Prague in the Rain

It was raining when we woke up this morning, and it rained for most of the day today. I was glad, in a way, for this as we had been warned by Viking that the water level in the River Elbe was so low that we might not be able to complete our cruise, that we might be bussed from place to place along our route. So I decided to make the best of it and try to enjoy the day, however damp.

And damp it was, as you can see out the window of our bus. 

Despite this, the tour guides tried to carry on more or less as if it were still sunny. This included long breaks where we were supposed to enjoy outdoor cafes. This annoyed almost all the passengers and rightly so:  not even the French are boulevardiers in cold, rainy weather. All I could think was that the guides were told to give us a three hour tour and if it was even a minute less than that they would be in trouble. 

During one of those breaks three of us went off to a nearby church to stay dry and see if there was some good art inside this splendid baroque edifice. The church is apparently one of two in Prague dedicated to Saint Nicholas. Perhaps because of its dedication to the fourth century bishop of the city of Myra in the Roman province of Asia Minor, today part of Turkey, many of the statues inside were of saints from that region such as John Chrysostom and Gregory Nazienzen. But the overall impression made by the art and architecture was the triumphalism of the Counter Reformation. 

This is Tridentine confidence and Jesuit assertiveness at its best. 

After leaving the church, we continued to stroll through the old city in the rain.

I could have taken more pictures, but the camera lens kept getting wet. It seemed pointless.

They took us up to the castle, but we were not particularly given a tour of it. We did step briefly into Saint Vitus’ Cathedral there where we were allowed to stand in the back of the nave. I was not all that sorry not to tour the building as the majority of the structure only dates from the 1920s. The choir and the ambulatory are medieval, but even they have been altered when the church was “completed” in the twentieth century. There is some adequate modern stained glass, but that is about it. 

Towards the end of the tour, there was a bit of a break in the rain. We went back to Wenceslaus Square

and watched as the famous town hall clock struck the hour. 

We returned to the hotel and tried to dry out. I had arranged a bike tour of Prague for the afternoon, but decided I was not up for riding around in the rain. I suspect I will not get my money back, but it was only twenty five dollars or so. Staying dry is worth that. We napped instead. 

It was only sprinkling in the late afternoon. I wanted to see the famous Slav Epic paintings by the Czech painter Alfons Mucha. I figured out using Google Maps that the “Trade Show Palace,” an old communist era building now converted into an art museum, was not that far from us. Still, we decided to take an Uber just in case it rained. 

When we arrived, we were seriously disappointed. The woman at the ticket desk seemed annoyed that we were there. When she finally looked up from her computer screen she sighed and told us that “…the paintings are in Japan.” We decided to look at the rest of the collection as we were there. She seemed irritated that she had to go to the effort of selling us the ticket. 

As it turned out, the museum was interesting. It showcases Czech art from the late nineteenth century to the present. None of it is particularly great, but it is interesting to see how the larger trends in European art were reflected here in this distant and often isolated part of Europe. There were lots of landscapes and still life paintings. I find those frankly dull. I started to get more interested when I found a room of  those wonderful late Romantic narrative pieces. There was the inevitable ship wreck 

and this horrible murder.

I am not even sure the artist knew what was happening in this picture.

John particularly liked some of the twentieth century stuff like this vaguely cubist sofa.

And, horrible as socialism was, who can not be sort of moved by the naive optimism shown in this early bit of communist art?

Later Czech art became less political, more personal

and even probably somewhat cynical.

We could have spent more time there, but by the end the guards were more or less chasing us out. 

Tomorrow we head off on the river cruise, but I have arranged a tour of religious Prague for the morning. Plus we get to pick up our laundry. I can hardly wait to be reunited with genuinely clean tee shirts!

Czeching In

After our late evening at the opera, it was hard to wake up early and be ready for another adventure. I think we both wished we had another day or two in Vienna. But we need to be on our way to Prague because after two days in Prague we will begin our cruise down the Elbe River. The good part of scheduling everything in advance is that you know you always have a place to sleep and will not miss some important events or attractions. The bad part is that sometimes a little spontaneity is a good thing, too.

We again used Day Trip to get from one capital to another. Our driver this time was named Marek. He was a nice guy, but we did not quite bond with him as much as we had with Davor. He picked us up promptly at nine o’clock. His Mercedes was not quite as spacious as our previous Land Rover and I wished I had more room in the back. As usual, John was more chatty than I was. I admire his ease in not only making small talk but sometimes plunging into topics of conversation that I probably would have avoided. 

Our stop on this route was Lednice Castle. This was originally one of the many palaces of the ruling family of Liechtenstein. In fact, Lednice, the adjacent estate of Valtrice, and the surrounding farms which provided income to the family covered nearly 200 square miles, significantly larger than Liechtenstein itself. The family, with its close ties to the Hapsburgs and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, considered this to be home until 1939. 

This stop should have been more carefully planned I guess. When we arrived, there were no more tours for about three hours, and we could hardly wait that long. Instead, we walked around the outside of the castle. As it appears today, the house is a classic Gothic revival structure from the middle of the nineteenth century. 

John and I immediately thought of a line from Beauty and the Beast when we saw these windows.

Of course, that’s the point where Gaston sings “I use antlers in all of my decorating…."

The original house, underneath all the Gothic Revival decor, is much different. The riding stables nearby were not updated to the Gothic style. They give a sense of what the original house must have looked like.

Extensive gardens, done in the English style, still remain. One of the characteristics of that style was to build “follies,” small buildings that only serve to decorate the garden. In many English gardens of this period fake ruined monasteries were built. In this case, the “folly” is a minaret, supposedly the largest in this part of Europe, and certainly the only one not attached to a mosque. 

After about 30 minutes of walking about the grounds, we had a coffee and continued on to Prague.

We arrived in the Czech capital about mid-afternoon. Few cities look attractive seen from their industrial and commercial suburbs, and Prague certainly seemed if anything bleaker than most. Things did not seem much brighter when we arrived at our hotel. John and I did not plan this leg of the trip:  we decided to splurge on a Viking river cruise down the Elbe. As a result, Viking had selected our hotel for us, and it was certainly not one that I would have chosen on my own. 

Marek gave us a little background. The Prague Hilton was one of the last construction projects of the socialist regime.  It was primarily designed to house western tourists to the Czechoslovakia — at that time, the government tolerated tourists in large, carefully controlled groups — and the building also was the center for annual party meetings at the adjacent “Congress Hall.” It is about half a mile from the historic center of Prague, but directly adjacent to an elevated highway. 

Inside, it looked about as sterile as it did on the outside. Typical of that era, it had a large atrium in the center and several floors of rooms opened to the the atrium. There were the inevitable glass elevators, of course. John found the enormous arrangement of artificial flowers particularly horrifying. 

John and I checked in with Viking, and we received our room keys. One of the local representatives seemed helpful, and we asked her where we could take laundry to get washed. She seemed to understand that with two weeks of dirty clothes we had no desire to pay the Hilton’s laundry prices. She recommended a place not that far away. We went up to our room. It was utterly sterile as we expected, but at least reasonably spacious. It would have been even more spacious if we can get rid of the trundle bed they they put in there. 

It was not altogether easy, but we found the laundry on the lower floor of an open air shopping center. The woman who ran the small shop was not happy when we said that we needed it all done by Friday, but she promised, in halting English, to do her best. No longer carrying a large box and a couple bags of dirty clothes, we went on to the center. 

Prague was a bit grittier than I expected. I suppose I thought it would be a somewhat larger version of Dubrovnik. It is also more Slavic than I thought it would be. These two ladies could have been straight from Warsaw. 

We walked about a bit more. Prague does have all that historic architecture, but it is also overrun with young American tourists. I am not completely sure why they are here. So far, the prices I see here are cheaper than Paris or London, but still not exactly dirt cheap. But there are thousands of them filling the streets. 

Tomorrow, we will do some more serious exploring of this city. 

The Road to Vienna

 The next morning we had breakfast at our hotel. I have never quite understood why people in central Europe seem so devoted to having cold cuts and cheese for breakfast. Still, I usually seem to have some kind of sandwich for breakfast. I figure that the protein is good for me and the cereal choices offered in Europe are bleak, either some kind of sugary American flakes or something with oats which even most horses would refuse. The offerings at this hotel, however, included some perfect pastries. “We have entered the croissant zone,” John decided. And, as always, he is probably right. 

The hotel made arrangements for a driver in a golf cart to take us and our luggage to a place where Davor could meet us. We have a much longer drive today. We are headed to Vienna. John and I spent a couple days in Vienna over ten years ago, and we have fond memories of riding bikes around the city. We only spending a night here this time as our ultimate destination is Prague. But our plans included an evening at the Wiener Statsoper, the Vienna State Opera. 

One of the cool things about the Day Trip service is that you can choose stops along your way, and your driver serves as your tour guide. John and I had chosen the Austrian town of Graz, located about halfway between Ljubljana and Vienna as our stop on this trip. Davor proved to be an outstanding tour guide. 

We parked in an underground lot and came up near a church. Davor pointed it out to us, but of course I wanted to go in. The interior was both ornate 

and austere.

Davor told us that Graz had recently been a “European City of Culture.” This is one of those things that the European Union does that really makes me understand why the British bolted from the EU. Some city, usually one that you do not normally associate with high culture, gets this nomination and a great deal of money is spent on dubious projects designed improve culture. It is more or less artistic "urban renewal.” In this case, one of the projects had been the construction of an artificial island in the center of the river.

Another project had been the construction of a new künsthalle, or art museum. But I will show you that eyesore later. 

Graz has delightful medieval and Renaissance buildings on both sides of the river.

We took a funicular up to the castle overlooking the town. We had a cup of coffee at the cafe there. Davor runs a coffee shop in Zagreb, so he gave us his ideas on beans, roasting, and espresso. John and I walked to the overlook

where we saw the old and new town

and the grotesque art museum.

Honestly, this building might be interesting or even fun in a different environment — a new city, or in the middle of a leafy park. But stuck in the middle of a neighborhood of late medieval and early eighteenth century buildings it is just a monument to the unbridled hubris of architects. 

We walked down instead of taking the funicular. This gave us an opportunity to admire the castle.

Many years ago I read an essay by a British architectural historian about ancient versus modern architecture. One of the points he made which has remained with me ever since, was the in traditional societies buildings are almost always made of local materials. The stones used for the houses or churches are the same stones you see on the hillsides and in the fields. This naturally makes the buildings blend in more harmoniously with the landscape around them. Modern societies, in contrast, almost always transport materials from great distances, that is, when natural materials are used at all, and this creates an often jarring contrast with nature. I think that is what the Graz castle blends in so well while the künsthalle never can, no matter where it is placed.  

John posed with the Hapsburg royal eagles.

The town of Graz is quite charming.

Unlike some other towns where the historic center has turned into a tourist area. Graz does not have that many tourists, so there were local people shopping in quite ordinary stores there. Even the shop that sold traditional dress was not selling it to tourists. 

Austrians — and, as my Austrian friend in Croatia reminded me, “Vienna is not Austria” — will often dress in national costume for special days and events.

From Graz we continued on into Vienna. We arrived in the late afternoon. I picked the “Motel One” just a block from the opera house. Motel One, despite its name, is not what Americans think of as a motel. Instead, it is a German chain that aims at a younger clientele that wants location and style and will accept small, somewhat spartan rooms, as a tradeoff for paying less. Once we had put our bags in our room we did not have much space to move around! 

We took a brief nap and then dressed up a bit and headed over to the opera house. Located on the Ringstraße that circles central Vienna, it is a monument from the very last years of the Empire. Many of the grand war horses of the modern Opera repertoire had their premieres here. 

I was so excited to be in such an almost sacred space for music, at least my favorite kind of music. We had splurged on really good tickets and our seats were just below the old royal box in the front row. We had a small screen that offered us English and German translations.

The opera was Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. The music for this opera is wonderful; the libretto, based on a play by the Symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck, is utterly incoherent. The production was overall quite good. The singers were great; the set and costume design ingenious but almost as incoherent as the text. But the audience was generally appreciative.

One of the things I love about going to plays and concerts in Europe is that they do not always end with standing ovations. In Los Angeles, the audience jumps to its feet at the end of every performance, mostly, I think, because people are plotting to get to their cars before the rest of the audience does. 

After the opera, we walked around central Vienna a bit, including Saint Stephen’s Cathedral. 

Tomorrow we will be off to Prague.

Sauntering through Slovenia

We left Zagreb fairly early today. We were not taking the train this time. Instead, for the next three days we will be using a new service call On Day Trip. Day Trip is sort of something like Uber. It matches selected local drivers to tourists who want to travel between European cities. Passengers can pick one or two side trips along the route. The drivers need to be knowledgeable, speak English and usually German as well, and have some kind of better-than-average vehicle. Day Trip is cheaper than flying, and offers the door-to-door convenience that taking the train lacks. 

Our driver was named Davor and he showed up in a fairly new Range Rover. He will be our driver not only today but tomorrow. We liked him right away. He drove us today to Lbubjana, the capital of Slovenia. Now at least until the Trumps burst into public attention, most Americans would have looked blankly at the mention of the country of Slovenia. Even now I suspect that most would have difficulty locating it on a map. This is a pity indeed as both John and I decided it was one of the most charming places we have been in Europe. 

A little background. Most of us grew up knowing a country called Yugoslavia. This country had been cobbled together from a small number of previous countries and parts of countries. Yugoslavia means “South Slavic Region.” All the parts of Yugoslavia spoke some kind of Slavic language and most of the people there considered themselves ethnically Slavic. But really, the cultural differences were always more important than the similarities. And so, in 1991, not longer after the Berlin Wall fell, the Yugoslavian project fell apart, too. Today the area is now six different countries — Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Slovenia. 

Each of these countries speaks a somewhat different language, though most can understand each other. Croatia and Slovenia are Catholic, Serbia and Macedonia are Orthodox, and Bosnia has a large Muslim minority. Some were parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, some were parts of the Ottoman Empire, and some of the most mountainous areas were always functionally independent. 

Slovenia was the first part of Yugoslavia to declare independence. Slovenia was always the most prosperous part of the old socialist country, and the area most closely connected to the west because of its borders with Austria and Italy. Unlike other parts of Croatia, there were no significant groups of Serbs or Croats living in Slovenia. This meant that there was no rationale for the remaining Yugoslav forces, composed mostly of the Serbians, to attack Slovenia. As a result, Slovenia’s independence was established early and fairly easily. 

Zagreb is fairly close to the border of Slovenia. We stopped briefly to have our passports checked and stamped:  Croatia is part of the European Union, but it is not park of the Schengen area. Almost as soon as we crossed the border the land became pleasantly mountainous. We passed small villages with clusters of small houses surrounding a parish church. “I looks like the Sound of Music,” John commented. And indeed it did. 

We were in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia in less than an hour after we crossed the border. For those not fluent in Slovenian, the name is pronounced “Loo blee YAH nah.” Davor was a little troubled when we gave him the address of our hotel. “That’s in the pedestrian area,” he said. “I cannot drive there.” He took us about as far as the GPS told him to go, into a parking garage near the river. We took our bags and started walking. 

We were enchanted by Ljubljana the moment we came above ground. Clusters of beautiful seventeenth and eighteenth century buildings line a small river crossed with many small pedestrian bridges. 

We found the hotel without much difficulty. We are staying at the Wander Urbani Resort. This is a boutique hotel right in the heart of the historic district. It has the great disadvantage of that kind of hotel as well — pretty tiny rooms! John and I were ready to do some exploring anyhow, so we left our small room and headed out. 

We strolled into the nearby square. This looked like something straight out of any Baroque German or northern Italian city. 

The square was dominated by the town hall.

We found an ATM. Slovenia is part of the Eurozone, and it was nice to once again deal with a currency we understood. We noticed the large church with the copper dome and decided to explore it. From the plaque at its entrance, we learned that it is named for Saint Nicholas and that it was the cathedral for Ljubljana. The interior was beautiful.

Nothing in the church was more lovely than the ceiling. I have discovered the best use of the iPhone’s front camera is to use it to photograph ceilings. I am not using it for selfies….

After we were finished with the church, it was time to find our city tour. Our hotel had told us that there was a free tour of Ljubljana leaving each day at 3:00 from the bridge near the old Franciscan church. That particular edifice had once been painted red, but time and the sun had faded it into some shade in between rose and bubble gum. It was not hard to find. 

There was a strange “Ljubljana weather” fountain in the square in front of the church. It shot up water, but not where you expected it. Instead, you had the sensation that somehow it was raining. It was a hot day, so John didn’t mind getting wet.

 Our tour guide spoke faultless English. I suspect she had lived in the U. S. for some time as a child. 

She started off by telling us a bit about the very early history of Slovenia and Ljubljana. I was not surprised to learn that the Roman had settled much of this area. They had not settled the area that is today’s Ljubljana as it was something of a swamp originally. She talked about how the Slavs had moved into the area in the sixth century, and about early efforts to make them Christian. We learned that both the Venetians and the Austrians had struggled for control of Slovenia, and the centuries it had spent as a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

As we started to walk around, she gave us a lot of interesting facts about the buildings. Much of the area around the Franciscan church had been flattened by an earthquake in the nineteenth century. The government gave property owners money to rebuild. On house survived somewhat intact. Instead of being grateful, the owner was angry he was not receiving any money. So, he placed beams on the outside walls as if it were about to collapse and asked for assistance. The ploy worked. Not needing any money for structural supports, he used it to decorate his house in the then fashionable Secession style.

 Ljubljana had a lot of pedestrian bridges, and a couple are covered with the inevitable — and annoying — “love locks.” All over Europe young couples take a lock to symbolize the idea that their love will last forever, put the lock on a bridge, and toss the key into the river below. Paris, despite its reputation as the City of Love, routinely cuts all these locks and throws them away. Ljubljana seems more willing to tolerate this nonsense. 

Another bridge is decorated with dragons, the city’s emblem.

About halfway through the tour, it was just too hot for John and he went back to the hotel. I continued with the tour. Each street seemed cuter than the one before it. 

I also learned a lot. For example, most of the so-called Congress of Vienna, the conference that reestablished European borders after the defeat of Napoleon, took place not in Vienna, which had too many distractions for the dignitaries, but in Ljubljana.

Returning to the hotel, John was feeling a bit refreshed from a nap, not to mention the air conditioned room. He had been told that if he went to Slovenia he really had to see Lake Bled. He had made arrangements with the desk for a cab driver to take us there and back that evening. 

A bit of geography and geology. While we usually think of Switzerland when someone mentions the Alps, that group of mountains extends into a number of different countries including Austria, Germany, Italy, France, and Slovenia. The Slovenian mountains are known as the Julian Alps. These mountains are not quite as large as the Swiss peaks as they are mainly made of limestone rather than dolomite. Limestone is softer and wears down more easily. The Julian Alps look more like the Adirondacks than the Rockies.

It took us about an hour to get to Lake Bled. Our driver did not speak much English, and we obviously spoke no Slovenian. He had learned the word “beautiful,” however, and he liberally applied this adjective to everything we saw along the way. After a while I wanted to rebel and say, “No, damn it, it’s not beautiful.” But for the most part, it was. It was just monotonous being told it so many times.

Lake Bled does look like something from a Disney cartoon with a castle on a cliff overlooking the water and a church tower rising up from an island in the middle of the lake. 

Our driver pulled into a hotel with a beautiful view of the lake. In his basic English, he told us that this had been Tito’s summer house. He came here a couple weeks each year and brought visitors to stay with him here. It had some of the best views of the lake imaginable, a good example of how, under socialism, some people are just more equal than others. Now, under capitalism, anyone who can pay can enjoy the view from the restaurant or a hotel verandah. Or, for that matter, you can just walk around the grounds like John and I did. 

The driver dropped us off in the town of Lake Bled, a somewhat depressing commercial stretch on the far end of the lake. We had no desire to stay there, so we started to do a circuit around the lake. We saw a number of former houses. Some had been converted into hotels and restaurants, and there were others whose current function was not clear. This rather attractive lodge had the EU and Croatian flags on it, indicating some connection to the government, but it did not seem to be in use at all. 

There are also a number of campgrounds and recreational facilities not far from the lake. It looks like this may be a popular family vacation spot, though frankly it would seem like a pretty boring place to spend a vacation for me. 

After about an hour walking, we still were not quite back to the town of Lake Bled. Fortunately, our driver had given us his card so we call him and had him pick us up and drive us back to Ljubljana. Along the way, he kept reminding us that things were “beautiful.” We nodded and said, “Yes, beautiful” to keep him happy.

He dropped us off at the castle, the fortifications high on the hill overlooking the city. Although it was dusk, the views were still good. Unfortunately, that view showed how the outskirts of the town had been marred by ugly tower blocks and factories built during the communist years.

Oscar Wilde wrote a book called The Soul of Man under Socialism. Wilde assured his readers that life would be not only equal but utterly beautiful under socialism. He was so wrong. 

John and I wandered around the castle for a bit, but decided against buying a ticket to look at all the attractions. 

I find tourists taking selfies amusing, and when I can I try to catch them in the act. 

It’s mean, I know, but I never represented myself as a nice person.

We took the funicular down the hill to the historic center of town. John was exhausted and wandered back to the hotel. I was not far behind, though I stopped at a sausage shop and bought him some food. 

Tomorrow we head off to Vienna.