Cave Day

Jet lag is good for something, I guess. I was fully awake by 6 am and decided to go down for breakfast. Had the place all to myself and, after choosing a table and getting a cup of coffee, spent an agreeable hour reflecting on the day and writing my  blog. Ingrid and Erich joined me about an hour later and we ate, discussed our plans and soon found ourselves on our way.

Our first destination was the National Museum to get a sense of the history of Slovenia. On the way there we stopped at an Serbian Orthodox church build in the early 1900s to take a look. It looked like a stern place: all walls completely decorated with the most serious looking saints I have ever seen, several of them holding weapons. No place to sit, either. They did have one interesting feature, though: their lighted candles are placed in a basin with shallow water, so that if an earthquake were to happen and the candles fell, their light would be immediately extinguished.

The museum itself was mildly interesting. It was not rich on artifacts, the highlight being a flute made from bones that was over 20,000 years old, but it gave me a good sense of the struggle Slovenians had for a national identity. Not easy for a people that kept being invaded by everybody: Germans, Italians, French, Turks, everybody wanted a piece of this land some time or another.

After the museum we got in our car and drove to Postojna to visit the caverns, and I have to say it was one of the most impressive places I've ever visited. Think of a series of caverns, over 20 kilometers in length, with ceilings over 100 feet tall, covered in stalactites and stalagmites, and a river running through it. Words can't do it justice, pictures don't do it justice, so I won't try to describe in detail what I saw, only what I experienced.

We got there by car, bought our tickets and went into an underground, open train for  a fifteen minute ride deep into the caves. In and out of tunnels it went, some of them making me duck for fear of hitting my head against the ceiling; I have a feeling the place should have a "you must be this short" to ride the train sign. We could see some impressive stalactites and stalagmites at the point (or so I thought until I saw the ones further inside), but I have to confess that the fact that we were in a ride on rails made me feel like it was Disneyland and that the caves were an imagineer creation.

Eventually the strain stopped and everybody got out and we were directed to go stand under the appropriate language sign to wait for a guide for the walking part of the tour. There were over 100 people under the sign saying English, another 20 under the sign that said Slovenian, maybe 30 under the sign that said Italian, and about four under the German sign, so to the German sign we went. I hoped that my German was tour-guide quality, but knew that my hosts would be able to explain anything I missed.

We were joined by a lady who took us on a leisurely one hour walk through the caverns along well-defined paths, often paved and with handrails. There was some up and down, and around every corner there was something new to enjoy: a different kind of colored rock, a huge stalactite, a forest of stalagmites, real wonders of nature for which no word or picture can do justice. I will add some pictures here anyway, just to give an idea. All good things must come to an end, though, and we found ourselves back at the train, making our way back to the mouth of the cave, where we could see the river disappearing into its depths. Oh, and apparently my German was tour-guide quality.

Stalagmite formation at Postojna caves

"Spaghetti Room" at Postojna caves

Back to the car and off we went to Piran, our first Istrian coast destination. Piran is a small town on a hill, so small that you cannot park your car inside it; you drive in, drop your stuff at the hotel and drive out again to park at a garage, catching a shuttle back into town or, in our case, walking leisurely along the coast for fifteen minutes or so until we were back at the hotel. We didn't do much else that day, as it was getting late: we found a nice bar and had a couple of beers while watching a beautiful sunset at the Adriatic coast. Once darkness came we went to find a place to eat and get some rest before the next day's adventures.

View of Piran

Sunset at Piran

Oh, by the way, the hotel had drains in the bathroom floor, something I see all over in Brazil and had never seen in Europe or the U.S.

Our hotel at Piran

Ljubljana

This morning we got on the car and started our road trip, destination Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. Good company, good weather, good roads and a nice scenery of rolling hills and very European-looking little villages made the 3 1/2 hours drive a pleasure. When we crossed the border into Slovenia the scenery did not change much, but it was obvious we were in a different world: I could not easily figure out the meaning of words, and consonants started getting accents, something no Portuguese or English speaker would dare do. It actually sent a chill down my spine when I realized we were in what I think of as Tintin land, the land of The Calculus Affair, the land where people could say "Amai Pleskigladz!"

Lower Austria countryside

By early afternoon we found ourselves dropping of our luggage at the City Hotel and heading out to explore the old city, starting with our first stop, The Naked Lady statue. Ok, technically it was not a statue of a naked lady, but of France Prešeren,  poet and Slovenia's national treasure, author of its national anthem. The naked lady in question is the muse that is the top part of the statue and which, according to my travel guide, caused enough of a scandal that the statue was occasionally covered and the poor woman who posed for the muse was forced to emigrate to South America, never to come back. Of course I had to go see it! We found the square exactly where we were told it would be, right by the three bridges at the center of town. The square was actually a circle, but the statue was there, the naked lady was, as promised, topless, and I was a happy puppy. In case you are curious, a statue of a naked lady on top of a national poet looks like this:

And a circular square looks like this:

After that Erich, Ingrid and I wandered around the inner city for a while, enjoying the atmosphere of the pedestrian-only streets, slowly making our way towards the castle. It was an interesting time-travel experience for me. We started from the Prešeren Square (aka Naked Lady Circle) with its distinctive Art Deco look, crossed the river at the Cobbler's bridge and were soon immersed in the medieval part of town, so picturesque that sometimes it felt like it was a movie set. It was interesting to me how evocative that walk was. Congress square felt like Petropolis, the castle area felt like Heidelberg and our hotel area felt like Budapest. Apparently you can visit three different cities at once by going to Ljubljana!

Talking about cities, the medieval one seemed to have a fascination with hanging shoes. Everywhere there were wires crossing the street, there were shoes hanging from them: tennis shoes, boots, dress shoes, even flippers! We asked the receptionist at the hotel what the story behind the hanging shoes was, and instead of telling us a lie, instead of telling us how the shoes were to honor a soldier that lost his shoes (with his feet still inside them) during the Franco-Prussian war, he told us the truth: no idea, just something that the university students did occasionally. But when you got a medieval part of a town, and look at shoes hanging from wires, you see something like this:

One interesting thing was all the references to Brazil I found. On Congress square we had the Brazilian embassy; at the bar we stopped for drinks they had caipirinhas; we passed a tv showing a soccer game with the Brazilian national team; we saw a TV ad with a famous Brazilian soccer player in it. Made me feel more at home...

We did stop at the cathedral, dedicated to St. Nicholas. It was a Baroque extravaganza, and reminded me somewhat of the churches back in Rio, upped one notch: bigger, much more gilding and three, I counted, three organs! I did take the time there to light two candles, one for my father and one for Sharon, whom I wish had been here with me enjoying the sights.

With such a huge castle towering over the city, of course we had to go and visit it, at least for the view. It was a steep hill, and it probably would have taken us a very tiring hour to meander our way to the top, but luckily the Industrial Revolution happened in the meantime, motors have been invented and there was a funicular we could take to the top. By the way, this is what a castle towering over a town looks like:

I am sad to report that I am not familiar enough with Slovenian history to grasp the importance of the castle, but I still enjoyed the experience and learned a few things. First, you only need to climb around 100 steps or so to get a very nice view of the city. Second, it is very, very windy on top. Third, you should always carry an extra battery with you because your camera will go dead after you climbed to the top, not before. Fourth, forgetting your battery charger in your bedroom in Vienna is not a smart move. Finally, a smart phone with a camera is a very nice thing to have. The view was very nice, though, and I did attempt to use the phone's panorama picture feature. The result was this:

Panorama of Ljubljana from castle tower

Eventually it was time to come back down. We could have walked down, but chose to take the funicular again, if only for symmetry. We walked along the river bank and crossed the river back to the Art Deco side at the Dragon Bridge. It's actually a very apt name for a bridge, as it is guarded by four dragons, one on each corner. If you want to know what a bridge-guarding dragon looks like, they look like this:

Jet lag caught up with me at that point (notice how it's always jet lag, never being tired and/or out of shape) and we went back to the hotel to rest until dinner time, which we had at a restaurant along the river bank. Trying to be more adventurous, and following my travel guide's advice which suggested Mediterranean dishes as the food of choice, I had a seafood extravaganza that turned out to be an interesting experiment in deconstruction: opening shells, removing fish scales, cracking up shrimps; a messy, but very tasty experience.

And thus ended our first day of travelling. Off to bed and to a new adventure tomorrow.

Ach, Bruegel!

My second day was spent at the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna. It was cold, it was rainy and staying inside a warm, dry museum seemed like a good idea. Besides, the museum is the place where, in 1986, I learned to like art. My friend Ingrid, an art history major, took me to the museum and patiently explained to me a lot of what I was seeing. It opened my eyes, got me reading about art, rid me of many of my preconceived notions and introduced me to a new and wonderful world.

This is also the place where I met the work of Pieter Bruegel the elder, a Flemish painter from the mid 1500s. I don't know what is it exactly that drew me to his work. If I had to guess I would say that it is because he chose to paint the everyday; not the saints, not mythology, but normal life, such as a peasant wedding or a farm dance. He also chose to use his canvas as a reporting tool, filling it with detailed presentations of activities from his time, such as his famous "Games Children Play." How the average person lived always interested me, and through Bruegel I got to experience some of it.

So it was with happiness and expectation that I found myself in line, waiting to buy tickets for the museum. The line was not too big but it was slow, and the Brazilians in front of me (they seem to be everywhere) decided the visit was not worth the wait. I tried to dissuade them, mentioning the Rembrandts, Titians and Tintorettos in the collection but to no avail, they chose a carriage ride in the rain over great masterpieces.

Walking through the museum was wonderful, even though my legs were still a little achy from other times. Met some paintings I remembered, others I'd forgotten and got to know a new one that impressed me. Hans Baldung is the name of the painter, if I remember correctly, and the painting was called "The Three Stages of Life and Death." What got to me was his representation of death: not the skeleton covered in a hood, but a corpse, still with flesh on it, but that clearly indicated it was decaying. Skin gone here and there, a gaunt face with a rigid grin, enough to make you feel very aware of the effects of death, and a little bit uncomfortable.

Eventually we made our way to the Bruegels and the moment I saw the first one I could not stop smiling. Really! I entered the room, I felt my cheek muscles contract and I was suddenly very happy, seeing in person those paintings from a long time ago, paintings I'd revisited many times in books I own, used as desktop background for my computer, talked to friends about. Two of them were missing, though, Games Children Play and The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, but I was happy to find out they had only been moved to another room, to take part in a special exhibit.

After the Bruegels the jet lag seems to have hit me and my energy level dropped down really fast, and with it an acute sense of missing Sharon. I had talked to her about those paintings, shared with her my enthusiasm about them and had looked forward to showing them to her. Not having her there, not being able to hear or guess what she would say about the actual paintings made the pain of her loss loom large for a while. I was surrounded by friends though, and with coffee, cake and good conversation at the museum's cafe I was soon back to being my new self.

Ach, Vienna!

This vacation I'm back in Vienna after twenty-three years, and I am really excited about it. I spent a year in Vienna from 1989 to 1990, doing the research part of my master's thesis. During that time I got to know Vienna, visit its many corner and find the places that were interesting to me. Now I get to see the 21st century version of these places, and figure out what changed, what remains the same and, most interestingly, what have I forgotten.

I got to Vienna the modern way, sitting for over 12 hours in a plane with very little legroom and courteous, but very limited service. I don't remember planes being this cramped when I last came here, but I do remember that airfare was double of what I paid this time, without any correction for inflation, so I am ok with it. I had to change planes in Franfkurt, and that was old school, with the plane parked in the middle of the tarmac, with us having to go down stairs and then taking buses to the terminal. I kind of like that, especially since it allowed me to get a view of the airplane from a different angle than I normally would. It looked like this:

Since my first full day was a Monday and the museums were closed, I decided to wander around town. My first destination was the site of Beethoven's first grave (just like in life, when he kept being evicted and moved from apartment to apartment, in death he too was evicted when the cemetery was closed and moved to a new location).  I remembered the place as a small park  with a little fenced off area for the grave, a fifteen minute walk from where I used to live, going East on Laudongasse. Turns out that the universe expanded, magnetic fields realigned and the ex-cemetery was now much further out going North on Waehringerstrasse. And that fifteen minute walk took me an hour! The place, now known as Schubertpark was definitely not as I remembered it; I had pictured in my mind a little run-down park with old trees and found it bigger and well-kept. Schubert was there too, which might have something to do with the park's name. I did find the grave, though, and paid my respects by listening to the second movement of his 7th symphony, which I find very solemn and appropriate for this kind of occasion. I had an urge to play it out loud, but restrained myself and used the ear buds instead. The park and the grave, by the way, look like this:

On the way to Schubertpark I went by the place where I used to live. That was something that definitely looked exactly the same! What was more amazing was that there was this little rinky-dinky cafe at the corner that I thought would be gone by now, but it was still there and looked pretty much the same. So I took pictures of the cafe, of the street and of the building and went happily on my way.

I had forgotten how fast the Viennese walk! I had mothers with little kids whizzing past me as I ambled along, making me feel like I needed to pick up my pace in order to not cause a sidewalk traffic jam! I did pick up my pace, as I am acutely reminded by my aching legs as I sit here typing this.

My favorite type of transportation when I used to live here was the tram, or, as they called it then, the bin. I had expected some modernization to have happened there, and that the bin would look very different and I was not disappointed. They used to look like this:

and now they look like this:

Well, ok, I am exaggerating a little since the pictures were taken within a few minutes of each other. Apparently they have bot the old and the new trams running side-by-side! I did take the tram back to the apartment, since I did not want to walk for another hour, but I made sure to ride on one of the old ones for old times sake. Here's a picture of me being happy with that decision.

After a nice lunch with my hosts I took a much needed nap (still trying to deal with all that jet-lag stuff). An old friend dropped by in the afternoon, and after coffee and some apfelstrudel we took off for a walking tour of the inner city. It was fun going around corners and seeing both things I remembered and forgot. Earth had not rearranged itself here, and things were pretty much where they were supposed to be, except for the Graben, a pedestrian-only street, which had turned 90 degrees and moved further away from the Hofburg than I remembered. Oh, and Karlskirche had grown since I've last seen it.

the Graben

Karlskirche

We did walk by Technische Universitaet where I had done my research work, and I couldn't resist taking a picture of the building where my office was.  The office was on the third floor, and by the elevator there was a sign that, in my bad German, I translated to "do not use this elevator if it is on fire." This is what the building looks like:

And that was it for the day. After spending over two hours walking we got on the U-bahn, went back home, the jet lag caught up with me and I promptly crashed.

I had forgotten how many bookstores there are. Every few blocks you run into one, selling old books, new books, comic books, travel books, whatever kind of specialization you can think of. I would have thought Amazon and the internet would drastically decrease their numbers, but this does not seem to be the case. And please don't correct me if I'm wrong, I want to believe that reading is surviving in this country.

I'd forgotten how cold beverages here are not ice cold, but just slightly less than room temperature. It's gotten better, though, and now you can find ice cold beverages in a few places, or at least this is what the sign below promised.

So that was it for my first day back: too much walking, some things remembered, others learned and very, very happy to be back here.