Eurotrip 2013, Day 7: Vienna

Big sightseeing day in Vienna today. Quick hits.

First up, more churches. Stephansdom (St. Stephan's Cathedral) is a big tourist draw in the very center of Vienna. IMO, not as cool as St. Vitus in Prague, but it has a cool roof:







Just down the street and not mentioned in any tourist guides is St. Peter's, which I think is actually quite a bit more impressive and attractive. It also happens to be a working church:



From there I headed down towards the National Library, and on the way saw a (pretty badly out of time) marching band performing outside the Habsburg Apartments, the former imperial residence.




My goal at the library was to see the Globe Museum. It turned out to actually be housed in a separate building a few minutes away, but was totally worth the hunt. Unlike the DOX museum in Prague, the Globe Museum had a well-curated collection with detailed descriptions and information about the exhibit. It ranged from the earliest globes of the Renaissance to modern digital globes; one of the coolest exhibits is an interactive touchscreen which lets you spin a virtual high-res scan of an ancient globe and contrast it with modern maps to see where we've corrected things. It's pretty neat to see the map of the world evolve over time from ones completely missing the Americas, to ones with California as a separate island, and ones with Australia and Antarctica connected.


No Americas!

Downstairs in the same building as the globe museum was the national library's Esperanto museum. Clearly curated by a lover of the language, the museum walks you through the history and ongoing use of the language, with audio samples throughout. Probably the most interesting thing was the handful of propaganda pieces written in Esperanto:



One thing was very clear after seeing the museum and the language (particularly after coming from Prague and seeing Czech): Esperanto was clearly a European's notion of a universal synthetic language. It basically looks like a bastardized Romance language with a bit of Slavic structure and vocabulary thrown in. At least in the small sample shown, there was nothing to suggest roots even in the more distant Indo-European languages, let alone something from a completely different language family (Finnish, Japanese, Chinese). While it makes sense in historical context (Esperanto was created in the aftermath of World War I, which at its core started as a European conflict), even by World War II it would have been obvious thanks to the Pacific theater that a European linguistic utopia would not be universal. Add that to the list of reasons Esperanto never took off.

After the two museums, it was time for a late lunch at the Naschmarkt, a giant open-air market running down the middle of two large avenues. The aisle on the right has sit-down restaurants, and the one on the left has stalls and stands. At its beginning (inner) end, it's dominated by fancy restaurants and stalls, which give way to falafel and döner stands, dried fruit stands, and finally a long narrow flea market at the western end. Lunch consisted of a (very greasy and sort of bland) Russian pastry with a lamb patty, and a really delicious soup from a local vegetarian restaurant. The flea market had a little bit of everything: weird teddy bears, kaleidoscopes from Geneva, ancient record players, bathroom hardware, you name it.

The globe museum ticket also includes entrance to the Esperanto museum and to a papyrus museum in the main building of the national library. After lunch, there was just enough time to catch the papyrus museum ten minutes before closing. They had papyruses in lots of languages: Latin, Arabic, hieroglyphic:




Dinner was at a restaurant called Vapiano: like Pluto's, you get the dishes you want from each station and pay up at the end. Unlike Pluto's, it's Italian and your tab gets marked up using a little RFID card you get at the front, rather than a punchcard. Nothing to write home about, but a nice solid simple Italian meal to get the blood sugar going again.

The evening's entertainment was a performance of Mozart's Requiem in the third church of the day, the Karlskirche or St. Charles' Church. This was the most impressive church yet, especially in concert ambiance and with the nighttime reflection in the pool. The music itself was fun, though I found myself wishing I'd remembered to buy the program -- I enjoyed the bits of the Requiem to which I knew the words much better than the rest, because then I was able to focus on the texture of the music rather than trying to decipher its content.








Remember the Soviet soldiers' memorial from yesterday? On the walk back home from Karlsplatz I learned that the fountain lights up with a dazzling variety of colors. If anything, this picture isn't vivid enough to reflect reality:

Eurotrip 2013 Day 6: Prague to Vienna

A quick word on breakfasts at the K&K Central: scrambled eggs are delicious with tiny pickled onions, ketchup, mustard, and chives.

Leaving the hotel in the morning for the train station, I was greeted by some of my favorite weather: clear, sunny, and about 40 degrees. That fall cold is great (though it's more of a wintertime thing in California). Put me in a great mood to catch a train to Vienna.




I expected to spend the train ride either writing blog posts or reading the books on my iPad (1Q84, Anathem, and Ready Player One), but the folks with whom I shared my compartment pretty much prevented that from happening. I was riding with three elderly sisters from America and a college student from Vienna who was studying philosophy and political science in Istanbul while living and hoping to teach theater in Prague. Fun crowd to talk to, and certainly made the hours fly by, but I didn't get any writing done!

I got off one stop earlier than planned, at Wien Simmering instead of Wien Meidling, at the advice of the student, who had told me it made for an easier U-bahn trip to my apartment. She was right. It also led to my first (and sadly, only) instance of my favorite European lunch: I picked up a döner kebab sandwich outside my subway stop for under 2 euro.



Graffiti artists in Vienna know what's up.

After a few minutes' walk, I arrived at the AirBnB apartment in Landstrasse I was renting. Easy enough check in, and a very cool twist: the Internet access was provided by a mobile 3G hotspot that I could take with me around town! Awesome idea that fell over in practice. I don't know if the hotspot was bad, the service was bad, or some previous renter had used up all of the data allocation, but it ended up being almost uselessly slow. It was easier to try to steal WiFi from nearby cafes...

Of course at this point I didn't realize any of this. Armed with the hotspot, my phone, and a Vienna Lonely Planet Encounter tour book from the apartment, I headed out for a bit of late afternoon sightseeing. Along the way into the Innere Stadt (the inner ring, city center, and main tourist district of Vienna), I passed by a fountain and plaza dedicated to the Russian soldiers who liberated Vienna from the Nazis. It's rare to see a monument to the Soviets in the West -- seeing it reminds one that although it was politically aligned with the West in the Cold War, geographically Vienna is much closer to its neighbors who were behind the Iron Curtain. I also passed by the Opera House, but more on both of those later.

The main destination today was the MuseumsQuartier, a large walled city-within-a-city containing a bunch of museums (duh) and other galleries, restaurants, and quirky concrete benches that get painted different bright colors. The girl on the train had told me this was the place for young people to hang out in Vienna; sure enough there were a few groups, but it was probably too early. It was also too late to make it worthwhile to museum hop, so I contented myself with a picture of Mumok, the Vienna contemporary art museum housed in an awesome modern charcoal building:



After the long day of travel, it was high time for dinner. The Lonely Planet suggested a restaurant that sounded really fun: Schon Schön had only one large table, a convivial atmosphere, and a multi course tasting menu of small dishes. Since the LP was a few years old, I checked Yelp using the hotspot real quick, but the only Schon Schön it pulled up was a hairdresser. Fine, I guess Yelp isn't that great in Vienna.

Fifteen minutes later, I learned from a rather confused man that, no, Schon Schön does not do dinner any more, and they do do hair. Drat - I didn't need a haircut. My faith in Yelp restored, I looked up a nearby restaurant to satisfy my craving for spicy food. (The European palate skews a bit bland for me.) Sure enough, the Yak and Yeti served up Nepalese food just ten minutes away, and had over four stars.

They deserved every bit of the rating. I'd never had Nepalese food before; it's very similar to Indian, with some Chinese influences as well. So good! Go here if you're ever in Vienna -- delicious, reasonably priced, super friendly, English-speaking, and where else do you get to sip your tea while sitting on a mat in this town?

Eurotrip 2013 Day 5: Prague

Not much to report today. Yesterday was exhausting; all the walking left me beat, so there wasn't much motivation to go out to sights (such as the technical museum in Holesovice aka WAY TOO FAR). It was sort of rainy, which didn't really help motivate, either. Still, it was too much to just sit in the hotel all day long; it seemed like a good idea to wander around Old Town to see if there were any sights I'd missed. First destination was Wenceslas Square, which I had heard about but thought I hadn't seen. Turns out it was the shopping street I'd seen on the very first day. Oops.

The Guardian published a couple itineraries of Prague; one of them mentioned a cafe very close to the K&K Central which I hadn't had a chance to try, so it seemed like a good bet for lunch. After wandering around Old Town a little longer (and walking through a little street market, and a couple glass/crystal shops to dodge a rain shower), I headed to the Grand Cafe Orient. On entrance, it looks nice, but not amazing. The chicken crepe with mushroom sauce fit that description as well. But that's because the star of the show here is, surprise, cafe eats. My first coffee there, a concoction of espresso, whipped cream, and drizzled chocolate sauce, left me staring as the waiter set it down at the table. Seeing me staring, he bent down and said in a dry Slavic accent, "is good." The second coffee was equally crazy and I don't even remember what it was. After a while I noticed that every table was getting dessert, no one was sharing, and everyone looked delighted when they got their individual slices of cake. OK, I can take a hint. The cake named after the cafe itself was as good as it looked:



The Grand Cafe Orient definitely reflected European cafe culture much more than that in America. This was a place for people to sit and relax over a few cups and cakes for hours, and it grew on me.

After the cafe, I headed back to the room to prepare for Vienna. Logistically: I had to find a place to stay. Mentally: I'd never seen The Sound of Music, and I had been told that it was unacceptable to go to Austria until I had done so. Easy enough; iTunes and fast Internet at the hotel let me take care of both problems. Dinner at the same pub from the first night let me get to bed early to head out to Vienna early in the morning.

Eurotrip 2013 Day 4: Prague

Today was the big sightseeing day in Prague: time to head to the main attraction, Prague Castle. From the Old Town, it's actually not a bad walk, even though it's across the river. There's a bit of confusion at the other end, since it's not always obvious which street to take from signs alone; the easiest solution is just to follow the crowd. This time, they're probably right.

After climbing a long set of stairs (mercifully empty of vendors in the morning) you reach the castle gates, with an hourly changing of the guard and a fantastic view of the red roofs of Prague:




It's advisable to carry a fair amount of cash to the castle: while you can buy tickets on a credit card, there is a required deposit for the audio guide which must be paid in cash. I was able to get my audio guide, but barely -- it took all my cash temporarily in reserve. I imagine there have been plenty of groups and families taken by surprise in our plastic era. Regardless, I opted for the short tour, which offers the main attractions on one ticket. A three hour audio rental was enough (and cheaper than getting the full-day rental).

First up: the castle itself. Parts of the castle are still a working building, used by the Czech president for state functions. The castle tour begins with the Vladislav Hall, which is not only beautiful, with stone rosettes in the ceiling, but is still actively used for receptions hosting international heads of state:




Before the installation of central heating, the entire castle was heated by these big green stoves installed in each room; without being told what they are, they look like giant ceramic-tile cabinets. (With central heating, they are still used as heating vents, I think.)



Most of the castle tour takes you through rooms that are sort-of-but-not-incredibly interesting; what's more interesting is the history description in the guide. For example, one room was used for official record keeping and state discussions; boring. Except that, in one of the events catalyzing the Thirty Years' War, two Catholic officials were thrown out of the window by local Protestant officials in the Defenestration of Prague. (The men survived; Catholics claim it was because of a heavenly miracle, but Protestants claim they fell into a pile of manure.)

Of course, no castle would be complete without a court. Sadly, the throne in this one is not made from swords; it's just a bit of a fancy chair. The replica Crown Jewels in the room are pretty shiny, though.






After the castle, head over to St George's, the earlier and smaller of the two main churches on the castle grounds. It's a very nice example of a large medieval-era church, with straight stone walls and frescoes dating back over 600 years. There's also a cool crypt below the altar.





Perspective wouldn't be invented for a while yet.




Stone carving of a decaying body in the crypt in St George's


After leaving the understated St. George's, I headed over to its antithesis: the gigantic Gothic St. Vitus' Cathedral. It's a big Catholic cathedral -- tons of gold and silver and carvings and possibly the most impressive stained glass I've seen anywhere:






St. Wenceslas's burial room has walls inlaid with semiprecious stones - amethysts, garnets, etc. In a cathedral this fancy, it actually fits in.



At this point, my three hours were over, so I returned the audio guide and went solo. On the way out of the main castle plaza, I found the old castle jail, along with its implements of torture. How about this body cage, used to restrain prisoners, and occasionally dangle them over (or into) a pit? No Rancor in sight, though.



The final stop on the short tour is the Golden Lane: a district inside the castle walls formerly inhabited by goldworkers and jewelers. Other than a couple exhibits of medieval life (which take about ten minutes to cover: the room of a gold worker, and a very small tavern), today it's mostly full of souvenir shops. The most interesting bit is probably seeing how small people used to be, as evidenced by the doorways. I'm not tall:




After the Golden Lane, my plan was to walk over to the DOX museum of contemporary art (about 4 miles away), grab lunch along the way, and generally explore a bit of Prague outside the old town. According to my map, I could walk along the north bank of the river almost the whole way there, and have water on my right and a park on my left -- pretty! The map failed to inform me that the park was about 5 meters higher than the road level, so that there was just a concrete wall on that side, and that the road was an inner artery. Instead of the Embarcadero, I got El Camino. With more homeless people. There were a couple camps underneath overpasses and even a shack by the river. Woo.

Even worse, there was no food at all along the route. It looked pretty bleak too as I got into Holesovice, the neighborhood hosting the museum. It looked pretty residential. But, there was a flea market, so on a prayer I ducked inside looking for something to eat. Turns out there is a very nice Italian restaurant inside, Mercato, which whipped up some spicy spaghetti alla olio for under $10. Highly recommended.




The DOX Center hosts a number of exhibitions of contemporary art, with a bias towards Czech and other Central European artists. The featured exhibit was by an artist also interested in math and programming, so it should have been right up my alley. However, almost all the work was presented without description or comment, which made it hard to appreciate. One empty room featured a speaker array sounding two pure tones, whose interference caused interesting spatial patterns and nulls in the room. That was cool; sadly, the rest of the work -- crazy graphs and musical arrangements accompanied by code, blurring the lines between programs visual and auditory art -- looked more like a cross between insanity and Baby's First Program in Processing.







The second main exhibit was better. (I'm writing these posts on the flight back, so I don't remember any names anymore.) It was a mixed text and video presentation. Before entering the exhibit, seven racks hold short 1-2 page stories. The stories focus on a modern man named Greatman (variously a cubicle drone, a manager, or a top executive, depending on the story), who awakes to find himself without arms. The stories become progressively more bizarre, involving detachable arms, mouse mazes, gas masks, packages in the mail, and kitchen lighters. The videos accompanied the stories, each illustrating a scene from one story. It was well-presented; I just found the videos disturbing for reasons I can't explain.




The final exhibit was of young artists who had won a contest (or a grant, or something). The quality was mixed, but again they all suffered from the same lack of explanation as the first exhibit. There was a foam box full of crystallized caramel in one room, with no explanation or even attribution.

After all the walking, it seemed better to burn a few crowns and take the tram back to the hotel rather than hoofing it another couple miles. That plan worked great...for two stops, after which the tram filled with the unmistakable smell of burning electronics. The doors opened, and we were all kicked out onto the street. Of course, that broken tram was blocking the rails, so there would be no other coming to help. Oh well -- walking it was to be. At least it wasn't too cold out.

The day's exercise justified a little splurge on dinner. After a brief hotel stop to recharge, I got a cab back to the foot of the castle to get dinner at Kampa Park. The food itself was quite good; nothing mind blowing, but very good. The meal started with a double dose of foie gras on the house (take that, California), continued with asparagus soup and lobster, and finished with creme brûlée. Arguably better than the food was the decor; eating at Kampa Park was like being seated in an indoor forest, with a network of branches and pinpoint lights just overhead. Very cool.










The other great thing about Kampa Park is its location on one of the major tourist sights of Prague that I had not yet hit: the Charles Bridge. By day, it doesn't look like much. There are some dark statues lining the sides, and even more souvenir vendors hawking junk. By night, though, the peddlers leave, and all you're left with is the views of the Castle and Old Town over the water. It's like real world Disneyland:

Eurotrip 2013, Day 3: Prague

Guys. GUYS. Listen up, I gotta tell you about Czech snacks. (Also real food, but mostly snacks.)

So today I was hanging out on Old Town Square, and I had some Czech crowns burning a hole in my pocket and nothing but a bunch of acid burning a hole in my stomach,and I saw all these snack booths and I thought maybe it would be a good idea to check them out. BEST IDEA EVER!

Exhibit 1: they just call it "potato". Which is pretty boring, because potatoes are kind of boring. Until you cut them so that they spring out into a spiral like a Slinky, deep fry them on a stick (the stick is crucial), and add salt and chili powder. BAM:




Exhibit 2: if you're walking around Prague, and you think you smell a churro, then yes, you're hallucinating. You're in the Czech Republic, not Mexico. But if you think you smell something almost like a churro, but not quite, with a bit less cinnamon, then congratulations, you're still sane. Meet the trdelnik, sweet dough wrapped on a cylinder then barbecued over coals (!) then covered in more sugar:


So, actually, the trdelnik was merely OK. Churros are probably better. But the spiral potato is a big winner!

There was real food today too. $9ish gets you this massive piece of work at the Hybernia "Needle House" restaurant (nicknamed for the skewers, not for heroin addicts). Chicken skewer, horseradish sauce, thousand island-ish sauce, and for a couple bucks more, some horseradish mashed potatoes:





Ok, so I did things other than eat today too. Since I was already eating in Old Town Square, I would have been remiss to not see the sights there. The most famous is certainly the Astronomical Clock, or Orloj. Apparently it will read off the time, time of year, Zodiac, and who-knows-what else. I had to consult the normal clock just behind it to the left to tell the time. At the top of the hour, the skeleton on the right pulls a cord and you hear the bells ring. At the same time, the two blue windows above the clock open up and the 12 apostles run by. There's a huge crowd of tourists standing by just before the hour, but the spectacle is really not that amazing. Just seeing the intricate design is more the point.




Right next to the clock is St Peter's, a cathedral in the Czechoslovak Hussite Church. The Hussites are one of the early Protestant sects, and a homegrown Czech phenomenon, founded by Jan Hus. The church itself is small but pretty, with a chandelier modeled after the crowns of the czars:






You can also see tour groups heading into the church, sometimes with interesting group leaders:



The buildings around the plaza are clearly very old, and it's interesting to see how much people have grown since they were built. I'm not particularly tall, but...:



After seeing the sights it was time to rest and recharge with a latte at a cafe on the square. While I was sitting there, I had the opportunity to see some Czech street sweepers come by, with a really clever street vacuum. It seemed quite powerful, but was super quiet, and vacuumed straight into a garbage can. This seems way more efficient than the brooms and other manual contraptions you see in the States.



Another highlight of he guidebooks is the Museum of Communism. The Czech Republic has had quite a bit of experience with Communism, and the curators of the museum were clearly not happy with this externally-imposed phenomenon. The museum forms a walking path with a number of exhibits showing the rise and fall of Czech Communism over time...but it could have been done quite a bit better. The museum itself feels very dated and could use some refreshing; there were a handful of interesting exhibits but they weren't presented all that well. Somehow, they managed to take a very interesting slice of history and make it almost boring. But then again, I was also jet lagged and sleepy. It was worth the $3 to get in.



I want this poster.




No, it doesn't mean "Kerbal Space Center"


The last sightseeing stop of the day was Frank Gehry's "Dancing House", with a shape designed after Ginger Rogers dancing. Nice building, but shame that it's not occupied by someone more interesting than Accenture.



After the Dancing House, it was time for a quick nap...which ended up being not so quick. It was once again too late for a proper dinner, but luckily there was a burger place on the same street as the hotel.

Eurotrip 2013, Days 1-2: San Francisco to Prague

It's not easy to get to Prague -- at least, not if you're trying to be cheap and buy inexpensive tickets using credit card points. Your journey begins with a 630a cab pickup from San Francisco (it turns out that cab companies can at least schedule those, even if they are completely useless after 5pm). An 830am flight will deposit you in Chicago 4 hours later. As you taxi in to the gate, you'll see a Lufthansa 747 approach and then recede, and you realize that with every extra foot of taxiing, your walk is increasing. After a brisk walk to the other concourse, you get to your gate, change your seat at the counter (because United can't change Lufthansa seats, and Lufthansa won't help you over the phone if you're already checked in), scarf down some pretty decent Mexican food (try the torta milanesa), and board your 8 hour flight to Frankfurt. Lufthansa is, at least, a bit nicer than United (high bar, I know), so you'll have some decent movies on the plane, but it's an old plane with those blasted dual-connector headphone jacks.

At 7am you land in Frankfurt with an hour to clear immigration and make it to the next plane. Charging down the hall to beat the crowd, the lady guarding the staircase down to passport control inexplicably sends away a crowd of Malaysian tourists (and you) to some unspecified point down the hall, at the other end of the terminal. Protip: let the Malaysians wander; ignore her and hang out right at the top of the stairs, because she's just a metering light. (Ignore this advice and you'll follow the lost Malaysians for 10 minutes before cursing and just going back). Famed German efficiency gets you through the line and through passport control in 15 minutes; the short walk to the gate leaves you 10 minutes before boarding the flight to Prague. Don't bother with the bathroom by the gate; it's mostly broken, and the cleaning lady will chase the line away before more than two people have managed to use it.

On the hour-long flight, you may be seated next to a very friendly and talkative pastor (wouldn't they all have to be?) from St. Louis but living in Prague, returning from a mission to Addis Ababa. His advice, though well-meaning, will rapidly vanish from your travel-addled head, so smile and make polite small talk. Upon landing, you can safely bypass the Travelex ATMs and exchange booths inside the terminal, inside baggage claim, and outside baggage claim; once you turn the corner near the taxi reservation station you see the ATMs associated with real banks. A taxi to the city center would run you 600 CZK ($30), but the shared van to the center (conveniently a block from your hotel -- how well planned!) is only 150 CZK/person.

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The room wasn't ready upon arrival, so the first course of action was to wander around Prague's Old Town for an hour or so. The Koh-I-Noor pencil company sells some sweet pencils - boring black pencils, pencils that are giant sticks of graphite, mechanical pencils, multicolored pencils - so that was time for gift-buying. Just down the street, there was a long pedestrian mall full of food stalls and shops; it wasn't until several days later that i realized this was Wenceslas Square. I'm pretty sure this store sells sausages, but they might also just sell videos of Psy's Gentleman:





A pub near the hotel offered a quick lunch of spaghetti con carne, and soon enough the room was ready. After a shower and quick nap, it was time for more evening wandering around Prague. It was late enough that a proper restaurant didn't seem worth it; so instead I followed the map to Bakeshop Praha, which sold a delicious goat cheese and tomato quiche.

One thing about Prague: even though there are a ton of little (and big) squares scattered about old town, there's not much in the way of public seating. That means you end up closing out your day trying to people-watch and eat on Namesti Republiky (Republic Square) like this:

Location:Prague, Czech Republic