Wednesday:  I know I’ve already done a download, but I need to relate my internet experience.  Two days ago, we went into a nice café that advertised “Internet”.  They didn’t have wifi, but a coin-operated terminal that cost 10 cents per minute.  It took us a while to find out that you put coins in, and by the time we were ready to try someone else was using the one terminal available.

In the town we are in today, we noticed a Spielparlor (video games) that also advertised internet.  We stopped by on the way to dinner and tried to use the computer they provide, but it was difficult  For one thing, the z and y are interchange.  The underscore (which I needed to log onto my livejournal) is down where The question mark should be.  I had hoped to zoom through a jounal entry (a euro for 10 minutes) but was frustrated by the keyboard, which also had a recalcitrant space bar.  (see the actual post on Friday for an idea of what happens if you try to touch type – I actually spent a lot of time making corrections or it would have been much worse.  I didn’t notice until Friday that they also made space for all the umlaut letters (2 dots over the vowel).

Meanwhile, Diane was asking about wifi.  The guy at the counter said sure; it was 3 Euro per hour.  I went back after dinner and spent half an hour checking my email (at work, I know it’s stupid, but also got some family pictures) and uploading the latest journal.  The speed was really good.  When I was done, I asked how much; the guy looked at the time and said one Euro funfzig (a buck 75 at the current exchange rate).  Not bad at all.

Also, when I said the Black Forest history exhibit was like Sturbridge, there was one important difference.  The oldest building in this exhibit was from 1599.  There are a lot of old buildings over here!  One of the gasthouses that we stayed in (in Melk) advertised that they date from the 16^th century as well.

We also had an interesting view of a construction site near our hotel.  While in the US you sometimes see the sort of crane system employing a horizontal beam on top of a single vertical tower, it is pretty much confined to big-city office type construction.  Here, they use them everywhere, even for single-family houses.  There is just no room for the sort of system we would use.  There are two houses under construction near us and we got to watch the workmen move a small cement mixer from an upper floor to the back of a truck using this system.  Fascinating.

The biggest hassle in Europe is parking.  We have bypassed entire cities because we couldn’t park.  In our hotel last night, they told us to go ahead and park in front of the garages with the big “no parking” signs.  (We found a spot that didn’t quite block the garage).  Tonight, someone (probably following our hostess’ advice) had blocked in our place and two others.  I had to drive over the sidewalk to get out of my parking place.  This is sadly typical.  There is some suburban-type sprawl but it seems limited to car dealers and big-box stores.

Diane is commenting on the small number of insects there are in Europe.  Everywhere we go, the windows are open but without screens.  Yet we’ve only had a handful of insects in our room in two weeks.  Thinking about it, we also have seen hardly any birds; I’m sure it’s no coincidence.  I recall reading that there was a large population boom in the middle ages when one of the religious orders began draining swamps as a way to increase the amount or arable land.  We suspect that because there have been people here so long, all the swamps and wetlands are long drained, and even the forests seem to be maintained. 

Thurday:  Another frustrating drive combining wrong turns with lots of construction.  This time I should probably blame the Michelin map rather than the Autobahn.  They put the route numbers in very small print making it hard to follow, and in an area where a lot of roads crossed near Mannheim (no not the steamroller) we wound up on the wrong autobahn.  This wouldn’t have been bad, as there was an alternate way to get there, but in typical German fashion, the A6 numbers simply stopped appearing and the A67 numbers began.  I have no idea where A6 went; it is a major road.  I suspect that it branched off during one of the many construction detours; I recall a large number of cars at one off-ramp in a construction site.

However, the day was saved by a lovely drive down the Moselle, and a visit to Burg Eltz.  This castle has been in the same family since the mid-13^th century (33 generations) and was originally a fortification.  The last major additions were in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, when it still had a significant defensive role, so we got a tremendous look at how a real castle would look.  Here is how it looks:

We then found our hotel that is in a small town that seems entirely devoted to wine and tourism.  Small is the operative phrase: two restaurants, zero banks or gas stations, and one very small convenience store.  For those of you of our generation, picture 1/3 of the corner store where you grew up.

Friday:  We were pretty burned out last night, by the traffic and the stress of finding the hotel, so decided to take it easy today.  We drove 20 km to Cochem, the largest town in Mittel-Moselle, arriving before the main tourist crowd could arrive.  We walked up the hill to the castle, which is a 19^th century replication, from the original plans, of the 11^th century castle that originally guarded the river, and which was destroyed by the French in the middle of the 18^th century.  It was quite spectacular, and offered beautiful views of the river.

Jim then bought some food for lunch while Diane shopped, and we met at the docks for the boat ride (now what could be more relaxing).  The boat went about 10 km upstream, but the highlight of the trip was probably the trip through the locks on the river.  We were raised about 30 feet.  The views were also beautiful, with small villages on the banks and vines reaching up the incredibly steep hillsides.

Since I’m sure the pictures can’t convey the steepness of the hills, I’ll show you another castle picture today.  This is actually the view of Cochem am Moselle, taken from the local castle

My German is very rusty, but I can get by.  Twice today Diane asked people about winery tours and in each case I was able to understand the reply (with a lot of repetition and patience from the other side).  The toughest thing is menus.  Very few menu items appear as they do in our translation guide, and since German “cuisine” is not international the way Italian or French is we don’t have the basis for understanding we would in those languages.  It doesn’t help that “braten” can mean roasted or fried or boiled, so when the menu offers half a page of various kinds of braten, you don’t really know what you’ll get.  My first order was “gemischte braten”, which turned out to be a couple of pieces of extremely well done pork tenderloin and a piece of what I think was overcooked beef surrounded by spaetzle..  I got through it all but wasn’t impressed.  I’ve done better since then but every meal is a crap shoot.  Still, I mess up a lot, like when I told the waitress “Dies is fur Ihnen”, which means this is for “you formal– plural” when I should have said Fur Sie, which is formal-singular.

Saturday:  We started the day with another wrong turn.  I realize that part of our driving trouble is because Americans pay much more attention to route numbers than to the towns the routes go through, while for Europeans, it is the other way around.  So, for example, if I were giving instructions to reach our home in Bedford from Rhode Island, I’d say go route I95 to 128, then get off at route 4.  A European would, I think, say follow the signs to Boston, until you see a Waltham sign; drive through Waltham and stay on the road until you see a sign for Bedford; get off there and stay on the road until you reach the center of town.

At any rate, today was pretty much more of the same; another boat ride (the Rhine this time) and another castle.  Dinner was a bit different for me: some kind of specialty from the Balkans that was similar to Italian food.  I’m getting really sick of German food: big piles of potato with overcooked meat.

Diane and I are getting tired.  This has really been too long a vacation.  We’re looking forward to getting home.  We’re shortening our days in order to reduce stress, and are both looking forward to getting home.  I’m thinking about work, and Diane has to stop every time she sees a baby and remark on its cuteness, then say how much she misses Wesley.  It’s been fun, but really wearing to deal with the language differences, the maps, and the amount of driving.  I’m hoping that in a couple of months we’ll forget the negatives and remember all the wonderful things we’ve seen and done, because overall it has been a great experience.

Sunday.  Finally, a bad day.  Diane has been talking the last couple of days about how we haven't had rain since the first week (then I was working).  The weather has been magnificent.  Today was misty and it started to rain in the afternoon and rained all night.  We didn't do a lot since we're exhausted.

Monday  Back home at about midnight, only 23 hours after getting out of bed.  It's good to be back home.

Saturday:  We woke bright and early, ate breakfast, checked out, and were at the Schonbrunn palace shortly after it opened at 8:30.  We were a bit concerned because we had bought a “combi-ticket” at the Hofburg, which supposedly meant we didn’t have to reserve a time like everyone else.  It worked great; we wound up ahead of the crowds, and were able to maintain a position between two tour groups so we had the rooms almost to ourselves. 

The furnishings were magnificent, although the story of the royal family was bittersweet.  They talked about diplomatically arranged marriages, with the Empress Maria Theresa hoping of one daughter that she could be a good wife so that even if she didn’t like her current life she would find a reward in heaven.

After a bit of hectic city driving, we got out of town and were soon on the road to the mountains.  The Autobahn was amazing.  Over a distance of about 100 km we went through about ten tunnels, most of which were over 1 km long.  One was 3.4 km.  I estimate that we spent 20% of the time underground.  Also, to protect the view, the road had fences and trees so it was very hard to see anything from the highway.

The obvious answer was to get off the highway, so we took a scenic route.  The highlight of the tour was a long drive down the Enns river valley (really a canyon in places).  After a while the valley broadened as we got higher into the mountains, but the mountains got more spectacular.  The mountains on either side of us were nearly 3,000 meters high (a bit short of 10,000 feet).  They consisted of sheer cliffs, almost totally bare of vegetation, for the last 1,000 meters.

We were a bit nervous coming to the Pension we had reserved.  Diane said that she had the feeling that the pictures were too good to be true.  However, they were actually quite accurate, and beautiful.  We ate Zanderfilet at a nice restaurant with pretty much the same view.  Here it is. 

Sunday:  This was our first real day for the mountains.  We drove north, around the west edge of the Dachstein Tauern (ridge, I think), which is about 3,000 meters high.  The drive was beautiful.  On the north side, there is a mountain lake in a deep valley surrounded by cliffs.  In the distance, we could see a glacier.  It took about two hours to walk around the lake, with many stops including one for a picnic lunch.  We then drove to Hallstadt, which is a beautiful town on another lake, but with so little parking that we skipped the town and found a spot further north from which to view the lake.

Following the two lakes, we drove further east and south, completing our circle around the Dachstein Tauern.  On the way, we saw a ski jump area.  It was horrifying how high and steep it is.  You have to be completely crazy to even contemplate going down one of those things!  We ended the day on the same road as yesterday, driving down the broad valley to the south of the Dachstein. We then broke our rule and ate dinner at the same place twice, since it had such a great view.

Monday:  Today didn’t turn out the way we planned.  We were stuck in traffic for an hour on a main highway (though not the autobahn).  The police drove up and down the road every 10 or 15 minutes, but didn’t seem to be doing anything.  Finally we gave up and drove 10 km back the way we came in order to take a different route (there aren’t many different routes through the mountains).

The detour turned out to be very interesting.  The initial road was a bit narrow; it was full of tight turns and places where the road squeezed down to only 1.5 lanes for 50 feet or so.  However, it then broadened into a high alpine valley with mountains all around.  After driving through another pass, the view got even better.  We wound up having a picnic lunch in a broad valley with mountains on all sides, and a glacier in view (though probably 40 or 50 km away).

We found a nice Gasthous in a small town just off the Autobahn west of Innsbruck.  We had a nice dinner in a local restaurant (Diane had fish again; Jim had lamb).  We were disappointed  to learn that the tramway we expected to take to the top of a local mountain to see the glaciers is not working, so we need to make other plans for tomorrow.

Notes on Germany/Austria: One of the things we’ve been struggling with is trying to find a Laundromat.  There are lots of places where you can drop off clothes and pick them up in 2 days, but nothing for people who move as fast as we do. 

Our German is getting better; we can do fairly well in controlled settings such as a shop of restaurant, but still struggle with something out of the ordinary, such as trying to ask the tourist bureau whether the gondola at the end of the valley was in operation (it was at this point that the woman said we could ask in English).  People respect our desire to speak German, and only use English when it is obvious we are in over our heads.  Also, a great many people, even in the tourist trade, speak no English at all.  Our hostess tonight, speaks fairly good English, but told us she only gets to use it about once a year.

Tuesday:  This was our last day in Austria, but we made the most of it.  We started out with a relaxing breakfast with our hostess, then headed back onto the Autobahn, headed west.  We got off the Autobahn just before a long section that called for extra toll, and which for 50 km was more tunnel than above ground.  The gondola ride we had hoped to take was closed, but another nearby was fantastic. We actually started in a gondola and then switched to chair lift.  The chair was better, as it didn’t block the view at all. 

We went up to an altitude of about 8,000 feet, from where we could see the 10,000 foot peaks all around.  Many had glaciers.  There was snow on the ground from recent fall (not a glacier).  When we looked to the west, we could see distant peaks with snow cover, which were in Switzerland, which was about 50 km away.  We walked around on the top for quite a while.  The ski area is impressive; it covers several peaks, so you can ski down one and take the lift up another.  In the summer, they graze sheep on the slopes and had constructed a full 9 hole golf course on the lower slopes.  It was a pretty unimpressive course, although the views were quite nice.

After spending close to two hours on the mountain, we headed back down, and almost immediately left the valley floor for another narrow road into the mountains.  Following the Michelin guide recommendations we went through a number of high (1700 meter) passes interspersed with beautiful alpine valleys.  At one pass, we stopped at a hotel just below a 1700 meter pass for coffee and strudel and a view that couldn’t be beat.

Our one disappointment was in lake Constance (the Bodensee in Germany).  We had hoped to stay there overnight, but there was a tremendous amount of traffic with long caravans of police escort (we have no idea what was going on - the Pope is in Germany, but the crowds would have been 10 times worse for him).  We drove around through three towns before giving up and driving to the outskirts of the Black Forest, where I am writing this tonight.  I didn’t get a single picture of the lake as we were trying to navigate, parking was impossible, and frankly it was too hazy looking south toward the sun to make much of a picture. 

This leads to another difference between Europe and the US. In the US, there would be chain hotels near the freeway exit ramps.  In Europe, you have to drive into the center of town and look around.  This wastes a lot of time, since you spend 10-20 minutes fighting the traffic in a town of any size at all.  The place we are staying is three stories high and has about 10 rooms, but is right across from the Radhaus (city hall).   It may be the only hotel in town; we intentionally looked for a small town to avoid the heavy traffic, etc. in a bigger city.  Of course the tourist bureau shuts down at 4 or 5 PM everywhere, so unless you look early (as we did yesterday) they can’t help you.  At any rate, we arrived safe and sound and in good spirits.  Tomorrow we explore the Black Forest.

Wednesday:  Today was our Black Forest day.  We started with a drive through beautiful scenery to the highest point in the Black Forest, the Belchen, and took a cable car to the top.  The weather was a bit hazy, so our visibility was limited, but we could see the Rhine river in the distance.  It was amazingly wide this far from the ocean.  We will cross it tomorrow.

We then drove through more beautiful scenery, stopping for lunch in the center of the cuckoo clock production region.  We visited a store advertising 1,000 clocks;  It was quite something.  We then spent over two hours in the Black Forest equivalent of Sturbridge Village.  They had moved over 20 buildings from all over the region to one spot.  We were surprised at how large the buildings were.  Most were 60 to 100 feet long and nearly all were three stories with a huge attic floor.  They explained that the roof needs to be steep as a result of all the snow.  I’m in a bit of a rush to get to the internet café (with WIFI!!!!!) so I’m going to skip the picture upload.  There may not be another download until we get home on Monday, but we may try again on Friday.  Auf Wiedersehen for now.

Good news.  Our hotel in Vienna has free internet, so we can post as much as we want.  This may be a mixed blessing as it means I can ramble.  Before I bring you up to date on our travels, I'll ramble on about how hard it is to prepare for foreign travel.  I spent 4 years in high school learning how to pronounce Ich, which is a wierd German sound (say i as in "it" followed by "hue").  It turns out everyone in Bavaria and Austria pronounces it as "ish".  All that hard work down the drain.  We bought language tapes that spent the first half hour teaching you how to say "Enschuldige Sie", which means excuse me, but over here, everyone says "Bitte".  Similarly, no one says "Guten Tag," they all say "Gruss Gott" which means literally greet God.  At any rate, our language skills are adapting.  Diane is much better at language than I am and by the end of the trip she'll probably be more fluent than I.

Now, on the the travel.  Yesterday, we left Ingolstadt and work and headed for Austria.  First, though, we spent a few hours along the way in Passau, which is on the German/Austrian border at the spot where the Inn river meets the Danube.  Another lovely city.  Along the way we saw hundreds of fields with a strange crop that was trained on wires like a vine.  Diane guessed it was hops and she was right.

However, the real prize of the trip was in Austria. We visited Stift Wilhering (stift means monastary), which was reconstructed after a fire in the mid 18th century, when Austria and the Baroque were both at the peaks of their power.  Rumor at the time said the monks burned their own monastary so they could rebuild it.  Although they later convicted a child, I wouldn't be surprised if it were the monks; nearby Melk had just completed a total rebuild after their own fire, and Wilhering may have been jealous.  The Michelin guide says that it is one of Austria's most striking examples of the Rococo style.  Those of you who read our last entry will recall how impressed we were by the church in Eichstatt.  That was a pale shadow of this one.  As a simple example, the picture below shows the ceiling above the apse.  Now try to imaging an entire cathedral decorated in this fashion.

I was actually surprised that I liked the Baroque style as much as I do, since I normally like the classical style best.  However, this was so well done that it just worked. We spent a lot of time just rubbernecking and taking pictures (way too many pictures - I've taken over 600 pictures so far and we have almost 2 weeks to go.

After we left Wilhering, we took a long way around to avoid going through Linz during rush hour but the highway signs directed us there anyway.  We were ticked off and frazzled by the time we got to Melk, were we were spending the night.  Melk is a pleasant little town, but its claim to fame was another huge Stift, which we toured this morning.  

Stift Melk is very much a working monastary; we were awakened by the bells in a call to worship before 6 AM. This wasn't some tame ding-ding.  It sounded like acouple of novices were just yanking on the ropes as hard as they could for about 5 minutes.  No rhythm or tone; just a racket.  We finally got back to sleep only to be awakened for the next set of prayers at about 7:30.  

In some ways Stift Melk even surpassed Wilhering, in a similar style.  It was larger in size but perhaps a bit less overstated in style.  We arrived early and decided to look for ways to hang back behind a huge tour group (first tours of the day).  We found a little door that let into one transcept of the sanctuary.  You couldn't reach the nave from there, but could see more than half of the church.  Best of all, we were all alone.  They hadn't even turned the lights on yet, although there was enough good natural light for pictures.

HOWEVER, I'm not going to show you a picture of yet another Baroque cathedral, because we decided that we should take a boat ride on the Danube.  We rode about 1 hour west, from Stift to Durnstein, which is in the middle of Austria's wine belt.  It was a beautiful trip.  We both wound up a bit sunburned (Jim more than Diane) but had a wonderful time.

The current on the river is so strong that it took us 70 minutes (including two intermediate stops) to get to Durnstein, but two hours and ten minuted to get back.  We really noticed the difference psychologically; going downstream, we had to rush to take pictures.  Going upstream, everything happened so slowly that we had a lot of time to take everything in.  One of the things we took inwas this castle. It is one of several that we saw.  Note that the ancient fortification has been topped with a Baroque upper story dating from the19th century.


We made it through Vienna's rush hour OK and found our hotel.  After Jim spent a couple of hours working (yes, I know it's stupid, but people need me) we found an excellent sidewalk cafe for dinner.  I could grow to like this place.  We are staying just outside the heart of old Vienna, a block or two from the Hofburg, which was the Imperial palace of the Habsburgs.  Now it's full of the finery they collected over the centuries.  We're looking forward to the next two days, and will be keeping you all up to date.

So long for now,
Jim and Diane