June 6, 2020 Thirty years ago, this week we were in the Czechoslovakia. We were there because in 1989 we took our kids to Berlin to see the wall. Two and a half months later it came down. In 1990 … Continue reading 30 Years Ago This Week
Yesterday I posted about the World Cup. Today I am posting excerpts of two letters on European tournaments. I watched Euro 98 games Austria and Egypt. During Euro 96 we lived in Tirana. I’ll start with Euro 2008. A cartoon in one of the local Cairo papers shows two Egyptians looking at the European football tournament, Euro 2008, on TV. One says to the other “The difference is, with us, football is just a game.” It is a madness that takes over Europe every fourth June. The roof of the Cairo Marriott is turned into a big screen outdoor football … Continue reading European Football Tournaments.
I enjoy the World Cup, watching games at various venues in Sitka. (Football is better watched in community. Besides, I don’t own a Television. The picture at the top is at the Pizza Express, a Mexican Restaurant in Sitka, the … Continue reading Remembering World Cups Past.
When we lived in Bratislava we often went for a show, concert or meal in Vienna. After the show we sat on the Schwartzenberg Café (also called the Opera Café) along the D tram line, enjoying a coffee until it … Continue reading Mitteleuropa Cafes in Vienna and Bratislava
Across the back of a row of the booths of the Altwiener Ostermarkt, Freyung (Old Vienna Easter market at Freyung Square) is a 40 meter (130 foot) long mural of the Passion of Christ painted for this 25th anniversary of the … Continue reading He is Risen, He is Risen Indeed.
The Bratislava Easter markets are basically extra booths added onto the open air booths that are in two of the squares all season (Hviezdoslavovo námestie and Františkánske námestie.) The Bratislava market had almost no emphasis on food (except for a … Continue reading Bratislava Easter Fair or a Spanking for Easter.
Around the perimeter of the Altwiener Ostermarkt, Freyung (Old Vienna Easter market at Freyung Square) booths sell handicrafts, I bought an olive wood egg. One sold live rabbits. The food market and the wine tasting booths were across the street. … Continue reading Altwiener Ostermarkt, Freyung (Old Vienna Easter market at Freyung)
The Altwiener Ostermarkt, Freyung (Old Vienna Easter market at Freyung Square) was smaller and more interesting than the market at Schonbrunn. In the middle of the square is what is advertised as, 40,000 decorated Easter eggs are for sale. It … Continue reading 40,000 Easter Eggs
Vienna’s Easter markets are spin offs of their Christmas markets and are relatively small compared with their Yuletide counterparts. I had wondered how these markets dealt with the Lenten season of penance and fasting. They mostly don’t. The market on … Continue reading Easter Market at Schonbrunn Palace
Railjet is Austria’s high speed train. While not as fast as Germany’s ICE (Suzi’s train from Brussels to Munich topped out at 275) or France’s TGV, we clocked a respectable 232 km per hour (144 MPH) on the route between Munich and Vienna. The train is comfortable with wi-fi (I took a picture when the speedometer tipped 200 and sent it out on FaceBook), a dining car, a cart that brings food to you and nice seats. Taking pictures out of the windows at the alpine meadows at that speed was a challenge for my camera. You don’t really feel … Continue reading Railjet, Austria’s High Speed Train.
There are Serbian Easter Eggs, Croatian Easter Eggs, American Easter Eggs, and Slovak Easter Eggs. Mikulas “Mickey” Derevjanik, is a Slovak craftsman, a metal worker, who designs Easter Eggs wrapped in wire. He comes from generations of metal workers who … Continue reading A Craftsman in Easter Eggs (From 2002)
I’m not sure of the theological meaning, but Pope John Paul II has been turned into a pillar of salt. In Genesis it was Lot’s wife who became a saline pillar. Her sin was looking back at Sodom, the home from which she was being evacuated by angels before its destruction. The Wieliczka mines in Krakow Poland are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We took a bus to the salt mines and went on the tour. We went down about 438 feet, although the mines go down much further than that, and walked for about three kilometers underground. The wondrous … Continue reading Salt Pope, Krakow, Poland
“For All the Saints Who From Their Labors Rest,” Especially for one. All Saint’s Day 15 years ago at Dubcek’s grave. This is All Saints’ Say. Today Slovaks visit cemeteries and light candles on graves. Most of my staff … Continue reading Alexander Dubcek’s Grave. All Saints Day 1998, Bratislava, Slovakia.
A week ago we woke up on a Saturday morning in Warsaw. It was 2 degrees Fahrenheit (-16 Celsius) with a minus 15 F wind chill. It was time to get ready for our Warsaw tour, which included a walking tour of the old town. It was cold but we went. We arrived on Friday on the Berlin-Warsaw express. Warsaw Central station does not have well marked exits, so instead of getting out onto the street we ended up exiting into a large and modern shopping mall with an undulating glass roof. I finally found my way out of the … Continue reading Warsaw, Poland, March, 2013
On Palm Sunday we ventured into the old town a second time. Poland is not the land of palm trees, although Charles De Gaulle square has a huge plastic palm tree. (It is a work of art. Before the war … Continue reading Warsaw, Palm Sunday, 2013
We have been to Telc several times. It has a nice outlet store for Bohemian crystal, even though it is in Moravia. Each time it was overshadowed, in the letter, by other places or, in one case, by a traffic accident. A Lada hit me while I was stopped an intersection, no one hurt. So the pictures will have to tell the story. The first time we were there in 1990 it was rundown but you could see the beauty under the dust and in spite of the faded paint. The last time we visited in 2002 it was gloriously … Continue reading Telc, Moravia, Czech Republic
April 27, 2002 Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic Dear Friends, We’re spending the night in Ceske Krumlov on a drive between Bratislava and Zagreb. Ceske Krumlov is nowhere near the direct route from Bratislava to Zagreb. Suzi and I have not often taken direct routes and we are the richer for it. Ceske Krumlov is a fortified city protected by a meander in the Vlatava (Moldau) River. We were last here in spring 1990 during the election that legitimized the Velvet Revolution. The city was not yet a UNESCO World Heritage Site. That came in 1992 along with some restoration funds. In … Continue reading Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic
St. Stephens Basilica is the main church on the Pest side of the river. It is a great venue for organ recitals. Continue reading Saint Stephen’s Basilica, Budapest
August 20, 2000 Budapest, Hungary Dear Friends, One thousand years ago today Hungary was established when King Stephen was granted the crown by Pope Sylvester. Today there’s a party going on. One week ago Suzi and I were sitting on the beach at Milocar in Montenegro, with no idea we would be here. Since then I’ve been in Bosnia, Croatia, and Italy. Today Suzi goes back to Podgorica while tomorrow I go to Bosnia, Austria and Romania. Don’t ask. At the end of the week I was feeling pretty punk. When I got back from a meeting with an ambassador … Continue reading 1000 years of Hungary
These are paragraphs from a 2003 letter: In Hungary the Internationale is best represented in Szabor (or Statue) park, a collection of Socialist Realism artifacts outside Budapest. While the park is not difficult to get to it’s sometimes difficult to find. I asked the Concierge to mark it on a map. She couldn’t find it and wondered why it was not in the center of town. I said; “Well, I don’t suppose you would put it in the middle of Hero’s Square,” which is where some of the original work really did sit. She laughed. Finding the road is not … Continue reading Szabor (Statue) Park, Budapest
This is an excerpt from a 2003 letter. Budapest has always been a “comfort city.” The first place hit after our first sojourn in Albania was Budapest and it seemed like Disneyland, even though it was only four years out of Communism itself. We had water, we had heat. We put them together and had long hot showers. During Milosevic it is the place we went to for refuge when things got too hot in Montenegro. We maintained a flat here for four months, and that was a comfort. But the food was the real part of the comfort. The … Continue reading Budapest
Suzi and I had a flat in Budapest for, perhaps, 100 days in 2000. We had a flat there because that is where USAID was coordinating aid to Serbian independent media and civil society during the election that unseated Milosevic. I spent only 22 nights in that flat, Suzi a few more. During that time I was using Budapest airport to travel between Kosovo, Montenegro, Romania, Bosnia and who knows where else. Suzi was traveling too. At several points one of us arranged to get to the airport early because that was the best way for us to see each … Continue reading Hungary
This is from a letter written in October 1998: Eastern Slovakia is an area crossed in trade and fought over by Tartars, Lithuanians, Poles, Hungarians, Germans, Russians and Slovaks. It’s where cultures meet. Kosice boasts the eastern-most gothic cathedral in Europe, and while it is VERY gothic, the clock tower has a very un-gothic gilded dome. This region is a borderland, a krajina in Slavic languages. We drove “along the borderland,” U krajina, the origin of the name Ukraine, which sits just a few kilometers to the east. More than a dozen wooden churches, built between the fifteen and seventeen … Continue reading Wooden Churches in Eastern Slovakia
This is from a letter in the early 2000s Friday afternoon we drove to Medzilaborce on the border with Poland and the Ukraine. Medzilaborce is the ancestral home of the Warhol family (as in pop artist Andy.) It’s easy to identify the town when driving through because of two huge Campbell’s Soup Cans that sit in front of the “Dom Kultura.” The Andy Warhol Foundation donated 14 works to the town, including “Red Lenin” and the town has set up the Warhol Museum of Modern Art. Warhol is probably one of the two best-known Slovak Americans. The other is Jesse … Continue reading Andy Warhol’s Nowhere, Medzilaborce, Slovakia