West Balkan loop

Tomorrow we leave for about a week through parts of the former Yugoslavia. We'll sort of be playing it by ear as we go, so the agenda might change as we miss a key connection or so (this time of year the ferries in the Adriatic Sea run a couple of times a week as opposed to one or more per day in the high season). 

The loose plan as it stands before departure is: we've got our train tickets for Ljubljana, Slovenia tomorrow. We'll spend Monday there before getting down to Rijeka, in Croatia to catch the ferry down the coast to Dubrovnik. After that we'll make our way back up through Bosnia and Herzegovina via Mostar and Sarajevo before returning to Budapest. How long any of those legs last will depend on what we encounter, but the long distance ferry is only twice a week so if we miss that we'll likely just take buses down the coast or something. From what I've read about the area, I don't expect it'll be too disappointing to find ourselves stuck or going off plan because the whole region looks completely fascinating. The trick for me will be keeping a willingness to give something up for the sake of not moving too fast to get too much in. Long hours reading on the train should dial things down a notch.

Save it while you can

The sun is setting at rush hour in Budapest now. This weekend it'll be rushed ahead some more when daylight savings time ends. 

The length of the day is slightly exaggerated for me since Budapest is about 5 and a half degrees latitude further north of where I've come from. Days were longer in the summer here, so I suppose I should get ready for the longer nights to come.

Another old bomb, another evacuation

On my second day in Budapest last July I learned that a district downtown here was evacuated the previous day because of a WWII bomb. The live 500-kilogram bomb was discovered during an excavation. The next day I read about another one having been discovered elsewhere in Hungary. Since then other stories about other bombs found during construction have continued to pop up. From my count there have been five more stories since July, including the one in yesterday's news, about an area around the Margaret Bridge being evacuated while a bomb was lifted from the Danube. Often story includes some version of an account from a neighbor having lived above a buried bomb for years without realizing it.

It makes me curious about how common this sort of thing is elsewhere in Europe...

Old school Hungarian geography

We went to the Agricultural Museum in the Varosliget here in Budapest on Sunday. The building housing the museum isn't that old by local standards. It was finished in its current form in 1908 for the Millenary anniversary of Hungary to showcase the various indigenous architectural styles. 

100 years is still plenty old enough to build up whatever blend of wonderfully smelly particles that go into "old museum" musk. The exhibits have the density that comes from years of squeezing in new 

displays in among the older ones. Many of the cards listing information about the exhibits have long ago yellowed, and some are written with a heavy dull pencil tip. All of these textures add up to a rich, dense sensory reminder of the old Catholic school I attended until 5th grade. 

While I was swept up in the atmosphere, a lot of insight is still offered about the role its landscape has played in Hungary's evolving hunting, fishing, forestry, conservation, crop and livestock traditions. I've always enjoyed the dioramas in these types of museums, and the ones here interestingly blend the building's gothic architecture into the scenes of Hungary's plains, marshes, and prehistoric cave life. (By the way, either the cave dwellers of prehistoric Hungary had particularly big boobs, or the clay models of them here were just a lot of fun to make.) 

As a kid I used to love those old maps in which colorful images of mines and cows and fish were superimposed over the regions that chiefly produced those products. This was like finally getting to walk around inside of one of those.

   

Vienna Prater

  

Our last stop in Vienna Sunday was a few U-Bahn stops out to the Prater Park, where there is an amusement park called the Wurstelprater. Our purpose was to see the Wiener Riesenrad, the giant ferris wheel built in 1897 and featured 50+ years later in the movie The Third Man. 

We were immediately taken by the rest of the place, however, with all of the roller-coaster screams, dinging bells, flashing pointing arrows, balloon sellers and other chaos. Best by far was the carousel. I've never understood how some people get to be carousel fanatics, but the one here with its misbehaving horses had us rolling! While the horses were supposed to go around when the music played, one kept taking shortcuts across the middle while others were distracted by us onlookers.

Neubau and Spittelberg

After spending Saturday in the gleaming Innerstadt and Sunday morning at Schonbrunn, we were dying to see more of the "everyday" Vienna. I wanted to know that the Viennese maybe let loose or relax a little. The Seventh District of Vienna, consisting of the neighborhoods of Neubau and Spittleberg, has recently been gentrifying but is still known for its younger more liberal student population and many of the associated affordable interesting shops, cafes and pubs.

Mixed in with the design and craft boutiques, it was a relief to find lock shops, paint stores and other trade businesses. I understand that there's no way to get more than a whiff of the character of a place as big as Vienna in two days, but here too it was largely clean and fancy.

  

  

Schönbrunn, schön indeed!

Before we left Vienna, we went to Schloss Schonbrunn, the Habsburg summer palace. As an example of all of the glory of human art and architecture that can be funded by the riches of a family at the center of a powerful empire, this is a good one. As an example of how over the top it is that it was once fasionable to have a zoo of exotic animals to eat breakfast in, this is also a good one. 

Most of all, it's a great example of how after the fall of an empire, the ruling family's legacy (including all of its quirky 'fashions') can become a park for the enjoyment of everyone, like us on Sunday.

  

U-Bahn Wien

I'm beginning to appreciate how big of an impact on a city's image is made by the aesthetics of its mass transit. To those who commute on it every day, the quality of their surroundings surely affects subconscious minds made vulnerable by the tensions or weariness of the workday. To new arrivals or visitors eager to find their way where nothing's familiar, the senses are hyper-alert and all new sensations are readily inhaled.

The U-Bahn in Vienna is certainly a sensation. It is like stepping into a version of the future that was imagined 30 years ago. Each of the five U-Bahn lines has it's own bright color and unique set of design elements. Many trains have a brushed aluminum look and are lined with bright orange plastic inside. The best part to me is the sense that it doesn't take itself too seriously. There is a theme park sense of fun, though maybe that's because this brain grew up on Star Wars and (the first) Battlestar Galactica.

  

  

  

Stephansdom dynamo

Spiking high over the center of Vienna's Innerstadt is Stephansdom, St. Stephan's cathedral. It towers over everything, and the severe gothic energy easily stuns anyone confronted by it either when emerging from a dark medieval side street or from the U-Bahn vestibule in its open front courtyard. The effect is so explosive that it's difficult to imagine its contrast not with the current modern city, but with the simpler city of 500 years ago (when the cathedral was completed in its current form). It is by that measure easy to understand how the Church could project so much political power back then. The beautiful, spooky and glorious awe almost knocks you to your knees.

The fact that it survived the centuries of fires and wars is another matter; one story involves a retreating German captain in WWII refusing orders to reduce it to a pile of debris. Apparently some symbols of human glory are too special to wipe out in any old world war.

Fog burns off... Vienna sparkles

  
Upon arrival at the Vienna Westbahnhof train station we picked up a map and hopped on the U-Bahn (subway) into the center of the city. Emerging from underground, we were confronted by a choir of angels singing. The city was white, bright with the diffuse light of the morning fog, and all around were grand frilly baroque buildings. We wandered around the edge of the Innerstadt (inner city) past horse drawn carriages and bright white statues of Greek philosophers, through parks and wide open plazas surrounded by marble and limestone buildings, some with shining bronze ornamentation. Vienna wreaks of its capitol-of-empire past. When entering a new city with a reputation, it can take time to see past your stereotype of it. Vienna smacked me in the face with its image as romantic, elegant "mitteleurope".

The Innerstadt is a UN designated World Heritage Area, but it was great to see that the Viennese haven't preserved it as simply a living period museum. Instead the city shows a continuing progressive design tradition; the architecture ranges from medieval to the 20th century "machine-age". The Osterreichesche Postparkasse (pictured below) looks like it could've come from the 1927 movie Metropolis, or that it could've been built this year. Instead it was completed in 1906.

After a day and evening of so much strict and clean refinement it was almost a relief to go back to our hotel in a more approachable working class neighborhood to the north of downtown.