The Hills Are Alive

The day began with a quick visit to the unspectacular Mirabell Gardens. It's not that it was bad. It was a perfectly nice park with some decent flowers. It just didn't blow any of us away, that's all. There were some Sound of Music scenes featured here, but since none of could even remember what the Von Trapp Mansion looked like when we were searching the previous day, we certainly didn't know which part of the park was featured in the movie. Maybe it's time for another Sound of Music viewing.


Rather than make another attempt to find the Von Trapp Mansion, Leopoldskron, by foot, we hopped in the car, entered the address in the GPS, and made our way over there. Even upon our visit there, it still seemed really strange to all of us how poorly marked the house was and how there are no signs around it. It seems it would be something visitors would want to see. Honestly, we weren't completely sure we weren't trespassing on the property as we walked around the grounds of the estate. Maybe we were. David commented that we probably had exerted a lot more effort than most Sound of Music enthusiasts to visit the house. This was both true and sad.

We stopped in small town called Hallstatt, roughly located between Salzburg and Vienna, based on the recommendation of Rick Steves in David's Best of Europe book. It was about an hour drive from Salzburg on very windy roads through the mountains. The views were breathtaking and were worth the drive on their own. The town itself is quaint and sits below the mountains on a lake. It claims to have the world's first known salt mine and reminds you of this by selling all sorts of salt products at the various souvenir shops. David licked a candle at one of them to make sure it was salt. It was. Some poor tourist is going to unknowingly take home some of David's saliva as a memento of their time in Hallstatt. We had a quick lunch at a small place on the lake which was more memorable for the views than the food, took a quick stroll through the town, and then headed out, back to Bratislava.
The roads got windier and the views got even better on the drive out of Hallstatt. It was difficult enough navigating the steep descent back to the highway, but the added obstacles of bicyclists and motorcyclists (who really seemed to have no fear) made it a little bit scarier, or fun. It depends how you look at it.

The highlight of the drive back to Bratislava (and I'm pretty sure of David's whole life) was receiving the Shrek scratch-off tickets at the gas station. I'm still not sure if they were a bonus with paying for the gas or if the attendant threw them in and charged me for them. There were 14 in all, so David and Jenn each took 7. Of the 14, David got one winner, and not just any winner; the grand prize, a Shrek finger puppet. If only you could have been there to witness David's excitement. We stopped at the next gas station to redeem the winning ticket and David's life will never be the same.

The guy from the car rental agency wasn't there when we returned to the airport. We waited for a little while until it became apparent he was going to be a while. We parked the car, locked it, laid the keys behind the rental counter, and hoped for the best.

It was a good trip and it got me over my fear of driving in a foreign country. This is important because there are a lot of cool places to visit within driving distance of Bratislava.

View the other pictures from the weekend here.

Road Trip to Salzburg

After spending two weeks in Limerick, often referred to as "Stab City" (because they, um, stab people there), it was time for a break. We arrived back in Bratislava on Friday and though we were tired, a road trip to Salzburg seemed like a good idea. We'd been talking about doing it for a while and it seemed as good of a time as any to go. Part of our decision was influenced by David.

David and I work together. A couple of years ago, a colleague put the two of us together because she thought I could offer him some guidance. I'm not so sure about how the giving guidance part went, but we got along pretty well and have had a good relationship ever since. He is also based in Bratislava, but for a shorter term than me. He's leaving soon, so we thought it would be fun to take a trip before he went home. Salzburg is what we came up with. Now, David is young, energetic, and likes to have a good time. This conflicts with about all I stand for: being old, lazy, and having no fun at all. However, these are not insurmountable differences. It helped to have Jenn there, to tip the scales more towards David's favor.

After much debate and in depth analysis, we decided to rent a car rather than take the train. It was a little bit cheaper, would offer more schedule flexibility, and would make for a shorter trip. Fortunately, we were able to rent the only vehicle with automatic transmission the rental company had. Unfortunately, it cost us about twice as much as it would have cost for a standard transmission. I need to learn to drive stick.

It took us quite a bit longer to get out of Bratislava than it should have because the GPS was set to "avoid highways". It took us about 30 minutes or so to figure this out. Once we got it figured it out, stopped to get a quick bite for breakfast and a toll tag once we crossed the Austria border, we were good to go.

Figuring out the GPS

Our Ride

The drive was uneventful, which is a good thing. David made his own mix CD's for us to listen to (5 in all if I remember correctly). We thought it was nice of him to do this until he told us later that he did it so that he would be able to listen to his own music.

We arrived in Salzburg after around 3 hours and 30 minutes. We dropped our stuff off at the Austria Trend Hotel (which should be ashamed of calling itself a 4 star hotel by the way), and walked to the old town. We ate lunch at Carpe Diem Finest Fingerfood, which was a place we had read about and wanted to try. Their gimmick is that they take regular meals, miniaturize them, and put them in cones. Interesting? Sure. Overpriced? Absolutely. Tasty? As far as miniature food goes, I've had worse.

Tuna

Burger Cone

We passed on the funicular and took the steep climb up to the fortress at the top of the city. There were some fantastic views of the city, some old weapons, a ceramic oven, and really creepy puppet room.

After the fortress, we naively set out to visit Leopoldskon, also known as the Von Trapp Mansion from the film, The Sound of Music. We skipped out on the opportunity earlier to take the 4 hour "Original Sound of Music Tour" because 4 hours in a bus looking at things from The Sound of Music isn't something I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. For a city that does everything it can to remind the visiting tourists that the Sound of Music was filmed in Salzburg, one would think they would make it easier to find. We took a roughly hour and a half walk looking for something that according to the sign below the castle was only 200 meters away. Since none of us really could remember what the house looked like in the movie, we did take pictures of several other houses (including an old age home) that we thought could have been the mansion just to cover our bases. We saw it on a postcard later in the evening and realized we now had multiple pictures of impostor Sound of Music houses.

We had a good dinner of hearty Austrian fare at the casual and comfortable Wilder Mann. The plan was to go out and for Jenn and I to prove to our younger friend, David, how cool we were. I ruined it, as I usually do, and had to go back to the hotel because I had a stomach ache (as I usually do).

It was a long day anyway and we all needed the sleep.

To view the rest of our pictures, click here

Hop On, Hop Off

We took to the train today and visited some of the towns along the coast: Bray, Killiney (supposed home of Bono and Enya), and Dalkey. There wasn't too much excitement. The beaches themselves weren't too special, but the scenery was nice. We had a good meal at Nosh in Dalkey, though because of a wrong turn, it took us way too long to find it. We finished the day with burgers at the TimeOut recommended Bobo's back in Dublin. They were fine. Here are some pictures:

Beach at Bray	Joey on the beach at Bray
Jenn taking a break on the beach at Bray	View of Bray
Dalkey Island	Water at Dalkey

View the rest of the pictures from the day as well as the rest of our weekend in Dublin here: Dublin Pictures

Book Worms

We had a wonderful meal last night at The Winding Stair, a local place located above a book store. It is a quaint restaurant with a neighborhood feel that serves up simple, high quality Irish food. When one thinks of Irish food, corned beef, cabbage, and Lucky Charms probably come to mind, but generally it seems it’s a lot of fish (often smoked), meat (beef or pork), and potatoes done many different ways. The atmosphere of the place was great though, even if it was a little loud, and we really enjoyed ourselves.

We spent our Saturday walking the city and seeing most of the highlights. We lucked out with amazing weather. The temperature was in the mid 60’s and the sun was shining the entire day. Irish eyes were smiling upon us apparently.

We walked from our hotel through St Stephen’s Green, which is a beautiful little park. Again, the weather helped, but the flowers were all in bloom, tons of ducks were swimming in the ponds, and there were people out on the lawns enjoying the nice weather. Walking down Grafton Street, I thought a lot about the movie Once, which was filmed here, and had several scenes on this street. It’s a great movie if you’ve never seen it.

Lunch was at the Fallon and Byrne Food Hall. It is kind of a Dean & Delucca-ish place that also had a café upstairs. We passed on the café and ate at their lunch counter. My club sandwich was pretty decent, as was Jenn’s chicken and mushroom soup. It made us wish there was something like this in Bratislava.

The General Post Office was nothing more than an old post office, but we bought postcard stamps there, so it served its purpose. We saw the book of Kells at the Trinity College Library. It’s a really old book and that’s cool, but besides that, I didn’t get too much out of it. The old library, however, was a sight to see. It’s a beautiful room with a high wooden ceiling, filled with shelves and shelves of old books. It looks a lot like an old church. It didn’t smell nearly as bad as I thought it would. I don’t know why I thought it would smell bad, but I always associate old books with a stale, musky odor.

We strolled through Temple Bar, which is the touristy area, but I didn’t find it overly offensive. We found a little farmer’s market. Jenn found a crepe and I found a woman with her breast hanging out of her shirt feeding her child with no attempt at covering up. I guess that’s how they do it here. We walked through Dublin Castle and stopped in at the Chester Beatty Library. I thought that my mother would be really pleased with the fact that I visited two libraries in one day. This one wasn’t much of a library. It was a collection of one man’s books and art, all related to different religions from around the world. Jenn and I discussed that we need to start collecting something besides souvenir spoons (her) and golf balls (me), because no one is going to want that crap when we’re gone. I heard a story on NPR recently when I was back in US about a guy who collected mustard jars for years and how there is a mustard museum with his entire collection, so I guess you never know.

The Kilmainham prison was very cool. It’s an old jail built at the end of the 18th century where prisoners were kept, mostly for rebelling against the British in the fight for independence. They’ve done a good job maintaining it and it makes for a really interesting tour. Jenn got a kick out of the cells for some reason as you can see below.

Dinner that evening was at an Italian place called Dunne and Crescenzi. It’s a cute, relatively authentic Italian restaurant. It wasn’t amazing, but not too bad either. We split bruschetta, a caprese salad, and lasagna. I use the term "split" loosely as we had the cut the dinner short and ask the waiter to pack up everything to go because Jenn was having stomach issues. The only amusing part of the situation was the waiter handing us the three to-go containers and saying to Jenn in his Italian accent, "I hope it wasn't the mozzarella."

Again, we couldn’t have been luckier with the weather. We always talk about what an impact it has on how much we do or do not enjoy our experience in a city. We’re going to explore some of the coastal towns tomorrow. Hopefully, we can get one more good day of weather.

Ireland By Train

I’m sitting on the train en route to Dublin after a week of work in Limerick. Jenn is meeting me in Dublin for the weekend, which will be great. She’s been there before. I haven’t. Neither of us was dying to go, but it ended up being more convenient. There were a couple of factors keeping us from doing what we really wanted, which was exploring the Irish countryside. Reason one is time. Jenn needed it to do work after having to spend time traveling during the morning on Friday and adding a few hours to her journey would have taken her away from what she needed to do. Reason two is more important. Most of the really impressive scenic areas in the country, like the Ring of Kerry for instance, are better explored by automobile, and neither of us knows how to drive a car with a standard transmission. As I often say, I could do it with a gun to my head, but hopefully it’ll never come to that. Driving in Ireland adds complexity to the issue in that the steering wheel is on the right side, so not only would I have to drive stick, but I’d have to do it with my left hand. Full disclosure, I can’t even get food in my mouth when using a fork with my left hand, so needless to say, this wasn’t going to happen. So, we’re going to Dublin.

Apparently, I sat in the car that requires you to check your common courtesy at the door before boarding. There were babies screaming, people talking on cell phones, and ipods blaring so loud I would have generally been concerned for the people if I wasn’t so annoyed with them ruining my peaceful train ride. The 2 year old a few rows ahead of me is a cry baby. She spontaneously has cried about every 30 minutes or so, undoubtedly to get her parents’ attention. The mom is holding a baby and the dad seems entertained talking to the young son, so it seems she is crying for no other reason besides being the middle child. I should be a psychologist. It doesn’t seem all that hard.

A random thought from my hotel room last night; I was watching a tennis match between Maria Sharapova and some other girl. I’m not sure if you’ve ever watched Sharapova play, but her grunting when she hits the ball is out of control. It was so loud, dramatic, and consistent that I was uncomfortable and had to change the channel, in fear that someone walking by room would think I was watching porn. Yes, I could have put it on mute, but I didn’t want to watch women’s tennis that badly anyway.

Weekend in Berlin

We took our first of what will hopefully be many trips this past weekend. Berlin would not have been our first choice of cities to visit. The original intention of the trip was to meet my brother-in-law, Brian, there. He was selected to participate in a program that would have him there for the week. Unfortunately, the plans changed and though he was in Berlin for the week, his trip went to Frankfurt for the weekend. Since our plans had already been booked, we decided to make a go of it anyway.

Unfortunately, there are no pictures to share at this point. I had a rough day of work on Friday and didn't leave the office as early as I would have liked. In the rush to get our stuff together and get to the airport, I left the camera in our apartment. We did buy a couple of disposal cameras and are in the process of getting the pictures on a CD. Once we have them, I'll post some, but we have no idea how they are going to come out. This brought back memories of when we went to Amsterdam a few years ago and I forgot to charge the camera's primary and spare battery for the day we went to see the tulips at the Keukenhof Gardens. I will say that in some ways, I feel like I learned a lot more on this trip and absorbed a lot more because I was more focused on what we were seeing rather than worrying about taking pictures of it.

Berlin is definitely a neat city. Everything is pretty new since the city was bombed in World War 2. The history of Berlin is really interesting. We took a walking tour on Saturday that was very good. We hit the high points in the city center: the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, Checkpoint Charlie, and several other spots. The guide was good, which always makes a difference, and did a nice job of giving the context of what we were seeing. He also looked and sounded like Matt Damon, so when I got bored, I just thought about the fact that Jason Bourne was guiding us around Berlin, and it made me happy. We didn't really have time to spend too much time in the multiple museums in town, but did visit the Jewish Museum, which was really good. It wasn't completely focused on the Holocaust, which was probably good. The focus was more on the history of the Jews in Germany, which was interesting and educational. Jenn put it well when she says it is good that the museum focuses on the history and the culture of the Jews, so when people visit they learn and understand that there was and is a strong Jewish presence there. It's a cool building. I'll save you my description of it and hopefully we'll have pictures soon.

Back to the Holocaust. You can't go 2 steps in the city without being reminded of it (which is a good thing). It is an eerie feeling walking around the city knowing what occurred there. You definitely get the feeling of total and complete remorse from the people that live there and that they are making every effort to remind people what happened and make sure nothing like it could ever happen again. The memorial for the Jews who were killed is nice in theory, but not sure it really serves the purpose to which it was intended. It is a whole lot of concrete blocks that if you didn't know any better would think it's just an abstract sculpture and nothing more, or a playground for kids.

There is no good transition from talking about the Holocaust, so let's move on to food. We ate at Entrecote the first night, a brasserie not far from the hotel and near Checkpoint Charlie. It was very good. We both had steaks and were really pleased. We ended up both having decent, but not great, chocolate fondants for dessert. Though our intention was only to order one, something was lost in translation. We had a really nice late lunch at Anna Blume, a cafe/florist/bakery. My chicken and mushroom crepe was delicious and Jenn enjoyed her banana and nutella crepe. After all these years, I still don't understand how Jenn can eat dessert for a meal, but I've stopped questioning it. I know there are plenty of things about me that she doesn't fully understand, but accepts. We had beers at Prater, a biergarten not far from the cafe, that Jason Bourne recommended to us. We walked around the city for a while and ended up having a late dinner at the somewhat forgettable Malatesta, which was across the street from our hotel. We had a lunch of pita, hummus, egg salad, and a couple other things at the cafe at the Jewish Museum on Sunday. It was overpriced, but everything was pretty good.

It was nice to be traveling again, just the two of us. It reminded us of our times traveling around Europe after our time in Barcelona when I was in business school, which was the best time of our lives. We're looking forward to seeing the world again.

The "American" Way

Since we slept through almost our entire flight from Dallas to London, there isn't too much to report and certainly not enough information for a full airplane review. I do have two complaints worth mentioning.

Since there were only TV's in the middle for all to view, one would expect a family friendly movie to be shown. One definitely wouldn't expect "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakual". Seriously, American Airlines? That is the best you can do. It seems they were catering to the lowest common denominator with that decision. There are literally hundreds of other movies that would have served the same purpose of entertaining people of all ages. I thought about naming a couple hundred for you here, but I already have a limited amount of readers so I want to hold on to the ones I have.  Fortunately, as I said, I fell asleep right after the movie started because if I actually did sit through "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakual", I don't think I'd ever be the same. To be fair, it's probably better than "The Bounty Hunter", my new benchmark for horrendous movies.

My second complaint has to do with the new thing where the homeless folks on the plane (or are they flight attendants?) walk down the aisle and ask for loose change to give to Unicef. Now, I'm not against giving money to charity. What I am against is after hiking up ticket prices, charging to check luggage and pretty much anything else they can figure out a way to charge for, the airlines asking for another dime from passengers. Just between you and me, I don't have any proof, but I'm not convinced all of that loose change is really going to those in need. I'm just saying.

It was good being back in the US for a week. It was nice being back in the office, seeing old friends, and of course being with Jenn. I got my Tex-Mex, Breakfast Taco, and burger fix. The food highlight of the week, however, was the Dandy Don Meredith, which is what I ordered for lunch at Olivia. What is the Dandy Don Meredith you ask? It is a glorious combination of brisket chili and two fried eggs circled by cheese fries. It warrants a picture, so here you go:

We are heading to Berlin this weekend and then it's off to Ireland for two weeks for work. The jet setting never stops.