Miscellany, For What It's Worth

1. Salzburg was so named because it achieved importance - and riches - thanks to the salt trade and the enormous salt mine nearby, still active after all these years. The Festung had an entire building which was used to store and protect the valuable commodity.

2.  My iPhone 3GS updated to iOS 6 today (9/24), in the good Wifi at my Munich hotel (the Salzburg wifi was spotty and cut out quite a bit.) The new Maps app does not have the level of detail (vis-à-vis points of interest) the Google maps had, and I don't get the turn-by-turn directions, either, because my phone's too old.  Also, my phone apparently tried to update over cellular data, and used more data in the attempt than the special overseas data package that I had purchased provided ... I'm a little nervous about what my phone bill will look like next month!  International data roaming fees ... ugh!

3.  Some of you might be annoyed that the email updates are titled "Ken's European Vacation 2011." That was the original title of the blog, of course, but I don't think I can change the email header without losing all of you who have subscribed by email (I tried to fiddle with things, but Google apps aren't the most user-friendly). I don't want to ditch my loyal readers, so please excuse the dated title!  Before my next trip (you never know when that might be!) I think I might ask all of my email subscribers to re-subscribe to fix this issue.

4.  I've been using a new blog-writing app, Posts, to compose the blog. It allows me to resize pictures and to arrange them a little more artistically than my old app, BlogPress. I'm also using the Photoshop Express app, a freebie, to do some basic photo editing. What do you think? The blog looks OK on my iPad (which isn't supported by iOS 6) but how does it look on your computer?  One item I discovered later in my trip -- the Posts app embeds the photos in the post in the size I select and does not allow you to click them and see the full-sized picture in my Picasso photo album -- my apologies for some of the smaller pictures I included in my blog which you have been unable to see enlarged!  Let me know if you'd like me to repost any of the pictures or email a pic or two to you for more detailed perusing.

5.  I forgot my sink stopper. I did some laundry before leaving Munich, but there was no stopper for my shower. I had to stuff a plastic bag in the drain. Believe it or not, a universal drain plug is a standard item recommended by most travel-light webpages!

6.  I had really weird pictures on the wall of my hotel in Munich - what do you think?

 

7.  In Prague I had to insert the key fob of my room key into a slot in the entryway to my room in order to have electricity - meaning when I wasn't in the room I couldn't charge my iPad or my camera batteries. It's energy-efficient for the hotel, though!

8.  Prague was paved almost everywhere with tiny square cobblestones -- imagine the time it took to lay down all of those sidewalks, and the ongoing maintenance! Here's an example of what I mean:

9.  There was an emergency prohibition law in effect during my stay in Prague.  It seems that a dozen people had died, and many more were blinded or injured, as a result of a ring of alcohol counterfeiters who placed bad moonshine in brand-name liquor bottles with forged seals.  No alcoholic beverages with a content over 20% could be sold, meaning you could only buy beer, wine and certain aperitifs.  I don't generally touch the hard stuff, so I wasn't affected by the ban.

10.  My museum curse did follow me on this trip, too.  I didn't mention it in my main post, but the principal building of the National Museum in Prague was totally closed.  It was the building with the collections that really interested me, of course.  I didn't bother with the smaller venues which contained tiny, very specific collections I didn't really care to see.  Oh, well - next time!

11.  On-street public bathrooms were available in Amsterdam and in Hamburg, as you may remember from my previous trips -- and they were really only privacy screens behind which men could relieve themselves into a gutter.  None were available in Salzburg, Munich or Vienna, but Prague had really upscale unisex on-street WCs:

12.  Vienna airport did security a little differently.  The departures hall for my terminal was a large circular room with a dozen gates around the periphery.  There was a security set-up with metal detectors, etc. outside the entry to each individual gate area.  The security staff simply moved from gate-to-gate as each flight was announced ready for boarding.  To me it is an improvement over a huge line with passengers from all departing flights nearer to the airport's entrance.

13.  This is my typical blog-writing desk, a pulldown tray aboard a European train.

Thank you all for following my latest adventure!  I don't know when or to where I'll next travel, but rest assured that I have the travel bug, bad.

Yours in travel,
Ken

Vienna, Day Three

St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, Austria, September, 2012

I'm feeling marginally better today, October 1st, but I'm still really congested.  I didn't let that limit me, however, and I left the hotel reasonably early, after the included breakfast, of course, and walked about 25 minutes to the center of town - to St. Stephen's Cathedral.  An ornate and gorgeous gothic edifice with parts dating back to the 1200s.

I took a good long walk around the massive structure, examining the gargoyles, pictorials, crenellations and superb religious iconography. I ducked the beggars and the guys in powdered wigs who were trying to sell tour packages.  I took refuge in the sanctuary.

The innards of the cathedral are breathtaking, whether you're inspired religiously or whether you appreciate gifted artisans and their beautiful embellishments.

From the cathedral I wandered around the very heart of Vienna, which is also a major tourist and shopping district.  The number of souvenir stands is simply obscene.  There were a couple of newer buildings tucked among the older Grandes Dammes, but I'm not sure how the city allowed them to mar the old town.

 

It's not even a particularly nice modern building, though it seems to have pretensions of grandeur.  Not sure what the building houses, and I don't particularly care.

Surrounding this glass-and-steel curmudgeon are delightful 18th century buildings in a riot of colors, with a rusty yellow seeming to be the most popular.

During the course of my wanderings I spied an interesting weathered copper dome, and I was drawn to it.

It topped a squarish and squat church which looked fairly plain on the outside.

On the inside (and I'm embarrassed to say I didn't take note of the name of the church) it was spectacular, in many ways more impressive than the St. Stephen's Cathedral.

The church's interior was roughly oval, close to circular.  And it was head-to-toe glory-be-to-God in gold and silver.  There was active praying going on in the church, too, so I had to be somewhat circumspect in my picture-taking and gawking.

And gawk I did, for nearly an hour.

 The morning long gone, I had lunch at a so-called English pub and had fish and chips -- overpriced, but I was in a tourist area (the "authentic" Austrian eateries were overpriced here, too).  The meal was decent, but I feel I must mention something about any cafe/bar/establishment you go to over here in Austria (and in Germany, too.) The bars are usually tied to a particular brewery.  There might be two or three beers on tap, at most, and a poor bottle selection.  This particular place had only Zipfer on tap, which is actually a very decent Austrian lager.  You could get Bass in a bottle, for an exorbitant price.

The afternoon was dedicated to the Hofburg Palace complex.  The summer home of the Hapsburg family for a long time.  The place where the royal treasury is housed.  The Lipizzanner stallions be here.

Well, the stallions be here, but they don't perform on Mondays -- I should have researched that, but my stay in Vienna didn't include any performance days in any event, so I didn't miss out by not heading here yesterday.

The palace complex was rife with neo-classical statuary, and every single water fountain had a small sign at the corner informing you not to drink the water.

Half of the palace complex was open, and the other half was closed, because it was Monday.  One attraction open, however, was the treasury -- the Schatzkammer.  What an awesome collection of crowns, gowns, priestly attire, bejeweled everything, and religious relics -- including an alleged piece of the cross on which Christ was crucified, the lance with which He was speared, and the Agate Bowl, a huge, err, bowl, carved from a single piece of agate in the 4th century, which at one time was thought to have been the holy grail.

 

This is the Austrian crown, orb and scepter from about 1600.  The Hapsburgs consolidated many national monarchies during their long history, and the collection includes royal vestments from many of the kingdoms, grand duchies,  and principalities from early medieval times through the 19th century.  Also featured are artifacts from the Holy Roman Empire and an impressive collections of objects which chronicle the Order of the Golden Fleece, the preeminent knightly order in Europe.

The treasury also has a huge collection of religious objects and equipment -- gold crosses and chalices, priestly attire and shepherd staffs.

One cool item is a giant narwhale tusk, which was proffered as a unicorn horn for centuries.  Didn't get a picture, but should have.

 No bull about it, I really enjoyed my time at the Hofburg, and my day in Vienna.  The sun setting, I decided to seek out a traditional Austrian restaurant for my last night in Vienna.  I consulted my TripAdvisor app, which will point you to nearby restaurants and provide you with traveler reviews of them.  I found a great place, not too far from St. Stephen's Cathedral, which is frequented by locals.  The prices were good and the portions were ample.  Reinthaler's Beisl was the name of the place.  I had wienerschnitzel, and it was far superior to the serving I had in Salzburg -- and I thought the schnitzel  dinner in Salzburg was great!  On my way back to the hotel I stopped at a cafe and had dessert --  apfel strudel with vanilla sauce and a tea.  What a great night cap!

Tomorrow I head to the airport, and home.

Sitting outside at a cafe, Wien, Austria.

Vienna, Day Two

I'm feeling better today (9/30), but I'm really congested and stuffy.  You know what I mean, I'm not that achy and I think my fever has broken - I'm just tired and I have a leaky nose and chest-clearing cough.

The Vienna Opera House - along the Ring-Route tour

I started my day with a very decent breakfast at my hotel -- included in the €88 per night.  From there I decided to do the almost unthinkable -- use a Rick Steves product.

Rick Steves offers a free audio tour app for your smartphone, and you can download free audio guides.  One such guide is a tram tour of Vienna, along the "ring-route."  Vienna used to be walled, but when the walls were taken down, a wide boulevard - the Ringstrasse - was created around the city center. Many of the cool things to see are situated along that boulevard, so it seemed to me to be a good way to get oriented.  The tour took a little over an hour (the audio tour itself is about a half-hour, but you start and stop it as you arrive at or depart tram stops) and involved transferring from one tram to a second line.  It was a good, basic introduction to the attractions of the city, delivered in Rick Steves' slow, overly-pronounced, talking-to-a-child voice.  Overall, though, not bad and some decent information.  It was not time wasted, and it allowed me to sit rather than walk.

 

The tour began and concluded at the Opera House. A quick ten minute walk from there brought me back to the Museum Quarter and I decided to take in one of the best of the lot - the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Museum of Fine Arts.)

You are assaulted by beauty upon entry into the museum. This is the main staircase to the exhibit halls. I'm pictured in a victory pose over my vanquished foe. Clothing is optional in the museum. 

The museum is home to spectacular paintings from the 11th century forward, as well as impressive Greek, Roman and Egyptian collections. 

  

This next set of photos is from the Egyptian wing, but first I feel a family obligation to post this warning:

Some explanation: my Mom has the distinction of having been kicked-out of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Why? She couldn't restrain herself and simply had to touch the mummies. She nearly got kicked out of the White House, too, for touching the wallpaper. 

 

Many mummies (all under glass, Mom), sarcophagi, hieroglyphics, statues and burial accessories. Even a fascinating display of mummified animals, including a huge, mummified crocodile. Couldn't take a good pic of that because of the glass and the way it was positioned in the display. Overall, lots of cool stuff plundered from Egypt. 

 

The Greek and Roman holdings consisted of statuary, pottery, weapons, and jewelry. Very swanky stuff. 

I spent much of the day at the Kunsthistorische Museum, and it was time well-spent. From there I wandered the food stalls that were set up in the plaza in front of the Rathaus (town hall) and I had an early dinner (lunch was in the museum cafe). I could have squeezed more sights in today, but I didn't feel up to more walking around and I wanted to save energy for my last day in Europe, tomorrow. I headed back to the hotel, took a hot shower to try and help clear my congestion, and went to bed. 

Karl-Schweighofer-Gasse 7, Neubau, Wien

En Route to Vienna

Miserably ill.  Thank the Powers-That-Be for Kleenex pocket packs - I brought three with me on the trip. I have on every trip (never know when you need emergency TP) but I've never used more than half a pack before. Used a whole pack just on the train.

Train Compartment on the Prague-to-Vienna train, September, 2012

My reserved seat on the train from Prague to Vienna was in an old-school compartment with six seats - like on Hogwart's Express. There was even an old lady pushing a trolley through the car, offering drinks and sweets - she said it in Czech, but I imagined she cried, "anything from the trolley?!"

Alas I wasn't sitting with Ron and Hermione. But I did spend the nearly five-hour train trip chatting amiably with a Brazilian from Sao Paulo, David, who, like me was traveling solo for a couple of weeks. David is a high-powered financial analyst who works for a major stock brokerage. Mucho dinero. We shared travel stories, beer, and a great apple torte he had bought to eat on the trip. Much of the conversation might seem boring to you, but we discussed in some detail the political, social and economic realities that David sees as conspiring to erect a glass ceiling on the ability of the Brazilian economic structure to fully modernize. 

The train trip was a bargain that I had scooped up in advance - 567 Crowns, or €22, or about $30.  By comparison, my trip from Munich to Prague, roughly the same distance, was €38, or about $50. 

I arrived in Vienna (the locals spell it "Wien") at about 1:30. Found my way to the hotel by about 2:30. The hotel - the Hotel Admiral - is located just off of a major shopping thoroughfare near to the Museum Quarter. 

This is a picture taken early the next morning of the shopping street (9/30) - normally this street is absolutely bustling with humanity. My hotel is located on the side street to the right. 

I checked into the hotel, unpacked, then went out and did my customary circuit of the immediate surroundings so that I would recognize landmarks, locate the metro station, and find food stores. After that, and early dinner (I wasn't very hungry but I forced myself to eat something, and drink lots of water) I went to bed. 

I hated to miss a half-day in Vienna, but I wanted to feel well enough for my remaining two days. 

Karl-Schweighofer-Gasse 7, Neubau, Wien.