it. I kind of ragged on Amazon... http://sfsignal.com/?p=51187
Posted 03/02/2012 10:44 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Over on a mailing list I'm on, there's been a discussion about how wrong the movies and TV often are about guns (e.g. how easy it is to hit a target while jumping, running, etc.), which led to a discussion of how wrong fiction often is about other things, like horses and computers.
I've learned that the more you know about anything (computers, horses, guns, medicine), the more you realize that fiction and the popular press get them completely wrong. It's really not a good idea to believe anything you read.
When writing popular fiction, you will never be able to satisfy 100% of your readers with the accuracy of your portrayals (the TV show ER had several doctors on staff as technical advisers, and they often disagreed even with each other), so there's no point in researching too much or worrying too much about getting it 100% right. Furthermore, even completely accurate facts, backed up with research and personal experience, may bounce the reader out of the story if they conflict too much with the reader's expectations. But if you rely only on what you remember from reading fiction, not only will your facts be wrong but the story will be lazy, flabby, and unsurprising.
It's a balancing act. The trick is to do just enough research that you can surprise your readers (the average reader) with unexpected details that make the work feel fresh and realistic.
Often the only way to get to that point is to do too much research and then, reluctantly, leave a lot of the really cool stuff out.
Posted 02/20/2012 09:12 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
I have received my programming schedule for Potlatch (February 24-26 in Seattle):
Saturday 10:00 AM: Walter Miller ReadingThe complete Potlatch program is available online.
Saturday 4:00 PM: The Author as Reader
Sunday 1:00 PM: E-Publishing PanelI will also be leading a section of the Writers' Workshop on Friday afternoon (sign-ups for which are already closed). Potlatch is one of my favorite small conventions and I'm looking forward to this year's edition with great eagertudinosity.
On a related note: as you may know, Potlatch is closely associated with the Clarion West writers' workshop, of which I am a proud alumnus and supporter. Applications for this year's workshop, with seven fabulous instructors including Mary Rosenblum, George R. R. Martin, and Chuck Palahniuk, are now open, but the deadline is March 1. Apply now!
Posted 02/13/2012 13:16 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 24965 | Since last entry: 13070
Our films in this year's Portland International Film Festival will be crammed into just a few days due to lots of travel in February. We're seeing one or two films a day for a week, and that's it.
So far we have seen...
Target (Russia) reminded me a lot of Kubrick, especially A Clockwork Orange. Stately in its pace, full of intriguing ideas, with gorgeous cinematography and subtle but effective touches to convey the near-future Russia of 2020, it's beautifully made. But it drove us out of the theatre with its relentless violence, appalling misogyny, numerous scenes of ugly joyless sex, and complete lack of any admirable qualities in its characters. It takes a lot to make me walk out of a movie, but this film managed it. this review is pretty much the one I would write if I wanted to spend any more time thinking about this film, which I don't. A Cat in Paris (France) was a delight. An animated film with a colorful, energetic visual style that reminded me of Lynda Barry, it was full of adventure, humor, and fun. Tightly plotted, with serious tension, great moments of humor, and some genuine human emotion, this film works at multiple levels. The villain manages to be ludicrous and seriously threatening at the same time, there are some delightfully unexpected visual tricks, and the score is fabulous. Also, the cat (although smarter than the average cat) is a cat, and manages to be the film's central character without talking, fetching things (other than a dead lizard), or doing anything else impossible for a cat in the real world. Highly recommended for adults and kids. Hello! How Are You? (Romania), an Eastern European You've Got Mail!, was a bit of a mixed bag. A romantic comedy about a long-married couple who each begin an online flirtation with a stranger, the best thing about this film is the subsidiary characters, especially their horndog son whose self-aggrandizing audio diary provides unconscious insight into the lives of his parents. This is a movie about sex and romance, and how sometimes getting what you thought you wanted is the worst thing that can happen. And, although I describe it as a romantic comedy and I laughed out loud on many occasions, the overall impression I came away with is sweetly sad. A reminder, as many romantic comedies are, of how important it is to communicate with one's partner.Posted 02/12/2012 08:17 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
As you may know, the Science Fiction Writers of America have been holding a quarterly reading series at the Kennedy School in Portland. They are also inaugurating a reading series in the Seattle area. See http://www.sfwa.org/for-readers/sfwa-northwest-reading-series/ for more information.
Ted Kosmatka, one of the scheduled readers for this week's readings, has had to drop out due to a death in the family, and I've been asked to step in. So if you'd like to hear me read from my upcoming story "The Last Days of the Kelly Gang" (a steampunk power-armor story set in the Australian Outback in 1880), along with John A. Pitts (Portland and Seattle), Ken Scholes (Portland), and possibly a special guest star (Seattle), you can come to the readings as follows:
PORTLAND:
Tuesday, January 31
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
McMenamins Kennedy School, 5736 N.E. 33rd Ave. Portland, OR 97211
RSVP (optional) at http://is.gd/cmg5HRSEATTLE:
Wednesday, February 1
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Wild Rover Restaurant and Pub, 111 Central Way, Kirkland, WA 98033
RSVP (optional) at http://is.gd/F30PviBoth events are free and open to the public. Beer, wine, and other typical bar fare will be available for purchase. Dancing is optional, but not discouraged. Hope to see you there!
P.S. Because of the extremely late notice, I hope that you will help me out by mentioning this reading in your blog, Twitter, Facebook, or Sub-Etha Mental Communicator Stream. Thanks!
Posted 01/30/2012 10:32 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
The fabulous Alpha SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers (ages 14-19) will be held July 18-27, 2012 in Pittsburgh, PA. At Alpha, students can meet others who share their interest in writing science fiction, fantasy, and horror. They can learn about writing and publishing from guest authors, including Tamora Pierce and Kij Johnson. Also, they will write and revise a short story during the workshop. Applications are due March 1, 2012.
The workshop is currently holding a fundraising auction, where you can bid on items from Ellen Kushner, John Joseph Adams, Elizabeth Bear, Theodora Goss, and many more, including me!
The auction runs through January 20 and can be found at href="http://alphafundraiser.wordpress.com. Go and bid!
Posted 01/17/2012 23:41 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 11895 | Since last entry: 1962
So that was Guadalajara. All in all, even if I hadn't gotten sick I think I would give it a mixed review. Though Guadalajara is the second biggest city in Mexico, there didn't really seem to be a lot of different things to do there. Where were the theatres, the major museums, the department stores, the galleries? Guadaljara's population is comparable to San Diego, Phoenix, or Philadelphia, but it just felt like an enormous, sprawling small town. Street after street was crowded with tiny shops, and more than half of them were tightly shuttered, with no signage or other information whatsoever about what they might sell or when they might be open.
Lack of information and infrastructure was a general problem. There were no bus maps or schedules available, and many places were not open when they were supposed to be (nor was there any indication that schedules had changed). Bus stops were rarely identified by signs and even when they were the bus might not stop there, even for Mexicans (on the other hand, you could generally flag one down wherever you spotted one). I had to wonder how the country functions at all. To some extent I believe that the answer is that it doesn't, not the way Americans expect; the other answer is that it functions quite well at a local level. Most people know where and when their bus runs, when their shops are open, and when there are changes they find out simply because they are there every day. But it's hard for a tourist.
We did eat pretty well (and I am not going to fault Guadalajara, or any particular food or restaurant, for making me sick; these things do just happen when you expose yourself to unfamiliar microbes), but I wasn't impressed by the variety and quality of the food on offer. France or Italy is a place you go for the food. Japan astounded with the wide variety of very different Japanese cuisines and the astonishing deliciousness of each in the hands of its specialist chefs. Even German cuisine, though unbelievably heavy by modern US standards, often surprised me with the subtlety of its flavors. But the Mexican food we found in Guadalajara was largely variations on a theme, and not much different or better than good Mexican food we've had in the States.
But. The people were uniformly friendly and very generous with their time and information. The little streets with their hand-painted signs were real and picturesque in a way that, for example, the Africa and Asia themed areas of Disney's Animal Kingdom can only approximate. Our B&B was fabulous. We did have one extraordinary meal, at El Sacromonte, and visited some delightful small museums.
So, mixed review. But I think I would go back, because I was really only able to give it two full days of touristing and I think it deserves more than that. And it was an experience of a world different from my usual, which is what travel is all about.
And now, some photos.
The delightful sunny entrance area of our B&B
The tub was decorated with original art and Aztec-style sculptures
The sink was equipped with large dual mirrors, yet you could not see yourself (note the weird floating elbows)
Los Arcos, the Arc de Triomphe of Guadalajara. There's a museum at the top but it was closed.
Weird-ass tentacled tortoise-shell-baby-head sculptures
Masks of scary Indigenous People at the ceramics museum
Detail of one of the masks
Santiago (Saint James) comes down from heaven, in the form of a caballero, to whip those scary Indigenous People into submission. Not shown: the Three Kings, who also come to help.
The very impressive Templo Expiatorio
Interior of the Templo Expiatorio. Did not get a good shot looking up into the light-filled stained-glass spire.
The Delta-Winged Queen of Heaven
Another DWQH. She may or may not be the Virgin of Zapopan.
You may have heard that Mexico is inexpensive, but it is not! (A fib. Mexico uses the $ sign for pesos, and each peso is worth about 11¢ US.)Posted 01/17/2012 12:13 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 9933 | Since last entry: 131
Not my best vacation days ever.
Yesterday I woke up with an upset tummy. Took some Pepto-Bismol, but after I could eat only a few bites of Francisco's yummy homemade tamales I realized that what I really needed was to go back to bed. Which I did. And stayed there all day, sleeping off and on. I spent a little more time in the bathroom than usual, but mostly it was just a sore tummy and a total lack of energy and appetite. Apart from sleeping, I read The Windup Girl (which is going to leave me very confused about what country I've been in) and wrote a minimal amount of words just to keep up the streak. Francisco fixed me a boiled-rice concoction from his grandmother's recipe ("it's good for the body") but I couldn't drink more than half a cup of it.
I don't know what it was specifically that did me in. Kate also had some tummy troubles but wasn't laid low the way I was, which means that it was either the barbacoa at 9 Corners (which was the only thing I ate that she didn't) or else I was just more susceptible than she was. She had a fairly low-key day of touristing without me.
Somewhat better this morning; well enough to fly home, anyway. By the time we hit LAX (which is where I am right now) I was positively chipper. We have a 5-hour layover here, so we got passes to the United Club and are making use of its quiet, comfy chairs, wifi, and snacks.
I'm not going to let this put me off of Mexico completely, but it'll be good to be home.
Posted 01/15/2012 18:01 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 9802 | Since last entry: 163
After another fabulous breakfast, we walked downtown toward the Museo de la Ciudad (City Museum) with stops at the Templo Expiatorio (a lovely church whose spire is completely done in stained glass, also featuring the Delta-Winged Queen of Heaven), a bakery, and some weird-ass sculptures of creatures with turtle bodies, twelve-foot tentacles, and baby heads. The museum told us a bit of Guadalajara history, though the text of the exhibits was written in more complex language than the House of the Dogs and thus was harder for me to understand.
We had lunch at La Chata (as seen on Rudy Maxa's PBS TV show, though we didn't realize this until we arrived) where we split the "house special platter," then went to catch a #706 express bus to Tlaquepaque, but when a #707 came by Kate changed her mind and said "okay, we're going to Tonalá instead." On the way I kind of panicked, because as I tracked our progress using the Maps app on my phone, the bus (for which we had nothing resembling a route map) didn't seem to be heading anywhere near Tonalá, in fact it was heading off into the wilds of nowhere. Then I discovered that there are at least three and possibly as many as five towns and localities called Tonalá in this vicinity, and though we were not heading for the one Google Maps found for me, we were heading right for the one that Kate wanted.
It wasn't a market day in Tonalá (we had avoided that deliberately, because it's jammed on market day) but for this reason many of the shops were closed. Nonetheless, we had a good time browsing many small shops selling handicrafts, furniture, and art. Curiously, we saw no postcards, T-shirts, or any of the other usual tourist kitch at all. Then we visited the ceramics museum (where we saw an exhibit of tiles showing various concepts of the Nahual, the mythical totem animal of Tonalá; amazingly detailed ceramic sculptures; and dozens of ceramic masks from the annual ceremony of St. Santiago Whips the Indigenous Peoples Into Submission Day -- you can't make this shit up) and the Regional Museum (a tiny place with a small exhibit of ceramics including a bunch of interesting funeral urns).
After a brief stop for some kiwi-strawberry iced tea, we caught a bus to Tlaquepaque for dinner. But on the way, Kate checked her guidebook and discovered that two of the things she wanted to see there would be closed by the time we got there, so we just stayed on the bus until it got back to Guadalajara. Had dinner at the 9 Corners Bierria, yummy carne asada al carbon and barbacoa, then caught another bus back to the B&B, where I wrote up my notes for the day and enough words of fiction to satisfy my new year's resolution. No promises about whether or not it's going to be worth keeping...
Brain dead now. G'night!
Posted 01/13/2012 19:20 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 9639 | Since last entry: 1146
So here we are in Mexico. It actually smells somewhat different from home, a dusty spicy sort of smell. But it doesn't feel as foreign as Japan or Thailand, or even Italy. More foreign than Canada or Australia, though.
Our language study has paid off. My comprehension isn't nearly as good as I would like it to be, but I can communicate well enough to ask "is the restaurant Caffe Mondo near here?" and kind of understand the answer. Kate is still doing most of the talking, but at least I can make out the signs at the museums.
The Guadalajara airport is all spruced up for last year's Pan American Games. At Customs you press a button and get a red or green light indicating whether you've been randomly selected for screening, and the taxis (all of which are new) are dispatched from a central window where you pay in advance. Both of these are designed to prevent corruption by removing power from individuals who might otherwise shake the tourists down.
Our B&B is in a rather industrial area but very nice inside, and our host is friendly and chatty. The dog, Nuahal, is one of the quietest, most polite little dogs I've ever met. I'm not a dog person but I could actually like this one. This morning's breakfast was fabulous: strong coffee; OJ; cocoa; fruit with yogurt (with flax seeds) and granola (with pepitas and bee pollen); light omelet with ham, mushrooms, and peppers and a fiery tomatillo salsa; delicious beans; and aerodynamic tortilla chips with holes in.
This morning we started off by taking the bus downtown to the tourist info office in city hall. It wasn't there any more, but we did see a couple of enormous and rather insane murals by the famous local artist Orozco. We did find a TI eventually, where we got maps but, alas, no info on the buses. We also stopped by the Teatro Degollado to find out about availability of tickets; we saw a huge Christmas-themed sand sculpture and the famous bas relief of the founding of Guadalajara, but the ticket office was not open (though the sign on the wall claimed it was supposed to be). From there we walked to the Rotunda of Famous Guadalajarans, then to the Casa de los Perros (House of the Dogs), once the home of a famous dog fancier and now a museum of journalism. There we saw famous revolutionary newspapers (looking rather like fanzines), old printing presses, UPI wire photo machines, and an old radio studio; upstairs, an exhibit on the Spanish diaspora and a fun exhibit of prints by students from the museum's printing workshop on the topic "Insectos Santos." The bathroom held some surprises: you must pick up toilet paper on the way in, and the urinals had valves rather than flush handles (but the sinks had push buttons).
With some difficulty we found a mercado, where we had tacos al pastor and tortas ahogados (sandwiches "drowned" in sauce) for lunch, then took the bus back to our B&B for a nap. After that we went back out by bus to Los Arcos (an interesting monument, but the museum within was closed), the Orozco museum (closed for painting, but they let us in to see the one mural still on display) and the statue of Minerva (in the middle if a very busy traffic circle). So the theme for the day is "we went there, but it was closed." I gather this is kind of par for the course in Mexico.
By then it was dinner time, so we made our way to the above-mentioned Caffe Mondo, but in keeping with the theme of the day it had been replaced by a yogurt shop. Fortunately, Kate knew of another nearby restaurant, El Sacromonte, where we had an excellent dinner (me: Pollo El Delirio, stuffed chicken breasts with a pineapple-sesame sauce; Kate: lengua) and finally walked back to the B&B. Total walking for the day, according to Kate's pedometer: 18,940 steps (8 miles, 700 calories). I logged my food and exercise as best I could and came up with a net of 123 calories BELOW my target for the day... no wonder we don't gain weight while traveling.
After returning home for the day I wrote a few hundred words on the novel. Following a suggestion from Mary Robinette Kowal, I'm not paying such close attention to the voice and it's going much, much faster (I wrote over 800 words in less than an hour on the plane). Of course, this will mean more work later.
Posted 01/12/2012 20:44 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 8493 | Since last entry: 4353
As you can see from the word count above, I've been sticking to my resolution of at least 1000 words per day on weekdays, 100 words per day on weekends and travel days. But it's been hard. This project is set in a historical period that requires a different voice from my usual, and I sometimes have to look up two or three words per sentence. That slows me down, which means that to get my 1000 words in I have to work for three or four hours, and I've often been sacrificing sleep to do it. I hope that as I settle into the voice and become more comfortable with the vocabulary it will go faster. But right now I am very tired.
At the moment we are off to sunny Mexico for a few days. I will keep writing every day -- in fact, I anticipate I'll get a lot done on the plane today -- but I'm not going to worry about word count until we return.
Posted 01/11/2012 11:32 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
The two stories of mine from last year that I'm proudest of are "The Tides of the Heart" (short story) from Realms of Fantasy and "Citizen-Astronaut" (novelette) from Analog. One is a fantasy, the other is hard SF, and both were published in the same month (June 2011), which tickles my fancy.
As an experiment, I'm making them available for free on my web site in HTML and EPUB format:
The HTML files are plain old web pages that you can read on any browser. The EPUB files are ebooks that you can download and read on your computer, phone, tablet, or ebook reader; they are completely free and unencumbered by DRM.
- Tides of the Heart (HTML)
- Citizen-Astronaut (HTML)
- Tides of the Heart (EPUB)
- Citizen-Astronaut (EPUB)
This is the first time I've done an ebook conversion, so if you have any feedback on the formatting, appearance, navigability, readability, or other quality of the ebook, please email me.
Enjoy!
Posted 01/06/2012 08:59 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 4140 | Since last entry: 2382
We're taking a trip to Guadalajara this month (in fact, we leave in less than a week, aiee) and we've been studying Spanish with the Pimsleur CDs since Thanksgiving. I've never studied Spanish before, but I do have a couple of years each of Latin and French and a little Italian under my belt... which helps in some ways (I've already been exposed to concepts like grammatical gender) and hinders in others (when I reach for a Spanish word, my brain rummages in the "Romance languages I kind of know" bag and hands me something which may or may not be correct). I feel rather overwhelmed, but my experience with Japanese tells me that even a little bit of the local language helps enormously.
Yesterday our Spanish lesson included phrases such as "Yo estoy enfermo" (I am sick) and "Necesito un médico" (I need a doctor). It's sometimes kind of strange when a CD makes me lie in a foreign language (e.g. making me say "Me gusta la cerveza"), but as I was saying those things I realized that I was, in fact, feeling a bit of a scratchy throat coming on. It was as though I was actually getting sick from exposure to the concept in Spanish. Language is a virus, indeed. I took a bunch of vitamin C and sambucus before going to bed.
I felt somewhat better this morning, and I hope to be completely recovered in a day or two. But I don't have a lot of energy.
The trip to Eugene to speak to the Wordos writing group went well. There were something over a dozen people present, including Nina Kiriki Hoffman and Jerry Oltion, and they seemed pleased with my talk about the various workshops and research trips I've taken for my writing and the Q&A afterwards. The trip also included several nice meals, a view of three volcanoes, and listening to Alan Cumming read Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan. Not too shabby a day, all told.
Posted 01/05/2012 23:45 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but I am in Eugene today, speaking to the Wordos writers group. I'll be having dinner at Cafe Yumm on Broadway beforehand, at 5:30, with whoever shows up.
Posted 01/03/2012 15:30 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 1758 | Since last entry: 1055
Worked at Case Study Coffee today from about 3:00 to 5:00, making 850 words or so, and finished my thousand after dinner and a movie (The Artist) with friends Janet and Ron Lunde. I hope that the words will come more quickly as I become more confident in the voice and I don't have to check vocabulary and other historical details several times per sentence.
I'm not promising to blog every day, by the way, but I find it helps with accountability.
Posted 01/02/2012 22:55 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
Word count: 703 | Since last entry: 703
Spent a chunk of time today setting up the Scrivener project and reacquainting myself with Scrivener, then wrote 703 words on the YA Regency interplanetary airship adventure. It's not a thousand, but this is a weekend so my target is only a hundred. We're off!
Posted 01/01/2012 22:58 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
We'd planned to go out to a big costume party, but at the last minute Kate decided she really wasn't up to it. We wound up watching De-Lovely, a much sadder film than either of us had recalled (though excellent and quite touching), eating popcorn, and turning in right at midnight. A quiet finish to the old year.
Today we'll be attending a couple of New Year's Day brunches, one of which marks the 27th anniversary of the New Year's Day brunch at which we met, and I swear I will begin drafting my new novel (even though I did not write the outline last week as I had intended to). I can write the first thousand words without an outline, ferpitysake.
But first, a little blog-maintenance coding. God help me, I just wrote this AND UNDERSTAND IT: sed -e 's;\([[:punct:]]*\)<[Ii]>;_\1;g' -e 's;</[Ii]>\([[:punct:]]*\);\1_;g'
Posted 01/01/2012 08:28 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]
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