On Vacation: the first half of the week

Saturday

Today was the most expensive trip to a museum that I’ve ever taken. It wasn’t the admission that made is so, nor the cost of getting there – we spent the night at our own house and our train pass covered our journey to the South Bank.

It was the cost of oversleeping.

For those of you who’ve talked to us anytime in the last two or three months, you’ve known that we were going to take our second honeymoon to Budapest and explore Eastern Europe, a seemingly fascinating part of the world that neither of us have ever been to and do not know much about.

We packed and prepared late into the night – using a Rough Guide to Europe courtesy of the local library. I must say – these books are quite helpful.

The alarm was set – I think.

But I woke up not to an abrasive ringing but to Bree’s soft voice asking, “What time is it?” The hint of sunlight outside of my window put pits in my stomach… it was 6:30. Our flight left at 7:50 from Heathrow. Engineering works along our route made it doubtful that we could make in an less than an hour and a half. The taxi would have taken at least an hour.

And thus our long-awaited first real vacation began.

After rebooking the flight for the next day, we decided to make the most of our vacation and headed down the Tate Modern, a visit we’d been intending to make for quite some time.

It did not disappoint.

Besides seeing all of the latest fashions for every sort of crowd, our eyes were particularly opened by a few exhibits. Here’s the highlights:

1) The Oak Tree – We rounded the corner into one room and saw a glass shelf suspended from the wall about 10 feet off the ground that had a half-full (some would say half-empty) glass of water on top of it. It was titled “The Oak Tree.” It was accompanied by an interview with the artist that went a little something like this.

“So you’re saying that you’re imagining this to be an oak tree?”
No, this is an oak tree.
“You mean this represents an oak tree?”
No, this is an oak tree.
“Why is it an oak tree?”
Because I have made it so.
“When did it become an oak tree?”
When I intended it to.
“Can all glasses of water on glass shelves be considered oak trees?”
No, just this one.
“Can you teach other people to make oak trees out of a glass of water?”
No, it is something they must learn for themselves.

Note from the blogger: I am NOT making this up.

2) Degenerate Art – A collection originally gathered by Nazis to exemplify their “superiority,” these are works of art created by Jews, disabled, and other outcast groups that the Nazis stole prior to World War II. Ironically, it became one of the most popular exhibits in Deutschland even despite the high prices charged for viewing and was rescinded shortly thereafter.

3) The Thames Dig – This is thousands of articles dug up about 5 years ago from the Thames River with some now displayed in a beautiful mahogany cabinet. It included everything from plastic bottles and trash you would expect to bones, dishes, jewellery, anchors, credit cards, lipstick, and even a strange, desperate handwritten note. Hundreds of volunteers, including school children, participated in this dig to create a snapshot of history from an unlikely source.

We look forward to taking Jess and other hecklers to see the Oak Tree for themselves – it’s worth every bit of the admission price – it’s free if as long as you haven’t missed a flight.

Dinner at one of our usual favourites – Wagamama. We thought of Jennifer & S and their new red t-shirts.

What a wonderful first day of vacation.



Sunday


Today we woke up on time. That is a very good thing.

Pretty non-descript day. We made sure we were at the airport very early.

The flight was bumpy and Bree had disconcerting ear troubles. Any ear experts willing to come help out?

As soon as we arrived in Budapest, we left. Not because we didn’t like it, but just because we could. Our final stop for the night was Vienna, Austria, where we found a nice little hotel. We wouldn’t find out until we checked out that this was an environmentally friendly hotel as well. It used solar panels to heat the shower water and rain water to flush the toilets. (Special instructions for Jess regarding saving the environment: Please refrain from sending us buckets of rain water for Christmas. Additionally, please spare our readers and continue to flush the toilet after every use).

Monday

We woke up and thought we were dreaming: we’re still on vacation; we don’t have to go to work; we’re in a country that doesn’t speak English.

Austria is a beautiful place – at least based on what we saw in Vienna (and what I’ve seen previously in Salzburg and Bad Gastein).

First stop: Schronnbrunn Palace.

Our favourite spot: the labyrinth and maze. Tall bushes shielded your view and you really didn’t know if you were going the right direction to get out. The most enjoyable part was the viewing platform, from where we could watch other unfortunate human rats that were less adept at finding their way than we were.

The maze was filled with hidden surprises all along the way. First was a fountain which was activated by a seesaw. Next, were Hupfplatten - a series of gigantic wooden pods on bouncy springs. I felt like Tigger! Then, we proceeded to a musical section of sidewalk, with different sections representing different notes. This is just a sample of all that there was. Best of all were stepping stones, which activated a barrage of water cannons.

After exploring the beautiful grounds, which also include a zoo, a swimming pool, on this particular day a university running class, and an outdoor theatre. Ponds, flowers, sanctuaries, greenhouses, and more.

We went to the bakery to see Jess’ future wife creating applestreudel while performing a stand-up act in both German and English (very talented, humorous, and a good cook, sounds like she’s got the Russian girl beat).

Our only disappointment was in the size of the strudel.

After walking around a bit, something we would do a lot of while in Wien (Vienna), we went to the Albertina and saw Bree’s new favourite artist, Jacob Alt. He created a number of beautiful watercolour landscapes of Wien and elsewhere.

We also went to Steffansdom, a beautiful cathedral.

We discovered that a carriage ride was out of our price range, and instead settled for some goulash and spinach strudel.

An hour in line at the Theatre An Der Wien proved to be worth it when we purchased standing-room only tickets for 2.50 euro and managed to find some seats.

It was only about an hour and a half into the show that intermission finally came and we were able to find some translators to explain what was going on. Our German is a bit rusty… ok, we don’t speak German actually.

This was an educational boon, as we then had the opportunity to visit with a small group of German teenagers who were on a week-long fieldtrip for their biology class. Their peers in the French and German class had gone to Italy; go figure. All of them had voted in the German election; and one was proud of her recent exchange studies in Ohio.

(As I write this, the train that we are on is departing Wien…)

(Bree takes the opportunity to wrestle control of the computer, in hopes of speeding up the writing process)

Back to the show. It was a modern musical tragedy, depicting the life of Austria’s most beloved queen – Elizabeth, better known as Sissi. Apparently she’s Austria’s version of Princess Diana, an ordinary yet beautiful girl chosen to be the wife of the Crown Prince Franz-Josef I. Sissi’s lack of freedom and constant pressure from her controlling mother-in-law push her into seclusion, until finally, her son commits suicide and she is assassinated.

We voted this the best musical we’ve ever seen in another language and also the “Best Bang for your euro.”

Tuesday

For the first time in our married life, we had to stop at the store to buy cough drops and it wasn’t for Bree. Apparently, Matt had caught a cold, and he was sniffly, and sneezy all day long. The rain didn’t help. But that didn’t stop us from seeing more of Vienna.

First we went to Sudbahnhof to buy our night train tickets to Krakow. We had already checked out of the hotel so for the first time we got to use one of the lockers in the train station. We felt like regular thugs.

Then we headed downtown to check out the Judenstag, a Jewish museum, and then (cover your eyes, West Texans) the Sigmund Freud museum. Interesting, and since this is a G-rated blog, that’s all we’ll say about that.

We stopped for lunch at Starbucks. Partly to stay out of the rain and partly to read another chapter in our books. Then we took the “cheap tour” of Vienna, via Tram #1. Again, partly to stay out of the rain and partly to see all the sights we had missed thus far. We saw Mozart’s statue (he lived in Wien, you know), the Hofsburg palace, Parlament, the Borse (Wien’s stock exchange) and a few other memorable sights that are currently unrememberable.

We stopped for dinner at Plachutta, a great Viennese restaurant. I had Wiener Schnitzel (no, Dad, not like the hot dog place in Lubbock) and Matt had Trafilgal? Sooooo good…..

Tried to get standing room tickets to the opera, but it was sold out. Walked around a bit, then headed to the station to await our train to Krakow, and to collect our luggage (still intact, the Mob had not picked up the goods yet.) We were pleasantly surprised by the sleeping cozettes on the train, just the two of us in one compartment instead of the six-person coaches that we were expecting. It even had a mirror and bottled STILL water for us, not to mention a full size pillow. Much nicer than our night train to Nice in August. With that, we will head to bed, the train has left the station, the border police have come by twice already to check our passports, signing off from somewhere in Slovakia…