Eastern (oops should be Central) Europe - Day Ten

During the night we’ve made our way to a small town called Durnstein in the Wachau Valley a region known for its beauty and wine. There is castle ruin above Durnstein where Richard the Lionhearted was held captive on his return from the Holy Land after the Third Crusade. It was a relatively short steep climb for me and I was able to follow the trail further up where I encountered some Austrian mountain climbers who were getting ready to work their way down and up one of the rock faces as part of their pre-season training to get ready for the Alps later in the summer.

Then it is on through the picturesque Wachau Valley and on to another small town named Melk. There we do a tour of an abbey that is done in the Baroque style – quite grandiose again…I really do need to read about the Hapsburgs of the 18th and 19th century and find out where all this wealth and power was coming from. We had a very short organ concert in the church before we went back on board the boat where I was hosting drinks for a number of our boat mates in our cabin.

This evening our professionals from Cruise One had to impose a bit of discipline. It seems that Mrs. de-I was accusing de-I of filching her evening chocolate - a charge the de-I veamously denied. I order to maintain good will among the couple, Al and Sandy did an independent, post-turn down service inspection of the cabin to verify that indeed both sides of the bed had a piece of chocolate. This is the type of personalized service that you just don't get from other tour reservation sources.

Pictures

Mrs. de-I Radiant in her Euro Fashion Look

The Road to Durnstein Castle

Here is the goal

Starting up the trail in town

On the trail

Getting Closer

Entrance to the Castle Grounds

The Castle Keep

View back down the valley

Looking East

Looking West

The Town of Durnstein

Durnstein Castle seen from above

Eastern (oops should be Central) Europe - Pictures of Vienna

I realized that didn't put in the pictures from Vienna with the last post.

Big Ass Monumental Buildings of Vienna

Cruise One Moments

Cruise One Believes in Fully Planning all Itineraries

(Al - "We're WHERE!")

Supreme Leader Sandy
"We will visit the 8 more monuments in the next two hours"

de-I
"Couldn't we have a wee bit of beer please mistress Sandy"

It was crazy ass cold and Wife had nothing for her ears so we ducked into a department store (actually this was in Bratislava - Tesco) and picked this up for 24 Euros...and she'll have something for the Halloween season as well. I never had trouble finding her after this.

Pictures from Inside Saint Stephen's Cathedral
I love Gothic Churches

Yet another picture of the River Princess

Eastern (oops should be Central) Europe - Day Nine

I've realized recently that I really should be referring to the part of Europe we are visiting as central Europe. Eastern Europe is Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, etc. I also forgot to post my pictures of day time in Bratislava yesterday so here they are.

A view of Bratislava Castle

The Castle Closer up

Old Town Bratislava with our Cool Guide

We arrived in Vienna around 6:30 last night. There was the ‘Captain’s Dinner’ – not quite a formal affair. But the real treat of the evening was the entertainment – a duo of a piano player and a violinist. They turned out to be respectively the conductor and first violinist of the Slovakia National Orchestra, and they were good, real good. They played a variety of classical music and folk music using a variety of instruments. Everyone, including the crew was entranced.

Our morning starts off with a guided bus/walking tour of Vienna. It is extremely chilly today with the temperature going no higher than 52% with clouds and drizzle – ideal sightseeing weather. Our travel guide today is decidedly inferior to our two previous guides in Budapest and Bratislava. But it gets to the city and gives us our orientation.

When the official tour is finished we head out on our own. I’m going to have to get a good book on the history of the Hapsburgs because I had no idea of the scale of grandiosity of the buildings associated with the Hapsburg Empire.

The Perfect Storm - How to Lose a Small Fortune

When doing extreme sightseeing (a form of activity that consists of trying to see the maximum number important ‘places’ in an allotted – usually short – period of time). The skill sets required to participate in this sport include research in order to know where to go, map reading and orienteering in order to find and get to the places, and of course walking; preferably as fast a possible. Our professionals at Cruise One, Al and Sandy, are enthusiastic practitioners of this sport and we are in full form doing this during our time in Vienna, the cold weather driving our average time at and between ‘places’ down.
One of the challenges of the sport is the requirement to take on nourishment, include a certain number of ‘ typical of the region’ culinary experiences, and of course unload waste materials. Since extreme sightseeing is mostly done in ‘famous’ places, finding bargains is not easy. Add cold, fatigue, a tight timetable and the current state of the dollar and you have the makings of a new record for outlay of funds for minimal amounts of food and drink. Thus we ended up with the coffee for four, two sandwiches and three pastries for $50 and the lunch for four for $123 that included a $10 glass of coke, $6 for five pieces of bread, and three small bottles of water for $7.50.

In the evening we are taken to a tourist concert of Straus and Mozart with a few other composers, ballet, Viennese waltz, and opera thrown in – sort of like listening to one of those ‘best of’ CD’s that have three minutes from 100 classic music hits. Actually the musicianship was quite good and I enjoyed the straight classical pieces a lot.

Riverside Castle on the way to Vienna

A Series of Pictures Showing Our Progression Rising in a Lock

This Picture was taken after the Boat was fully raised

Another Castle on the Way

Eastern Europe - Day Eight

Last night we finally boarded our boat, the River Princess in Bratislava, Slovakia. It was nice to get ourselves totally unpacked. According to our cruise specialists Al and Sandy, our rooms are very nice and spacious compared to an equivalent ocean cruise especially the bathroom and the shower. After dinner, we went for an hour and half walk around the old part of the city which is almost completely an auto free zone. Our walk was actually supposed to be shorter but we got lost.

This morning we had a bus and walking tour of the city. Our guide was quite good. We are quite surprised by Bratislava. The guidebooks do not give it much play and there is much written about Slovakia being the poorer step cousin to the Czech Republic. However, we found the city quite attractive, clean, and buoyant; clearly a place we would come again to spend more time.

As part of the revised schedule we are boarding the ship just after Noon and we setting sail for Vienna. Some more general impressions of this experience:

The Dark Side of Friendliness – The bouncy Cruise Director’s exhortations of the day’s activity while I’m just drinking my second cup of coffee at 8 in the morning just don’t fall well on my ears.

Convenience is Awfully Nice – Not having to figure out where to eat, where to stay or where to get to is actually rather convenient and pleasant.

Getting to Know Your Staff – We have befriended one of the waiters (name – Tomas (pronounced To-mahsh – he’s Slovakian) so we have a regular conversation going on as to what it is being served, how it is prepared, whether it is authentic or not, etc.

Attractiveness of Central Europe – This trip has really changed my impressions of this part of the world. I could see us coming back her and spending some more substantial time in a place like Bratislava or driving through Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland.

Our Cruise One Staff filming our entry onto the River Princess
("I need to get documentation that this de-I guy actually got on board or I know he'll try to nick me for something")

Wife Boarding Ship

Bratislava at Night

Eastern Europe - Day Seven

I finally have internet again! So I will try to catch up on as many days of our trip as possible.

As a total cruise novice and full-time troll, my initial reaction last night to the mass of people that I will be spending the next week with borders between terror and revulsion. But this trip is about Wife and not about me, because it’s something she has wanted to do for a long, long time. And as far as cruises go, this is a micro-cruise with barely a 100 people on the boat (compared with the thousand that are on real cruise ships). I had a poor night sleeping last night going over a myriad of ways that I was going to be miserable. But in the end my focus on the reason why I was doing this allowed me peace and I fell a sleep

We have to get up early today to get our luggage all arranged and entered into the coaches. There is going to be a tour of Budapest that will cover mostly things that we’ve already seen after which we will drive in the afternoon to Bratislava and finally get on the boat. All of us will be glad to get our bags to one spot and stop moving around unpacking and repacking. The tour itself was uneventful and we are now on the road to Bratislava so I will make couple of observations based upon a full six hours of this tour group experience (can’t call it a cruise experience yet since we haven’t made it to the boat yet).

Cultural Identity – This is an Anglo group with representatives from the US, Canada, Great Britain, South Africa and Australia. I am fearful of the implications that this has for the culinary experience.

Friendliness Can Be Alluring – In spite of my best efforts to maintain the curmudgeonly standards of the mail line of my family, I’m finding the genuine friendliness of my travel companions a serious obstacle to maintaining a monastic posture. I’m sure the great saints would have something to say about this but I don’t have access to any of there writings now.

Watching the Great Al in Action – One of the main reasons for agreeing to this trip was hearing all of the stories of how Al has created contacts and relationships around the world as well as having had a wide variety of non-traditional experiences as a result of the a his natural gregariousness, fearlessness, desire to find a better way to do things with cruising. Up until now we were doing a vacation separate from the “cruise experience”. This has now changed. Today I watched him work with our tour guide. This led to her taking us on a special shopping trip apart from the group to the ‘hidden’ grocery store under the Central Market so we could buy booze for the ship at a discount from what was being sold on the floor above.

Inside Church at Buda Castle

I Love Stained Glass Windows

The Haul from the Grocery Store under the Market

Sandy, Wife and Our Wonderful Guide Andrea

Eastern Europe - Day Six

This is our last full day in Budapest. We are supposed to be moving on to the boat today but there is a breakdown of the locks between Budapest and Bratislava, Slovakia so the itinerary is being changed. Instead we are being put up into another hotel here tonight. Then we will get in a coach tomorrow, have a short tour of Budapest, drive on in the afternoon to Bratislava, and move on to the boat.

After getting everything packed up, we check out of the hotel and head off to the opposite side of the river, the Buda side. Whereas Pest is flat and on a plain, Buda is hilly with bluffs overlooking the river. We have been so lucky with the weather. They keep predicting rain and we keep having nice days. We cross over the Chain Bridge (looks like a miniature version of the Brooklyn Bridge) and go up to the Buda Castle above. Everyone else took the funicular but I took advantage of the opportunity and decided to climb up.

After touring the castle grounds for a while, AinA and I decided to break off from the rest. We were in the mood for a relaxing lunch and everyone else wanted to push on to see more sites. AinA and I had a nice light lunch with couple of glasses of nice Hungarian rosé. Then we walked down the hill back to Pest and picked up a couple of other sites we had not seen including the Opera and the historic main Synagogue. The latter was immense and looked like a middle eastern building with a large courtyard and dome on the end of the main sanctuary. We didn’t go in but may have a chance tomorrow as it is on the mini-tour we have with cruise line.

We met up with Wife, Al and Sandy around 3 PM. AinA said her goodbyes and caught a cab to the airport while we caught a cab to our interim hotel, a new modern Hilton. We get oriented tonight (here are the sides of the ship – if you go beyond the railing – you fall in the water and drown) and start the cruise adventure tomorrow.

Pictures

The Chain Bridge

Parliament seen from Buda Castle

The Synagogue

Eastern Europe - Culinary Interlude

I dedicate this post to my various children and the BCD family who would have thoroughly enjoyed every moment of this.

This trip has not been a gastronomically oriented trip but Saturday has been an exception. Budapest has a large Central Market and we visited it for lunch. There were numerous stands selling a wide variety of prepared items. We went to one and had the following:

• Roasted Chicken with a sauerkraut cooked with hot Hungarian peppers
• A sausage in sauce concoction on rice
• Just a roasted sausage with bread and mustard
• Cabbage rolls stuffed with a rice/sausage filling and a non-spicy sauerkraut
• A beef stew
• Red cabbage

It was substantially better than what we had for dinner the night before for a fraction of the cost. Very hearty with lots of flavor, eaten standing up and washed down with beer.

Dinner was at a restaurant that I had researched that specialized in goose and in Jewish dishes (Hungary had a substantial Jewish population prior to WWII). The name of the restaurant is Fülemüle, which is Magyar for Nightingale. The menu had over 15 different variations of goose including goose cracklings, cold goose liver in its own fat, Cholent with roasted goose leg, goose soup with matzo balls, etc. Our service was every bit as nice as it had been surly in the main downtown tourist area. Here’s what we had.

We shared communally a number of dishes up front. These included:

• The afore mentioned goose cracklings (think about all that wonderful skin from the roast bird – mmmmmm)
• Home made pickles including cucumber, hot peppers, green tomatoes (sounds like a deli right?)
• Beet salad
• Cabbage salad

For main courses we had the following:

• I had a combo plate of goose that included a wonderful goose liver with fried onions, a roasted leg, and a breast piece with fresh mushrooms (the mushrooms were awesome, kind of like Chinese black mushrooms). Along with it was potatoes fried in (tah dah) goose fat.
• AinA had the Cholent which here was a long-slow cooked bean dish very much like a cassoulet with hard cooked eggs – great flavor
• Sandy also had a goose leg with roasted veggies and millet
• Al had a leg of lamb
• Glo had a pikeperch in a cream sauce with mushrooms

Everything was fabulous. The service was excellent and friendly. We had a very nice bottle of Hungarian wine. Best of all, the total for five people was $163!

Food Counter at the Central Market

Our Group chowing down at Central Market

The various appetizers - Look at the Goose Skin Crackling! Mmmmmmmmmmm

My Goose Combo Plate
Under that pile of brown fried onions was goose liver to die for

Supreme Leader Sandy's Goose Leg with Roasted Vegetables

Al's Leg of Lamb
(or what's left of it)

AinA's Cholent with Eggs
Beans as good as any French Cassoulet

Wife's Fish (my least favorite dish - not enough fat I guess)

Everyone having a good time