September 27 - October 16, 2003 Austria and London:

Last Day: London, October 15, 2003

Our 2 hour flight from Vienna arrived at Heathrow without any difficulty.  All of our flights have been on British Airways.  There was a little run-around at the airport as we tried to contact a hotel bus service.  Soon we were on the "Hotel Link" bus for the ride to our hotel. 
 
We are staying at the Millennium Bailey?s Hotel.  I thought it was going to be the same hotel as I stayed at a year ago but it is right next door and is part of the other hotel.  We are located directly across from the Gloucester Tube station, just south of Kennsington Park.
 
Yesterday, Jan and Gordon came to meet us at our hotel.  Martha met them and became friends of them when they were all working in Austria after the War.  While Martha and Jan caught up on things, Gordon and I walked out of the hotel to find a nearby restaurant.  I suggested Garfunkels - in a little shopping center on the next block.  Garfunkels reminded me of Denny's.  Gordon suggested an English pub and there was one right across the street.  This was the right choice.  Martha and Gordon ordered fish and chips, Jan a shepherd pie with beef and stilton.  I ate pasta with olives and tomatoes. 
 
The inside of the pub was brightly lit, "Victorian"in decor (with high ceilings and ceiling fans) and smoky.  There was a huge screen and a list of upcoming soccer and rugby games.  There was a spigot thing at the bar that dispensed about 7 kinds of beer.  Guinness was the only one I recognized.
 
The weather is sunny and mild - probably about 60 degrees. 
 
Later that afternoon we wheeled down Cromwell Road which merged into Brompton Road and then Knightsbridge where we stopped and shopped at Harrods.  Back on the sidewalk we continued towards central London for a few blocks then hailed a taxi at Hyde Park Corner when faced with a cool wind and returned to our hotel.
 
Tomorrow we will leave the hotel around 9:30 AM and start out trip home.v

Wednesday, October 8, 2003, Innsbruck 

This is the hardest city to drive in so far.  It didn’t help yesterday either, that we were driving in the rain and at dark.  It started when we ventured out to find a self-service laundry.  We had a highly abbreviated and stylized map with the location of 2 bubble-wash places.  Luckily we stumbled upon the street.  I parked to get out and physically track it down when I spied it in the distance.  Since I wasn’t in a legal parking spot, we circled the block and there was a legitimate parking spot.  We put out the California handicap placard and went on our way.  So far we haven’t’ gotten any tickets … parking nor speeding.

 The streets signs are poor and even if I know what street I’m on, I don’t know if I’m going in the right direction!  On top of that, many of the street names are written in “old German” script, which is hard enough to read under the best of conditions.

 Today we drove up to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, about 35 miles away.  We were on the autobahn for only a few kilometers then on country roads.  As we ascended, we saw more and more snow and the rain even turned into snow.  Fortunately the snow did not stick on the road.  The car has a thermometer and at the lowest it registered 0.5 C!

 In the upland valleys we saw many little shed with hay inside and wood stacked outside under the eaves.  It’s really early for snow and I think later on there will be cows down in these fields over the winter, eating stored hay. 

Garmisch is a charming place..  We parked on a narrow street and went walking and window shopping.  Very nice … little shops.  I picked out some shoes in a shop … very modern European design.  I asked the shop clerk if she had a “grosser” size and she said “these are for Frauen!  Herren are upstairs!!!”   I went upstairs, but didn’t find a style I liked as well.

 Today I’m on my laptop in the lounge area of the hotel.  I am able to connect to the Internet through my wireless adaptor and the hotels wireless access point.  They gave the a wireless password and the first time I accesses my browser it asked for a userid and password that the hotel provided.  It costs 5 Euro’s for  24 hours.  A lot cheaper than the dialup option.

Watch out for Innsbruck

Innsbruck, a sly, tricky, conniving town.  It is a place I want to be FROM (as in "far from").  First off, winter came very early this year.  Fall only started a couple of weeks ago, for crying out loud!  Maybe it's early because the summer was so hot.  On top of that, every time we set out to go somewhere in this town, we ended up hopelessly lost (it seemed at the time) .
 
Things turned ugly that night we set out for dinner.  ?We'll walk?, I said, "It's easier than trying to use the car".  The hotel gave very good directions for an Austrian restaurant called the Stadium (or something like that), just a couple of blocks from the restaurant.   Maybe you can tell by the way this is going we never found it.  In the darkness and rain, we rolled down the sidewalks ? a wheelchair with two umbrellas. 
 
I was sure the restaurant would be next to the Olympic Stadium I'd seen earlier in the day.  (Innsbruck hosted the 1976 Winter Olympics.)  It wasn't.  Nor was it near the rugby field, the main fire station, the emergency hospital and countless other buildings we passed, block after block, in the miserable rain.
 
Finally I took a "shortcut" back to our hotel.  "Let's just have one of those little pizzas they serve at our hotel", I said.   But there ahead on the corner was a little warm, cheery, dry, neighborhood Bier Stube.  Inside, we order a beer (Martha) and mineral water (me).  We asked the waitress for ?menus?.  She asked ?Zwei??  We said ?Yes?.  That was a clue.  Why did she ask us if we wanted ?Two??  In a short amount of time, two "Daily Menus" were brought to our table ? a potato-and-mystery-meat hash and greasy sauerkraut. 
 
I listened to Martha tell about traveling to Egypt and meeting King Farouk in the 1950s as I scraped the meat stuff off of the potatoes and stirred it all around.  After a while the plates were removed.  The room was full of smoke and a man who had too much beer to drink was leaning over the bench leering at Martha.  I couldn't wait to make our getaway.
 
After about 1/2 mile we saw the lights of the Hotel Binders in the distance.  We raced to our rooms, quickly locked ourselves in our rooms and plotted an early escape from this crafty, devious and slippery city.

Sunday October 5, 2003 – in Salzburg

 This day was miserable weather-wise … as it rained almost the whole day … anyway whenever we were out, it was raining.

 The rooms in our Salzburg hotel are small, but nice.  I sleep on a little monk’s bed pushed against one wall, and I have a stuffed chair, a desk and chair (in addition to the mini-bar and TV).  I have learned that I can connect to the Internet through the phone in the room.  That is, I can dial into Earthlink (my ISP) via Vienna.  I shudder to think what’s it’s going to cost, but I decided I don’t care.  Now I’m able to download my email, read it off-line, compose email off-line, and not worry that my email stored on Earthlink was getting full (which is was).

 Martha and I attended mass at the Salzburg Cathedral on Sunday.  It was a special service celebrating the harvest.  There were 2 choirs and 2 orchestras … so the music was unbelievable.  And I could nearly understand the homily … mainly because I understood the context and the priest spoke slowly.

 After the service there was a procession of Salzburgers dressed in 18th costumes, carrying baskets full of bread and harvest goods.  They gave Martha a little loaf of bread and a shaft of wheat as they passed by her wheel chair.

 During the day we took the cable car up to the Festung (the fortress on the hill above “old town”.  We started to descent a flight of stairs but realized there were too many.  Martha stayed at a little restaurant there, ordered vegetable soup and tea and I took the tour.  Since the 1400’s the succession of Bishops of Salzburg built and expanded the fortress until the 1800’s.  At that point it was used by the military and now is a museum of the state.

October 3, 2003 – Salzburg

Yesterday we drove from Vienna to Salzburg starting about 8:30 AM.  We took the A-1 autobahn, stopping at the towns of Melk and St. Florian.  The Stift Melk is a fortress Benedictine abbey built on a bluff above the Danube River.  It was burned by the Turks and rebuilt in the 1700’s.  Inside we saw tapestries, paintings, religious relics and frescoes.  I especially liked the octagonal dome, the library and the Baroque marble and gold high alter.  We stared at the later as we sat for a short organ recital.

The Stift St. Florian is another Baroque abbey and this one is noted for the composer Anton Bruckner … who is buried here.  The organ is called the Bruckner Organ.  At the restaurant we ate beef goulash (Martha) and vegetable strudel (Tom).

In Salzburg, we followed the signs to the old city.  Martha said instead of looking at the map, “let’s find the fortress”, a castle called Festung Hohensalzburg which looms over the old town.  Finally  it appeared and we made our way to the Mirabell Gardens and when we did consult the map, we were 2 blocks from our hotel

Tuesday September 30, 2003 – the Hilde Zadek Competition

The rain we had yesterday disappeared and the sun and clear skies returned.  In the morning we set out determined to find the street with the rumored 24 hour Laundromat.  We parked on the street where it was supposed to be located, stepped into the tobacco store and learned it was just across the street.  We bought 2 1-hour parking tickets.  You mark the date and time and put them on the dashboard.

This laundry had a fancy control center where you put in money, punched in the number of the washer, extractor and/or dryer, to get started.  On the machines themselves you select the temperature, speed, etc.  It costs 5 Euros to wash and .80 to extract and 1 to dry.

This night was the Third Hilde Zadek competition.  We got dressed up and drove over and parked not too far away from the University of Music.  There was a little reception going on in the lobby of the theater and we were greeted by Hilde briefly before we took our seats.

Ten singers (8 women and 2 men) were the finalists.  They each sang a modern piece and something much older.  It was very enjoyable.  The contestant we were rooting for came in first.  They gave out 5 prizes … the top three got money awards.

 Sunday, September 28, 2003 - Schloss Shönbrunn

Today we drove to the Shönbrunn Palace, a castle that Maria Theresa hoped would rival Versailles in grandeur.  We took the “Grand Tour” … our audio guide provided us we a description of each room that we entered.  The palace is situated in a huge park which is also home to huge formal gardens, the zoo and a beautiful iron and glass “Palmenhaus” (green house for palms). 

At the highest elevation is a wide, arched structure called the Gloriette which overlooks the palace.  We entered the park here and it was smooth and easy pushing Martha’s wheel chair downhill.  To return to the car, we took an “elephant train” back uphill.  There was even a little mechanical lift that picked up Martha in her chair.

Back at our hotel, I dropped off Martha, parked the car and on the way home stopped by and got falafel sandwiches at a small nearby take-away place.  Tasty!

 Saturday, September 27, 2003

Today was our first museum day.  We fired up the old Octavia and headed southwest from our hotel.  I say that because I can’t really navigate and drive at the same time so I head in the general direction.  Then I stopped several (many?) times, consult the map, take a sighting from the sun and head out again.  That day we seemed to go around in circles a couple of times before finding a parking place right across the street from the Vienna Fine Arts Museum. 

What a beautiful museum.  There was a huge staircase in the center surrounded by a double set of galleries.  We saw examples of every famous European painter.  The audio system allowed you to enter the number beside the painting and listen to a complete description.  We ended the tour with dessert in the museum’s café.

Back in the car we drove to Grinsing, a suburb in hills and into the Vienna Woods.  Here we saw views of Vienna in the distance.

We returned to the city as night was falling and found a parking place between a Greek restaurant and the Internet café.  So after a delicious dinner of Greek salad and vegetables and lamb shank (Martha) we ended the day updating a web site at the Internet café.

September 26 - First day in Vienna:

We woke up around 7:00 AM after a good night???s sleep at the Hotel Tabor.  The breakfast room is on the 1st floor (one from up from the ground floor).  We could choose from cereal, bread and rolls, cheese and sliced sausage, fruit, yogurt, fruit juice and boiled eggs.

Mid morning we set out for St. Stephan???s Cathedral which is sort of the center of the old town.  We are just north, across the Danube canal.  Martha was in her wheel chair with me pushing.  Most of the curbs and crosswalks are beveled to make this a fairly easy task.  I tried to convince Martha that rolling over the cobblestones would aid digestion ??? she was glad we didn???t see much of this kind of paving.

We got to St. Stephans right at noon and sat through 12:00 mass.  Afterwards we walked towards the University of Music and German Art.  The Hilde Zadek competition is taking place here and we were told that if we were there between 2 and 3 PM we could speak with her.  We found the building and room and we able to greet Hilde before she returned for more auditions. 

We will attend the final competition on Tuesday.

Tonight I had to take the car out of the parking garage (the 24 hours was up) and find a parking place on the street.  I hope I read all of the no-parking & parking signs correctly.  Anyway, I almost got completely lost as I walked back to the hotel and lo and behold, here I am at the Internet Cafe.  Hmmmmm.

More later ... Tom and Martha

September 26th - Arrived in Vienna

David drove me to BART and I took the SF Airport train all of the way.  Martha had already checked in and was at the gate waiting.  I just got to the gate in time to board our British Airways 747 for the trip to London.

Soon after takeoff (7:00 PM), we were served dinner.  There were headset TV screens so we could watch whatever movie we wanted … I saw “Finding Nemo”.  After dinner I fell asleep and slept about 6 hours until Martha woke me up for breakfast.

The plane landed in London on time and we transferred from Terminal 4 to Terminal 1 and weren’t at the new gate very long before we boarded our BA Airbus 319 plane and were on our way to Vienna.

At the airport, a person came with a wheel chair and stayed with us as we picked up our bags and picked up the rental car.  It is not a VW Golf but rather a Skoda Octavia, 4 wheel drive, 4-door, diesel station wagon.  We made it to the hotel without too much trouble … stopping at a bus stop to ask for a street.  We are about ½ from the Danube Canal beyond which is the old town.

The hotel has provided us with a parking place at a garage about 2 blocks away.  On Friday night through Sunday, street parking is easy, so we will only pay for parking the other days (15 Euros).