Month: April 2014

Yes, the suitcases are all packed and ready to go. Romania is the last stop and tomorrow we fly back to Massachusetts. Still, we’re not convinced that all good things must come to an end.

On the ride into Bucharest we passed a Gypsy house and grabbed a quick snapshot through the bus window, thereby violating our commitment to you to step through the window and not offer you narratives gained by sitting on our duffs. Sorry about that, but this was just too unique to keep to ourselves. The Gypsies are a significant percentage of the population in most of the countries we’ve been through and people speak of the “Gypsy problem.” What they mean is that the Gypsies are still not well integrated into their communities. Of course, this is all beyond the scope of our modest blog. We were told that, at least in Romania, the Gypsies prefer the term “Gypsy” to the term “Roma,” even though the origins of “Gypsy” are apparently derogatory. They identify with it, much as many Native Americans prefer to be called Indians.

One place we visited in Bucharest was the Village Museum. It’s said to be the largest open air museum in Europe and was founded in 1936 by bringing buildings from all over Romania. We enjoyed it quite a bit. Pictured is a peasant house that was half buried in the ground and then thatched so that it would blend into the wheat fields and escape the notice of Ottoman troops as they swept yet again through the area.

You may remember that Romania was the last country in the region to have a successful revolt against Communist rule in 1989 (and it wasn’t peaceful). Nicolae Ceausescu was a totalitarian dictator in all the worst ways. One of the ways he drove his country to despair in the 1980s was by building the People’s Palace, now known as the Parliament Palace (as Parliament now meets there). He didn’t live to see it completed, meeting with summary justice back in ’89. 20,000 workers and 700 architects worked 24/7 to build the palace and it is impressive in its own way. Being the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon in surface area and clocking in at 1,100 rooms, walking through the main public rooms is like entering a series of overdone, impossibly large spaces. It’s like a series of enormous train station central halls, like something Donald Trump would do if he had the resources of Bill Gates. Rather than serve as the government headquarters of Romania, it would be well suited as the headquarters of the Federation of Planets. But, that’s just our opinion. During our tour, we stood on the very large balcony from which Michael Jackson famously greeted the people of Bucharest with a “Hello, Budapest!” Some years later, he did return and got it right. Some things can be forgiven.

Having docked in Rousse, Bulgaria, we traveled into the mountains to the neighboring towns of Arbanasi and Veliko Tărnovo.

Veliko Tărnovo, clinging to a steep hillside, was the capital of the Bulgarian Second Empire from the 12th through the 14th Centuries.

In Arbanassi there is a museum in Konstantsaliyata’s House, an example of a well-to-do Ottoman family dwelling from the 18th century. Arbanassi remains a desirable place for privileged Bulgarians to have second homes.

Down the river from Belgrade, but still in Serbia, are the ruins of the 14th Century Golubac fortress. Looks like a good defensive position for those times, although it attracted a lot of battles and changed hands often. All of the powers in the region seem to have held it at some point. Doesn’t look very comfortable these days.

On the Romanian bank of the river there is an enormous likeness of King Decebalus, carved in 2004. He was a Dacian king who reigned from 87-106 AD and was defeated by the Romans. The Romanians are proud of their history as a non-Slavic people who have been in the region for thousands of years.

As we go further down the Danube towards the Black Sea, we venture further into the territories formerly occupied by the Ottoman Empire: the further we go, the longer the areas were retained in the back and forth history of the region. At a strategic geographic choke point in the contest between two great world civilizations Belgrade (“beo” = white; “grad” = city) was besieged in 115 wars and razed 44 times in its long history. Our local guide quipped that even having been born in 1984 she had lived in four countries, without moving once.

Serbia has something of a violent past when it comes to their monarchy. We walked by the former royal palace (now town hall) where winners of Olympic medals and the like stand on the balcony to be recognized. When we had passed by earlier in a bus with our guide, she also mentioned that a King and Queen had been thrown from the same balcony. Actually, that’s not quite the full story and it reminded us of the defenestrations in Prague (although the happenings in Prague were rather tame in comparison). It seems that young King Alexander I had acceded to the throne when his father King Milan abdicated and fled the country. Alexander proceeded to do many unpopular things, such as marrying a widowed former lady-in-waiting and then considering naming her wildly unpopular brother as heir presumptive when Alexander and Queen Draga turned out to be unable to have children. To make a long and fascinating story shorter, there was an army conspiracy, headed by a key member of the same Black Hand society responsible for later goings-on in Sarajevo, to assasinate the King and Queen to make way for a new dynasty . They invaded the palace, found the couple hiding in a cupboard in her bedroom, shot them, mutilated them, disembowled them, and threw what remained off the balony onto a pile of animal manure. Nicely done, don’t you think?

Our visit to the Tesla Museum was a fascinating detour into the life of Nicola Tesla, an extraordinary pioneer in electronics. He invented, among other things, the induction motor, radio (per the US Supreme Court in a ruling against Marconi), and remote control. Here, our guide (a local student in contention for an internship at SpaceX) demonstrates how transmission of electricity remotely can light of a fluorescent sign and Jim helped to demonstrate the same principle with a huge jolt of high frequency current (see the bolt of electricity under the black ball). Some of you may recall that Matsumoto uses low frequency current as a murder weapon in his detective novel Inspector Imanishi Investigates. It turns out that this isn’t fanciful after all. High frequency is safe, or at least that’s what we were told.

Belgrade is a city we were sorry to leave. We could easily have spent another day. One reason, of course, is that people in Belgrade apparently love dogs. It’s our kind of place (and the coffees and cakes are good, too).

A visit to Eastern Europe wouldn’t be complete without sighting a stork. Besides, we thought it would be nice to start out this post with something gentle and upbeat.

The tour proceeded to visit a very funny entrepreneur and his family out in the country. He has brandy and wines and savory treats and cakes for the tourists to try at 10:00 in the morning, plus the all-important toilets. There are displays of fishing gear and crafts and lots of things for sale. Nino puts on a zany presentation in which he manages to actually convey serious information about his country to his unwitting audience. Here he is sporting a Buso mask, asking to be photographed, but which he used to launch into an explanation of the two Battles of Mohacs (in nearby Hungary). The 1st battle was won decisively by the Ottomans in 1526, beginning Ottoman occupation of the region. In the 2nd battle in 1687, the forces of the Holy Roman Empire crushed the Ottomans and the Ottoman army subsequently fell apart, paving the way for Hapsburg forces to gain control over substantial territory. Nino tied the Buso mask to a legend that people from Mohacs were hiding in the forest to avoid Ottoman troops occupying the town. They were told to don scary masks and sneak up on the troops making a lot of noise. The troops, obviously, ran away and the people regained the town. An older legend that’s not as much fun maintains that they chased away Winter. Maybe that’s slightly more plausible.

It is hard to disagree with what seems to be a tour company talking point for guides: every country from time to time does good things and does bad things. Unfortunately, that may be true, but it doesn’t offer much solace for the future. (Cue the music for an upbeat conclusion to this posting.)

Finally, we’re off! We loved Prague and Budapest, but motoring down a waterway and seeing the smaller locales is what river cruising is all about. The first stop was a place called Kalocsa. It also has a history, with a bishopric created there by King Stephen right after the turn of the millenium (the first one). Right off the bus, we were herded into an interesting church (although we’re certain you’re beginning to tire of church interiors, so we’ll spare you the picture) and were treated to an organ concert by this priest peering out from the organ loft. Bach and the usual suspects.

Now that the Bishop has his residence back after the close of the Soviet era, it’s again an active Catholic town. Of course, there always seems to be a quirkiness about things. It seems that one of the prized possessions of this Bishopric is a Bible with comments by Martin Luther and signed by him. In a borderland of cultures and empires, it’s good to keep an open-ish mind and soften the hard edges of culture and religion. Besides, we keep being reminded by guides that the history of Hungary seems to be mostly that of occupation and a continual shrinking of its territory (most significantly after WWI), one quipping that Hungary is the only country that is surrounded by itself.

We moved on to the Puszta horse farm for a horse show and a look in a barn. We must admit that descriptions of this excursion elicited groans from yours truly. Of course, we thoroughly enjoyed what we most dreaded. The horses were modest in size, a mixture of Mongolian and Arabian horses, and were exceptionally well trained.

Amanda got pulled out of the crowd for a demonstration of precise whip control (oh, great!).

This was also demonstrated by knocking pegs off posts, as there were no more human volunteers.

The grey cattle are prized for beef (purportedly on a par with Kobe beef), although they didn’t seem to be too afraid of us.

These rather odd looking pigs (and piglets) aren’t half sheep, but the result of breeding Serbian pigs with Hungarian pigs. However they do it, the bacon and ham we’ve been having in Hungary have been exceptional. The sort of selection of hams that you may remember from Jim’s lunch the other day is also offered on board the ship.

Godolo (pretend there are umlauts over all those “o”s) Palace was a wedding gift to Emperor Franz Josef and Queen Elisabeth, they of the dual monarchy of Austria and Hungary. Elisabeth loved to spend time there and was fluent in Hungarian. Having fallen on hard times, such as WWI, WWII and Soviet occupation, a restoration program has begun to make a real difference and the interior has significant sections open to the public. People of the village managed to hide a substantial number of the furnishings during WWII and brought them out after the Soviets left, meaning that there are original furnishings from the Hapsburgs in Godolo palace (a no photography zone). Violet, Elisabeth’s favorite color, is much in evidence, although she only wore black after her son Rudolf died under suspicious circumstances and was herself assassinated by a publicity seeker in Switzerland. Franz Josef must have wondered about Elisabeth. Her favorite Hungarian poet was a revolutionary dedicated to ouster of the Hapsburg dynasty. During our visit, the Hungarians were commemorating a battle against the Austrians in the 19th century. They lost.

Once again, we find that we must backtrack a bit to correct the record. Returning to the Synagogue, we discovered from our guide Reuben (from, among other places, Queens) that the Synagogue is actually the world’s second largest synagogue (#1 being in NYC). It seats 3500 without extra chairs brought in. It’s a Neologue synagogue, which is the same as (or akin to) Conservative Judaism. The reason it looks so much like a church is that it was designed by a Catholic architect and the city at the time (the 19th century) restricted architectural styles. Reuben let loose his sense of humor to try to explain the difference between Neologue and Orthodox (as a non-observant Jew). [This rabbi walks into a butcher shop and points to the shank of ham behind the counter. I’ll take that nice piece of smoked salmon. But rabbi, that’s a piece of ham. You call it what you like, I’ll take that beautiful gefilte fish.] On a more sober note, we found the memorial tree to Hungarian Jews killed in the Holocaust to be quite evocative. There are 5,000 names engraved on individual metal leaves on The Tree of Life, the willow tree traditionally representing mourning.

We started our city tour in the flat land of Pest, built up in the nineteenth century from a sleepy village, with drive-bys of a number of sites that we later doubled back to visit.

The neo-moorish Great Synangogue, reputed to be the third largest in the world, was closed for a wedding when we ventured there in the afternoon.

We had better luck at St. Stephen’s Basillica which was, as you can see, drop dead beautiful. We went into the attached Holy Right Hand chapel to take a look at (you got it) the late King Stephen’s hand, but you couldn’t see much. King Stephen was the first King of Hungary, crowned with the Pope’s blessing in 1000.

Hero’s Square, built on the Pest side in 1896 as part of the millenial celebration of the Magyar tribes conquering the Carpathian Basin in 896, features the leaders of the seven tribes.

Buda developed much earlier into a city, being hilly and offering a good defensive location for a castle and then a palace. As is the case in much of Europe, the castle area was almost completely destroyed and has been rebuilt, sometimes multiple times. This facade does, however, date from the fourteenth century and has been restored. Must have been colorful neighborhood.

Fifteenth century King Matthias built Our Lady Church, commonly known as Matthias church, after he was imprisoned by his rival for the crown. A raven took his ring to his mother from the prison to assure her that he was still alive. Matthias church has undergone many changes over the centuries, including serving as a mosque during the 150 years of Ottoman rule. Hungarians joke that if the Ottomans stayed for 150 years, the Austrians stayed for 400 years, and the Russians stayed for 50 years, tourists should stay for at least one day longer.

The Fishermen’s Bastion provides a magnificent view over Buda and Pest. The seven towers in Magyar style symbolize the seven founding tribes. It’s King Stephen looking back towards Matthias church. It all makes us wonder if we should change our minds about no longer following Game of Thrones.

Back in Pest, lunch was at DiVin Porcello, Friends of Ham. As you can see, Jim had the Hungarian ham plate and the assorted pickles. It was amazing. The pickles on top on the right seemed to be eggplant. Wow, was that good!

Dinner was at Menza. We both followed goulash soup (a must in Hungary) with roast chicken and beet root risotto. The chicken was perfectly done and who knew to put beets in risotto?

You can’t always trust the first story you hear. Of course, as with many other things, you begin to wonder whether the truth of the story is the important thing anyway. To make a long story reasonably short, your intrepid travelers were surprised to learn from a different source (it seems heartless to say “disappointed” to learn) that the gentlemen defenestrated in the 17th century actually survived their ordeal. Explanations for their survival varied from the miraculous Catholic version involving angels’ wings to the Protestant account emphasizing the very bulky clothes and the glancing drop onto a nice slope and landing in a dung pile. That made us wonder whether this reenactor outside the historic set of windows had done his research.

By the way, the view from the castle and its grounds is very nice indeed. We understand that Ambassador Shirley Temple Black used to enjoy sitting out on the grounds of the US Embassy (see the squarish building on the right with the flag) which shares a comparable view of the city.

The walk down from the castle was certainly better than a walk up.

After a full day of touristing, we took in a performance of the Czech Philharmonic at the Rudolfinum. We enjoyed the concert, although there was some confusion in the seating process and we ended up without a program, which we wouldn’t have been able to read anyway. Especially nice was an encore performed by the guest cello soloist. He enlisted the first chair cello player from the orchestra to perform an unaccompanied duet with him. The exceptionally lively acoustics helped make it an exquisite performance.

Early next morning we were off on a long bus ride through Bohemia and Moravia in the Czech Republic, then Slovakia (split from the Czech Republic in 1993), and finally into Hungary to our destination of Budapest on the Danube. We got reacquainted with the Colonel on our way.

We had a bit of time in the late afternoon and evening to explore the area of Pest around our hotel. It turns out we actually got a room with a nice view of the bridge between Buda and Pest. That’s Buda Palace in the traditional setting at the top of the hill.

After dinner, we walked back along the road leading to the bridge.

Why is Prague so enjoyable to visit? What especially impressed us were the beauty and variety of its architectural styles and vistas, the compactness of the key interesting neighborhoods, and the exceptional friendliness of the people (whose English is pretty decent by international standards).

Among the visual delights of Prague are the graffiti on the John Lennon tribute wall started when he first died and attracting admirers from across the world (maybe you can make out two images of his face to the right of the doorway) and the sgraffiti (the illusion of three dimensions on a wall by applying layers of colored plaster) on a number of buildings in the area of Prague Castle.

Some areas of Prague reminded us of Brussels, with gorgeous Art Nouveau architecture, like this concert hall.

Right next door is the “Powder Tower,” a surviving gate from an old city wall that stored gunpowder for a few years in its storied past.

Whatever architectural style this is, we thought the forcefulness of it was impressive and that it is certainly from the twentieth century, given the gas mask in this sculpure (complete with pigeon spikes):

Indeed, we’ve never seen so much scupture decorating buildings in such a concentrated area as in Prague.

Around every corner, you don’t know what you will encounter. Turn one way and it’s the grandeur of the Hapsburgs at the castle. Venture down another street and you may see the charm of a restaurant courtyard or the spectacular clock at the center of the old town (with an Easter tree around the corner).

The city has, of course, a colorful past. Very few years were spent under the rule of locals, such as good King (actually, Prince) Wenceslas. A truly popular ruler, he was, alas, killed by his brother who took over on his death, although no streets have been named nor monuments erected in his brother’s honor. Here Prince Wenceslas presides once again over his city and Wenceslas Square, scene of most major political events of the last couple of centuries, including the Velvet Revolution in 1989.

There were other traditions for getting rid of rulers in the 15th and 17th centuries, such as throwing people out of windows. That’s where we got the word “defenestration,” i.e. out the old fenestra (Latin for window, of course), for this colorful means of regime change. Was it this window with what looks like a gangplank? No. This facade seems to be one Maria Theresa (grandmother of Marie Antoinette) put over some old architecture that didn’t go well with her decor. You can see the original look in that corner staircase. The windows through which history changed seem to have been on the other side of the castle so that the unfortunate dignitaries at least had a good view of the city on the way down.

Keeping to the theme of grisly ends, the tradition is to touch the statue of St. John of Nepomuck to ensure a return visit to Prague. St. John actually wasn’t very lucky. After he refused to divulge the secrets of the confessional under torture (it was the Queen he was protecting), his tongue was cut out and he was thrown from St Charles bridge. Coincidentally, that’s where you’ll find his statue, rubbed bright by all of those eager hands.