Every time my wife Laraine and I travel abroad, I promise that it–the “experience”–will not turn into a working holiday. I’ll shoot photos and generally make note. But I won’t take notes. Alas, we know where that can lead. Well, it led there again in a recent visit to Vienna, Budapest and Munich.
But, no, I’m not Rick Steeves. I’m not about to go all Frommer’s and Baedeker’s here. It’s Old Europe, and, of course, it’s charming. So, just a few observations from an American adding another perspective of his own country while noticing his Medieval-meets-light rail surroundings.
For openers, what timing.
There’s literally no escaping media ubiquity these days–and when it’s a drumbeat of “shutdown” and default scenarios, it’s as embarrassing as it is maddening. Not hard to detect a sense of smugness in European anchors and editorial writers referencing America’s “suicide caucus” and quoting and re-quoting President Barack Obama’s “held hostage” comments. Sure, the ripples from America’s dysfunctional Congress have global impact, none of it good, but there was no mistaking a hint of schadenfreude over the self-inflicted predicament of the world’s most powerful country.
Enough on that. It’s infuriating just referencing it. A pox on the OutHouse of Representatives.
* If you haven’t picked up an International Herald Tribune lately, you will be taken aback by its size. In the age of broadsheet downsizing, the IHT is like unfolding a table cloth. It’s so much bigger than it used to be without becoming larger. Amazing.
* Vienna has no edifice complex, to be sure. And much of it is Habsburg related. Speaking of, this political dynasty lasted for 640 years. Puts the Adamses, Roosevelts, Tafts, Kennedys, Clintons and Bushes in humbling perspective.
* Amid the baroque, gothic and art nouveau architecture is its contemporary counterpart. Hardly a complement–anymore than those McDonalds and Burger King franchises–but you know what modern replaced. About a third of the city was destroyed in World War II.
* Talk about re-purposing. More than 160 families now live in government, rent-controlled apartments in the iconic Schonbrunn Palace.
* Surprising how much graffiti is in evidence around Vienna. You can tell a lot of it is politics related–immigration is an issue as well as an evolving definition of “neutral.” But you can also tell the generic handiwork of the usual, narcissistic idiots.
* Upon further reflection: Following the Rays online inside the Opera House was probably a sacrilege.
* Imagine happening upon a “grow house” along the Danube in Vienna. Who knew?
* On a side trip to Salzburg, it was pointed out where various “Sound of Music” scenes were filmed. No less well-noted: where the inventor of Red Bull lives.
* Budapest straddles both sides of the Danube River. Buda and Pest were formerly separate cities. The contrast–Buda is hilly and leafy, Pest is flat and the administrative and commercial center of all Hungary–is visually intriguing. Buda is known for lush parks and fashionable neighborhoods; Pest features luxury hotels and upscale shopping. Ten bridges–two for trains only–span the Danube. The dynamic includes Viking river cruises as well as large dinner, gambling and night-club boats. There’s even a Sinatra Piano Bar barge. Talk about a river-centric synergy. The development of The Heights on the Hillsborough can’t come soon enough.
* Watching anything but politics on TV eventually gets you to local sports. This is Europe, so soccer and cycling is a given. But darts? Seemed like the players were the only ones sober.
* Goulash is a Hungarian staple. But who knew the acclaim over marzipan? There’s even a Budapest museum dedicated to it.
* What’s compelling about Budapest history is that you don’t have to go all Medieval in its pursuit. The 20th century, alas, more than suffices. Most notably, 1956. Soviet tanks rolled into downtown and crushed an anti-Communist, anti-East Bloc citizen revolt. It was brutal, and vestiges–and survivors–remain. The “Terror House” museum now stands as a graphic reminder. It formerly housed Hungarian Nazi headquarters before morphing in 1945 into a Communist interrogation, torture and execution chamber. Now it commemorates its victims. Incongruously enough, the Neo-Renaissance “Terror Haza” sits prominently on tree-lined, stately Andrassy Boulevard, often referred to as Budapest’s Champs Elysees.
*Munich, which was 70 percent destroyed in World War II, has an understandably modern, not just Bavarian, feel. It’s also nefariously steeped in early Nazi and Hitler history. Putsch Hall now doubles as a spacious, tourist restaurant. In Marienplatz, the city’s most famous–and eclectic–square, you can shop for a Rolex next to a sausage shop and then wander down to hear and watch the 11:00 a.m. Glockenspiel attraction rotate its 32 life-sized figures on top of the Town Hall.
* Had an interesting dining experience at a restaurant at the Munich train station. The menu included a “Tampa Bay” sandwich (mit schinken and kase), which turned out to be ham and cheese with lettuce, tomato and mayo–and not to be confused with a Boliche Boulevard Cuban.
* Granted, it was a limited sampling, but nice–hardly fancy–restaurants sans flat-screen TVs were most welcome.
* Wherever you go, there’s an Irish pub.
* There is no seamless transition to Dachau, the notorious concentration camp about 10 miles northwest of Munich. The weather, almost on cue, turned cold, windy and rainy. If there’s a place that should never be sunny and nice, it’s this place. You walk around, and you know you’re confronting the artifacts of evil. Nothing this calculated is anything but.
Among the memorials and inscriptions, this one from a Dachau survivor:
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, for I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out, for I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the gypsies, and I did not speak out, for I was not a gypsy. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, for I was not Jewish. Then they came for me. And there was no one left to speak out for me.”