Life: Idiotropic

23 September 2008

When I moved here to Germany, there were two trips already set in my mind that I could not forget to take. One is the trip to Berlin that we'll do as a family this spring to tour the city and to see the place where my grandmother grew up. The other was the trip to the Burganland of Austria where my grandfather was born.

So last fall my dad and I began to plan this trip - a trip that was special for two reasons - one that it was a father-daughter vacation - just him and I traveling at our own speed, taking photos of absolutely everything, and enjoying the time together. We did a lot of trips together when I was little - hiking and camping, caving and kayaking. I've missed those, so this time was extra special. It's been a long time and the travel dynamic changes a lot when I lug my four girls with me. I think we both looked forward to some time with out the pull of anyone else.

The second was that this trip was fashioned by the early life of my grandfather. I spend the couple weeks before looking over the book he wrote for the family, scribbling down notes of every town and address that he mentioned there. I printed maps and calculated distances and driving times. And so it was planned... Vienna where grandpa went to school for a time, Oberwart where he was born, and Budapest where he spent a summer vacation with Aunt Margie. Looking back, now, there are things we missed and more I could have researched, but we did all that we could in the short time we had and with the information we had then.

More Trip Photos:

We began our adventure at the Cologne-Bonn airport with a German Wings flight. The only glitch of the trip occurred then as I sat at the gate just 10 minutes before boarding time and decided to look at my rental car voucher to double check the company that we would use. I saw the words "italia" on it and thought, "well, may be it's an Italian car." Then I saw "Marco Polo airport" and thought... "Well, there is a bit of Italian influence in Vienna... may be..." And then I looked again and to my horror saw the city: Venedig. The German word for Venice. My pre-paid, pre-arranged, tiny little rental was waiting for us in Venice. This is when the panicky crisis management adrenaline kicked in and I went into hyper drive... grabbed my cell and left a message for Kirk... then called the car company... they couldn't help me... then called the base office that made the mistake and they couldn't help me either - just told me to rent the cheapest car I could find when I got there. So... we had an uneventful flight into Vienna, then started going from rental agency to rental agency. Sold out, sold out, sold out, 550 Euro, sold out, sold out, 455 Euro, sold out, sold out... finally... over 300 Euro - over 100 Euro than we'd originally paid, and we had ourselves a tiny little basic car - reliable, but gutless and without any air conditioning.

Vienna, Austria:

The traffic was thick getting into the city, but nothing unusual. A series of one way roads made getting to the hotel tricky, but we made it to Tiefer Graben street to the Best Western there - the Hotel Tigris that is established in a building where Mozart once stayed with his father and sister. Two plaques commemorating Mozart's presence are on this street. Just a few doors up he stayed again and composed there as well when he was older. The hotel was clean and modern. Old tiny elevators and stone stairways gave way to spacious modern rooms brightly lit and decorated with modern art.

It was about 5 then, so we set out walking and just walked until it was too dark and cold to walk any more. It would take some thinking to retrace my steps and you probably would be in full snooze by then, but needless to say, we covered some ground and our shutters had little rest with the flurry of photography that happened between us. I traveled with my new lens since the old one is kaput - a new lens that is telephoto only, so I did a lot of backing away from things and taking pieces of buildings. An entire building could not fit in my view. My dad took the big pictures and I took the details. It worked.

Vienna is beautiful. I'd heard others say that it is too perfect. It is. A college student on the plane next to me said that there is an attitude adopted by true Viennese people - an aire of rudeness that is just typical and almost expected of them. I didn't find anyone that was overtly rude, but there isn't a lot of warmth there either. Still, every where I looked, I saw beauty, history, and pure elegance.

Just walking down "normal" streets is amazing. Giant statues adorn building corners, roof lines, and doorways as commonly as we hang curtains. They are everywhere. Little plaques saying "Mozart lived here" and others as well remind walkers by a bit of the rich history of Vienna. Shops sell exquisite things at princess prices. Even the cakes and chocolates are beautiful.

We walked down Herrengasse to the Hofburg/Imperial Palace that sprawls out and around the Burg, Hofburg, and Volks Gardens. It's a commanding structure in both its size and "fanciness" - kinda of standard there. Horse drawn carriages wait out front for any tourist who wants a ride. In the center of the round a bout in front is a large covered archaeological excavation. The church across the way looks almost plain in contrast to the grandeur of the green domed palace. Again... larger than life statues are just hanging out on the rooves in large dramatic gatherings, at the corners, and along the walkways though the palace gate. Every where you look there is drama and beauty in those carved faces.

The gardens display a simple beauty in contrast to the architecture surrounding them, so it's a peaceful quiet walk though them to the Rathaus and theater. We saw the towers of the Rathaus (City hall) and walked toward there admiring the Burg Theater across the street. Bright red geraniums overflowed from the boxes under each window of the Rathaus. I backed up as far as I could, leaning slightly into the temporary wall of the tent set up for the upcoming horse show and even then could only get a tower top or a window in my view.

A Burg Theater projector shone on the well known Cafe Landtmann's across the street changing the facade every 30 seconds. I stood and gazed at the famous theater than grandpa had gone to in his youth and where both my grandparents had been to together on their last trip to Vienna wondering what they'd seen and wishing I that they were with me now - going to a show together.

From there we passed the Parliament where a policeman seemed to be watching us. I walked up the steps anyway and continued to take pictures. There were a lot of police in the area and none of them seemed very friendly, so I did my best to ignore them and continue pretty sure that taking photographs was not verbotten.

Between Parliament and the Museum quarter we got hungry. But... restaurants are not abundant on the Karl Renner Ring and we weren't ready to commit to a lengthy nor expensive meal, so dad suggested a Wiener stand. There were several stands in a row near the bus stops... some selling gyros and pizza and another selling "weiners." So, for a handful of change, we each got a large hot dog (more like a German sausage than like the American version) stuffed into a hollowed out baguette. I'm not usually a fan of that sort of food, but I was hungry and it was absolutely delicious; albeit messy.

I'd forgotten how much ground you can cover when you're not walking along side short legs. We did cover a lot of ground walking in and around the museum platz with all the over sized buildings with grandiose statues and copper domes. The wide building at the end - the Museum Quartier - houses several smaller museums inside, a fancy restaurant, and a well graffiti-ed bathroom with a giant courtyard in the center. It was at this point that we just started a almost aimless wander... not that we ever had a plan, but this was the time when we'd see something and say, "let's walk to that ___ and see what it is" or "I'd like to get a picture of ___ and then we can head back." We walked and wound and got a bit turned around... saw crazy "Wiener" fashion, a store called HuManic whose name I found amusing, beautiful buildings and statues, and then, quite by accident, we stumbled up on the great St. Stephen's Cathedral - one that Grandpa had mentioned, and one that is impressive because of it's beautifully tiled roof. I've seen others now, so in comparison, it's pretty average, but at this moment, it was the first colorfully tiled roof that I'd ever seen, so I was just amazed and couldn't take my camera off of it.

By this time it was near 11, so we wound our way back finding our street but couldn't turn down it though we could see our hotel, we were looking at it from the bridge above it. It took just a moment, then dad saw the stairs through a narrow dark tunnel-like passage to the level of our street below.

Six hours of walking was almost enough to have a pretty good directional idea of the town, but not nearly enough time to see everything. There is just too much to see. I just might have to go back.