The Long Way Home

I would like to begin by requesting we all pretend that I actually posted this in a timely fashion, not some two months after it all happened.

At the end of June, my parents came out to Tisovec to escort me home for the summer, and we wandered around the area for a little before we left. We went to the SNP Museum in Bystrica, and Bojnice Castle, and then when we left Tisovec we drove north to Kraków, then to Moravský Krumlov in the Czech Republic, and down to Vienna, from whence we flew home.

on the way up to Poland

these two dudes look like the Abbott and Costello of Polish carriage drivers

In Kraków we took a hop-on-hop-off bus tour, and I'd show you the cool video of driving around the city, except Blogger doesn't want me to upload videos anymore. We stayed in Kazimierz, the Jewish district, about a block from the Tempel Synagogue, and we happened to arrive on the last day of the Jewish Culture Festival. That night Matisyahu played an acoustic show at the synagogue, which we could hear from our room. That was cool. There are some videos of the show on Youtube that are better quality, but this one shows some of the interior of the synagogue best.

When we arrived in Moravský Krumlov, about half an hour from Brno, my dad asked why he'd driven out to the back end of beyond. On the map it doesn't look like that bad of a drive, but it kind of is. There's really not much interesting about the town itself. The interesting thing shouldn't even be there. The chateau in Moravský Krumlov houses the Slav Epic, a series of paintings by renowned Art Nouveau artist Alfons Mucha (which is not, in fact, pronounced "Moo-cow," as we called him). Mucha was born in the nearby village of Ivančice. He wanted the Slav Epic to be in Prague, and the government was supposed to find or build a home for the paintings there by this year, but so far that hasn't happened. The chateau isn't a bad site for hosting exhibitions, but it's out of the way and needs to be fixed up. I was concerned about the paintings from a conservation point of view, because although there were barometers about and the exhibit is only open during the summer, it gets humid there, and these paintings really need to be protected.

The Slav Epic consists of 20 huge paintings that tell the story of the Slavic people. Photography was forbidden in the exhibit, the which stricture I actually followed this time; but there is no way photographs do justice to these pictures. They are really amazing. As my mom said, the style is reminiscent of Maxfield Parrish, another artist the commercial use of whose works often seems to overshadow his artistic talent, and Andrew Wyeth. The colors Mucha used are amazing, the size of the canvases is staggering, and the composition is untraditional but effective. It may be out of the way and take a while to get to, but it's totally worth it to go. I really hope the Czech government does right by Mucha's genius and passion and gets it the home it deserves in his native country.

Just north of the Czech-Austrian border is a town called Mikulov. We stopped at the Tesco there to buy some final Kofola and Studentskas before heading into Austria. From the Tesco we could see in the near distance an island of an old town rising above the fields and the newer parts of Mikulov.

The old town of Mikulov is very pretty and well-preserved. It's kind of like a Disney version of a late-medieval/Renaissance town. That probably sounds denigratory, though I don't mean it to be. Somehow--and this could have been more to do with me and when we visited than with the place itself--Mikulov didn't seem like an authentic old town. It had a slightly surreal quality in some way. This is not to say that I didn't like it. If I ever find myself in that area again I'd like to go back, because Mikulov had a significant Jewish community for nearly 500 years, beginning in the 15th century. One can visit the former ghetto, and there is an old cemetery that is supposed to be really cool.

Here's a view of the borderlands from the grounds of the chateau.

I may have mentioned before that even though Slovakia and the Czech Republic border Austria, there is a definite difference between the countries in terms of the divide between Western and Central Europe. The obvious difference is in signage, but there is often a different feel to the areas as well. And then there is visible, tangible evidence:Those crazy Austrians, with their sustainable energy sources.

When we got to Vienna and checked in to our hotel, we went into the center and looked in St. Stephen's and then ate dinner and I had an Almdudler and saw a woman in a kilt playing the bagpipes near the plague column. Then I had the least uncomfortable flights I can ever remember and then we went home and watched all three Jason Bourne movies within the first 48 hours we were back.

Flashback: Christmas

I am terribly behind on the blog, and I apologize. Luckily I haven't done anything interesting for the past two months, so I can catch up on December.

WienerWorld
Way back in December I had the pleasure of my family coming to visit. I met them in Vienna (fondly known by some as WienerWorld) and we did a brief tour there. I must admit that by the time we went to dinner that first night I was working on trying to use my third language of the day and it was about to cause me a nervous breakdown, which was circumvented by the waitress bringing us English menus. We didn't go into St. Stephen's, but we saw it from the outside all lit up for Christmas. We also went into two of the smaller churches, St. Peter's (at left) and St. Michael's, which were both very nice. St. Peter's was interesting because it had two skeletons on display in chapels. Both of the skeletons still had on ceremonial garments that seemed heavily worked in gold. There were placards that said who the gentlemen formerly were, but of course I've long since forgotten. They weren't terribly old, though.

St. Michael's, where photography is not really allowed

Blava
After Vienna, we took the train back to Bratislava and encamped there for a week. It was quite the experience hauling a few hundred pounds of luggage (mostly full of things that I'd asked my parents to bring) up six flights of stairs to the rooms where we were staying. This is Central Europe. Elevators are for the weak. I don't mind being weak when faced with nine suitcases and over 100 stairs.

I finally got to walk around Bratislava castle. It was very windy and chilly up there, but it had nice views of the city and the surrounding area. We bought presents for each other and people back home at the gift shop there.

In Bratislava we walked around Old Town a lot, naturally. We ate in several good restaurants and Slovak Pub, where my family is now convinced that I'll never be able to eat again because of our waitress' blatant disdain bordering on hostility. We went in St. Martin's Cathedral, where photography is also not allowed, and because of that all of my pictures are blurry, as they were taken furtively. Furtiveness usually doesn't equal high quality, at least for me.

We also went to the Slovak National Museum, which is on the edge of the Dunaj. They have an exhibit there about life in the 20th century that was very interesting. It's quite different to learn about the world wars and the Communist regime in the United States and then to see the places where those things really meant something to people's lives. (I've also been teaching history to my first years and have found myself saying that the Nazis were the "wrong" side because for Americans, they were. But Slovakia was part of a puppet state back then and some of my students' great-grandfathers had to fight for Germany.)

Slovaks celebrate Christmas by doing on December 24th many of the things that we do on December 25th. So they decorate the tree and have a traditional dinner and go to church and open presents on the 24th. There is a tradition that says that if you don't eat anything before Christmas dinner you will see a golden pig and will have good luck for the coming year. Needless to say, none of us saw the golden pig, but we saw plenty of Kofola pigs. There's a brand of soft drink here called Kofola, and on their bottles for the Christmas season they had flying angel pigs. My dad began collecting them after a while. I think he has five or six. All of the pigs have different names and they're doing things like singing or playing the trumpet--you know, regular Christmas angel stuff. We had Christmas dinner with a bunch of other Americans, and it was really good food and almost as traditional as being home. Alas, I did not get to watch any football, but what can you do.

T-town and Beyond
On Boxing Day we and our metric ton of luggage crammed into a car and drove to Tisovec. Because there was no room in the inn hotel I live in, my family stayed at the apartment of one of the other teachers. It has a much nicer bathroom than mine. Here in Tisovec if you don't hike the major tourist attractions are the cemetery and the natural spring, both of which we visited. My parents now claim that they've never been colder than when they sat through church in Tisovec.

One afternoon we drove to Banská Bystrica to try to visit the SNP (Slovak National Uprising) Museum, but it was closed. At the very least we got to see some of the tanks, guns, and airplanes from the war that are outside the museum. I also found the bathrooms in the square that I swear I didn't know were there before.

Probably the highlight of our post-Christmas week was going to the skanzen in Pribylina. The headmistress suggested it to us while we were at her house eating kapustnica (cabbage and sausage soup). So Dad drove us up to Pribylina, which is in a pretty flat place. It was kind of weird being somewhere that flat; I'm so used to there being hills all around me. It was also very snowy there. The place was called the Museum of the Liptov Village. It's made up of buildings that were relocated from various villages in the Liptov region, especially Liptovsky Mara, which was completely relocated when they built a lake or reservoir there.

With the snow and the winter afternoon sun, it was like one imagines the steppes. Most of the buildings just had informational plaques in Slovak, German, and English about who lived in each building and what they did for a living, but a tour guide took us through the mansion house and the church. Both of those buildings still had bits of old frescoes in them which were pretty cool. The skanzen's pub was used for filming "Bathory," about the countess who bathed in young women's blood to preserve her beauty. Alžbeta/Erzsébet/Elizabeth Báthory was imprisoned in a castle in Čachtice in Slovakia at the end of her life, but the castle has since burnt down and there's nothing there but ruins anymore. But I digress. The skanzen, being all outdoors in December, was wicked cold, but it was worth seeing. In the past it's been hard to imagine where my ancestors came from, and I still have trouble imagining it, but visiting this museum really helped.

The day before New Year's Eve we drove to Košice, the nearest major city at only about two hours east. On the way we stopped to look at the castle at Krásna Hôrka and saw...A TREBUCHET! It's not in good repair--certainly it isn't ready for use--but it's still awesome nonetheless. Just imagine my delight at driving into the parking lot below the castle and seeing that bad boy. I also scampered all the way up the hill to look at the castle closer, but it was closed, unsurprisingly. You could see Hungary from there, though.

Also on the way we saw one of the biggest employers in the area, US Steel.

When we reached Košice our (my) main goal was to see St. Elizabeth's Cathedral, the largest cathedral in the country. It's a pretty cool cathedral, although once again, photography is not allowed, and once again, I scoffed at the injunction. Just behind St. Elizabeth's is St. Michael's Chapel, which was closed, but looked interesting. Also closed but interesting-looking was the archaelogical museum with the old foundations of the city, although some of those were visible from street level. We did get into the Slovak Technical Museum, though, which has rooms full of all different typewriters and different kinds of stereo systems and things. It has a cool display on iron and ironworking. To me the museum's main drawbacks were its serious '70s decor and that not all of the information was in English.

Košice's main square in Old Town also has a nice area around its plague column and some pretty Art Nouveau decorations and façades on some of the buildings.

We spent Silvester or New Year's Eve in Tisovec watching "White Christmas" and "A Christmas Story." At midnight people set off fireworks, and then we went to sleep. The next day my family had to leave and it was very sad, but it would have been sadder still had they not come at all. It was a great trip, and now they've been where I am and understand what I'm talking about better.

Whew. I kind of sped through that, so if you'd like further information/pictures, hit me up. Next up: two weeks from tomorrow spring break starts and I'm going on a superexciting trip that involves buses and trains and airplanes and ends in a place where people theoretically speak English.

Videos!

*When I first posted this, these videos were on Google Video. Next month [May 2011] Google Video is shutting down completely, so the videos are now embedded from my YouTube account. I'm leaving the text as is, though.*

Here are links to some vids I put on Google Video. I was unable to embed them as I wanted to; maybe I'll figure that out in the future. I really wanted to get these up ASAP. I'm aware that the quality is somewhat poor, as they were taken on my digital camera, but I hope you enjoy them anyway.

St. Stephen's

Stužková (full description at a later date)--Mike and Majka dancing, the band playing

Folk singing/dancing/bagpipery from Pribelce group at Čierny Balog festival

Cheeseburger in Paradise

On Saturday we took three buses and a train to get from Tisovec to Vienna. I didn't get to see everything I wanted to see, but what I saw was pretty great.

From Bratislava it's about an hour by train to Vienna. Once you get into Austria things are almost immediately different; of course the signs are suddenly in German, and the general topography isn't radically different, but you can definitely tell you're in a wealthier country. Some travel guides lump Vienna in with Eastern Europe, but I would classify it as Western, without a doubt.

When we got to Vienna, the first place we went was to Stephensplatz to see the cathedral. Part of the outside has scaffolding on it, which is not very impressive, but overall the effect is striking. St. Stephen's is quite big. The inside was even better. I must say that it reminded me of the (fake) cathedral interiors in "A Knight's Tale"--I think it was the amount of space inside. It seemed to me that St. Stephen's is bigger than St. Patrick's. It's certainly older. The ceiling had an interesting vaulting that I couldn't and still can't place; if someone knows, tell me. Parts of the ceiling were just a ribbed vault, but then there were crazy parts too.

While we were there we heard some musicians performing. I'm not sure why, but there was a choir and an orchestra somewhere. I have a short video that I haven't been successful in uploading here yet, but I'll keep trying (it doesn't help that the error message is in Slovak). The cathedral has not one but two pipe organs: the big one over the entrance in the front and a smaller (but still quite large) one nearer to the altar.

One of the chapels was the burial place of Prince Eugene of Savoy, and in the crypt are buried more members of the old Austrian nobility. Visitors can also go into the towers of the cathedral. There's even an elevator in one of them.

There was tons of stuff to see while we were walking around, but some of it I didn't know what it was because we were never able to look at the signs. We saw the plague column, and a place where there are some old Roman foundations, and a Steiff store with a huge stuffed bear outside.

Don't know what that is, but it looks pretty darn imperial

We also went to the Albertina to see the Van Gogh exhibit that's there until December 8. I was hoping that they'd have my favorite, The Olive Trees, on loan from MoMA, but they didn't. In fact, all of the pieces were new to me. Most of them were drawings, rather than paintings, and they showed Van Gogh's progression from realism to his iconic style later in life.

For dinner we ate at a place called 1516, a brew pub that people had recommended. Sure, it wasn't really classy Viennese cuisine, but there were cheeseburgers, and they were so good. So, so good. Apparently the beer was pretty good as well, but I couldn't say from experience. All I know is how good my cheeseburger was.

After dinner we walked around some and saw where the Christmas market is set up, although all of the booths were closed because it was late. We left for Bratislava again around 11:24. I wish I could have seen more, but if things work out I'll be back in Vienna next month.

Day Eleven

The Hills are Alive
Also wherein foreshadowing comes into play
In the morning from Seefeld we went to Innsbruck. We went to the park where the 1964 and '76 Winter Olympics were held, and saw the ski jump, which was covered with grass, it being summer and all. I'd never been to an Olympic site before, so it was cool. The torch and the rings were there, too, and that was neat.


We then visited the Wiltern Basilica. The basilica is an extremely rococo church. I'm sure it has a lot of historical significance, but I can't recall any of it. It dates from at least the 19th century and probably earlier. One interesting thing I do remember is that the outside of the basilica is painted yellow, which is not a color that many of us were used to seeing on large churches. In my mind, things like cathedrals are made of stone. But lots of buildings in Austria are white or yellow, or both.

In Innsbruck there's a famous thing called the Golden Roof. It's a little hard to explain. There's a regular white building with a plain wall, and then fixed to it is a balcony with a gold roof. When I heard "Golden Roof" I thought of a whole big roof. The balcony was used by the Emperor Maximilian I to view events in the square below.
Innsbruck also has the Swarovski Haus, where you can buy anything crystal, from simple stud earrings to intricate sculptures. Swarovski Haus seems like part store, part museum, but that's probably only to people like me who who can't afford all the big things. I bought some gifts there, but nothing too big. It was a very shiny, glittery place to be in, but also a bit crowded, and that was scary in a store full of breakable things.

the Back of the Blue Bus kids in Innsbruck...miss you guys!

We drove back to Seefeld and changed for our concert that afternoon. When we got to the bandshell where we were to play, they gave us all cunning alpine hats. I still have mine in a place of honor in my room. We got set up and ready to play, but the weather turned to sprinkling and then raining. Since water is bad for some of the wussy instruments like clarinets, the directors decided to cancel the concert after two songs. Besides, nobody was going to come listen to us in the rain anyway. We packed up our horns and stands, and one of my friends, A, and I stayed with a few other people to help get the trailer packed while everyone else went back to the hotels. Once everything was safely packed up, A and I headed back to the hotel. The hotel that was only 7 minutes from town. Where we were allowed to walk around by ourselves because the worst that could happen would be getting lost.

Well, we meant to head back to the hotel. We went the wrong way out of the park, and ended up walking to someone's house. We turned around and walked back, and even asked one of the directors we saw how to get to our hotel, but missed the turn again. Even though it was raining and we were lost and A wasn't wearing comfortable shoes, our spirits were not low, and we sang songs while we walked. Who else has gotten lost in Austria in the rain? A and me, that's who, and it was just so like us. And I am not making this up: When we finally got on the road that went straight up the hill to the hotel, a rainbow appeared in the sky over the hotel. A turned to me and said, "All we had to do was follow the rainbow." It was ridiculous and great. The experience was summed up in our homage to American Pie: "This one time, on the band trip, we got lost in Austria, and it was raining, and it was so not funny." Not terribly clever, and probably not terribly interesting to anyone but us...you just had to be there, in the rain, in Austria.

My heart will be blessed with the sound of music
And I'll sing once more

Tomorrow: Venice for the day

Day Ten

Liechtenstein and Austria

We left Champéry at 7 and got to Liechtenstein around noonish. It was sad to leave Champéry, since it had made such a good impression. Until that point, Switzerland had been near the top of my places-I-want-to-visit list; now I had been there. It was hard for any place to follow that, but they did admirably. (For the next four years, Canada moved to the top of the list.)

Liechtenstein is one of those small countries, like Andorra, Luxembourg, Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City. Liechtenstein is 62 square miles. The capital city is Vaduz, which is where we stopped. The country has a royal family who is apparently pretty popular, or at least was when we were there.
Since we were only there for about an hour, and since we would have had to try really hard to make or find trouble, we were allowed to wander off by ourselves. We must have been allowed to, because I did. The most famous landmark in Vaduz is the castle, which is up on a hill. That's not a great picture of the castle, but there it is. The royal family owns vineyards; I was a little surprised to see any vineyards at all there. It didn't strike me as especially good grape-growing weather, but what do I know about horticulture. I also saw a nice church. I'd started off walking along a road, not knowing at all where it went, and after a while I decided I'd better turn around before I walked straight out of the country. Of course I couldn't have actually walked all the way out of Liechtenstein, but I didn't know that at the time.

From Liechtenstein we continued on to Austria. We got to Seefeld around 4 and got settled into the Hotel Marthe. The hotel was about seven minutes' walk and up a slight hill from the center of town, so once we were checked in some of us walked down. I exchanged some money, everyone else bought ice cream, and we went back to the hotel for dinner. We watched part of a movie in French on TV, which was a little inexplicable, and then to bed.

Tomorrow: Innsbruck, and the second-most memorable concert of the trip