Randy's Travel Blog

Traveling Home & Onward - April 24 & Onward

2011-06-20T15:12:00.000-07:00

The Easter Sunday plan is to take the train back to Linz with Madeline, spend a little time there, and then travel on to Munich where we have hotel reservations. The first problem we encounter is that the ticket machine at the Westbahnhof won’t take our credit cards for reasons unknown to us. We eventually use most of the cash we have on hand to buy train tickets. I’m a little nervous to be essentially cashless on Easter Sunday, when the banks and practically everything else are closed.

We have a pleasant Sunday train ride back to Linz, then use our last few Euros to buy S-bahn tickets to get to Madeline’s apartment. On the way through the Hauptplatz we note that there are a couple of café’s open, so after Madeline gets unpacked and starts a load of laundry, we go back there for lunch. With anticipation, we ask the waitress if the café will take credit cards, since our cash is now completely depleted. It does not. So we spend the next 45 minutes trekking around the Hauptplatz to locate cash machines. We find a couple. Both are out of order—empty, I would assume. The “no banks or services on Sundays” deal is beginning to seem like a really bad idea to me. Finally, Madeline uses her bank card to enter the lobby of a bank. Within that lobby, secure from the demanding cash cards of the unwashed masses, Kathy is able to get cash successfully from that ATM. Whew! I have no idea how the average tourist, without a daughter living in Linz, is supposed to function on Sundays.

Cash in hand, we go back to the café and have burgers. With mayo, lettuce, tomato, and corn(?). Actually, it is not too bad! I finish with a gelato, and then we all take a little walk along the Danube. It is a beautiful sunny day. Spring has definitely arrived in Austria. There are lots of people out walking, sunbathing, and playing with their dogs and kids. Then we go back to Madeline’s apartment collect our bags, and head back, for the last time to the train station, where we say goodbye to Madeline and board our train to Munich.

The trip back to Munich is about two and a half hours with a short stop in Salzburg. Our hotel in Munich is not far from the Hauptbahnhof. Not the Elephant this time, but a different one: The Hotel Metropol. Kathy and I both like the hotel. It is roomier than the Elephant, and, unlike the Elephant, we actually have a few more pieces of furniture other than beds. It is a small, family-run hotel, it is quiet, clean, not overpriced, near the Hauptbahnhof, and the staff is friendly, so has all the things you would like to find in a hotel.

Kathy wants to skip dinner. All the eating we’ve been doing is catching up with her. I’m never in favor of skipping meals, but since I don’t want to go to a restaurant by myself, and since many restaurants are closed, I finally just go to the Hauptbahnhof, buy a sandwich and bring it back to the hotel room to eat. We’re both ready to just take it easy and chill in our room, so we flip on the TV and end up watching Wallace and Grommit in German. It is great! Grommit, of course, doesn’t talk, and Wallace seems very authentic speaking German. Maybe he’s always been German and nobody knew!

Monday morning, we have a very good breakfast at the Metropol and then follow the expected routine—walk to the Hauptbahnhof, take the S-bahn to the airport, and catch our flight back home. Then unpack, and then go back to work. And finally, I go to the doctor and get the stent removed. I feel about a thousand times better almost immediately.

Once I’m back at work, I announce that I’m going to retire in November. The time has come in my life for the cane, the hearing aid, and the overweight miniature dog named “Mister Cuddles.” Maybe I’m kidding about the dog. Anyway, while I’ll most likely pick up a part time job, I’m looking forward to some free time, and hopefully will use it for more travel. I’ll keep you posted.

Vienna April 21-24 Hotel Hell (But the Habsburgs Were Swell)

2011-04-22T19:11:00.000-07:00

Click HERE for a Vienna slide show.

Vienna, like most European cities, was at one time a walled city. It was necessary to have walls to protect the city from invading Ottomans (the Turks, not the furniture), or any other marauding armies that happened along. But by the middle of the 19th century, the nature of war had changed and Austrian Emperor Franz Josef decided to demolish the city walls. (War had not ended, of course, it had just changed to the point that the walls were no longer protective. This was about a century before the aerial bombardment of Vienna by the Allies in WWII.) In place of the walls, he built the Ringstrasse, the wide boulevard that encircles old Vienna. Old Vienna is now referred to as “The 1st District”, and is the historic heart of the city, as well as the most expensive real estate. The villages and towns that encircled Vienna outside of its walls were incorporated into Vienna at the time the Ringstrasse was built and were given district numbers. I have been told that the lower the number, the more prestigious (and expensive) the district. While most the tourist sites are in the 1st District, I had decided that there was no reason to stay there, since hotels there are more expensive, and since public transportation is good throughout Vienna.

Thus, on this day, around six o’clock our train pulls into the Westbahnhof in Mariahilf, the 6th District. We get off the train and find our way to our hotel, the Ibis Wien Mariahilf, that we soon find to be an overpriced, 340 room, bland, uninspired tourist barn. I had reserved two adjoining rooms, each with a double and a single bed. What we find upon check-in is two rooms with double beds. After some back and forth with the desk, I am able to acquire a room with two beds for Mike and Madeline. By making the switch though, we no longer have adjoining rooms, and are not even on the same floor.

The weather has turned quite warm and we find that our hotel rooms are even warmer. Every other hotel that we’ve stayed at in Austria and Germany has had windows that opened. Not this one. The windows are locked and there are small signs explaining that opening the windows is not necessary since the hotel is air-conditioned. The air-conditioning does not seem to work. I call the desk about the stuffy, hot room and nonfunctioning air-conditioner. The young woman I speak with tells me that she will make sure that our problem is dealt with within ten minutes (signs in the elevator proclaim that guests problems will be addressed by the hotel staff within ten minutes). She says that she doesn’t know how to explain it in English, but the solution, nevertheless, is less than ten minutes away. In maybe nine minutes there is a knock at our door. When I open the door, a young woman is standing there, perhaps the same young woman I had spoken to on the phone. She is holding an oscillating fan. She hands it to me and says that this will solve the problem of my stuffy room. By the time I recover from my shock and disbelief, she’s gone, and I’m holding an oscillating fan. The weather cools down outside, but the room never cools. I use the fan. The air conditioning never works. By the second night, Mike and Madeline also have an oscillating fan.

Kathy is suffering from a cold that had been developing for the last several days, so she decides spend some quality time in our room with the oscillating fan, while Mike, Madeline, and I go out for dinner. Madeline mentions pizza, but we wind up at a nearby restaurant serving good beer and standard Austrian fare. It is late by the time we get back to the hotel, so we call it a night.

The next morning we have breakfast in the hotel’s charmless subterranean breakfast facility. The food is OK, but there are too many people crammed into the available space.

This is Mike’s last day in Austria, so we decide that he should choose our activities for the day. Mike decides that we will start at Schoennbrun, the opulent summer palace of the Habsburgs, the family that ruled Austria for over six centuries, and also ruled over Spain, and numerous other countries. The Habsburgs collected countries (through conquest, marriage, midnight poker games, etc.) like other people collect stamps, Star Trek memorabilia, or rubber ducks. I’ve been told that my great-grandmother Svec was upset to her dying day that her immigration papers to the U.S. listed her nationality as Austrian. She was Bohemian. The Austrians were the conquerors.

We reach Schoennbrun after a short ride on the U-bahn. I am immediately impressed with the sheer scale of the place. It is the sort of place where an emperor would live. The grounds cover 145 sculpted and manicured acres. The massive main palace has 300 rooms. If you include the rooms in the ancillary buildings, there are 1441 rooms in the entire complex. And this was the just the summer home.

This is the most visited tourist site in Austria, which is obvious when we arrive at ten o’clock by the long lines of people waiting to get in the palace. My guide books suggests that while most people start their exploration of Schoennbrun with the main palace, an alternative is to first climb the hill to the Gloriette, a small columned building on a hilltop, to get a bird’s-eye view of the grounds. Given the long lines to the palace, we choose that option. The hike to the Gloriette is not a short one. The day is already hot so we follow a path up the hill that keeps us in the shade of a line of trees. We pause at the elaborate Neptune Fountain at the base of the hill, and then make the climb to the Gloriette. Both Neptune’s Fountain and the Gloriette were added as part of the redesign that occurred in the 1770’s under the empress Maria Theresa. She was so fond of the Gloriette that when her corpulence and age prevented her from walking to the top of the hill, she would have litter bearers carry her to the top. Since we have to walk up on our own power, it is nice to find a pleasant outdoor café on the back side of the Gloriette when we get to the top. I have a wonderful coffee and ice cream treat. The others try to make me feel guilty by ordering water. But I do not feel guilty at all and have a lot more fun than they do. I can imagine Maria Theresa sitting in the Gloriette consuming large amounts of coffee and ice cream. Yay for being old and fat and enjoying life!

-Gloriette and Neptune Fountain-

-Schoenbrunn Palace from Gloriette-

After spending a few minutes viewing the palace grounds from the high point of the Gloriette we start back down the hill. On the way down, we notice signs for the Tiegarten (Zoo), also located on the palace grounds. This was originally the royal zoo and has since become the Vienna public zoo. Prominently displayed on the zoo signs is a picture of an almost anthropomorphically smiling cute little baby panda. Madeline is completely entranced and it becomes obvious to her that visiting the Tiegarten and seeing the baby panda could be the most important thing that we do while in Vienna, if not in our lives.

-Anthropomorphically Smiling Baby Panda - As Seen On Zoo Sign-

So we detour to the zoo entrance where we discover that the Tiegarten is not free. It will cost nine Euros each to get into the zoo. After some discussion, we decided that anthropomorphically smiling cute baby pandas, while extremely important, are not 36 Euros worth of importance. We turn back once more toward the palace. On the walk to the palace, we see a cute little tufted-eared Austrian squirrel scampering along the path—absolutely free of charge!

-Cute Austrian Squirrels May be Viewed Free of Charge-

Throngs of people surround the ticket offices for the palace, and once we make it to the front of the line, we find out that after buying tickets we will still have to wait another hour and a half to get into the palace. They only allow a certain number of people in at a given time and it is a busy day. Mike decides that waiting that long is a complete waste of time; so instead, we take the U-bahn to Stephansplatz in the 1st District.

As we come up out of the subway in Stephansplatz, the first thing we see is the impressive spire of the magnificent St. Stephan’s cathedral. But wait. On second glance it doesn’t look quite right. And on third glance, we see that it is undergoing some reconstruction work and is wrapped completely in fabric to hide the scaffolding, and on the fabric is a detailed, to scale, picture of the cathedral spire that it covers. Thus, tourists like us who will probably only be here once can at least get an idea of what the structure looks like in spite of the reconstruction.

-Stephansdom Spire Partially Covered with Renovation Facade-

It is lunchtime, so we find a little sidewalk café in the shade just off the square. I have a delicious salad and a Budvar.

-Lunch-

After lunch, we wind our way through some little side streets to the Hofburg, the Habsburg winter palace. Along the way, we stop at an antique book/print shop and Mike becomes quite engrossed in looking at prints. He finally settles on a couple of nice small floral prints to add to the small art collection he seems to be acquiring on this trip, and then we wander on until we finally run into the huge Hofburg complex—far from the entrance. We are actually a little unsure where the entrance is. In our search to find it, we stumble across the Lipizzaner stables and get to see couple of the world famous white horses hanging out and chewing on hay.

We finally work our way into the palace, which is so huge and so filled with things to see that in sheer confusion and panic we wind up in the kitchenware and china museum. Case after case of teacups, salt wells, and stew pots. Proof once again that the Habsburgs had lots of stuff. I can’t imagine why anyone would want or need 4700 colanders. And I can verify that once you’ve seen 47000 colanders, you’ve seen them all. And once you’ve seen all 470000 of them, you become really bored and tired.

So to escape the colanders, we go up one flight of stairs and find ourselves in the royal family’s living quarters and a museum dedicated to the Empress Elisabeth, wife of Emperor Franz Joseph. The change in the museum presentation technique on the upper floor is a good thing. Tell me what someone thought and felt and you are giving me a better sense of history than you will by showing me their colanders. Elisabeth of Bavaria was affectionately known as Sisi to her family, and then to history. Sisi was much loved by her Austrian subjects, both when she ruled and yet today. She was a beautiful and tragic figure in Austrian history—so much so that several movies have been made about her. She wed Franz Josef in an arranged marriage at the age of 15, but from the very beginning, she abhorred the public world in which she lived, and rebelled fruitlessly against the Habsburg court protocol. She witnessed the death of her two-year-old daughter, and later had to face the demise of her son, the crown prince, from depression and suicide at age 30. From the day of his death, she always dressed in black until her own murder at age sixty at the hands of a deranged anarchist. After learning of his wife's death, the Emperor reportedly whispered to himself, "She will never know how much I loved her."

After we leave the palace, we buy some ice cream and sit on steps next to an archeological dig directly in front of the palace entrance and eat it. Then, on the way back to our U-bahn stop in Stephansplatz, we run across a great street entertainer doing a juggling show. The show goes on for a long time and probably contains more amusing banter than actual juggling, but we are sufficiently amused to leave a big tip. We are definitely more entertained and amused by the street juggler that we’d been by the colanders.

When dinnertime rolls around Madeline is once again excited by the prospect of pizza. I check on line for pizza recommendation for the area we’re staying in, but don’t come up with any outstanding suggestions. We'd noticed an Italian ristorante near the hotel, but we decide that we should ask ask someone at the hotel for a recommendation rather than just blindly going there. The young man at the desk suggests the same ristorante we had noticed. But, when Madeline asks if its good, rather than give a direct answer, he gives her the name of another place to eat—only a block from the hotel. Gasthaus Franceschi. So that’s where we go. It is a small, but welcoming looking place. As we go through the door, however we’re a little unsettled by the man standing in the entryway talking nonsense to us. No, wait—he’s not talking to us, he seems to be talking to himself. Well, actually maybe part of the time he’s talking to us. Turns out that this is Gary Franceschi, an American, who along his wife Inge, runs this establishment. They serve Austrian fare. The only thing Italian in the entire place is Gary’s ancestry. Gary seems a little unhinged, but probably (or hopefully) is harmless, and seems to spend most his time rambling around talking to the guests and maybe also talking to the voices in his head. He is quite amused with himself. This is obvious from the way he frequently laughs at things that he says to himself. He laughs like Curly from The Three Stooges, “Nyuk, nyuck, nyuck, nyuck!”

Madeline is not happy about the absence of pizza from the menu, but as it turns out, the food is excellent. Kathy has an outstanding salad and schnitzel while Mike and I both have bratwurst and kraut. All delicious, but, as Madeline keeps pointing out, none of it is pizza. Another strike against the Ibis, for steering us wrong.

Mike has to get up very early Saturday morning to catch his flight. He has an unbelievably tedious flight back to the States. First, he has to fly from Vienna to Dusseldorf, do a layover, then fly from Dusseldorf to Munich, and do another layover before connecting with a Munich to Chicago flight. After all of that, he has to catch a bus from Chicago back to Madison. I get up at 4:00 to see him off, but he’s caught an early cab, so is gone already by the time I get to the lobby.

This is our last full day in Austria. Madeline, Kathy, and I decide to try the Schoennbrun palace one more time, only early this time, to avoid the crowds. We get there as they are opening, and our strategy works. We get right in. Even so, before we’ve finished our walk-through, the number of people in the palace has grown exponentially. By the time we leave the palace we have lots of tour groups both in front and behind us—really restricting our ability to move around. Nevertheless, the palace is well worth our time and effort to see it. Around 40 rooms are open to the public, and each room has its own story and history, from the Emperor Franz Josef’s study, which he furnished in a very Spartan style compared with the rest of the palace, and where he began work each day at 5 AM, to Hall of Mirrors, where in 1762 a six-year-old Mozart performed for Empress Maria Theresa and other assembled royals including the seven-year-old Marie Antoinette.

Finally, we leave the palace and once more heed the call of the anthropomorphically smiling baby panda. We unhesitatingly lay down our 27 Euros and enter the zoo. The zoo is pretty cool. It combines some of the old baroque zoo buildings with many more modern structures. Unfortunately, the animals are pretty much sleeping. We find the pandas. They’re asleep, too. And we don’t see any babies, anthropomorphically smiling or otherwise.

-Pandas As We Found Them-

It turns out that the baby panda in the picture is Fu Hu, was born in December, is definitely at the zoo, and as website pictures show, is cuter than cute. I suppose Fu Hu was napping, just like all the other animals. We leave the animals to their slumbers and take the U-bahn back to the hotel for lunch and a nap. A nap seems like a good idea after seeing all the animals doing it. Madeline is determined to have pizza, so this time we go directly to Italian ristorante on the way to the hotel. It is closed. So we eat at the hotel. The food is OK. It is not pizza. Madeline is now deep in pizza withdrawal. After our lunch/naps, we take the S-bahn back to Stephansplatz and hike over to the MuseumsQuartier, a complex of museums housed in an amazing 250-year-old Baroque complex that was originally the Imperial Court Stables. We spend our time in the Leopold Museum looking at paintings by the likes of Egon Schiele, Gutstav Klimt, and Edvard Munch. I find it hard to imagine that all this fine art is hanging where almost a thousand Habsburg horses used to stomp and neigh.

We peruse the museum until it closes, and take the S-bahn back to the hotel, arriving around dinnertime. As we pass the little ristorante, we find that it is open! It turns out to be a cozy little place—just a few tables, but it is great! They’re having Asparagus Week, so we all get a bowl of cream of asparagus soup, then we all get pizza and some appropriate beverages. The food is good, the service is friendly, but I do not remember the name of the place. A later Google search is fruitless. Regardless, it is a memorable meal, and it is our last dinner in Austria.

The next morning, Easter Sunday, we have breakfast, check out of the Ibis, walk down to the Westbahnhof, and board the train for our trip home.

Linz 2--April 20-21--Several Snafus, Seven Sorrows, and a Sumptuous Supper

2011-04-20T17:21:00.000-07:00

Click HERE for a Linz slideshow

On Wednesday, I finally get clean clothes! My clean clothes situation was already getting a little dicey in Salzburg on the 17th. I had asked at the Europa desk about getting laundry done and was told that guest laundry was not handled on Sundays, and definitely not on Palm Sunday, because, after all, the laundry people deserved a day off, too. Sundays are considered sacrosanct in Austria—the country practically shuts down. This is an abrupt conceptual shift from service-oriented American business practices that I’m used to, but it is a reasonable approach assuming that one is used to it and can plan for it. If one is travelling, though, it can create problems—such as the need to wash one’s socks and one’s underwear in one’s hotel bathroom sink.

On Monday when we checked into the Wolfinger, I again asked about laundry. It was, I was told, not a service that the hotel normally provided. However, there was a nearby laundry where I could take my clothes. On Tuesday morning after breakfast, I asked the desk clerk where the laundry was located. Then Kathy asked if it was a laundry or laundromat. The meaning of her question was probably lost in translation. So she tried again. “Do we have to do the laundry or will it be done for us?” This question, I suspect, was also misinterpreted. The desk clerk sighed, “We will arrange to have one of our maids take your laundry to be done. Just bring it to the desk.” So we left it at that. She apparently thought the spoiled American tourists were asking her if they really had to trouble themselves with taking the clothes to be laundered. In fact, my original plan was not be troubled with dealing with laundry—so maybe I am a spoiled American tourist.

So Wednesday morning, garbed in freshly laundered clothes, we meet in the Hauptplatz with a guy named Johan who guides us on a walking tour of central Linz. Madeline had arranged the tour with Johan after participating in a tour he guided for the Austro-American Society. We find Johan to be personable, knowledgeable, and interesting. He shows us the Altes Rathaus, built in 1638, and spends some time in the Hauptplatz, and talks about how Hitler would draw crowds when speaking from a balcony overlooking the square. We see the Kepler Haus, where Kepler lived in the early 1600’s, and tour the Neuer Dom, the massive neo-Gothic cathedral built in the 1800’s. And we stop at a bakery to sample the locally famous Linzertorte and drink some coffee. During this stop, Johan sits with us and we have a pleasant chat. We find out that he has lived in Korea and the U.S., has a background in software, but is currently trying to establish a business as a tour guide.

Linzertorte is OK—the guidebooks all say that no trip to Linz would be complete without sampling this treat, so I can say that my trip was complete. One Linzertorte claim to fame is that it is the oldest recipe in the world. A recipe in the Admont Abbey in Austria for Linzertorte dates to 1653. It is a crumbly, short pastry containing lots of ground hazel nuts and a little flour, some unsalted butter and egg yolks, and a little cinnamon for flavor. It’s layered with jelly or jam and served with big dollops of whipped cream. If I were into desserts, or if it were made of chocolate, I would have liked it a lot. Many people, I’m sure, would get really excited about this pastry.

-Post-Linzertorte Outside Bakery-

Madeline works with a teacher named Ernst who has invited us to come to his house for a meal on this day. Ernst lives in the foothills of the Alps near the little town of Amstetten, which is maybe 30 miles east of Linz. We take the train to Amstetten and Ernst meets us there and drives us over some very picturesque winding roads to his house. Ernst and his wife live in an attractive old house that they’ve beautifully remodeled and added to. We have our meal at a table by a large picture window with a panoramic view of the woods and pastures stretching out in the valley below. The meal and the conversation are both fine. Ernst and his wife talk about their travels to Canada, Australia, and Alaska, and Ernst and Madeline tell us about some of the projects they have done with his classes. They serve a wonderful array of Austrian food: Fresh salads adorned with little flowers from their lawn, beef roulade, semmel knoedel (a type of dumpling), cranberry sauce and peach chutney. For desert, they produce two huge strudels— poppyseed, and cherry vanilla. We finish with some local pear cider and schnapps. Finally, Ernst drives us, well-fed and happy, back to the train station in Amstetten and we travel by train back to Linz. Kathy and I are back at the Wolfinger by nine o’clock and promptly go to bed.

-View from Ernst's Window-

Thursday morning is warm and sunny and after breakfast Kathy and I take a walk through the Alstadt, and up to the Schloss, a hilltop fortress, now a museum, near the Danube, and then along the Danube itself. The walk gets a little long for me but it is a beautiful morning.

The plan for the day is to visit Poestlingberg, a hilltop overlooking the Danube and much of Linz. The day is not without its snafus. Snafu #1: Madeline and Mike had originally planned to meet us at our hotel before we went on our Poestlingberg excursion, but last minute, Madeline calls me on our hotel room phone and suggests that since her apartment is on the way to Poestlingberg, that we should meet them at her train stop. I, unfortunately, misinterpret the message and we end up waiting for a long time at two different train stops before we finally connect. Snafu # 2: We make a grocery store stop to stock up on provisions for the picnic. One item is olives packed in oil, which Madeline, understandably, has to sample. Unfortunately, she doesn’t properly seal the olive container, and by the time it is discovered to be leaking, there is oil all over the other food, the bag, and Madeline’s clothes. So Madeline becomes a little testy. But in fact, the weather is beautiful, the view from the hilltop is spectacular, the food is good, and the company, in spite of some testiness, is great. So it is a good day.

To get to the top of Poestlingberg we ride steepest non-cog rail line in Europe—a grade of nearly 1:10. At the top we picnic and enjoy the view, and check out the Sieben Schmerzen Mariens Church, a huge Baroque pilgrimage church built in 1748. Sieben Schmerzen Mariens translates as “The Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary.” Not being a Catholic, I didn’t realize that Mary had seven sorrows, but for the record they are:
1. Hearing a prophecy from Simeon the Righteous when Jesus is still an infant that alludes to his crucifixion.
2. The flight into Egypt to escape King Herod’s killing of infants.
3. Losing Jesus in the Temple
4. Meeting Jesus on the way to Calvary.
5. Jesus’ death on the cross.
6. Receiving the body of Jesus in her arms.
7. Placing the body of Jesus in the Tomb.

The seven sorrows idea dates back to at least the 13th century and is a great teaching tool, but I think it is kind of stretch coming up with seven, just because that number has special significance. For instance, the story of losing Jesus in the temple and finally finding him sitting with the elders and wowing them with his wisdom is kind of a cute story. Why is this a sorrow?

Following on this theme, I try to compose the Seven Sorrows of Our Pilgrimage to Poestlingberg: 1-The Great Confusion of Meeting at the Streetcar Stop. 2-The Anointing of the Grocery Bag with Oil. 3-The Long Quest for an Ideal Picnic Spot. Nope. That’s only three. To come up with seven, I would have to stretch, too. The day just wasn’t that sorrowful.

-Checking Out the View from Poestlingberg-

Regardless, the church is spectacular. I can add this to the growing list of spectacular churches that I’ve seen in the past week.

-Sieben Schmerzen Mariens Church-

Also on top of Poestlingberg is the Marchengrotte Railroad, a 100-year old miniature railroad that runs underground through “a colorful world of dwarfs and other displays.” Is this whimsical or hokey? I am not able to find out since it is closed for the day.

-Scary Clown Figure Which Probably Has Something to do with the Marchengrotte Railroad-

We finish our Poestlingberg excursion by midafternoon, collect our luggage and board the train for Vienna.

Linz April 18-19—Dead Saints, Doeners, and Dangerous Grape Leaves

2011-04-19T10:15:00.000-07:00

The trip to Linz seems short. We start a game of Euchre and don’t even have time to finish before we arrive. At the train station, we grab our luggage and hop on the S-bahn. Everything is painless and uncomplicated here since we’re on Madeline’s home turf—all we have to do is follow her lead. The plan for Linz is for Mike to sleep on Madeline’s couch at her apartment. Kathy and I have a hotel room. At the Hauptplatz, Kathy and I get off to find our hotel while Mike and Madeline continue on to Madeline’s apartment. It is a short walk across the square to the Hotel Wolfinger. We find that the hotel entrance and reception area are on the second floor and, in light of our luggage/stent situation, we search vainly for an elevator. There is no elevator. The building predates elevators by several centuries. So we haul our luggage up the stairs to the small reception area, complete the check-in formalities, then cross a second-story walking bridge over a courtyard to our room. The room and its furnishings are—simply old—lots of antiques, but also some late garage sale items. But the plumbing is modern—a perfect blend of quaintness and functionality. The Hotel Wolfinger was originally a 16th century nunnery. Sleeping in a structure that was built just as the Middle Ages were waning and was formerly inhabited by nuns is a unique and new experience for me.

-Ensconced in Wolfinger Room-

The hotel faces the Hauptplatz, the largest public square in Austria. The most visually significant object in the square is the Dreifaltigkeitssäule, or The Pillar to the Holy Trinity, a 65-foot white marble column. The column was erected in 1723 in thanksgiving for deliverance from the Turks, the fire of 1712, and the plague of 1713. A collection of sidewalk cafes fills the east side of the square, and that’s where we go next. Mike joins us, since Madeline has a phone interview for a potential job. The weather is still a little cool, but pleasant, and we enjoy our coffee, conversation, and people watching.

-Dreifaltigkeitssäule-

Later, Madeline joins us for dinner at a Greek restaurant, “El Greco,” on the Hauptplatz near the hotel. We feel a little disjointed being Americans ordering Greek food in Austria. The restaurant has menus in English if you ask, but maybe someone unfamiliar with Greek food and not very adept with English wrote them. Or maybe they were translated from German to English with Google Translate. Baklava is listed in the English menu as “nut strudel”, strangely accurate, but also sort of amusing. “Grape leaves” appear on the English menu as “Hazardous Grape Leaves.” On Madeline’s German menu the operational word is “gef”, an abbreviation for "gefüllt," meaning "filled." But the English translator must have assumed that “gef” meant "gefährlich" which means "dangerous." Regardless, the food is great, and we all get a complementary shot of ouzo with our check!

Tuesday morning is low key. Kathy and I have an excellent breakfast at the Wolfinger. Since this is the week before Easter, our eggs are hard-boiled colored eggs. After breakfast, Kathy goes out for a wander—she spends some time hiking around the picturesque streets of the Alstadt and finally winds up by the Danube where she sees Mike out for a morning run, and some swans. I stay in our room—the walking thing is just not working for me.

We have our lunch at a doener place. Madeline has talked about doeners ever since her first experience in Germany. It’s probably the preeminent German fast food—and actually outsells sausages in Austria. Doeners, while Turkish in origin, are a true German food in the same sense that hamburgers (hamburger original meaning = from Hamburg) and hot dogs (wiener original meaning = from Vienna) are true American foods. It’s a matter of controversy what exactly should be in an authentic doener, and I don’t claim to be an expert, but here’s what I came up with in my Google search: The basic ingredient is meat roasted on a vertical spit—same as you would use in gyros or shwerma. For a doener, the meat may be lamb, or it may be veal, turkey or even pork. The meat goes into fladenbrot. A direct translation of “fladenbrot”, I suppose, is “flat bread.” Google Translate translates “fladenbrot” to “pita bread.” But the doener I’m eating is not in pita bread—it is more like focaccia or ciabatta. Additionally, you may find lettuce, cucumbers, onions, red cabbage, white cabbage, tomatoes, garlic sauce and chili sauce in various combinations depending on where you buy your doener. All I can say for sure is that my one doener lunch experience has convinced me that they could be very addicting. Madeline, who has been craving various American foods that aren’t available in Austria will probably return to America and develop cravings for doeners.

The plan for the afternoon is to go to the little nearby town of St. Florian and visit the abbey there. I had read that St. Florian’s Abbey was one of the premier examples of baroque architecture in all of Austria. But it is out of the way, I remain unsure of how we will get there, and the others are less than enthused about going. We take the S-bahn to the bus station and find that the buses run to St. Florian irregularly and they take a long time to get there because of frequent stops. So we take a taxi. I prepare for St. Florian’s Abbey to be totally lame, requiring my profuse apologies to the others for their expense and effort. I needn’t have worried. St. Florian’s turns out to be awesome, in the actual sense of the word. We are all awed.

St. Florian was a 4th century Christian martyr, a Roman official who would not renounce his faith even after torture and upon threat of death. He was finally dragged to a bridge and thrown into the river with a millstone tied around his neck. A pious matron dragged his body out of the river and buried him in a secret Christian graveyard. Around the year 800, a monastery was built at the site of his burial. Though the various buildings have been replaced or altered through the years, there has been a church and monastery on this site since then. The current baroque complex was built around a pre-existing gothic structure in 1686. In the intervening 300+ years, this complex of buildings with all of its statuary, gold, woodcarvings, and frescoes has survived the travails of time and two world wars and is every bit as beautiful today as when it was first constructed.

The church’s main pipe organ is a magnificent instrument with 7343 pipes. It is now referred to as the “Bruckner Organ” since it is the organ that Anton Bruckner played on as the church organist before he became famous as an organist and composer. Today he is interred in a tomb directly below the organ that bears his name. The phenomenal library, with its two-story high walnut shelves and frescoed ceilings contains 135,000 volumes, many of which are hand-written manuscripts that predate the printing press.

There is a small gift shop/book store in the Abbey where we are able to book a tour. Our tour guide is a local woman who is worried about her ability to explain things to us in English, since she usually does the tour in German. She is great. She carries around a big jangly ring of large old-fashioned keys and takes us behind locked doors to see, among other things, Bruckner’s tomb, an ossuary containing the bones of 6000 people who had chosen to be buried near the saint and whose bones were excavated in the 13th century, the imperial chambers—rooms for important guests, the Marble Hall with its monumental ceiling fresco, and the opulent library, where, unfortunately, photography is not allowed (but you can see it at this website.)

-St. Florians Collegiate Church Choir Stalls-

-Bruckner Organ-

-Touring St.Florians Marble Hall-

-Marble Hall Ceiling Fresco-

While Madeline thoroughly enjoys the tour, I think the highlight of the day for her is her discovery and purchase in the bookshop of a crazy book called “Struwwelpeter”, a book of cautionary tales for children. “Struwwelpeter” obviously comes from the same culture that brought us Grimm’s Fairy Tales, where children are eaten by hungry wolves and thrown in ovens by evil witches. In this book, children suffer ghastly consequences as a result of misbehavior. The little boy who sucks his thumb has his thumbs cut off by a crazed scissors-wielding tailor (because tailors do that, right?) The little girl whose kittens warn her not to play with matches does so anyway and is reduced to a pile of ashes. (At least the kittens cry at the end—they could have said, “Told you so!”) And the little boy who refuses to eat his soup ends up starving to death. (That’ll teach him! Oh wait, he’s dead.) Anyway, this book is so bizarre that Madeline and Mike chuckle over it all the way back to Linz. Here’s a YouTube video that gives you the flavor of the book.

-Reading Struwwelpeter at the Bus Stop-

Shortly after getting back to Linz we have dinner at Chindia—this time around we are Americans eating Chinese and Indian food in Austria. At least this time it is a buffet so we don’t have to deal with menus translating Indian and Chinese food descriptions from German to English. Madeline’s friends William, Josh, and Ross join us for the meal. It is fun to meet some of the friends that Madeline has been telling us (and blogging) about. The guys are great, and so is the dinner. We finish with a complimentary shot of schnapps then Kathy and I head to our hotel and bed, while all the young folk go in search of a bar.

Salzburg April 16-18

2011-04-17T18:25:00.000-07:00

Click HERE for a Salzburg slideshow.

The Munich-Salzburg train is underway and we’re still wandering the aisles encumbered with all of our luggage (and a stent, in my case) trying to find four seats together. We can’t believe our good luck when we finally find a private compartment. We’re sitting there for a while when it occurs to us that our tickets are for regular passenger service and the compartment we’re sitting in is first class. That is when the conductor shows up and asks for our tickets. With trepidation, we hand them over. And he punches them and walks off. So then, we once more can’t believe our good luck. We spend the time on the train visiting and playing the famous name game. (Someone names a famous person, then the next person must name a famous person whose first name begins with the same letter as the last name of the famous person just named—and so on. There are no rules beyond that, although I am told that minor Nixon cabinet officials are not “famous”.) Having both my kids with me in the same place at the same time is a rare occurrence, so that by itself makes this a special occasion. On top of that, I’m riding in a first class train compartment and the German and Austrian countryside is rushing by outside the train window. We eat lunch on the train—sandwiches we had bought at the Munich station, and arrive in Salzburg in the early afternoon.

Our hotel is located near the train station, so the walk is short and it is easy to find. The Hotel Europa Salzburg is a wonderful four-star hotel with 14 stories, but a mere 100 rooms. All of the rooms have windows looking out of the same side of the hotel (the hallway is on the other side) to accommodate the view. The view in this case, is all of Salzburg with the Salzach River winding through the middle, the Hohensalzburg, a medieval fortress, on a promontory above the city, and the snow-capped Alps spreading out behind.

-View of Salzburg from Hotel Europa Window-

We spend the next several hours drinking in the view and unpacking. But finally, we’re ready to explore. The River Salzach divides Salzburg into the Alstadt, or old town, on the west and the Neustadt, or new town, on the east. “Old” and “new” are relative concepts here; this is Europe, not America, after all. The new town was originally developed in the 1600’s while the old city of Salzburg was built in the 8th century on the ruins of an older Roman town called Juvavum, which grew out of a collection of earlier settlements going back to the 5th century BC. The train station and our hotel are in the Neustadt, but most of the points of interest are in the Alstadt. Our route from the hotel to the bridge to the Alstadt takes us through the Mirabel Gardens. If you’ve seen “The Sound of Music”, you’ve seen the Mirabel Gardens. It’s the place where Maria and the kids sing the “Do-Re-Me” song. The gardens surround the Mirabel palace, originally built in 1606 by an archbishop for his mistress and their 15 children. The baroque formal gardens have been described as one of Europe’s most beautiful parks, and are filled with flowers, topiary, sculpture and fountains. I like the bronze Pegasus standing in a pool near the palace a lot. This horse is smiling! Mona Lisa, eat your heart out!

-Walking Through Mirabel Gardens-

-Smiley Pegasus-

Having traversed the gardens, we cross the Salzach and plunge into the old town. Salzburg’s original historic importance was as a terminal in the salt trade, but in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, it became an important center of political power. During this period an incredible array of churches and public buildings were constructed. These historic buildings blend with the narrow brick-paved streets, the sculpture and fountain festooned plazas, the river and the mountains surrounding the city to create an awe-inspiring visual experience. The entire Alstadt is pedestrian only. Shops and restaurants line the narrow streets and cafes spill out onto the plazas, so it is a very pleasant place to amble around, or just sit and sip coffee and take in the view. Our first trip to the Alstadt is pretty much just a pleasant amble. We stop at the Tourist Information Center on Mozartplatz to get maps, advice on what to see and information on walking tours for the next day. Mike finds a street artist doing some nice, visually interesting watercolors. And we spend some time sipping coffee and soaking atmosphere.

-Sipping & Soaking-

Then we walk back to the hotel and go to the nearby Stieglbrau Restaurant for some good classic Austrian food and a Stiegl beer before calling it a day.

The 17th begins as a bright and sunny morning. It is both Palm Sunday and my birthday! Breakfast is on the 14th floor of the hotel—a fantastic view of Salzburg and a wonderful breakfast buffet with all the usual things I’ve come to expect; eggs, sausages, assorted fresh fruit, pastries, breads, and cheeses, fruit juices, as well as coffee and tea.

Our first excursion for the day is trip to Fortress Hohensalzburg. While there is a walking path up the steep Festungsberg hill (essentially a cliff) on which the fortress is perched, most people, especially those with stents choose to ride the cog train. The view from the top is spectacular, and when we have spent sufficient time enjoying the view, we begin to explore the enormous and labyrinthine fortress. It was built originally in 1077 as a fortress and eventually became the residence for the ruling archbishops. Noteworthy among the many things to see in the fortress is a recently excavated Romanesque chapel dating back to the 11th century. There are fragments of colored plaster on the excavated walls. That plus the thousands of fragments found while excavating indicate that the interior of the chapel was originally richly covered with frescoes, which we can only speculate about today.

-Fortress Hohensalzburg-

-Inside Romanesque Chapel Excavation-

It is almost noon when we finally take the cog train back down to the Alstadt. We had planned on the 12:15 walking tour of the Alstadt, but I am worn out from the morning exploration of the fortress, so we instead stop at a little café in one of the plazas and order salads, which turns into a long leisurely lunch. While I rest, Mike finds the street artist that he had visited the day before and buys a watercolor of Salzburg. He also buys some gourmet salt at a store specializing in that line of goods.

Eventually we stroll, enjoy the street musicians and sample Mozartkugel several times. (Mozartkugel: A confection originally invented in Salzburg in 1890. It consists of a pistachio marzipan surrounded by a layer of nougat, coated with dark chocolate and wrapped in blue foil featuring a picture of Mozart. Undeniably delicious!) Finally, at two o’clock we walk to the Tourist Center in Mozartplatz for the walking tour. The four of us are the only people on the tour, and our guide is a strange, asocial man. As far as I know, he doesn’t ever introduce himself or tell us his name. He also shows no interest in us personally and pretty much sticks to the facts. Also, there is the matter of the fee. When I present him with a large denomination Euro bill, he says he can’t make change, so Kathy and I have to spend time combing our wallets and pockets for smaller bills so we can pay him. He takes us to all the important sites in the Alstadt: the Residenz, the Dom, the Franziskanerkirche, Stiftkirche St. Peter, and winds up at No. 9 Getreidegasse, Mozart’s birthplace. I, unfortunately, run out of steam and become uncomfortable (the stent thing) shortly after the tour gets underway, thus once again, I am not focusing on what is being said and miss much of the detail. Lastly, for the final embarrassing moment of the tour, Kathy and I realize that neither of us have any small bills to tip the guide since we'd already given him all our small bills for his fee. So he stands around awkwardly for a few moments and finally walks off.

After our awkward guide leaves, we spend some time touring the apartments where Mozart was born and spent his childhood, which is now a museum, and then, continuing with the Mozart theme, we cross the river to the Neustadt and tour the house where Mozart spent his late childhood and early adulthood, also a museum. The museum is interesting—we tour with headsets for so we can listen to descriptions and lots of Mozart’s music.

-Mozart's Birthplace-

That night we go to an Italian restaurant near the hotel with a nice antipasto bar and everybody gives me a birthday card. It is a memorable birthday!

Monday, the 18th starts with another wonderful breakfast on the 14th floor of the hotel. Then we head, once more, to the Alstadt. First we stop at the Tourist Information Center, where I leave a tip for our awkward guide from the previous day. He isn't there, but I leave the money with one of the staff. She is very surprised. Then, Kathy's interested in seeing St. Peter’s cemetery, and especially the early Christian catacombs carved into the cliff below the fortress.

We find that the cemetery is open, but unfortunately, the catacombs are closed to the public for the day. The cemetery is both picturesque and interesting. It is small, squeezed between the base of the cliff and the church, and the graves follow one right after the other with no space between. The cemetery is well maintained and the graves are elaborately decorated with flowers and candles. All of Salzburg’s elite are buried here, including Mozart’s sister. But not Mozart himself. While Salzburg claims Mozart, Mozart rejected Salzburg for the brighter lights of Vienna, where he met an untimely end, and was buried in a mass pauper’s grave.

-St. Peter's Cemetery-

Our last stop in the Alstadt is at a grocery store where we buy massive amounts of Mozartkugel to bring home. Then we check out of the hotel, walk the short distance to the train station, and board the train to Linz.

Munich April 14-16

2011-04-14T13:27:00.000-07:00

Click HERE for a Munich slideshow.

The first step in negotiating our way through Germany is finding our way to the S-bahn (subway/train) so we can get from the airport to our hotel. It is totally guesswork on my part that leads me to decide that the green signs showing a circled “S” are leading us to the S-bahn. Luckily, my guess is correct. Had the “S” signs actually signified the way to a stegosaurus or a slime pit it would have been a very unfortunate and disastrous guess on my part. I could always ask somebody. But that reduces the sense of adventure. At the S-bahn, I am baffled by the posted schedule. Fortunately, a nice man asks me where I am going and then says, “Let us figure this out together.” Thus, I am allowed to keep my dignity more than if he had said, “Stupid American tourist! Let me show you how obvious this S-bahn schedule is!”

So we get on the right train and in about 45 minutes, we find ourselves in the Hauptbahnhof (central train station) in the center of Munich. Our hotel is only a few blocks away, and following a map printed from their website, we find it in short order. The Creatif Elephant Hotel is quaint and has a lot of character. To some, I suppose, that would translate to “The Creatif Elephant Hotel is little and old.” But having stayed in some sterile, chain, tourist barns (see Vienna hotel), I prefer this sort of hotel. I had requested a room for three, since Madeline would be joining us, and unfortunately, the only reason our tiny room can be called a room for three is that there is a double bed and single bed in it. The single is shoved right next to the double and other than a small armoire, there is no other furniture in the room, nor is there room for any other furniture. To get out of the double bed, we discover that it is necessary to walk across the single bed. So that's quaint. But the hotel staff is friendly and helpful, the hotel is well kept, and we soon find out that the breakfasts are phenomenal.

Madeline meets us a couple hours after we've checked in, having come in by train from Austria. We do a quick walk-around the Aldstadt in the afternoon. Mainly we hang out in Marienplatz in front of the Rathaus (town hall) to watch the Glockenspeil go through its paces.

- Marienplatz -

The Glockenspiel is a clockwork conglomeration of chimes and mechanical figures that goes into action three times each day. It was without a doubt, pretty amazing in 1908 when it was originally built, but in this day of computer-generated images, it seems a little lame. It is essentially mechanical puppets going in circles.

The Glockenspiel has two levels and tells a separate story on each level. The top-level figures enact the story of the marriage of Duke Wilhelm V (he founded the Hofbrauhaus, so he is OK in my book) to Renata of Lorraine. Part of the story involves a joust between two knights in honor of the wedding couple. Spoiler alert! The Bavarian knight wins! The crowd gasps as the other knight is knocked off his horse and then the Glockenspiel tells the second story: In the 1500’s Plague came to Munich and everyone locked themselves into their houses, afraid to come out lest they catch the disease. Well, the coopers (dudes who made barrels) were not happy that people had shuttered themselves away, since they weren’t out drinking beer, which would result in brewers buying barrels. So to convince everyone that it was OK to come out, the coopers did this crazy dance through the streets (The Schafflerstanz—it was kinda the Watusi of 16th century Munich). Everybody was so amused that they came rushing out of their houses. Then they all caught Plague and died horrible and hideous deaths. Well, no, actually, they all started doing the crazy dance too and the duke was so amused by the whole spectacle that he ordered that these crazy shenanigans should be reenacted every seven years. Go to Munich next summer and you can watch, or even participate in this crazy event.

So the mechanical coopers are dancing around a central scary clown figure (don’t know the significance of the scary clown—maybe one of Stephen King’s ancestors was involved in the design), and then about 15 minutes into it, everything stops and a tiny mechanical owl at the very top of the Glockenspiel hoots. Thrilling End of Show.

In the few days we are in Munich, we somehow manage to watch this show three times! This is delusional and abnormal behavior. After having seen it once, the time I spend watching the other two shows could have been spent quaffing a couple dunkel biers in the Hofbrauhaus.

- The Glockenspiel In All Its Splendor -

The burgers (e.g. citizens, not beef patties) of Munich do like their beer. There are breakfast places that serve beer. So civilized! The Creatif Elephant does not serve beer, but the breakfasts, we discover, are excellent: Eggs, sausages, and a nice mélange of peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and basil. As well as juices, coffee, tea, and cakes. We sit at breakfast the morning of the 15th and chat for a long time before finally heading back to the Alstadt for a walking tour. (Stent Man perspective: Sitting & chatting = good. Walking = bad) Our walking tour guide is a young guy from Wisconsin who has moved to Germany and does English language tours for a living. He is interesting and way into it, but after an hour my body is telling me “MUST….SIT….DOWN….!!!” so loudly and persistently that I can no longer hear what the guide is saying. We see lots of baroque churches including the Frauenkirche, hear about how much of the old buildings in Munich were destroyed by Allied bombs, and hear about a lot of Ludwigs and Maximillians. We walk through the Royal Gardens and on into the huge, expansive English Garden, and finally wind up at the Hofbrauhaus where I am able to sit my body down and drink a beer.

- Hofbrauhaus! -

We discuss the possibility of a second tour later in the day that focuses on the Third Reich, but my Stent Man body tells me that it would not be a good idea. So I go back to the hotel to rest while Kathy and Madeline rent bikes and bike around the English Garden. When they come back, Madeline brings me a little wind-up inchworm. You can think of it as working on the same principle as the Glockenspiel, but simpler and more amusing, actually.

The morning of the 16th we have another great Creatif Elephant breakfast and then walk (Stent Man: “Aaarrrgh!”) around the botanical gardens. Then we pack our bags and walk to the train station to meet Mike. We position ourselves under the large Coca Cola sign in the front of the train station, our designated meeting spot. On the 15th I had used my Skype connection to call his cell phone voice mail to leave detailed instructions about getting to the train station from the airport, how to come up out of the S-bahn stop and go back into the train station, and where to look for the giant Coca Cola sign. His email reply, “Got your voice mail. It was a little garbled. Something about meeting by a Coke sign. I didn’t understand it all, but I’m not worried.” Yet amazingly, here he is walking across the train station! Hugs and greetings are exchanged & then we get on the train and head for Salzburg.

Austria - Some Context

2011-04-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

These next few blog posts are about our family trip to Austria. Since, in real life, it is impossible to separate any event, be it a trip to Austria or anything else, from what comes before and what occurs afterward I’ll spend a couple of paragraphs providing some background and context for this excursion.
Kathy and I traveled to Austria because of a cascade of occurrences that began in 1998, when Mike was in high school and took German as his foreign language choice. Five years later, when it was time for Madeline to choose a foreign language she also chose German. One of the main reasons for her choice was that Mike had taken German. As she tells it, this would allow them to share a secret language that neither Kathy nor I would be able to understand. A trip to Germany in high school continued her interest in German language and culture, then, German became one of her minor concentrations in college. A summer in Berlin allowed her to become more proficient in the language, and ultimately, after graduation, she pursued an opportunity to spend a year in Linz, Austria teaching English to high school aged kids.
We went to Austria because visiting Madeline provided a reason for us to go. We planned a two-week trip, with the time equally divided between four cities, Munich, Germany, then Salzburg, Linz, and Vienna in Austria. Mike would join us for a week in the middle of the trip. Madeline, who was on Easter break, would meet us in Munich and travel with us for the entire time.
A week before we were to fly to Munich, my left kidney decided to cough out a stone, which lodged about half way out. End result: Me experiencing excruciating pain followed by me experiencing laparoscopic surgery for stone removal—for the expelled stone as well as another cluster of stones the CT scan found in my kidney. I waffled for a while as to if I could make the trip, but I decided to go, and while it wasn’t the optimal experience, in the end I’m happy I went.
To prevent post surgical swelling and blockage (not an ideal outcome, especially if I were to be somewhere in the middle of Europe), the urologist, during surgery, installed a stent. A stent is a device that resembles a long soda straw with curly-queues at both ends. The one end sits in the kidney & the other end goes into the bladder. I found that carrying a stent around Europe was not a good time. It ranged from uncomfortable when I was sitting, to borderline painful when I was walking around. It put me at a definite disadvantage when we would do walking tours. I partially focused on the tour, partially focused on how I felt and mostly thought about how good it would be to sit down again.
Our plane from Atlanta to Munich was only partially full—a partially full trans-Atlantic flight is something I have not experienced for over twenty years, and it was wonderful. I claimed three seats and was able to lie down and get some quality sleep on the way over. Considering my subpar condition, the good flight over was a real plus, I actually had the stamina necessary to deplane, get luggage, get through the passport check, negotiate the S bahn into Munich, and start my European experience.

Puerto Rico--January 2011

2011-01-15T15:47:00.000-08:00

This travel opportunity came out-of-the-blue when I got a phone call at work one day from Kathy, “I have to go to Puerto Rico for a few days for my job.” “Cool!” I said, “I’ll come, too!”

A few weeks later, we were on our way. I had no time for my usual meticulous (OK, maybe overly meticulous) preparation and flew there with little background or knowledge about Puerto Rico. It was pretty much a matter of throwing a few warm weather clothes into a suitcase & going.

The Wednesday we flew out, the whole country was in the throes of several major storms. The day before, Atlanta experienced major snow and thousands of flights had been cancelled. Our layover, of course, was in Atlanta. Fortunately, other than a few small delays, we didn’t have any trouble with our flights. When I looked out the plane window as we landed in Atlanta, my first impression was that we hadn’t left Minnesota—piles of snow everywhere!

I have no real first impressions landing in Puerto Rico since it was dark when we flew in. The first person to speak to us in Puerto Rico was a hustler/potential mugger. He accosted us as we e headed for the taxi stand, “Hey, you need a taxi? Come with me!” Like sheep, we started to follow him. Onto an elevator! Finally, I had the presence of mind to ask, “Where are we going?” “Oh, I’m parked in the parking lot. It’s OK. How are you? Are you OK?” Sure, I’m OK until you get us into the parking lot & take all of our money. Kathy and I gave each other a look and I told him that we would prefer to take a real taxi at the taxi stand. We got off the elevator, proceeded to the taxi stand, and took a taxi to our hotel with no additional problems.

We stayed at the Courtyard Marriott in a section of San Juan called Isla Verde. The hotel is near the airport and right on the beach. The hotel has a couple of nice restaurants and all the usual amenities. It seems that in Puerto Rico the usual amenities include a casino and a live band playing Latin music.

My real first impression of Puerto Rico was the following morning when I got out of bed, stepped onto our balcony and took this picture.

Ah, heaven!

The following two days, while Kathy worked, I, along with the husband of Kathy's co-worker who was along on the trip, spent some time exploring the historic forts in Old San Juan and Old San Juan itself. On the weekend, Kathy and I booked a tour and went to the San Sebastian festival in Old San Juan, which was in full swing.

Here are a few things I learned about or experienced while in Puerto Rico:

Cockfighting:
The night we arrived, we drove by a cockfighting arena on the way to our hotel. We both said, “Wow, that’s legal here?” Turns out, that not only is it legal, many consider it to be the Puerto Rican “sport”. The fights start at noon on Saturday and Sunday and go continuously until midnight. A bird owner will bring his specially bred rooster to the arena where it will face off against another rooster and battle until one rooster stops fighting—usually because it is dead. The roosters’ spurs have been filed down and replaced by an artificial plastic spur, which is longer and sharper, thus making a spur strike more deadly. There are no betting windows like they have in mainland horse racing. Instead, you bet on an individual basis with those sitting around you. It is important to be careful what you say to whom and what hand gestures you use during the fight or you could end up making a bet you didn’t even know you were making. When the fight starts, the men watching (and they are mostly men) start to bet, cheer, and yell, and the beers flows freely. Ironically, chicken wings are also for sale.

I did not attend, nor would I have any interest in attending a cockfight. Most of my information came from a conversation I had with the tour guide who led the Saturday tour we took to Camuy and Aricibo. He, like many Puerto Ricans, raised fighting roosters when he was a teenager—pampered them, fed them special high protein diets, and ultimately sacrificed them to the pit.

Cockfighting has become illegal on the mainland U.S. on a state-by-state basis, with Louisiana being the last to outlaw it in 2008. It has a long history, however, in the U.S., Europe, and around the world. It obviously caters to the same emotions as violent movies and video games, only in this case the fighting, the blood, and the death are very real. Someone, I’m sure, has studied anthropologically why many of us find cockfighting to be morally repugnant, but have no problem with chickens being slaughtered for us to eat.

The birds, by the way, are referred to with the “c” word, and not as roosters. I’ve avoided that word here to prevent unwelcome hits from those Googling for a very different topic.

Forts of Old San Juan

Fort San Felipe del Morro

In 1493, Christopher Columbus claimed the island of Puerto Rico for Spain, much to the surprise of native Tainos who thought the island was theirs. Within fifty years, the Tainos were nearly extinct due to the hardship of slavery imposed on them by the Spanish and by European diseases, thus Puerto Rico truly became a Spanish island. Since it was the first land ships would encounter when sailing with the prevailing currents and trade winds from Europe, it was strategically important. Thus, in 1539 the Spanish began to build a fort, Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which occupied a promontory at the entrance to the harbor. The fort was occupied continuously as a fort until after World War 2, was modified on a regular basis, and is massive. Its impregnability allowed Spain to control Puerto Rico until it succumbed to a new generation of weapons and lost to the U.S. during the Spanish American war.

It is a masterpiece of military engineering—20-foot thick walls, six levels that go from sea level to 145 feet, and an open esplanade on the land side that would turn any land attack into a slaughter. After the U.S. took control, it continued as an active fort during both world wars, to protect American interests in the Caribbean, including the Panama Canal, and has the distinction of being the location of the first American shots fired during WWI, when American naval forces fired on a German supply ship. Since 1961, it has been a national park.

In 1598, the British managed to capture Castillo del Morro by attacking from the land side. They controlled the fort for a short time, but ultimately succumbed to dysentery and the Spanish regained control. This event did inspire the Spanish to build a second fort, Castillo San Cristobal, to protect San Juan and Castillo del Morro from attack by land. It was built over a period of 150 years and ultimately wrapped around the old city of San Juan. The fort itself covers 27 acres, making it the largest Spanish fort in the Americas. When the fort was built, walls were also built around the entire city, and stayed in place until 1897 when about one third of the walls were demolished to make way for the expanding city.

Fort San Cristobal

Old San Juan
Old San Juan is composed of quaint, historic architecture dating back to the 16th century, charming public squares, fun shops, cathedrals, museums, restaurants featuring every type of cuisine, and miles of narrow, hilly streets paved with bluish bricks, all surrounded by the historic city walls, the harbor, and the old forts.

It is the original part of San Juan. It began as the town that served the fort and is located on a small island connected to the main island by two bridges and a causeway. Most of the central government buildings are here.

It is also home to a large population of feral cats. When the central government decided to destroy the cats, there was such a public outcry that they modified their plan to a catch, neuter, and release program.

Our time spent here consisted of visiting the forts, admiring the old buildings, getting up-close and personal with the cats, poking through the shops, sitting at outdoor cafes and quaffing cold beverages while people-watching, and attending the festival.

Old San Juan

Festival of St. Sebastian
In early January each year, a large part of the entire population of the island crams itself into Old San Juan for the four-day Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastian, which marks the end of the Christmas season. During the day, the streets are jammed with people, stalls selling fried food, artists displaying their art, trinket vendors, and wandering musicians. In the evening the craziness gets cranked up to the next level with hundreds of stages featuring live music, parades of singing, dancing (and drinking) people, including cabezudos--people wearing giant peppier mache heads, and more people than you would think possible all crammed together in a marde gras sort of atmosphere.

If one is smart, one walks to this event, since it is virtually impossible to get there by car when it is in full swing. And forget parking. If one is almost 60, like this writer, it is advisable to go only during daylight hours and then interpolate regarding how much crazier it would be after dark.

Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastian

Camuy Caves
Imagine this huge cave system under the rain forest that has collapsed in places forming giant sinkholes. Imagine descending by trolley into one of these holes on a path built corkscrew fashion around the edge to the bottom. As you descend, the rain forest surrounds you—above, below, and on all sides. Eventually you reach the bottom and the stalagmite and stalactite festooned entrance looms before you.

This was our experience when we visited Parque de las Cavernas del Río Camuy (Camuy River Cave Park). It was incredible to experience this natural wonder. It was so impressive that it is only proper that every fact I quote about the Camuy caves be followed by an exclamation point:

• The river Rio Camuy runs through the cave is the third-longest underground river in the world!
• Cueva Clara, the chamber we visited, is so high that a 20-story building would fit inside!
• A half-million bats live in the caves—13 different species!
• The cave provide habitat for a species of fish that is totally blind!
• The sinkhole Tres Pueblos is so large that the entire Fort San Felipe del Morro would fit inside!
• Ten miles of cave have been mapped so far—probably a fraction of the total!
• We stopped along the road for lunch after visiting the cave and had fantastic food!

Puerto Rican Food
After visiting the caves, we pulled off the road at one of the little roadside restaurants that pepper rural Puerto Rico. The restaurants are called lechons. While a variety of food is served, it all centers on pigs roast on a spit. Traditionally the pig was a suckling pig (leche = Spanish for milk), but now more often the pig will be a medium sized adult pig. At our stop, the pig was cooking on a spit in front of the restaurant, and the food was served cafeteria-style inside. After filling our plates, we grabbed a soda, pulled a chair up to a plank table, and commenced to enjoy. Succulent, savory, and satisfying!

One night at the hotel, we had a scrumptious paella on the beach along with a couple of Medallas—the local beer. Medalla is a beer for the tropics; light, cold, and available everywhere!

At the San Sebastian Festival, there were millions of stands selling all sorts of fried snacks. Some of the ones we sampled:
Mofongo: A mixture of fried plantain (or yuca, or breadfruit), mixed with garlic, and pork fat, and formed around a filling of vegetables, seafood, or beef.
Pinchos: Roasted tostones (fried mashed plantain) and chicken or pork on a skewer.
Alcapurria: A sort of turnover made from yucca, calabaza (a type of pumpkin), potato, or plantain filled with crab, chicken or picadillo.
Bacalaitos: A fish fritter.

One evening we ate at Metropol, a family style restaurant right next to the cockfighting arena. The clientele seemed to be a mixture of tourists and locals. I ate a nice piece of beef complimented with congri (rice and black beans), tostones, and a tamale. All very delicious.

And then there are Mojitos—perhaps the main fuel of the San Sebastian festival. And why not! It is a great way to deal with the heat and humidity—the mint and lime are so refreshing and yeah, there’s rum, too! Wikipedia declares this to be the proper way to prepare a mojito: “Lime juice is added to sugar and mint leaves. The mixture is then gently mashed with a muddler. The mint leaves should only be bruised to release the essential oils and should not be shredded. Then rum is added and the mixture is briefly stirred to dissolve the sugar and to lift the mint sprigs up from the bottom for better presentation. Finally, the drink is topped with ice cubes and sparkling water. Mint leaves and lime wedges are used to garnish the glass”. I don’t think that the mojitos I consumed at the festival were made with this degree of finesse. But they were fine. Damn fine!

Pinchos at San Sebastian Festival

Aricibo
Imagine if somebody were to construct a giant radio telescope dish in one of the giant Camuy sinkholes so large that it filled the entire hole and then suspend from giant cables above the dish, a huge sci-fi looking collecting device. If you were to imagine that, you would be imagining the Aricibo telescope.

This installation is run by Cornell University and the National Science Foundation and has been used to among other things:
• Determine the exact rotation of Mercury
• Discover the periodicity of the Crab Pulsar
• Discover the first binary pulsar
• Image an asteroid, for the first time in history
• Look for signals from extraterrestrial intelligent beings
• Send signals into space as a message to extraterrestrial intelligent beings

It is jolting to see this huge complex in the midst of the Puerto Rican rain forest. And because of this, it has been used as a backdrop for two movies, Contact (the extraterrestrial angle) and GoldenEye (I think it was the source of a death ray the bad guy was going to use—Bond destroyed it).

The visitor’s center was great. One feature was designed to help us understand the relative distance of the planets to the sun. The “sun” was located in the parking lot. On the long climb up the path to the visitor’s center, which was on the brink of the sinkhole, we passed Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter. Pluto beyond the sinkhole and the Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, was on a mountaintop on the horizon.

Statehood vs. Independence vs. Status Quo

After our Camuy/Aricibo tour, the tour guide and I had a long discussion about this very interesting and complex issue. In the end, we arrived at our hotel, and sat in the car talking about this for another half-hour.

Puerto Rico has been under the control of the U.S. since we took it from Spain in the Spanish American war. Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917. There are strong opinions about what the future of Puerto Rico should be within the U.S. and Puerto Rican governments. Right now the pro-statehood forces are in control in Puerto Rico. But due to the complex process needed for statehood, it is unlikely to happen soon, if ever. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for this unique, beautiful island.

Puerto Rico!

2011-01-11T18:53:00.000-08:00

Off to San Juan in the morning! We're flying thru Atlanta, which is having major winter weather issues right now (This is Atlanta we're talking about--how bizarre!) They cancelled a lot of flights today, so we are hoping for an improvement by tomorrow or we may end up sitting at home, drinking rum, and pretending we're in Puerto Rico on the beach.

May 17, 2010--Austria?

2010-05-17T18:30:00.000-07:00

Madeline has graduated from college! She will spend the summer as a nanny & then plans to take an English teaching position in Linz, Austria. Seems like my travel MO has become following Madeline around the world, but that works. We will be traveling to Austria at some point in the next year.

April 2, 2009--Gaborone and Home

2009-04-06T18:05:00.000-07:00

After spending the morning at SOS on April 1, we finally did make it to Sanitas Restaurant. The food was OK and the ambience was very pleasant—outdoor dining amidst trees and plants. I, nevertheless, was overjoyed. That night was our last night at the Lolwapa. Madeline decided to spend our last night in Africa with us. On the morning of this day, we got up, packed up, bade Madeline farewell and taxied to the airport. Madeline was getting ready for her own trip to Victoria Falls—she would travel by bus over roads that at times became dirt tracks. It actually took her longer to reach Vic Falls than it did for us to fly all the way home. Our journey took us to Jo’berg, then on to Amsterdam and finally back to Minnesota.

My only regret was our inability to see any of the big cats on this trip. On my trip to Kenya in the 70’s I saw a leopard, a cheetah, and a multitude of lions and did not realize how lucky I was. I also would have liked to have come across mopane worms, just for the experience.

I’ll have to experience all of those things on the next trip to Africa.

Click here for a slideshow of African Animals.

April 1, 2009--Gaborone

2009-04-06T18:04:00.000-07:00

We spent another morning with Madeline at SOS on this morning. Here are a few pictures from the day.

March 31, 2009--Mokolodi and Bahurutshe

2009-04-06T18:02:00.000-07:00

On this day, Kathy and I hired a car and driver to take us to a couple points of interest near Gaborone, the Mokolodi Game Preserve and Bahurutshe Cultural Village. The Mokolodi Game Preserve is a 30 square km nature preserve south of Gaborone. It was formed in 1991 as a preserve and a center for environmental education. There were already a variety of animals living in the area, including warthogs, steenbok, and kudu, when the preserve was set up. Zebra, giraffe, eland, ostrich, hippos and rhinos have all been reintroduced. We were driven around part of the preserve in the back of a pickup truck outfitted with seats and saw ostriches, kudu, warthogs, wildebeests, and zebra. We also saw a large group of giraffe. (Groups of giraffe are called jennies—how cool is that?) We saw a cheetah in an enclosure—they have two at Mokolodi that were injured and are there for rehabilitation. There were also elephants that were under the care of elephant handlers. No lions, though.They are doing good work at Mokolodi, but it was all a little too tame after having been to northern Botswana.

We left Mokolodi and drove to the Bahurutshe Village to find out about traditional Batswana village life. Madeline had visited the cultural village with her ACM group in January and had recommended that we go there as well. The purpose of the cultural village is to preserve Batswana tradition, and while it is great for tourists, it also is aimed at local school groups, to help them understand their past and their traditions in this rapidly changing, rapidly urbanizing society.

When we drove up to the collection of rondavels that comprise the village, there was a small group of elderly women ululating a welcome. I had expected other tourists to be there, but Kathy and I were the only people there. There were five or six elderly women and one old man there to facilitate the program. After it was explained that if we were following tradition, I would sit in a chair and Kathy would sit on the ground, we were both seated in chairs in the shade of an acacia tree. Then they performed a traditional wedding with song and dance, showed how the bride would go to live with the groom’s family, and help with the daily chores. The chores included pounding sorghum into flour, and spreading fresh cow manure on the doorstep every morning (with her hands—yes they really demonstrated that). They also demonstrated traditional games that the people of southern Africa play at social occasions and by the fire in the evening.

One game is morabaraba and is played mostly by men. Morabaraba is played on three concentric squares scratched into the dirt that are all connected at the corners with diagonal lines. Rocks, bottle caps, or similar objects are used as game pieces and are called “cows.” Each player in turn places a cow at the intersection of two lines. When a player has placed three pieces in a row (called a “mill”), he may “shoot a cow” by removing one of their opponents pieces from the board. Cows in a mill may not be shot. Once all the players have placed all of their cows, each player in turn may move cows from one intersection to an adjacent one to form mills. A player wins when their opponent has only two cows left or can’t move.
According to Wikipedia, Morabaraba is derived from the English Morris and is based on a European game called “Nine Man Morris”, or alternatively Mills or Merrills in English, which was introduced by European settlers. This game ultimately came from a Roman game. Merellus, in Latin, means gaming counter.

A game favored by women is diketo, and requires timing and dexterity. Diketo, in principle, is like jacks. To play diketo, you draw a circle on the ground and place a bunch of pebbles within that circle. Each person takes turns tossing a large pebble, called a mguni or goon, into the air while taking pebbles out of the hole and placing them in a prearranged pattern (first one, then two, then three, and so on) on the ground before catching the large pebble. If you manage to get all the pebbles out, you continue by putting them back in the circle. If you manage to get them all back in, you’re done and you shout "Ndavala!" ("I'm finished!").

Finally, there was singing and dancing. Kathy was invited to participate. I, thankfully, was not. Then it was time for dinner. We were served seswaa (pounded beef), chicken, bean leaves (which were just that—the Batswana grow a large variety of beans, some for their leaves), bogobe (sorghum porridge), bread (which is not traditional), and some fresh greens (they called it lettuce, but if it was, it was not a lettuce I’m familiar with). The food was enjoyable, but bland. There doesn’t seem to be much variety in the traditional diet. It is centered on beef and either bogobe, or in recent times pap, plus a few vegetables. Disappointingly, they don’t seem to use much in the way of spices—quite different from other warm climate cuisines.

Visiting Bahurutshe was a good way for us to understand and appreciate the cultural background that formed the base for the modern Botswana that we were experiencing. I had hoped for mopane worms to be part of that experience, but they were not offered.

March 30, 2009--Gaborone and Oodi

2009-04-06T18:00:00.000-07:00

On this day, Kathy and I, along with Madeline and her friend Avery, traveled to Oodi, a little village near Gaborone to visit the Oodi weavers. To get to Oodi, you must turn off the main road and drive a couple of miles of rocky open range dotted with grazing goats and cattle. The village is a collection of thatched rondavels, small tin roofed houses of concrete block, dirt streets, scratching chickens and playing children. It seems an unlikely spot for a world-famous weaving enterprise.

The Oodi weaving cooperative uses European spinning, dying and weaving on spinning wheels and looms imported from Sweden. The artisans have incorporated their own stylistic sensibility into the process, however, and their products, from the runners to the tapestries, are without a doubt, African. In 1973, two Swedish artists set up the coop here with the help of a small grant from CUSO. The coop, consisting of about fifty local people, mostly women, has thrived. The coop members hand spin the imported wool, hand dye the yarn in large iron pots, and weave the fabrics on a variety of handlooms. An individual co-op artisan designs each tapestry. They typically display scenes from Botswanan village life, or Botswanan wildlife. The runners and tablecloths that we saw in the show room were made from fine Merino wool, while the tapestries were made from coarser wool.

The coop’s main building was a large one-story wooden frame building divided into workrooms. One large room was for the looms, a smaller room contained the spinning wheels, and even smaller room had stoves and pots for the dying process. It was relatively quiet during our visit. There were maybe a half-dozen people at work at the looms and spinning wheels, and no other visitors. One of the workers showed us around the work areas and then led to a smaller adjacent building that contained the business office and a small show room. Kathy, Madeline, Avery, and even I had fun sorting through the piles of fabric and examining the tapestries on display on the walls.

The Oodi visit was enjoyable for me for the chance to see the process of making the weavings, and visiting the Botswanan countryside. More importantly, it was inspiring to see firsthand how this enterprise had provided income and empowerment for these village women. The project has become a source of local and national pride as the weavings have gone on display around the world. It has brought money into the local economy and it has provided a means of keeping people in this village, as other similar villages lose their population to Gaborone.

After our visit to Oodi, our driver dropped us at the university. It was lunchtime and Madeline decided that we must go to Sanitos, which she described as a pleasant outdoor restaurant in a plant nursery on the edge of Gaborone. So she called the taxi company.

“This is Mary. I need a taxi to go from the University to Sanitos….No, Sanitos. Sanitos, do you know it? Sanitos…. I can direct the driver. How long? Twenty minutes? OK. No. Mary….Mary”

A half-hour later, she called again. “This is Mary. I called a taxi a half hour ago and it isn’t here yet. Sorry?... Sorry?....No, Mary. Sorry? To Sanitos. Sanitos. Sorry? No, I can direct the driver. Ten minutes? OK.” With great optimism, we left her dorm room to wait on the street.

Ten minutes later, she called again. “I called for a taxi and am wondering when it will arrive. Sorry? This is Mary. Yes. Two minutes? OK.”

Five minutes later, she called another taxi company. “I need a taxi to go from the University to Sanitos. Mary….Sanitos…No, Sanitos. I can direct the driver. How long? Twenty minutes? OK.” A minute after that call, a taxi drove up. It was the taxi from the first company. The driver’s name was Francis. He had been waiting around the corner for “a while”—not the usual spot for taxis to wait, but it was his first day on the job. Madeline called the second taxi company back. “This is Mary. I called for a taxi a short time ago, please don’t send it. I have changed my mind. Sorry? No, we don’t need a taxi. I have changed my mind. Yes. Thank you.”

We got in and Francis drove us across town as Madeline provided directions. Sanitos was definitely off the beaten track, but we got there. There was a wall on the front side of the nursery with a gate for cars. I could see a pleasant shady brick-paved area through the gate. Francis asked if he should drive through the gate or drop us at the gate. Madeline decided he could drop us at the gate, and we got out and paid, then Francis drove away. We walked through the car gate, across the shaded parking area, and up to the front door. It was closed. “Closed on Tuesdays,” the sign said. I ran to the gate to see if I could flag down Francis, but he was long gone. Madeline cursed and dug in her purse for cell phone. “We were just dropped off at Sanitos and they are closed. Could you tell the driver that dropped us off to turn around and pick us up? No, Sanitos. No, we were dropped off and we need to be picked up because it is closed. Yes. Mary. Yes. No, we’re at Sanitos Restaurant and it is closed so we need to be picked up. One of your drivers just dropped us off. Can he pick us up? His name was Francis. Yes. So can he pick us up? Twenty minutes? He was just here. Twenty minutes. OK.” She hung up. I suggested that perhaps the taxi dispatcher hadn’t understood her. She made a growling sound and called the other taxi company.

“Hello, we are at Sanitos Restaurant and we need to be picked up. Mary. Yes, Mary. Yes, I did tell you I didn’t need a taxi. But now I need one because the restaurant we went to is closed. Yes, we need a taxi. But, I didn’t need one then. Sorry? Sorry?” She hung up and swore.

Twenty minutes later a taxi appeared. It was from the first company. It was not Francis. When we asked about Francis, the driver didn’t know anyone by that name. Granted Francis was new, but it also strengthened my theory that the name some Batswana use with foreigners is not their real name. Madeline had the driver take us to the Game City Mall, one of the larger malls in Gaborone where we cast around for a half hour for a particular restaurant that Madeline wanted to eat at, but didn’t remember the exactly where it was located. It required some tense muttering and walking around but we eventually did find it and ate a very late lunch. After lunch, we went to a store called Botswanacraft to shop for artisan-made good from Botswana. Unfortunately, I was exhausted from too many activities, taxi hassles, tense muttering and walking around and found a spot to sit on the stairs while Kathy and Madeline looked around the store.

Kathy and I had just enough time to go back to the Lolwapa and change clothes before it was time to go out for dinner. Avery, Madeline, and her friend Tswello joined us. Tswello was quiet and, I think, a little intimidated by us. He seemed like a great guy with an interesting background and some broad interests. Tswello is a rapper and has a CD out in Botswana. His father is a farmer and raises ostriches, not the usual livestock in Botswana, where cattle are ubiquitous and where wealth was measured traditionally by how many cattle one owned. But talking about any of those things at length with a couple of old Americans was a little too much for Tswello. He did start to loosen up a little by the end of the meal. I would like to think that that we managed to draw him out with our charm and winning personalities. Or maybe it was the beer.

March 29, 2009--Chobe River & back to Gaborone

2009-04-06T17:55:00.000-07:00

Check out the African bird slideshow here

On this day, we met Chapman by the Lodge’s dock and then boarded a small pontoon boat for a private wildlife excursion down the Chobe River. We spent the entire morning on the river and Chapman patiently and expertly guided the boat into the shallows near the shore to give us the opportunity to see birds and wildlife at close range and at the best possible viewing angle. I got some spectacular bird photographs on this excursion and much of the credit goes to Chapman for placing me in the right spot in relation to the bird and the sun. You can view these photographs, as well as other bird pictures in a slide show here.

After the boat excursion, it was time to check out of the Chobe Safari Lodge. This was the end of the safari portion of our trip. Ironically and significantly, the second of my two camera batteries went dead right after the boat excursion. So while we would have to rely on Kathy’s little camera for the rest of the trip, at least the batteries had held out for the length of the safari.

We had about an hour to kill before it was time to leave for the airport, so we settled into some chairs near the activities office and read our books. At some point, I noticed that there was a little green snake under the end table next to the chair where I was sitting. I was not surprised that there would be a snake since the “building” I was sitting in had a thatched roof and no exterior walls. I suggested to Kathy that the snake would be an interesting subject for a photograph. She gamely crouched down under the table with her camera and the snake, not liking this intrusion, took off cross-country to the next table. Kathy followed along and did get a couple nice pictures. Then Chapman came walking along, and we pointed out the snake to him. He seemed to feel that the snake and the other guests would be happier if the snake were relocated. He left and came back with a stick and a shopping bag. The trick, he explained to us, was to put the bag next to the snake and then prod him with the stick. In order to hide from the prodding stick, he would slither into the bag, at which point he just needed to carry the bag somewhere far away and let the snake out. What is good in theory does not always work in practice, and this instance was one of those cases. When prodded with the stick, the snake would crawl under the bag. Remove bag, reposition, repeat process. Eventually the snake managed to slither into a tiny crevice where a pole supporting the roof met the floor. At that point, Chapman decided to stop bothering the snake and the snake stayed in his crevice and didn’t bother anybody. Then we got in the hotel van and rode to the airport.

We flew uneventfully to Gaborone, taxied to the Lolwapa Lodge & checked in again. The staff was as friendly and helpful as before, and the roaches were overjoyed to have us back. After unpacking, we walked to Madeline’s dorm at the University and caught a cab from there to a pizza place where we were joined by Avery and Jordan, two other students in the ACM program with Madeline, and Todd, a professor in the ACM program, along with his wife Deb, and their kids.

After dinner, Madeline taxied back to the Lolwapa, and we called Mike to sing happy birthday. Considering the cost of trans-Atlantic phone calls, we didn’t talk much beyond the song, but I think we caught Mike by surprise, anyway.

March 28, 2009--Zimbabwe & Victoria Falls

2009-04-06T17:53:00.000-07:00

From the very early planning stages of this excursion, one of our dilemmas was if we should visit Victoria Falls. Victoria Falls is one of the wonders of the natural world, and we would be within a few miles of them. However, in order to visit the falls we had to make one of two choices, each with its own set of problems. We could go to Zambia, which was not the prime viewing location and presented some logistics difficulties, or we could travel into troubled Zimbabwe to see the falls from the best location.

The troubles in Zimbabwe stem from a series of bad decisions made by its dictatorial government led by President Robert Mugabe. A few words about the history of Zimbabwe for perspective: The British colony of Rhodesia, which became Zimbabwe was controlled by a minority white elite for the entirety of its existence. Blacks had no political power and were forced to live on the least productive land, while the whites, who made up less than 1% of the population owned over 70% of the most productive land.

This disparity resulted in confrontations between the black and white populations which escalated into a racial civil war in the 1970’s known as the Bush War (no connection with either former U.S. President). The war ended with a British-brokered peace. The country of Rhodesia ceased to exist, and the country of Zimbabwe came into being. Fair elections were held, and the Presidency was won by Robert Mugabe. He has controlled the country since his election.
Governance, which started out as a fair, democratic process, descended slowly into a morass of inefficacy, corruption, and one-party rule.

Land reform efforts started with a relatively fair "willing seller, willing buyer” effort, but in 1992, with the Land Acquisition Act, the government became empowered to buy land from white farmers compulsorily. Due to corruption, most of the land the government acquired ended up in the hands of government officials and their friends. Around 70,000 Zimbabwean blacks have, in fact, been relocated to farms, but lack the infrastructure and knowledge necessary to farm. Only 300 of the original 4500 white commercial farmers remain. Because of the disappearance of viable farms in Zimbabwe, the country has gone from being a net exporter of food, to a country facing starvation. It is estimated that that about two-thirds of the county’s 11.6 million people face severe food shortages. Mugabe has thrown the international media out of the country which has prevented any sort of external examination of the extent of the current famine.

The loss of the agricultural economy, the eroding economy, and the disappearance of tourism due to the country’s instability has resulted in virtual economic collapse of the country. There has been triple digit inflation and numerous currency revaluations in the last ten years. The government has printed trillion dollar bills, and the official exchange rate is 15 million Zimbabwean dollars to the US dollar. For all intents and purposes, the currency is worthless, and U.S. dollars, South African rand, and Botswanan pula are the preferred currencies with merchants and even government offices.

This is the unstable situation we encountered as we entered Zimbabwe. To get to Victoria Falls from Kasane, you drive a half-hour to the Zimbabwe border, go through some border formalities and then drive about another half-hour to reach the town of Victoria Falls. Almost the entire drive, on both sides of the border, is within national parks. I counted more elephants than humans on the drive. Our excursion was in a van and with a driver provided by the Chobe Safari Lodge. There were three other lodge guests in our group, a young guy from California (but originally from Iowa), a woman from Ireland, and her French boyfriend. The American and Irish woman both worked for a software company that was doing work for the government of Botswana in Gaborone. They were taking a break and doing some sightseeing.

Though it was early, the day was already hot by the time we reached the border crossing. All five of us climbed out of the air-conditioned coolness of the van to buy a visa and fill out the necessary forms. The doors and windows to the small station were open for air circulation. The public area was bare of any kind of furniture except for a bench built into the wall. Some yellowing documents posted on a bulletin board announced the visa requirements for various countries. A radio on a windowsill cranked out American pop music. Behind the counter, three young uniformed guards handled the forms and paperwork. Since the Zimbabwean government has given up on its own currency, we purchased our visas with U.S. dollars. As we stood at the counter waiting for our forms to be processed, Beyonce’s song “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)” came on the radio. Never one to be shy when there’s good music, Kathy started singing along. By the time the song was into its first chorus, she was moving to the beat. Not necessarily exactly the way Beyonce does it in the video, but Kathy was definitely being rhythmic. I was a little concerned at her irreverence during these solemn border crossing formalities and put a controlling hand on her shoulder. The guards were all grinning. They probably all laughed over beer after work about the crazy American woman and her discomfited husband.

When we arrived at the town of Victoria Falls, we parked in a fenced parking area directly across the street from the entrance to Victoria Falls National Park. All we had to do was pay the park fee at the gate and walk a short distance, and there was the falls. There were a few other tourists at the falls, but not the numbers one would expect at this wonder of the natural world. Tourism in Zimbabwe has dried up due to the unstable conditions. Almost everyone is now seeing the falls from less desirable vantage point but potentially safer Zambia.

The falls themselves are beyond description, but I shall make a lame attempt. We were there while the river was in flood stage so the amount of water going over the falls was phenomenal. A permanent cloud hangs over the falls during the wet season, and as one gets close to the falls one becomes enveloped in a mist which turns into rain, the rain falls from the sky, but also comes from all other possible directions, including up out of the chasm. The vegetation changes as you near the falls and you find yourself in the midst of a lush tropical rain forest. You become very wet. We were covered with rain coats that we bought at the hotel, or we would have been soaked. I had my camera in a plastic bag with the lens protruding through a hole. The sound of the falls is noticeable from a distance and increases in volume to a roar by the time you reach the mist. From our vantage point the mile-wide river was flowing directly towards us and then plummeting into a 300 ft. deep narrow chasm that runs perpendicular to the river. At the bottom of the chasm the churning water follows the deep cut in the earth around a corner beyond the falls and then through a series of boiling swirling gorges. The gorges are where you wash up eventually if you go over the falls. And people do. So do hippos.

Kathy and I walked along the edge of the gorge for the full mile—the width of the falls. At the end of the falls, where the river bends, there is, unbelievably, a bridge. The Victoria Falls Bridge was conceived of by Cecil Rhodes who wanted “the spray of the falls over the train carriages.” It was completed in 1905, and with completion of the bridge and the rail line, Victoria Falls became a tourist destination. The bridge spans 650 feet from end to end and is over 400 ft. above the base of the chasm. Today, due to the age and condition of the bridge there are strict restrictions on both weight and speed of vehicles traversing it. In addition to linking Zambia with Zimbabwe, it also serves as the platform for a bungee jump—a jump that takes the foolhardy 360 feet into the chasm.

After leaving the park we decided that it might be worthwhile, just for fun, to cross over the bridge and get a temporary permit to enter Zambia, just to say we did it. As we left the park and started walking toward the bridge, a throng of roving merchants attached themselves to us. The merchants probably outnumbered the tourists by a significant ratio. As I said, there were hardly any tourists here. Kathy, I, and our throng reached the guard post by the bridge. I was feeling a little too hassled by the merchants, and when I realized that there would be a significant fee to enter Zambia for even a short time, I lost all of my enthusiasm for that venture. So we turned around walked back to the parking lot where our van was parked. As we walked, one particularly persistent seller of carved animals stuck up a conversation with Kathy and tried in every way he knew to convince her she needed to buy a carved giraffe. She finally told him, “Look, I don’t want a carved giraffe. If you had a carved hippo, I might consider it.”

“You want a carved hippo? I can get you a carved hippo.”

“OK, you do that. I’ll be there." She indicated the fenced parking lot where our van was parked.

“They won’t let me in there,” he explained. “You watch for me and when I come, I will sell it to you through the fence.”

He did show up, about twenty minutes later with a hippo. There was some bargaining through the fence, and Kathy became the owner of a very nice carved hippo. By the time the transaction was over, there was a crowd of people outside the fence, all with something to sell.

We had much the same experience when we went to a nearby outdoor market where local artisans were displaying their goods. The five people in our van were the only customers. The shopkeepers, I think, did not want to seem too desperate and drive us away, so they didn’t pursue us down the street as the people by the falls had done, but they practically pounced when we showed any interest in their products. Perhaps we would be the only customers that day. We spent all the money we had. I bought a set of carved soapstone giraffe bookends. Kathy bought a lot of fabric. I also bought a cheap little kalimba. When we had spent all of our money, people asked if we could trade our jackets for their goods. There so little goods or money coming into the country that people are that desperate. After we were back in the van, Kathy and I pooled our last bits of change and Kathy went back to the bookend seller to bargain for a hippo soap dish we had both liked. She explained that this was all the money we had left. She got the soap dish. We both admired our purchases all the way back to Kasane. Then, as we were unloading our purchases in our room, the hippo soap dish fell from the bag and broke into pieces on the floor. (Fortunately, when Madeline made a trip to Victoria Falls later, we told her where to find the seller of hippo soap dishes and she purchased one for us!)

On the way out of Zimbabwe, we stopped at a park containing a baobab tree under which Livingston used to sleep. It was in a wooded area, with nothing nearby but the road. Crazily, as soon as the van stopped a group of people materialized out of the woods wanting to sell or exchange goods. Our only other stop was at the border, where we once again had to fill out the requisite forms, and, interestingly enough, to walk single file through a trough of disinfectant, while the van drove through a larger trough of disinfectant, as a control for hoof and mouth disease. Then it was back to the Chobe Lodge for another night.

March 27--Chobe and Namibia

2009-04-06T17:50:00.000-07:00

One item that I continued to run into as I researched our trip to Botswana was the mopane worm. The mopane worm is the caterpillar of the emperor moth, which lays its eggs on the the mopane tree and other trees in southern Africa. The eggs hatch, and the caterpillar goes through a series of molts and becomes a very large, meaty caterpillar before spinning its cocoon. It is a significant source of protein for many people living in southern Africa. I was sure that by this point in my trip I would have had the opportunity to try them, but I had not, in fact, encountered them. Maybe this was not the season? Maybe it's like oysters & you can only eat them in "R" months. I did get the opportunity to try a variety of wild game at the Chobe Lodge—crocodile, kudu, impalla, & a variety of weird plants, but not mopane worms.

On this day, we took a morning game drive in Chobe National Park. Chobe Park is very large, but since there is a concentration of game lodges near our little corner of the park, I expected there we would see a lot of other people out driving around—and we did. On the other hand, the reason for the concentration of lodges was the super abundance of animals, including the largest herd of elephants in Africa. So the morning could have gone either way, good or bad. In the end, it was mostly bad, and the problems mostly revolved around our driver, not the number of tourists. It could have been that he was a bad guide, but I would like to think he was just having a bad day. We spent the first couple of hours tracking a lion, which meant driving at high speed over rutted trails and right past other animals that we all wanted to see. We saw flocks of guinea fowl for the first time and were unable to get good pictures because we kept moving. Finally, when all six of us in the vehicle insisted that he stop, he did—about ten feet beyond where the birds were congregated. And he sat there until we asked him to back up. Then he sullenly slammed it into reverse and backed up—past the birds.

We didn’t ever find the lion, and after it became clear that we wouldn’t he became even more sullen. He was doing a lot of sotto voce mumbling, which I finally figured out was his way of describing animals that we were seeing, but not in a voice loud enough for us to hear. He was just going through the motions.

I imagine that it is hard to deal with tourists day after day, and maybe he had a fight with his wife that morning or something, but he was not a stellar guide. In spite of the guide we did see stands of tree-sized aloe plants, flocks of guinea fowl, a large troop of baboons, Egyptian geese, colorful carmine bee eaters, and large herds of zebra and giraffes.

In the afternoon, we decided to visit Namibia. We weren't quite sure what we would find there but we figured that at the least it would be a chance to add another stamp to our passports. In spite of the flooding, we found a trek that was safely doable. There's a 12 x 15 km Namibian island near the confluence of the Chobe and Zambezi and we arranged for a guy to take us there in a boat. His name was Niven--not related to David, as far as I know.

Impalila Island contains around 60 villages and about 1200 people, all of the Subia tribe, which is also Niven's tribe. The boat landing was deserted when we arrived, except for a couple of guys butchering a cow. We had our passports stamped and filled out a Namibian entry form in a small building near the landing--the only structure. When I handed in my form, the official there pointed out that I hadn't filled in anything in the blank that asked for my occupation. I told him I was a scientist. Then he asked a question that I didn't understand. "Which village?... Which D plan?...Which deplane?" I finally understood that he was asking, "Which discipline." I told him that I was a microbiologist. He was satisfied with that answer. As a matter of fact, he was more than satisfied. He was strangely amused. As we left the building, he was quietly muttering to himself, "Mic-ro-bi-ol-o-gist...mic-ro-bi-ol-o-gist."

We followed a dirt road that lead away from the landing for about a half-mile through the savanna and then along the edge of a few small fields of sorghum and corn which were surrounded by rows of acacia brush to keep out marauding elephants and hippos. Finally, we arrived at one of the larger villages on the island, which had a population of around 50. Niven said that his village had a population of eight. I asked Niven several times what the name of this village was, but I didn't ever really understand what he told me.

The village consisted of 20 or so small houses, which were constructed of mud plastered onto a stick frame with corrugated sheet metal roofs. Niven explained that thatch was the traditional roofing material. Sheet metal's disadvantages were that it was very noisy when it rained, it was hotter than thatch in the summer, and it had to be purchased while the reeds used for thatch was free for the gathering. But thatch needs to be replaced every few years while sheet metal is virtually maintenance free.

Each house had a "courtyard" enclosed by a reed fence (called a jarata). The courtyard was actually the living area of the house and included the kitchen and bathroom. The one-room house was just for sleeping. The house that I visited had the one room divided into three sections by hanging sheets. The main room contained two threadbare easy chairs and the other two rooms each contained a bed--that was the sum total for furniture. The jarata had an area covered by a thatch roof with an open fire and a cooking grate and a stack of pots and pans. Another small enclosure contained a Turkish style toilet. There were four fruit trees in the jarata--guava, mango, papaya, and mulberry.

The village had no power but there were several hydrants for water. The water intake is in the river and gets processed through a filter before being pumped to the village. The water system was intalled by a nearby game lodge a year ago after six village children were killed by crocidiles over the course of the previous year while fetching water from the river.

Chickens and goats wandered freely between the houses. The village also had cows, but the cows were not allowed to enter the village. They were, instead, kept in herds in the savana between villages and were tended by herders. The herders kept the herd together and safe from predators, but their main job was to keep the cows from breaking through the acacia brush fences and trampling through the corn fields. That was considered so serious an offense that if that eventuality were to occur, the cow owner would have to pay the field owner any price the field owner would request--up to and including the forfiture of the cow.

Towering at one end of the village was the largest boabab tree I have ever seen--I would say that it was at least 60 feet around. Niven claimed the tree was famous in the area and was over 2000 years old. At the other end of the village was another boabab tree, laying flat on the ground, but living. There is a parasitic species of tree called the strangler fig that sprouts from seeds that land in the crotch of another tree. As the fig tree grows, it sends roots down the side of the trunk of the host tree. As the the roots descend they constrict and eventually girdle the host tree and kill it. Because the boabab tree is shallow rooted the weight of the parasitic tree had caused it to topple over. With the boabab in a horizontal position, the fig tree was unable to encircle the trunk and kill it. Thus, there was a large fig tree with a huge (around 15 ft. circumference) boabab trunk coming out of its base and stretching across the ground. Large foot-thick "shoots" came out of the boabab trunk like mini-boababs. The village children used it as a play structure and it is very likely they had the best play structure in the world.

The village was devoid of men. They were all out fishing on the river. Fishing is not good right now due to the flooding, but it is their livelihood. When the women and children saw us coming, they all ran into their houses and brought out baskets and arranged them on the ground for us to examine, and hopefully, purchase. The baskets were beautifully woven palm frond baskets with designs woven in using palm fronds dyed with a brown dye made from the root of the magic guari tree. We knew these baskets were authentic because we saw the women making them. Niven, however, cautioned us against buying them because they were overpriced. He told us we could get baskets of a similar quality in Kasane or Gabarone for a better price. So we decided to forgo the baskets--a decision I hope we don't come to regret. While we may find less expensive baskets in a shop, we won't have met the people who wove them.

Kathy admired the colorful fabric in the dresses the women were wearing and asked where she could find something similar. Niven asked the women her question and told Kathy that they said the material was purchased far away. I suspect something was lost in translation in that exchange. Kathy did buy quite a bit of fabric later in Zimbabwe. More on that story later. In addition to telling us not to buy their goods, Niven cautioned us not to give money to anyone--something I had considered doing after having been invited into one of the houses. Niven claimed that the villagers were so desperately poor that they would all fight over the money when we left.

Poor, I think, is a relative term. The people of this Namibian village were living a very basic subsistence life and that had probably not changed for generations. But they seemed well nourished, healthy, and happy. On the other hand, the people we met the next day in Zimbabwe truly were desperate.

March 26, 2009--Pom Pom and Chobe

2009-04-06T17:47:00.000-07:00

On this day, we took our final game drive with Partner. Game sighted on this morning drive included elephants, giraffe, tsessebes, and impala. We also saw a large troop of perhaps twenty baboons ambling along the tracks that a Land Rover had made in the grass. It was early and by following the tire tracks, they could stay out of the dew-saturated grass. We also saw lion tracks in the sand, but no lions.
The game drive and our stay at Pom Pom camp ended when we stopped at the edge of the same gravel landing strip we had landed on three days earlier. Five zebras galloped off the runway as we drove up and then stopped to graze about twenty yards off. Ibises and cranes waded through the marsh at the end of the runway, looking for fish.

Partner parked at the end of the runway and offered us a Coke from a cooler in the back of the Land Rover. “Since the plane isn’t here yet, I can tell you about how I spent some time in the U.S.,” he told us.

We were surprised. “You’ve been in the U.S.? What were you doing there?”

“I was there about two years ago. I worked there for about a year.”

“Where did you work?”

“I worked at Disney World.”

“What did you do?”

“I was Mickey Mouse.”

We believed him for a fraction of a second, only because Partner was normally serious. In fact, he had worked at Disney World for a year. Disney wanted to recruit people from Botswana to work in the African Safari part of Animal Kingdom at Disney World who were knowledgeable of the local fauna and flora who would also be able to act as Botswanan cultural representatives.

When Partner first heard of the opportunity for the job, he was reluctant to apply since he hadn’t finished high school. Finally though, two friends convinced him that they should all travel to Gaborone and apply for the job. When they got there, they discovered there were hundreds of applicants for the jobs. Again Partner was reluctant to go through with it and had to be convinced. There was a test. He aced that. The questions all dealt with the animals and plants that he was around every day. Not surprisingly, he did better on the test than those with more education who had spent all their lives in the city. The selection process went well into the night, but in the end, Partner was among the chosen few.

So he went to America and gained first-hand knowledge of culture shock and language barriers. When he first arrived, he wanted to get to a different floor in the airport and there were no signs directing him to the lifts. Later he found out that they are called elevators in the U.S. He asked for directions to the toilet, but when he followed those directions, he arrived at a door labeled “restroom” and was sure that the person he had asked hadn’t understood his question. The food in the U.S. was OK, but he longed for pap. While he could find things that were similar to pap, real pap was impossible to find.

But he made some good friends and when his year was up, they paid his travel expenses to Washington State and New York City. He wasn’t that interested in the natural areas of the U.S.—he could find that in great abundance in Botswana. But our cities amazed him.

Partner had to end his story of his travels when our plane arrived. He knew we were headed for the Chobe River Lodge, and as we left, he told us we should say hello to an instructor he’d had when he was studying to be a guide. His name was “Chop Man” he told us. Once again, as was the usual case with Botswanan names, we weren’t sure we’d heard it right.

The plane we boarded was a small prop driven job with seven passenger seats. The flight took a couple of hours, including a stop at another gravel landing strip in Okavango to pick up five more people at another game lodge—a quintet of Seventh Day Adventists who were relaxing at a game lodge after having helped build some clinics and schools in Mozambique.

The second half of the flight was rough and the airsick bags got a good workout in the back of the plane. We were all relieved while we finally landed at Kasane. As we approached Kasane, I was surprised to see a huge lake on the edge of town. I found out later that it was the Chobe River, which was in flood stage and well out of its banks, mostly on the north side of the river in Namibia.

At the Kasane airport, a van from the Chobe Safari Lodge picked up the five Seventh Day Adventists, Kathy, and me. The safari lodge was right on the river and on the edge of Kasane. Its close proximity to town didn’t seem to detract from the wildlife experience. Warthogs were grazing on the lawn when we arrived (and later the very same ones or their cousins could be seen ambling down the streets of Kasane). We also observed a group of mongooses (mongeese? monguay? What’s the plural?) foraging in the undergrowth by the lodge. A sign in our room warned us that the crocodiles, hippos, and elephants would, on occasion, wander through the lodge grounds and were wild animals, not pets, and furthermore were very large and had huge nasty sharp teeth.

The Chobe Safari Lodge was huge and hotel-like, a shock after our Pom Pom experience. It has 46 hotel rooms, a cluster of “rondavels”, round traditional style freestanding huts (“huts” with indoor plumbing and air conditioning), and camping facilities. It also had a large restaurant, a bar, and a swimming pool.
Our room could have accommodated an army. In addition to our bedroom with a king bed, there was a separate room with two bunk beds. We had a commodious bathroom and a deck facing the river.

Our first activity at Chobe was to take a river cruise on a large riverboat owned by the lodge. There were probably fifty people on the boat—all lined up on folding chairs crowded onto the lower deck. There were families with crying children, and people clustered around the bar at one end of the boat who were obviously more interested in the bar than the river. There was also a guide who made a valiant effort to be heard above the cacophony of the throng. Chobe is home to the largest herds of elephants in Africa and they were numerous along the banks, wallowing in the mud and splashing each other and themselves with water. There were also large congregations of hippos. The guide would call attention to the animals and then give some detail about their ecology or behavior. He was, for the most part, ignored. There was no chance, in this large craft filled with people to observe the smaller mammals or birds. This was not a mokoro experience. I was annoyed that often I couldn’t hear what the guide was saying and felt sorry for him and wondered about his job satisfaction. Kathy and I asked him a number of questions, which turned into a conversation about the Chobe River and its wildlife. During this conversation, we noticed the name on his name badge was“Chapman”. This was “Chop Man” that Partner had asked us to say hello to. When we returned to the safari lodge, we went to the activities office at the lodge and arranged for a trip down the river for just the two of us in a small boat later in the week with Chapman as our guide.

March 25, 2009--Okovango & Pom Pom Camp

2009-04-06T17:42:00.000-07:00

We encountered a gradient of awareness of Americans and American culture in Botswana. At one extreme was the guy I sat next to on a combi in Gaborone who asked me if I was from the U.K. I told him I was from the U.S. and he responded, “U.K., U.S., all the same.” At the other extreme was the woman we met at the Bahurutshe cultural village. When she asked us where we were from, we gave our stock answer of the middle part of the U.S. When she asked which state and we told her that we were from Minnesota, she said, “Minnesota is on the Great Lakes, isn’t it? I so want to visit the Great Lakes. When I am seventy in two years, I am going to retire and travel. Then I’ll visit the Great Lakes.” She now has our phone number.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. cultural influence here is definitely less than the British. It is obvious in a number of ways that the Brits have put their stamp on Botswana, from driving on the left to the manner in which the Batswana speak English. On this morning, Partner held up a water bottle and asked us what it was. “Water,” Kathy and I both responded. “Waterrrr,” he repeated, emphasizing our American “R” sounds. Everyone laughed. In Botswana, of course, people pronounce it “woe-tah.”

This day we spent the morning on the woe-tah. The traditional way to get around in the Okavango is via a shallow draft dugout canoe called a mokoro. These days the government is encouraging people to use a manufactured fiberglass version to save the trees, but regardless of the material, they are still mokoros. Our morning activity was to explore the delta in this traditional way. “Poled silently, the mokoro glides gently through the waterways, parting dense reed beds with perfect stealth so that animals and birds are caught totally unaware,” is how the promotional literature describes it. Kathy and I rode while Dalton stood at the back and propelled us forward with a long pole. At times, the water was so shallow that a pole made a lot of sense—it would have been too shallow for a paddle. At other times, there was a strong current and the pole could barely reach the bottom. Standing up to pole obviously requires a good sense of balance and lots of practice. Dalton learned as a child from his father. He said at first he would lose control and fall in the water and then his father would beat him.

Although we did see an elephant from a distance and the back half of a hippo as it disappeared into the woods, the focus this day was not on large animals, but rather on small animals, insects, and plants at extremely close range. Dalton pointed out tiny reed frogs clinging to the sides of reeds that were so well camouflaged that they look like part of the reed. He also showed us areas where bream had cleared an area of reeds and laid their eggs in the sand at the bottom of the water.

After a couple hours, we landed on an island so we could stretch our legs. Elephants obviously congregated on this island because there were many piles of elephant dung. The volume in one pile of elephant dung is truly amazing. Think of what your dogs produces each morning on his morning walk and then imagine he was the size of an elephant and you will begin to see the picture. While elephants are herbivores, they are not ruminants like cows. Since they lack a four-chambered stomach, they can’t digest vegetation as thoroughly as cows. Thus, they need to eat that much more to get the nutrition they need and much of what they eat comes through undigested. The amount of vegetable fiber in elephant dung has been put to good use—it is used to make beautiful paper. I noticed that the elephant dung on this island was filled with round lumps about the size of a golf ball & asked Dalton about that. They were the fruit of the marula tree. These small fruit are similar to lychee nuts in that they have a very small layer of fruit over a large central pit, but the fruit is very tasty, a fact to which the elephants will attest. This fruit apparently sometimes gets over-ripe and ferments while still hanging on the tree. When this occurs, we were told, you have to deal with the problem of drunken elephants. As much as this story appeals to me, it may be an old wive's tale. The fruit is used to make candy and a liqueur called Amarula. Kathy and I sampled Amarula later that day when we were back at the lodge. It is a cream liqueur and is every bit as smooth as Bailey’s Irish Crème, but with a unique fruit flavor. I understand now why elephants like the fruit.

Our post-siesta activity on this day was another game drive. We spent most of the drive tracking a leopard, but never did catch up with it. So the day ended with no lion or leopard sightings, but it was nonetheless, another fine day.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009--Maun & Pom Pom Camp

2009-04-06T17:40:00.000-07:00

Tswana is a melodic language, and I noticed that Tswana speakers speak English with a melodic flair. R’s, for instance, get a hard roll-almost like a series of rapid D’s. It may be that Tswana speakers have trouble distinguishing between D’s and R’s. If that is the case, it would explain why so many people have trouble with Madeline’s name. Since so many people have issues with the pronunciation, Madeline, in certain situations, refers to herself as “Maddy.” Then, with the D sound becoming an R, “Maddy” becomes “Mary.” Thus, Madeline, in concession to the linguistic difficulty, refers to herself as Mary in those situations.

One of those situations is when she deals with taxis. She maintains a list of numbers for taxi companies on her cell phone. When she needs a taxi, she calls one of those numbers and says, “This is Mary. I need a taxi to go from the University to River Walk.” A half-hour later, if the taxi hasn’t shown up she calls the number again and says, “This is Mary. I called a taxi a half hour ago and it isn’t here yet. Sorry?... Sorry?....No, Mary. Sorry? To River Walk. Sorry? No I’m GOING to River Walk. Right now I’m at the University. Sorry? No, Mary. Ten minutes? OK.” Then in a half hour if the taxi still has not arrived, she will call a different taxi company and start over. Taxis, we soon discovered, have reliability issues.

Thus, I was more than a little concerned about our ability to get to the Gaborone Airport. Our scheduled flight to Maun on this day departed at 7:15, which meant a taxi pickup around 5:45. We had arranged a taxi the previous day, but if it didn’t show up, we would have no way of calling the taxi company, since we didn’t have cell phones and the Lolwapa’s phone could only receive calls, not call out. So I fretted about that periodically, but needn’t have. The taxi was outside the hotel a few minutes before we were ready and we got to the airport in plenty of time, and then we were airborne on a small Air Botswana prop-driven plane for the hour-and-a-half flight to Maun.

The flight took us north across the edge of the Kalahari Desert and then into the unique riparian phenomenon known as the Okavango Delta. Maun is located right on the edge of the Okavango. The Okavango River flows south out of Angola, across the Caprivi Strip of Namibia, and finally into Botswana. Shortly after entering Botswana, the river spreads out into a maze of channels and marshes until it is finally totally consumed by the sands of the Kalahari. It is referred to as “the river that never finds the sea.” In the wet season, much of the delta is marsh. As the dry season progresses, the marsh gradually shrinks to individual waterholes, some of which dry up completely. The Okavango is a haven for wildlife, and as the dry season advances, the wildlife becomes very concentrated around the remaining sources of water. The Moremi Game Reserve takes up much of the Okavango, but there are also numerous private concessions surrounding Moremi. We were headed for one of them.

At the Maun airport, we were met by the pilot of a small four-seater plane. We transferred to his plane for the twenty-minute flight to Pom Pom Camp. There are no roads in the Okavango, so flying is the only way to get there. From the air, we could see the marshes, channels, and islands of the Okavango. We also saw numerous towering termite mounds and (gasp!) elephants and giraffe.

We were met at the gravel landing strip by Peter and Paul, two guides from Pom Pom. This apostolic duo hoisted our bags into a Land Rover and we followed a dirt track for a ten-minute drive that ended by crossing a narrow wooden bridge onto the island where Pom Pom camp is located.

Pom Pom has an open-sided thatched main building that contains a small lounge area, a large table for communal meals, a bar and a small gift shop. Guests stay in nine luxurious platform tents. Our tent opened onto a small deck that faced the lagoon. There was a king bed in the tent, a wardrobe for our clothes behind that, and in the back of the tent, a toilet and sink. A door at the back of the tent opened into a shower area that was enclosed on all sides, but open to the sky. There were small electric lights in the tent, which would work when the generator was running at night.

Since we arrived around 9 AM, we had time to ourselves for unpacking and getting situated before the 10 AM brunch. Brunch was yogurt, fruit juices, salads, coffee and tea, home baked bread, and made-to-order eggs, bacon, and sausages cooked over an outdoor griddle. The food at Pom Pom was phenomenal and plentiful. Game viewing activities occurred when the animals were most active, at sunup and sundown, and the rest of the time was filled with five meals. The schedule ran something like this: 5 AM, get up & eat breakfast; 6 AM morning activity; 10 AM brunch; 11 AM siesta; 4 PM tea; 4:30 PM afternoon activity; 6 PM, break in afternoon activity for sundowner drinks and snacks; 8 PM supper.

After brunch, we sat on our deck, read our books, and photographed the friendly arrowhead babblers (birds) and vervots (monkeys) that lived in the tree above our tent. The babblers would fly down to our deck and babble at us, while the monkey would sometimes jump onto the roof of the tent and scamper across and other times sit on a limb and watch us.

There was a self-service bar in the main building, so I ambled down there at one point for a beer. There are a number of beers made in southern Africa. St. Louis beer is brewed in Gaborone. Windhoek, an interestingly yellow pils is made by Germans in Namibia. South Africa makes any number of beers. I was not enamored with any beer I quaffed on this trip. Perhaps because of the climate, all the beers I tried were light-bodied lagers. Most of them had the flavor of your average Bud. Disappointing any way you look at it.

On my foray to the bar, I met the managers of the camp. They told me that they were a little confused because they had received two sets of reservations with the same last name & first initials. And they were not duplicates—another couple sharing our last name and first initials was staying in another tent at the same camp as we were, at the same time! Doppelgangers!

At four, we had tea and then went on our first game drive. Our guides for our stay at Pom Pom were Partner and Dalton. When Peter and Paul had picked us up at the airstrip, they had informed us that our guide would be Partner, but because of their accent and the unlikelihood that his name was really Partner, we weren’t sure what his name really was. Were they saying, “Padma?” Was he Indian? No, he was African, and his name really was “Partner.” I suspect that the names we called our guides were not their real names, but perhaps English names and words that somewhat approximated their real names, because we would mangle the pronunciation of their real names—the reverse of the Madeline/Mary phenomenon.

The game drive was in an open-sided Land rover. The other couple with whom we shared the vehicle were a young couple from Australia, Ryan and Kirsten. Our Doppelgangers! The other guests at Pom Pom were French and German. We didn’t run into many Americans. Africa is just so far away from the U.S.!

On this drive, we saw photographed many birds including a hammerkop, large, colorful saddlebacked storks, cattle egrets, blacksmith lapwings, and a host of others. We also saw red lechways, kudus, and tsessebes, all large ungulates, as well as zebras and giraffes. No lions. At six, we stopped for sundowner drinks, and then continued for a couple hours in the dark looking for leopards. At one point Kathy yelled at Partner to stop & back up, sure that she had seen a leopard. When Dalton swung the spotlight, there, looming out of the darkness was a stump. Kathy is convinced to this day that there was a leopard there and if we had backed up further we all would have seen it.

March 23, 2009--Gaborone

2009-04-01T04:21:00.000-07:00

While there are a substantial numbers of cars in Gaborone, not everyone owns a car, so there is a fair amount of pedestrian traffic everywhere. It seems like a good thing to me, for several reasons. For one thing, it reduces crime. Crimes are less likely to happen on a busy street than when the potential victim is alone. Also, the more humans, the more humanized the environment becomes. Everywhere you go, small entrepreneurs have set up kiosks, stands, and even tables along the street selling all sorts of goods. People out walking around are potential customers while people zooming by in cars are not.

Can you imagine this in the U.S.? People would get out of their cars, get some healthy exercise, meet their neighbors, and find interesting things at stands along the route to their destination. They wouldn’t get there as fast, which is also OK. Living life at a slower pace would only be a good thing for all of us.

If you don’t own a car and have to travel a long distance in Gabs, there are taxis. There are also combis, which are very reliable, very cheap, and a great place to strike up a conversation. Combis are small white vans that can hold a dozen passengers when they are (very!) full. They run specific routes and you can ride for P2.70 (about 35 cents).

On this day, we met Madeline at a combi stop near the University and then took a combi to Tlokweng, a town outside of Gaborone where she volunteers at the SOS Children’s Village. An Austrian named Hermann Gmeiner founded the SOS Children’s Villages organization in 1949, while he was still in medical school. His original mission was to help alleviate the suffering of the many orphaned and abandoned children in Europe after WWII. From those beginnings, SOS-Kinderdorf International has grown to become an organization that is recognized around the world, and in fact was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

SOS Children’s Village began working in Botswana in 1986. The village in Tlokweng has 15 family houses, and each family has between ten and twelve children whose range in age from babies to 16 year-olds. In addition to orphans, the village also takes social welfare children brought to them by the government social welfare program. Children from the surrounding community also attend the kindergarten at SOS. Kids living at the village go to the nursery school and kindergarten on site until they reach school age when they attend the local schools. At age 16, they children move into a youth house where they stay until they are old enough to be self-sufficient. Also, a vocational training center teaches skills and vocations such as tailoring, welding and carpentry.

In Botswana, of course, many of the children who live at SOS have been orphaned by AIDS. One can hardly begin to imagine the suffering these little kids have gone through to lose both parents, and perhaps siblings to this disease. Some, no doubt, are HIV positive themselves.

Madeline spends her time helping in a class of nine two and three year-olds, as well as supervising general activity on the playground during recess. And when Kathy and I were there, we helped as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed working (playing) with these kids. I don’t know what they made of me—a “teacher” that was helpful, but obviously of limited intelligence & unable to understand anything they said. I was in demand on the playground, however, for lifting, twirling, and pushing swings. I was constantly surrounded by an eager group of kids yelling “Teacha! Teacha!” Trying to get my attention, approval, or assistance.

After recess we washed hands, prayed, and had lunch: On this day, lunch was chicken gravy over rice, “pumpkin” (actually some type of winter squash), and beets (Tswana word for beets: “Debeetirooti”—I love it!) Then we rode the combi back to Gabs & did a quick tour of the University of Botswana campus & Madeline’s dorm.

The University is contained on a large, well-maintained campus filled with modern buildings. The large number of covered walkways and covered courtyards reflect the fact that the summers are hot, and that there is a rainy season. Madeline’s dorm room was a typical dorm room. There were maybe eight double occupancy rooms clustered around a common room on her floor with all of those rooms sharing a bathroom. Her room contained a desk and a bed, and she and her side of the room was separated from her roommate’s by closets.

After the tour, we went for dinner at an Indian restaurant. It didn’t take many days for Kathy and I to discover that local cuisine was essentially not available in the local restaurants. Restaurants serve “international cuisine” but restaurants celebrating Botswanan fare were at best rare and probably nonexistent. Local food, however, can be found in the little stands along the road, and I’m sure in most people’s homes—perhaps even the homes of the people who worked in restaurants serving pad thai, shahi korma, or hamburgers.

March 22--Jo'berg & Gaborone

2009-03-23T05:34:00.000-07:00

A little about Botswana. It is a landlocked country just north of South Africa and shares borders with Namibia to the west and Zimbabwe to the east and is separated from Zambia to the north by a narrow panhandle extending from Namibia called the Caprivi Strip.

It was formerly Bechuanaland, a British “protectorate.” It received independence in 1966, at a time when South Africa was suffering under apartheid and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was moving toward civil war. Botswana, first under the wise stewardship President Sereste Khama, and then under the leadership of the Presidents that followed him, has steered a moderate, progressive, democratic course. Diamonds are the main export and the main source of revenue for the government. The government has managed this resource well, and has invested the diamond revenues in infrastructure, health, and education.

Botswana has undergone tremendous change since independence as it has modernized and educated its youth. There has been an exodus from the rural areas of the country to the cities, and it has become one of the world’s most urbanized societies with over half of its population living in urban areas.

The problem that ruins what would be an otherwise promising outlook is AIDS. Sub-Saharan Africa contains 11% of the world’s population, but more than 70% of the world’s HIV cases. Botswana has not escaped this epidemic. The current population of the entire country is about one and a half million and it is dropping due to this scourge. The birth rate has dropped from 3.5% to 2.3% in the last ten years. Life expectancy at the time of independence was 49 and moved up to 70 by the mid-1990’s due to the improvements made throughout the country. Had that trend continued, it would now be around 74, the same as the U.S. Instead, it is 33, and is expected to drop to 27 by 2010. The government is fighting this battle with education, promotion of condom use, and free antiretroviral drug therapy to all HIV positive citizens.

Americans are, for the most part, unaware of Botswana. Most exposure to Botswana here has been through the somewhat inaccurate movie, “The Gods Must Be Crazy” and the excellent “Number One Lady’s Detective Agency” series of books by Alexander McCall Smith.

We arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa (referred to locally as Jo’berg) at 7:30 in the morning on this day, then, after a four hour layover, flew for an hour and a half to reach the airport at Gaborone (pronounced “Hob’ o ron eh” in Setwana, but referred to by the locals as “Gabs”) a little after noon.

Like much of Gaborone, the airport is a combination of first and third worlds. Passengers deplane on the edge of the runway and then walk through the tropical heat to the small chaotic terminal. But a gleaming new terminal is under construction next to the old one.

Madeline was not waiting for us, but did arrive in a taxi after we'd been waiting a short time--she had been at a friend's and had lost track of the time. She asked us if she looked different. She looked like the same old Madeline to me--I imagine that she feels like she looks different after all the experiences she's been through the past few months.

We tossed our luggage into the taxi and rode to the Lolwapa “Not the Ritz” Lodge, a small hotel across from the University where Madeline had reserved a room for us. The Lolwapa has a friendly welcoming staff, six rooms in varying states of repair, an empty swimming pool used for drying laundry & a fair number of cockroaches. Our room had interesting cracks in the bathroom tile, half a soap dish in the shower, and dirty shoe prints on the wall & ceiling—somebody using their shoe to kill roaches would be my best explanation for that phenomenon. There was a TV, which was capable of picking up only the channel that the lobby TV was tuned to. There was no shower curtain, but there was a mop so you could mop all the water off the floor when you were done with your shower. All of this for less than 30 bucks a night. I have stayed in worse.

My immediate impression of Gabs was that it is growing and modernizing at a rapid pace. In some ways it is a third-world city—roads in bad repair, unkempt vegetation and litter along some of the main roads, large numbers of people walking along the sides of the road in the middle of the day—perhaps an indicator of high unemployment (estimated to be around 40%), while goats, chickens, and cows wander down the road on the outskirts. On the other hand, there are many good roads, many nice buildings, and an amazing number of buildings under construction. And everybody I saw was clean, and neatly, even fashionably dressed. While the infrastructure for landline phones does not exist on a large scale, it seems that everybody has a cell phone.

After checking into the hotel, we walked to the Main Mall, an outdoor shopping area that is normally filled with outdoor kiosks selling every kind of goods imaginable. Since this was Sunday, however, it was mostly deserted. We did find a small grocery store open where Madeline bought a meat pie, since she hadn’t had lunch. We found a bench on the mall where Madeline could eat.

As we sat there, an eight or nine year old kid came along to beg. He was kneeling before us with his hands extended begging for money. I had forgotten about third world beggars. We were about to get up and move on to get rid of him when a teenager came along and chased him off. He seemed concerned about the impression we foreigners were getting of his country. "Don't give him any money," he told us. "He'll just use it to buy glue for sniffing."

Something I noticed at the Main Mall and elsewhere: Tiny, fast moving ants seemed to be swarming practically everywhere. If you would stop walking and stand still in the midst of one of these swarms of ants, they would immediately crawl onto your shoes, up your legs, and start biting you. When I mentioned this to Madeline, she shrugged and said, “Oh yeah, the ants. They’re everywhere.”

We spent the rest of the afternoon settling into our hotel room, and then at dinnertime took a taxi to Riverwalk, one of the many modern shopping centers in Gabs. We ate at a bizarre restaurant called Apache Spur; I suppose it could be described as a theme restaurant. The theme would be the American West as visualized in the mind’s eye of some African designer who has never been there. All the stereotypical Western and Native American themes are mixed together freely with African design elements. We could consider this payback for the decades of inaccurate and stereotypical American-made African jungle movies and TV shows. The menu was the African version of American fast food. The burger was good. The enchilada was not an enchilada. There was a strange bottle of something called “chip sauce” on our table that shot its contents into the air and all over the table when Kathy opened the cap. As a microbiologist, I was intrigued.

After dinner, we taxied back to the Lolwapa for a long night of jet-lagged slumber.

March 21, 2009--London

2009-03-21T03:32:00.000-07:00

We originally came up with the idea to vacation in Africa when Madeline chose the University of Botswana as the place where she would study abroad for a semester. Macalester College encourages its students to study abroad and Madeline was interested in Africa because African Studies is one of her minors. Also, she had already spent last summer in Germany, thus was less interested in another European experience. She looked at several programs in Africa but finally settled on, and was accepted into the University of Botswana through a program offered by the Associated Colleges of the Midwest. For an account of Madeline’s experiences in Botswana, visit her blog.
She left for Africa in January along with three other students from Wake Forest University in Chicago, and the University of Chicago, and a professor from Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa. About the time of her departure, we started planning our itinerary. We ended up booking a five day safari in northern Botswana through Island Safaris and securing two grueling redeye flights—a Minneapolis to London flight, then a nine hour layover in London, followed by a London to Johannesburg flight, a short layover and a hop from Johannesburg to Gaborone, Botswana where Madeline was attending the university. We planned to make the most of our nine hours in London by taking the tube into the city and doing a short tour.
It was raining when we flew out of Minneapolis. It is always easier to leave when the weather is bad. A raging blizzard would have been OK, but then maybe the plane wouldn't have been able to take off.
Nothing exciting happened on the flight over. I read Time Magazine, and listened to podcasts of "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" while Kathy watched movies and worked on crosswords. We both slept a little and tried to be comfortable in seats designed for midgets with no pain receptors.
The weather in London was cool and sunny--somewhere in the mid-30's at 10:30 AM. Spring had definitely arrived here, though. The grass was green and the daffodils were blooming in great profusion.
The trip into the city of London did not happen. There was a snafu with our one checked bag. We managed to pack light and had everything in carryon luggage, but since Madeline needed various supplies, we put all of her items in a bag that we checked all the way thru to Gaborone at Minneapolis. Checking that bag took a long time--the slowdown was mostly due to the fact that we're using paper tickets--something we had to do due to an interface issue between Northwest and South Africa Airways.
At Heathrow, we had to switch terminals, which meant taking a ten-minute shuttle ride and then going through security again. Then we had to present our paper vouchers at the South African Airways to get boarding passes. During check in, the clerk commented that we had no checked luggage. We replied that we did, in fact, have checked luggage. "Where's your checked luggage tag?" she asked. "Woops." we replied.
The next thing you would expect to happen in this scenario would be for the clerk to phone Northwest Airlines and ask them for the tag number for our checked bag. That would have been logical. That is not what happened. What really happened was the clerk informed us we would have to get the checked luggage tag number from the people at the Northwest desk. "But that will mean that we'll have to take the shuttle back to Terminal Four!" I said. "That's right." she smiled. "But then we'll have to go through security again to get into Terminal Four," I said. "That's right." she smiled. "And then we'll have to go through security again to get back into Terminal One." I said. "That's right." she smiled.
So we did that.
At the Northwest desk in Terminal 4 the Northwest clerk wondered, "Why didn't the South African Airways clerk just call us to get the luggage tag number?"
I set off the metal detector alarm both times on the foray between terminals and was patted down both times by delighted British security agents.
Other than that and the fact that the terminal is under renovation, so they recommend being at the airport three hours before your flight, and the fact that the tube ride into London takes an hour and a half, there's no good reason not to go into London (subtle sarcasm).
So we found a bench at Terminal 1 for the duration of the layover. I read Time magazine and listened to podcasts of "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" while Kathy worked on crosswords.
That was London.

Palisade Head, MN - September 21, 2008

2008-09-21T19:49:00.000-07:00

Before leaving Grand Marais, Kathy wanted to pay one last visit to “World’s Best Donuts”, the little red store just off Wisconsin Street. One activity one can participate in at “World’s Best”, other than eating donuts is to sign up as a “registered donut eater.” If you sign up, and remember your number when you come back the next year, they give you a free donut.

Then we drove home. We only made one more stop before leaving the North Shore—a nostalgic stop at Palisade Head—one of my favorite fally-down spots. This time we were there with no dog and no kids. So I only had to keep track of Kathy.

-At Palisade Head_

Thunder Bay, Canada - September 20, 2008

2008-09-20T19:37:00.000-07:00

Kathy ran. I slept. Then Marie served us a big hearty breakfast of fresh fruit, oatmeal, and cheese omelets.

During breakfast, Marie helpfully listed possible activities for the day. We knew that we would barely get a taste of the Canadian north shore, since we had reservations in Grand Marais that night. I did want to visit an amethyst mine and had downloaded information on a couple nearby mines from the internet. Marie suggested that the mines that had websites were too commercial and that we should visit a mine nearby that a friend of hers owned. She also suggested a visit to nearby Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, a huge park that filled Sibley Peninsula, a peninsula extending into the lake that formed one side of the bay. From a distance, the topography suggests a prone human form, hence the name.

Getting to the Blue Point Amethyst Mine required a long drive down a dirt track with potholes and protruding rocks—well worth the price of admission in itself. The couple in the trailer-towing car ahead of us were not enamored, however, and were discussing it between themselves at great length and in colorful language when we arrived. “Arrived” in this case, refers to arriving at a clearing containing a shack devoid of any sort of human presence. The shack shared the clearing with a decrepit school bus, an ancient cement mixer and various other pieces of mechanical detritus. Blue Amethyst was definitely not commercial. A hand-lettered sign directed us down another path with the words “mine path.” I was only slightly worried that it was a warning sign and that the path contained land mines. The owner eventually appeared. I secretly hoped for somebody leading a mule and looking and sounding like Gabby Hayes. In fact, he was in a truck and looked and sounded like a Minnesotan—not surprising, since he was from Silver Bay. We paid him the requisite twenty buck in exchange for a couple of gallon ice cream buckets. The mine was “open pit”—a ten-foot deep hole in the ground about the size of a football field. It was not hard finding the vein of amethyst. We spent the next couple of hours, not looking for amethyst, but rather finding the best specimens to fill our buckets.

-Amethyst-

We only had a couple hours to spend sightseeing in Sleeping Giant Park. Considering the size of the park, that meant we mostly just had time to drive through it. The park supposedly contains great vistas, waterfalls, beaver dams and lodges, scenic overlooks, and unique plant life. We pretty much saw woods through the car window.

At the very tip of the peninsula is a small cluster of houses and one lone store with a sign proclaiming “Store.” This is what remains of a small town named Silver Islet that supported a silver mine on a small island of the same name located just off the peninsula. Silver was discovered on the island in 1868. At that time, the island was only 150 square feet in size and was only a couple of feet above the water level. Silver Islet Mining Company was formed in 1870 to extract the silver, which was so rich it was practically pure. The company built wooden breakwaters and increased the island’s size by a factor of ten. In 1878, they were considering shutting down operations since most of the purest ore had been removed. Then they discovered a second vein. By 1883, most of the highest quality silver had been taken out of that vein as well. The mine’s deathblow came that year when a coal shipment didn’t show up in time. The mine, by that time, was almost a thousand feet deep and pumps were needed to keep the mine dry. Without coal, the pumps shut down and the mine gradually flooded. In the 16 years it was in operation, 3.25 million dollars worth of silver had been extracted from the mine.

Today, the public is not allowed on Silver Islet, and all that remains of the mining operation are the buildings scattered around the tip of the peninsula. The store is open as a store and the remaining houses are used as summer cabins. All of the structures rely on wind and solar for electricity since there is no power on that part of the peninsula.

We were running out of time since we had a long drive to reach our lodging for the evening, back in Grand Marais. So we headed south toward Grand Marais, stopping only once, at the beach at Kadunce River where we picked up a few rocks and took some pictures.

We arrived at the Aspen Lodge in Grand Marais at dinnertime, checked in, and ate dinner at the Gunflint Tavern. We ate there based on our previous good experience and were not disappointed this time. I had tomato Romano soup and chicken mole with a nice fresh salsa, good rice, and black beans. The hotel was a step down after staying at B&B’s but the room was pleasant and we could hear the waves lapping on the shore all night.

Grand Marais, MN - September 19, 2008

2008-09-19T19:20:00.000-07:00

Another morning and still on vacation! Breakfast at the Inn this morning was smoked salmon in scrambled eggs. A little cream cheese in the eggs made them creamy and wonderful. Also, there were strawberry smoothies and asparagus. We checked out and drove to Grand Marais. Kathy found a quilt shop. I looked for coffee—couldn’t find good coffee, so had to settle for fudge instead. We went to the little bookstore by the shore, Drury Lane, and browsed. I picked up “Grass Roots: The Universe of Home,” the last book written by the late great prairie kid, Paul Gruchow. I’m looking forward to reading it someday when I catch up with life

We had lunch at the Angry Trout, a nifty restaurant that sits on a jetty extending into the bay in Grand Marais. There’s additional outdoor seating on docks that are on two sides of the jetty. It’s a great location for a restaurant and a great restaurant. One of the restaurant’s claims to fame is the bathroom. Since the entire restaurant sits over the lake, plumbing a bathroom within the restaurant was an issue. So the bathroom is located in a small building on the shore. It is unique in that way, and in the fact that it’s a unisex bathroom. Finally, it is unique in that it has a really cool tiled mural covering the walls and floor. The problem is actually getting into the bathroom. Since there’s only one serving the restaurant, there was a line. I suspect that many of the people standing in line didn’t need to use the facilities, but were there to scope out the tiles. I was amused that one of the servers wore a t-shirt with a message printed on the back that said, “Through the front door. It’s the little building with the green door.” I assume she got tired of telling customers where the bathroom was, and this way could just turn around.

Also cool & worth noting: The Angry Trout tries to buy locally—produce, locally caught fish, and hand-harvested wild rice. They also advocate sustainability—they are powered by their own windmill.

After lunch, we got back into the car & headed north. We stopped at Judge Magney State Park and walked a mile and a half to the High Falls Cauldron. Actually Kathy walked. I gimped. My knee was still being problematic. On level terrain, it wasn’t too bad, but going up or down was painful and the mile and a half was pretty much down, except when it was up. And going back it was generally up, excluding the down places. The foliage was very green though, with undertones of red and orange where fall had tinged the leaves. And the water rushed, roared, and created a mist around the cauldron. My knee survived.

Getting back from the walk, we realized that it was late and we had a long distance yet to drive to reach our next B&B by check-in time. In addition, I had more or less forgotten that the time would change when we crossed the border into Canada. Getting through the border check slowed us down a little, and then, once we were across, we realized that we still had to drive quite a distance past Thunder Bay before we would get to the El Dorado Beach Bed and Breakfast. Once we were into Canada and beyond Thunder Bay, we discovered that the character of the Canadian north shore was quite different from the Minnesota side. The lakeshore had collections of summer homes in spots, but beyond the lakeshore, even on the highway, gas stations, restaurants, or any kind of retail establishment were rare. Gone were the kitschy little souvenir stands, and the plethora of other stores catering to tourists that line Highway 61. We drove for nearly a half-hour beyond Thunder Bay before we finally found the turn-off that took us down to El Dorado Beach.

We arrived well beyond check-in time. The El Dorado Beach B&B was not eye-catching. It was a house. The setting, however, is wonderful. The hostess, Marie Harding, also happens to be the El Dorado Beach mayor. Our spacious room faced the lake, but unfortunately, since we were there mostly at night, and just for one night, we didn’t get to appreciate the view.

It was well past the dinner hour and quite dark when we ventured out for dinner. Marie had suggested we go to a truck stop that we had passed a few kilometers back on the highway, so we ventured back there It was good, I suppose, for local color, but the food was forgettable. We took an incredibly circuitous route back to the B&B from the truck stop, drove down lots of tiny winding roads along the lake, and turned around at a lot of dead ends so Kathy could develop a running route for the next morning. When we finally got back to El Dorado, we went right to bed so Kathy could get up early to run.

MN North Shore - September 18, 2008

2008-09-18T18:54:00.000-07:00

Breakfast was good. Are B&B breakfasts ever bad? This particular morning the menu included French toast with orange cream. We left after breakfast with plans for a day of hiking. We first had to stop at a little quilt shop Kathy had noticed in Illgen City in a little ramshackle building—one of the few structures contained within this “town.” Kathy perused fabric while I waited in the car. Eventually, she seemed sated, and we drove to Tettagouche State Park for a hike. Our hiking route took us over some moderately rough terrain through mixed hardwood and pine forests and along a couple of lakes. We revisited the Baptism River High Falls and then hiked to Nipisiquit Lake, followed the north side and west of the lake & then cut down to Mic Mac Lake. We followed the shoreline of Mic Mac to the Tettagouche Camp & then hooked up with the Superior Trail and went through some hilly terrain back to where we started. It was starting to get dark by the time we got back to the car. The whole hike was probably seven or eight miles and took us the whole afternoon. I was worried beforehand how my foot would hold up and in fact the foot did OK, but my knee gave out & was sore for the rest of the trip. I’m not sure what the knee thing is about— I had issues with it in Miami when we walked around a lot. I probably just need to use it more frequently to build up some resiliency.

-Getting Started on Tettegouche Hike-

After our hike, we drove back to the B&B for a rest. It was getting dark and we were tired, but since it was my only opportunity, I took a short walk down to the river behind the B&B to take a few pictures & also took a picture of their unique sauna.

Then we drove down to Beaver Bay for dinner at the Northern Lights. I always enjoy eating there. We ate in the open area in the back and it was a little chilly, but I warmed myself with some spicy wings washed down with a South Shore Red Lager. I followed this with soup and the salad bar. Kathy had the hunter’s pie; elk meat and vegetables in a rich gravy over mashed potatoes, covered with a layer of Monterey Jack and baked. It looked good, and I would have sampled it, but I was having problems handling all of my own food.

Then it was back to the inn for another night. After the hike and the big meal, our sleep was sound. Were there wolves again? We will never know.

Baptism River Inn, MN - September 17, 2008

2008-09-17T18:34:00.000-07:00

Even though we got a late start, we still stopped, as required by tradition, at the Lester River information booth on the north side of Duluth to get the first look at the lake and skip a few rocks. We ate a late lunch at Rustic Inn, which had been recommended by one of Kathy’s co-workers and we found the service friendly, the surroundings unpretentious, and the food good. I enjoyed the vegetable beef soup a lot and I told the server so. She shrugged and said the chef put chili powder in it. I also ordered a walleye poorboy, which came in focochia rather than a bun. I bought a blue cup with the Rustic Inn logo as a souvenir. It was all good and I would like to go back.

We stopped at Split Rock Lighthouse and got our first look since the recent remodeling. I didn’t have a vivid memory of what it was like before, but mostly noticed that the visitor’s center didn’t have the worn look that is so typical of state park visitor’s centers. We watched the requisite historical movie, toured the lighthouse and other buildings, and walked down the path that goes steeply down to the site of the old dock on the lake. I took the same picturesque photos that most other tourists get.

After Split Rock, we drove on to the Baptism River Inn where we were going to spend the next two nights. We turned off Highway 61 at Illgen City, one of those little towns that exist on maps, but in reality hardly fit in the category of “town.” We drove away from the lake on Highway 1 for a few miles and finally turned onto a winding gravel drive that took us through the woods across a small wooden bridge built over a rushing stream and finally to the large log house that was the inn. The inn has three guest rooms and a suite, a guest parlor with a fireplace, and an atmosphere of relaxation and solitude. We found dinner at a little bar/restaurant down the road that had the baseball game on a large screen TV—one of those adequate, forgettable meals. Then we went back to the inn, opened the windows to let in the cool, fall air and the night sounds, like the mournful far-away howling of wolves. It is possible that the wolves were really dogs, but howling dogs wouldn’t be in keeping with the northwoods experience that we were seeking.

- Baptism River Inn-

Back to Reality - October 11 & 12, 2006

2006-10-11T18:23:00.000-07:00

This was a travel day. We got up and ate breakfast at the hotel then took the hotel shuttle to the airport and left Greece. At least on this trans-Atlantic flight we would be gaining time. We landed at JFK, went through customs and then flew on to Atlanta. It was evening when we got to Atlanta. We booked a room in a little run-down Day’s Inn near the airport; $50 per night and no ambience, no view, and no good food.

The next morning we took an early shuttle to the Atlanta airport and ate breakfast there. Then on to Minneapolis and back home again with our dirty laundry, souvenirs, and memories. Travel is food for the soul, but home is a good place for digestion. Now it's back to work and back to reality and time to think about the next adventure.

Santorini - October 10, 2006

2006-10-10T18:19:00.000-07:00

Breakfast again on the patio and then we checked out of the Astra. We had a full day on Santorini before our flight left, so we stowed our luggage in the office. We told Electra, the concierge, that we would walk to Ia and spend the day there. She seemed impressed at either our fortitude or foolhardiness; I’m not sure which. Apparently, not that many tourists walk to Ia.

It did turn out to be quite a hike. After we got outside of Imerovigli the path turned to dirt with a lot of rock and gravel and wound up and then back down two large promontories. We hardly met another person on the whole walk. We did overtake a German woman and her two children along the way, all of whom had backpacks. One of the children, a teenage girl, was sobbing and crying the entire time we were within earshot. This, apparently, was not her idea of a fun Santorini activity.

It took us two and a half hours to get to Ia, and by the time we got there I was getting pretty sunburned. As soon as we hit the outskirts of the town, I found and bought the first sunscreen I could find. It cost 16 Euros. Wow.

We found lots of fun shops in Ia. Other than the sunscreen, things seemed reasonably priced. Kathy was happy with the variety of “cute puppies and kitties” wandering the streets. At one point there were seven dogs lying in one spot on one narrow little street.

-Ia_

We had pizza for lunch at an outdoor rooftop café. The pizza was great—thick crust with feta cheese, tomatoes, and olives. The pack of cats hanging out there scored big at our table with pizza handouts.

Late in the afternoon, we stopped for ice cream at a little café. The proprietor told us “I have the best ice cream in Europe!” It turned out to be Hagen Daaz. As we were eating our ice cream, we noticed clouds moving in from the horizon. They darkened and produced thunder and lightning as they neared us. While we had originally planned to walk back to Imerovigli, we decided that being on the path in the rain, or worse, on one of the promontories during a lightning storm, would not be a good idea. So we paid 1.20 Euros for the bus ride back.

It did start to rain while we were on the bus. When we got back to Imerovigli, we holed up in a little café—not quite indoors, but under an overhanging roof. We had coffee and read the Herald Tribune until the rain tapered off. Then we took the walking path to Firostefani and had dinner at another good café, Remni. I had cheese stuffed peppers and spanokopita, my last meal in Santorini.

We caught the shuttle to the airport and flew back to Athens. Heavy rains in Athens delayed our flight, so we stayed longer in Santorini than we had planned. Unfortunately, the small, Spartan terminal was not the pinnacle of Santorini ambience.

It was becoming clear that Greece was entering the rainy season. It had rained in Santorini after we had been told by the locals that “it never rains here.” Athens was experiencing heavy rains, and central Greece, where we had been a week before, was getting torrential rains. Floodwaters washed out a bridge that we had no doubt recently crossed on the main road between Kalambaka and Athens. We, fortunately, seemed to stay one step ahead of the rains.

Our plane finally arrived and we flew to Athens, and then took a taxi to the Holiday Inn near the airport where we spent the night.

Santorini - October 9, 2006

2006-10-09T17:10:00.000-07:00

I woke up not feeling well and we decided to lay low for the morning. But what a great spot for laying low. I spent the morning hanging out on our patio reading Hemmingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” and enjoying the view. By early afternoon, I felt well enough that we decided to take an amble out onto Skaros. It turned out to be more than an amble. The path became quite rough with a lot of steep ascending and descending. We didn’t ever get to the very top of the peak. The climb became quite steep—literal climbing, not walking. Since the footing was loose gravel and there was nothing between us and the sea below except hundreds of feet of air, we decided to forgo that experience. We did enjoy poking around in the ruins, though. Kathy discovered a hole on the bank of the path that was the entrance to an intact room right under the walking path. There was enough sunlight filtering into the room that we could see an interesting passageway. We left the passageway and whatever it led to unexplored. We also found a little white stuccoed church tucked away at the very end of Skaros. We also discovered that there was fennel growing wild along the path. Chewing on a few fennel seeds as we walked was refreshing.

-Sundown-

It was late afternoon by the time we trekked back to the main part of the island and then we settled on our patio to watch the sunset again. This sunset was not as spectacular as the day before. While the previous day had been cloudy, the clouds had separated at the western horizon just in time for sunset. This day had been partly cloudy and the clouds actually congealed at the horizon just before sunset. Thus ended our second day on Santorini. It was low-key, but enjoyable.

Santorini - October 8, 2006

2006-10-08T17:01:00.000-07:00

We had one final Achilleas breakfast before leaving Athens for Santorini. It was Sunday morning. This morning we retraced our steps from exactly one week previous. We carried out luggage out of the hotel and down the narrow little street to Syntagma Square, then across the square and down the stairs to the metro. Then we rode the metro the airport and flew Olympic airways to the island.

We could see the whole island from the air as we landed. The island is shaped like giant letter “C”, and is so shaped because it is part of the cone of an extinct volcano. It is the eruption of this volcano that likely destroyed the Minoan civilization of Crete, which may have given rise to the legend of Atlantis.

We had arranged to be picked up at the airport and the driver from the Astra Apartments was waiting for us. We had to wait for a bit for another American couple who was staying at the Astra and had just flown in from Rome. The airline had lost their luggage. They had just spent a week in Italy and the airline had lost their luggage on the way to Italy from the US as well. We commiserated and thanked our lucky stars that to date our luggage had stayed with us. The driver drove us across the island and dropped us at the Imerovigli “town square” which looked suspiciously like a parking lot. There were some stairs descending from one edge of the parking lot. The driver told us to go “down and to the left.” “Down” took us over the edge of the caldera where a plethora of white stuccoed building clung to the side of the cliff. “To the left” took us onto the walking path that traverses the caldera from Fira, near the center of the “C” to Ia on one of the tips. A sign on the path announced the Astra. We descended some more steps that led to a little plaza that ran the length of the Astra Apartments. All of the apartments either entered directly onto this plaza or entered onto stairs that went down to the plaza. The office was located next to the stairs and at the opposite end of the plaza were a pool and an outdoor bar. The edge of the plaza opposite the apartments dropped down to the next level where there was another small hotel. Below that level was nothing but hundreds of feet of precipitous cliff and then the sea. We checked in at the office and then were escorted to our apartment, which was located near the pool and had its own little private patio on the plaza and faced west toward the caldera. The apartment had a small kitchen/living area, a bedroom, and a bathroom that was nearly as big as our Athens hotel room. The shower was so commodious that not only could you bend over, but you could run laps.

Projecting into the caldera from the edge, and directly in front of our hotel was a small promontory of land called Skaros. There were ruins of a castle at the peak of Skaros. From the Middle Ages until the mid-1800’s this castle and its associated buildings on Skaros housed the island’s administrative offices. It eventually fell into disuse and time, combined with several earthquakes, has reduced it to ruins. It is difficult to tell even when you are among the ruins that an elaborate complex of buildings once existed here.

After checking in, resting, and enjoying the ambience of the hotel for awhile, we walked a half-mile or so down the walking path to a little seafood restaurant hugging the side of the caldera with a great view of Skaros. The restaurant was appropriately called Skaros. Kathy and I split a Greek salad and I had a Mythos and some calamari along with tzatziki for dipping. The calamari was huge and was fried with a coating of fava. “Fava” is not fava beans but rather is a local legume that resembles a small yellow pea. Each pea is about the size of a grain of barley. The tzatziki was pungent with garlic and the whole meal was wonderful in every way.

Unfortunately, since it was a 3 PM meal, I was not a bit hungry when we went out for dinner at 8 PM. We had followed our 3 PM lunch with more wandering on the hiking path and then several hours of watching the sunset from our balcony.

Dinner was at the world-famous Selene, located on several terraces overlooking the caldera in Fira, and presided over by the world-famous Selene, herself. The setting was beautiful and the food was imaginative and thoughtfully prepared. Since I was still bloated from my hearty late lunch, I tried to pick light items off the menu. I had a dry Santorini white wine, and Selene’s version of a Greek salad, which was attractively presented with crunchy croutons, a local variety of cherry tomato, wild Santorini capers and grated (gasp!) feta. I followed the salad with a bowl of fish ball soup with a very mild fish stock broth. I finished with a cantaloupe sorbet served in a slice of cantaloupe. What was a memorable occasion unfortunately became all the more memorable due to the acute gastrointestinal distress that followed--not in any way due to the food, but more than likely due to the quantity consumed. I have witnessed cows suffering bloat from overeating fresh green grass on a spring day, and that's the way I felt. The day ended with my chugging some Kaopectate and going to bed.

Athens - October 7, 2006

2006-10-07T16:56:00.000-07:00

We had an Achilleas breakfast and then walked to the National Archeological Museum. This is one of those museums that you could spend days at and still not see everything. We spent half of a day there. The museum’s collection simply surpassed our stamina. Some of the outstanding items we saw there included gold death masks from the Mycenaean excavation. Walked back to the hotel and rested before heading back to (where else?) the Plaka for another fine meal. We settled on an early dinner due to the need to get to bed early because of our early flight the next morning. Early, in this case, meant six rather than our usual eight pm—proof that we’d fallen right into a European rhythm. I had wanted to eat at Platonos since both my on-line resource and my Frommer’s guide had recommended it, but we discovered that they didn’t open until seven, so we went back to Xani. It wasn’t quite as happy the second time. We ate in the very back room of the restaurant because all of the sidewalk tables and tables in the front room where the musicians sit were taken. The restaurant was overflowing with an American tour group—retired Midwesterners. I had chicken souvlaki that was mediocre; it was dry and didn’t have a lot of flavor. It was a utilitarian meal that had more to do with filling the stomach than enjoying the experience. After our meal, we went back to the Achilleas for a final night with the stone tablets otherwise known as beds.

Athens - October 6, 2006

2006-10-06T16:43:00.000-07:00

I crawled out of bed with a certain sense of freedom. Our tour was over and now we were free to explore Athens on our own time and do whatever our whims dictated we do. My whim dictated that I shower. I lead a spontaneous and fascinating life. The shower was so tiny that if one would drop the soap, one would not be able to bend over to pick it up. I can proudly report to everyone that I did not drop the soap. Breakfast was self-serve on the mezzanine level. The victuals that the hotel provided ranged from good to bad: Good Greek cheese, tasty brown bread, hard-boiled eggs, fresh fruit, yogurt, fake Tang-like orange juice, and instant coffee.

We decided that this would be our day for the Acropolis, so after breakfast we headed in that direction. First, we walked to the Plaka, then to the ancient agora and up the hill through the Propelaea, the 5th century BC entrance, and onto the hill. It is all still there as it was in 1980 when I had last been there, but even ancient ruins change. Most of the buildings are under repair, so there was a lot of construction material, and scaffolding covered many of the old buildings. Still it was good to see these ancient structures again: The Parthenon, the large temple dedicated to Athena; the Erechtheon, built as an honorary tomb to Erechtheus, legendary king of Athens, and containing the famed delicate Caryatids, columns in the female form (these are replicas—the real ones are in museums), and the temple to Athena Nike, the small temple to Athena built in 424 BC. Totally new to me was the Acropolis museum, which included some great recovered statuary. It also held all of the Caryatids from the Erechtheon that are in Greek possession. Another new thing I noticed here that I also noticed at the other archeological sites is restrooms. A very positive step! The Greeks used the British designations and have them all labeled as “WCs.” A rosebush grows by the ladies room door at the Acropolis. I noticed a woman holding one of the blooms gently to her nose and sniffing. Another woman came by and asked, “Is it fragrant?”

“Smells like a loo,” the woman replied.

From the Acropolis, we peered down into the Theater to Dionysus where an orchestra and operatic soprano were recording—never found out who they were. After we were done at the Acropolis, we found an outdoor café for more Greek Salad, and then visited more ruins.

Our post-lunch ruin was the vast ancient agora, the ancient original Athens marketplace at the foot of the Acropolis. In ancient times, the agora, the Acropolis, and the theatre of Dionysus made up the entirety of Athens. The sacred way ran through the agora and up to the Acropolis. The best-preserved ancient temple in all of Greece is located in the ancient agora: The Temple to Hephaestus. It never fell to ruin because it was in constant use through the centuries, first as a church then as a museum.

-Parthenon-

We also visited the old Roman agora. The Roman agora is just off the ancient agora and was constructed contiguous to the ancient agora beginning in the times of Julius Cesar. Much of the Plaka lies between the ancient and Roman agoras and probably covers innumerable undiscovered ruins. Archeologists want to start digging, but so far, the Plaka merchants have held them at bay. The most outstanding building within the Roman agora is the Tower of the Winds. It was originally built in the first century BC as a combination water-powered clock and giant sundial. Under the Turks in the 18th century, it was a Sufi center for whirling dervishes. Nearby, and within the Roman agora is an old mosque, one of the few signs of the 400 years of Turkish occupation.

After looking at the ruins, we did some souvenir shopping in the Plaka. Kathy bought some jewelry and I bought a lightweight white cotton shirt, some Greek Delight to bring to work, and a nice bronze Athena holding an owl and a spear.

We ate at Xani Taberna (XUNI) in the Plaka. It was great sitting at our little street-side table listening to the taberna’s guitarist and bouzouki player while I sipped my Mythos beer. I had another fine Greek salad: cucumbers, purple onion, green pepper, tomatoes, olives, a little olive oil, and a slab of feta sprinkled with oregano. I followed the salad with grilled octopus, something I maintained I would try when I was in Greece. I got a tentacle. It was a little weird eating the little suction cups, but it was good. It tasted like a mild fish, with a firmer texture. I had expected that it might be tough like calamari, but it wasn’t. With all the good food and relaxation, I had my cold on the run. Cold viruses don’t stand a chance in a happy body. We strolled back to the Achilleas and went to bed. Another fine day in Greece.

Kalambaka - October 5, 2006

2006-10-05T15:15:00.000-07:00

Kalambaka is an old Turkish town located in Meteora—the land of the giants. Meteora is located in a fertile plane at the confluence of two rivers. It is notable for the towering columnar rock formations that rise above the plane. The ancient Greeks say that after the giants lost their battle with the gods, the gods turned them to stone in this place. In Christian times, hermits climbed these formations to live their lives in simplicity and solitary prayer and contemplation. Eventually groups of these aesthetics banded together into monastic orders and built monasteries perched atop the rock towers. We spent our morning viewing the monasteries and visiting two of them. In the past, the only way into most of the monasteries was by being hauled up in a basket attached to a rope. Now, in all cases, stairs access the monasteries and some have had roads built to them. They all pretty much have electricity and plumbing now, too. Monasticism isn’t what it used to be. Many of these beautiful old buildings are now empty, or at best have one monk caretaker. Two have become convents. There just aren’t enough monks to go around. Monasticism, as I mentioned before, isn’t what it used to be.

Both of the monasteries that we saw were filled with beautiful examples of Byzantine icons and art and many are in the process of renovation and restoration thanks to tourist dollars. In addition to the amazing art and architecture, the scenery itself was fantastic and awe-inspiring. We took lots of great pictures of all of that plus some cat pictures—Kathy’s particular fascination. At one scenic overlook, we came upon two cute waif kittens that hungrily devoured two crackers, the only food our group had to offer them.

-A Meteora Monastery-

We drove back to Kalambaka for lunch and ate at a traditional Greek restaurant where, in traditional style, we went into the kitchen to tell the cook what we wanted. The cooks were Mama Kate, the proprietor, and her daughter, who spoke English. I was tempted by the chicken and peppers in retsina wine, but settled for the meatballs, rice, and beans.

After lunch, we went hunting for some Vitamin C to treat my cold. Because a green cross marks all apothecaries, they aren’t hard to spot; but since no two seem to carry the same things, finding a specific item can be an adventure. In the first one we tried, the clerk didn’t speak English. I tried several variations of “Vitamin C” but we were not communicating. Finally, we both just shrugged. As I turned to leave, I spotted a small box on a shelf that had written on it, amidst all the Greek writing, the English phrase “Vit C.” I happily bought it. The box contained two vials of tablets. I promptly opened one vial and popped a tablet in my mouth. An immediate “fizzy-in-the-mouth” reaction allowed me to determine quickly and astutely that these tablets were meant to be put into a glass of water. I found my way to the nearest garbage can, and with my mouth foaming like a rabid dog; I spit the tablet out.

The next apothecary sold me some fruit flavored lozenges that actually proved to be quite effective in relieving my sore throat and making my cold go away. Then, to get the fizzy tablet taste out of my mouth we went in search of a taverna where I could have coffee. We found a little outdoor place on the main street where another member of our tour group was despondently sipping coffee. From previous encounters with this person, I had him pegged as one of those middle-aged American white guys who wanted the whole world to be like his hometown. “I tried to tell them how to make American coffee,” he told us.

“How is it?” I asked.

“Tastes like shit,” he responded.

My first interaction with the Greek coffee hater was the day before when we stopped at an ice cream place that served, according to Irini, the best ice cream in Greece. He was despondently eating ice cream when I sat down next to him. “Where you from?” he asked me.

“Minnesota,” I told him

“You got Cold Stone Creamery there?

“Yes, we do.”

“Well, they sure as hell don’t have it here!”

Eventually, we got back on the bus, left Kalambaka, and spent the rest of the day on the road, driving back to Athens. It rained a little on the way back. Later in the week, Kalambaka and the surrounding area got torrential rains that resulted in flooding. The flooding washed out a bridge on the main highway between Kalambaka and Athens that I assume we had passed over just a few days before.

By the time our bus got through Athens traffic and dropped us at Syntagma Square it was after seven pm. There had been demonstrations that day in central Athens. Irini had been worried about how those demonstrations would affect traffic and if agitation by anarchists would turn the demonstrations to riots, but by the time we arrived, all seemed quiet. The demonstrations were evidently due to the current state of political turmoil. There is much polarization regarding the best economic course for the country. While we were in Greece, the secondary teachers were out on strike demanding a 45% pay increase and local elections imminent, which increased the public discourse. The demonstrations were part of that process.

We walked several blocks from the square to our hotel. This time we were staying in the Achilleas, which was another old, classic hotel, like the Astor, but smaller. The Achilleas, shoehorned between other old buildings on a side street, has around 30 rooms on six floors. After we checked in and unpacked, we walked down to the Plaka and found some Greek salad at an outdoor café called the Hydra (in Greek YDPA), situated in a shaded square. It was dark when we got there, and the café lighting was dim—a few light bulbs fastened to trees. At one point, I put my hand down onto the bench that I was sitting on and felt something tickle my hand. At first, I thought it was a bug and tried to brush it away, but when I looked down, I realized a cat had curled up next to me on the bench. He was not shy. I petted him a little, but when he put his paws on the table and started to show interest in the feta on my salad, it was time for him to go.

After we had eaten, we went back to our little old room, crawled into our little old hard-as-rock beds in our little old cramped home away from home.

Delphi - October 4, 2006

2006-10-04T15:09:00.000-07:00

We drove maybe a half-mile from the town of Delphi to the ancient site of Delphi. When the early Christians destroyed the holy Delphic site, because it was pagan, earthquakes had already damaged the temples. The one building that still stood after the Christians finished their work was the Roman agora, the market building built by the Romans below the temple to Apollo. This remaining building became a Christian church, and as is often the case, where there is a church, a town eventually grows up around it. In this case, the town of Delphi was built right on top of the forgotten ruins of the old temples. It wasn’t until the last century that archeologists began to imagine what might lie beneath the town. They actually were able to put together a fund and offer the townspeople money to move to a new location so the site could be excavated. Nobody wanted to move until an earthquake caused extensive property damage. At that point, the offer of money to rebuild made complete sense and the town moved to its present location.

When excavations began, they found that beyond the Agora, and up the mountain were the treasury buildings—each city-state had one to both guard and flaunt their wealth and the spoils from their conquests. Statuary abounded. Above the treasuries was the large temple to Apollo where, in ancient times, the earth was cracked open and fumes emanated—a mysterious and holy place. There in the dim basement of the temple, the priestess would breathe in fumes in an ecstatic, hallucinogenic state while fondling the stone that represented the center of the world. She would babble in tongues and one of the temple priests would interpret her strange incantations to the pilgrims who had come to seek their future or find the answer to their dilemma. The priest always answered the pilgrims’ questions in an ambiguous way to not risk being wrong. Also, a network of spies gained information from the pilgrims as they traveled to Delphi, which helped stack the odds in the favor of the Delphic Oracle.

-By Temple to Apollo, Delphi-

Above the temple was an amphitheater and above that was the stadium—games were held at Delphi as they were at Olympia. At the base of the mountain was a temple to Athena. All of the ruined temples were still located at the site, but any statuary had been relocated to the either the museum at Delphi or the National Archeological Museum. Irini, as usual, gave a great tour. But, as usual, she talked for too long—thus the time we had to look around on our own was a mere 15 minutes. After touring the site, we spent time in the museum and then drove back to the town of Delphi for lunch. After lunch, we made the long drive to Kalambaka.

We arrived in the evening at the Amalia Inn just outside Kalambaka. I’d been fighting a scratchy throat all day and by bedtime, it was obvious that I’d contracted a good old Greek rhinovirus. I took a little stroll around the hotel grounds that evening after sunset—through a small grove of apple and pomegranate trees and then took my cold to bed.

Olympia - October 3, 2006

2006-10-03T14:59:00.000-07:00

If there were nothing else in Greece, the trip would be worthwhile just to see Olympia because of the history surrounding it: The site of the original Olympic games; the original stadium, the ruins of the Temple to Zeus, the Temple to Hera, the Phillipian Temple built by Phillip of Macedonia. The games were run every four years from 776 BC until 393 AD. Then the games ended and eventually the site slipped into disuse and ruin. When the site was finally excavated, it was covered by ten feet of dirt.

-Phillipian Temple, Olympia-

There is a great new museum, new since I was there before, with a wonderful collection of statuary and other artifacts recovered from the Olympian temples.

After spending the morning at Olympia, we drove on to Delphi via the new bridge over the Corinthian Straight at Patra. We stopped at a Greek version of a truck stop in Patra—a BP gas station and a snack shop. Impressively, they served cappuccino in real cups and had a second floor area to relax and enjoy your cappuccino while looking at the straights and the new bridge. Plus, they had waiters to pick up your cups.

We got to Delphi in time to watch the sunset over the Ionian Sea from our perch in the mountains—another Amalia Hotel. We did some shopping in Delphi—Kathy bought some earrings, a bracelet, and some worry beads. She bought me a pig—a little pink porcelain porcine. Might be the only pig in Greece. She bought several decks of mythological playing cards and I got some woven bookmarks for gifts.
We had a buffet dinner at the hotel—all the standard Greek fare: Dolmadis, spankopita, calamari, mousaka, pestitsio, and all sorts of other good things. The hotel was nice, and the view, as I mentioned, was fantastic. The town was fun—there were two very steep main streets running more or less perpendicular to the slope and parallel to each other and there were stairs connecting these two streets. The slope was so steep between the two streets, that there was a mere building’s width separating them but what was the main floor on the upper street was the second floor on the lower street—and the main floor on the lower street was the basement for the upper street. The drop-off was so steep on the lower street that buildings built along the other side of that street were six stories high and you entered the sixth floor from that street level. There was a little terrace at the base of those buildings, but no street and then there was another even more precipitous drop-off.

CHAT Tour - October 2, 2006

2006-10-02T14:51:00.000-07:00

This was the first day of our CHAT tour. A CHAT person met us at 8 AM in our hotel lobby. The tour bus couldn’t make it down our narrow little street, so we walked out to the square to get on the bus. The bus was big and contained about 25 other tourists. Our tour guide’s name was Irini and our driver was Socrates. We found our way out of Athens during rush-hour traffic and finally picked up one of the new roads that the Greek government built for the influx of Olympics tourists. We drove across the bridge over the Corinthian canal into the Peloponnesian peninsula and made our first stop at the bridge for refreshments. Then we drove on to Epidaurus, an ancient center for healing. The acoustically perfect amphitheater there is still intact and still in use. We drove through beautiful countryside and stopped at the port of Naufplia long enough to take pictures of the Doges island palace and the Venetian fortress on the hill. A variety of foreign powers has occupied Greece from the time of the Romans until the mid-1800’s, and Venice controlled this particular corner of Greece at one time.

Then we drove on to Mycenae to look at the Mycenaean citadel and beehive tomb—dating back to 1250 BC. Homer told the story of how the Greeks at Mycenae under King Agamemnon went to Troy and fought the Trojans for ten years to reclaim Helen from the Trojan prince Paris. The German archeologist Heinrich Schliemann found and excavated Troy in the late 1800’s proving once and for all that Troy was not just a mythological city. In 1874, he began to excavate Mycenae and found a city that matched Homer’s descriptions perfectly. He also uncovered a treasure trove of artifacts, including gold death masks that are now on display at the Archeological Museum in Athens.

We stopped in Megolopoli for coffee in a nice little town square park, then drove on to Olympia. We got to the Amalia Hotel in Olympia late, had an 8:30 dinner (so-so fish, rice, and vegetables), and then went to bed—a long day.

Athens - October 1, 2006

2006-10-01T14:41:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure exactly when the day started—somewhere in the dark over the Atlantic when I advanced my watch from Eastern US time to Greece time, I suppose—a seven-hour time difference. Eventually the sun rose and we flew over Europe and landed at the Athens airport. We disembarked, got ourselves to the luggage pickup area and rejoiced that our luggage actually arrived with us after switching planes twice. We were waved through customs, changed money, found the metro to Athens, and boarded without a hitch. There was some confusion regarding if we were on the right train. There didn’t seem to be anybody in charge there. The only passengers were tourists—perhaps because it was early on a Sunday morning. I asked a few if we were on the right train and they seemed confused as we were. A few people asked us, too, and we no doubt seemed confused as they were.

Kathy slept on the ride into Athens and I looked at the landscape until we went underground. We arrived in Syntagma Square, the large square in front of the Greek Parliament building in central Athens, got off the train and found our hotel without too much trouble. At first we got a little lost & confused among all the little streets that meandered willy-nilly off the square. We were at the point of finding someone to ask for directions when a gentleman decided we looked like confused tourists and pointed us in the right direction. We thanked him for his help and when he started promoting his tour services we told him that we were not interested since we already had one booked..

The Astor Hotel was about what I expected—a little worn about the cuffs, but clean, more or less, the staff was hospitable, more or less. Regardless, it was nice to have a bed to lie down on after having been cramped in the cattle-car environment of the plane for hours and hours. We felt dirty and wanted to shower, but had no towels in our room and the hotel could apparently only provide towels on their schedule, not ours. We took a nap and then, still grimy but somewhat rested, we went out to explore Athens.

We ate at a little nondescript outdoor restaurant on Syntagma Square—I had a beer and a sandwich, and then we looked at the ruins excavated from the site of the Syntagma Square subway station. It is amazing that pretty much anywhere you excavate in Athens, you’ll not only find artifacts, but you’ll find artifacts from a variety of periods. I guess that goes along with Athens having been continuously occupied for over 3000 years.

-Temple of Olympian Zeus-

After looking at the Syntagma Square artifacts we went back to our hotel for a rest and then went hiking through the park behind Parliament—the National Garden. We wound up down by the ruins of the Temple to the Olympian Zeus. The temple was one of the largest temples in the ancient world and the massive columns scattered on the ground bore testament to that. The Greeks started building it in the 6th century BC, but it was not until 700 years later that the Emperor Hadrian oversaw the completion of construction. The temple at one time contained two large statues, one of Zeus, and one of Hadrian, who obviously had ego issues. The ruins now are home to some feral looking dogs. One of the dogs had a den with six puppies beneath some collapsed columns. The puppies weren’t at all shy. Kathy ooed, cooed, and made friends.

We took puppy pictures and ruins pictures and pictures of Hadrian’s Arch, which was also located there. Hadrian built the arch as another way for him to demonstrate his claim on the city. The inscription on one side reads, “This is Athens, the ancient city of Thesus.” The other side is inscribed, “This is the city of Hadrian, not Thesus.” We walked past the arch, once the official entrance into the city, and entered the ancient city. The area of steep winding streets on the slopes of the Acropolis is the Plaka, and is now home to millions of outdoor restaurants and souvenir shops. We wandered around the Plaka looking at touristy souvenirs, ate at a little sidewalk café, and finally found our way back to the hotel after dark.

The hotel had a rooftop (10 stories up) restaurant with a great view of the Acropolis, which is illuminated at night. Our final activity before calling it a day was to have apple pie and coffee on the roof while looking at the view. The coffee was OK, the apple pie was a little suspect, but the view was incredible and will be one of those images that I carry with me the rest of my life.

Leaving Home - September 30, 2006

2006-09-30T14:36:00.000-07:00

Getting ready for a vacation is no vacation. Even after you've made the travel plans and booked the hotels and tours, there are still all of the loose ends at home to tie up. OK, it's true that Kathy and I are now empty nesters, but we still have kids; they just don’t live at home. And life does not stop just because you're gone. Examples: There were the three days tying up loose ends at work. There was a conference happening as soon as I was back in town. On Thursday and Friday, I spent my time making and canning applesauce so I could unplug the second fridge, which would normally be full of apples from our trees this time of year. My concern was having a refrigerator and freezer on the same circuit which has on occasion popped the breaker—not something that I want to have happen when we’re gone for two weeks.

I also hauled five loads of cut logs to the splitting pile—done with that project for the year! I ordered a new door for the walkout basement door, and a new sash for the broken window in our bedroom, two projects for when we were back in town.

Saturday morning we were up at 4:50. Linda W. drove us to the airport for an 8 AM flight to Atlanta. We got to Atlanta noonish to discover that our 12:45 flight to Kennedy had been pushed back for a half-hour—so we ate lunch in Atlanta and then caught our flight to New York. Got to Kennedy around 3:30 PM and then boarded the flight for Athens at 5:20. We’d already been traveling all day and we hadn’t even done the trans-Atlantic part yet!

The flight across was interminable. There were a couple of crying kids right in front of us, and it is impossible to get comfortable in the confined space you’re allowed in an airplane. I didn’t feel like reading, so I watched lots of trashy TV reruns on the cabin screen. This was an older plane so we didn’t have individual screens, just one fuzzy dim screen a row in front of us. After the trashy TV shows I faded in and out through “Mission Impossible III”. The movie seemed to consist of people running and shooting at each other and blowing things up, but I’m not sure what the exact plot was. Then I finally found a music channel playing new-agey music that relaxed me enough to sleep—for a couple hours at least.