four reasons why I love Vienna

1. Coffee, coffee, coffee. Overpriced yes, but worth it for the languid coffee house culture which sadly does not exist in America. You get something to eat or drink, and sit for as long as you like without being pestered by the wait staff. In fact, if you want anything else, you have to get their attention.



2. Cheap opera. How cheap? Cheaper than the coffee. I saw three operas three nights in a row for a grand total of 8 euro. They were standing room tickets, but since the second night at the Volksoper (Orpheus in der Unterwelt) wasn't sold out, us few standees in attendance were allowed to plonk our butts in velvet seats as soon as the lights went down. I had practically an entire row to myself. Since the soles of my feet are kind of wrecked from tromping around Russia, this was a good thing. The first night at the Wiener Staatsoper (Salome) was sort of brutal. Not only is Strauss a bit out of my opera comfort zone, the temperature in the gallery seemed to be rising steadily throughout the intermission-less performance. Still worth it, though. I'd do it all over if I could. But be warned that standing room in Vienna can be vicious. There was a minor kerfuffle involving shoving, fisticuffs, and police intervention the third night, back at the Staatsoper (appropriately for this trip, Eugene Onegin). No kidding!


3. Public transit. This can also be said for Moscow and St Petersburg. Cheap, efficient, barely any wait time between trains. And no matter how sardined the cars are, everyone pretty much behaves themselves (other than the one guy who was passed out in the Moscow metro). I can only imagine that Europeans visiting the Bay Area are shocked by the state of our public transit, where at times you need to wait 20 minutes for a train, and then once aboard, there's always a good chance of having some unpleasant experience.

4. You can ride your bike on the sidewalk, or your get your own lane in traffic, complete with traffic signal. Even the horse-drawn carriages don't get their own lane.

Tomorrow I'm off to Bratislava. I feel like I've rushed around town, yet barely touched the surface of Vienna, so I'll need to come back soon.

Wien

Half the people on the streets in Vienna seem to be munching gelato cones, so soon after I hit the streets, I did the same.

I was slightly worried about leaving St Petersburg, since I had booked a ticket on an airline I had never heard of before purchasing said ticket (AirBaltic), and because I had heard there were some funky procedures when departing Russia via air. I left for the airport four hours before my flight just to make sure I could get through all the red tape in time, which meant I left the hotel at 0600 after falling asleep at 0300. Turns out it was all fine; there are two security checkpoints at Pulkovo-2 airport, both with long lines, but I got through both with loads of time to spare, and a full pat-down to boot. Plus I had this swell view of the propellor from my 2D window seat.

The last two weeks have been full-bore sightseeing. I get up and go each morning, and don't stop until dinner. I crash out as soon as I lay down. I have more blisters on my feet than I care to count, and some of them are in places that I didn't think it was possible to develop a blister in. I think I may need that treatment where you stick your feet in a tank of little fish who nibble off all the dead skin, but I'll need a really big school of those little fish. Anyway, I've arrived in Vienna with not much planned out, and not too much time. Need to hit the guidebook tonight, if I don't just zonk out.

10 pictures from The Hermitage

Москва

Before I left home, I set my rucksack down by my front door and sat on it for a few minutes. My guidebooks say that Russians do this before a journey to bring good luck, and I figured when going to Russia...

Today is Tuesday, May 18th, and we've been running around non-stop since arriving. No time for proper writing! Here's a distillation of what's been happening.

We almost lost our luggage upon arrival in Russia, and got a first hand look into the remnants of a lingering bureaucracy that still requires everything to be in duplicate and stamped. Thankfully the wayward bags were merely tardy, and showed up on the subsequent Lufthansa flight.

The taxi ride from Domodedovo Airport to central Moscow took two hours. And our driver was cranking though, except when he was caught in traffic. We all managed to sneak in a nap to the lullaby of Moscow gridlock. Since it was a fixed rate ride, it wasn't as outrageous as it seems.

My first dinner in Russia was an entire chicken. I knew I had ordered "pressed chicken", but didn't realize it was really "a pressed chicken." More on the language barrier later; it deserves its own post.

Yeliseevsky's Gastronom - the fanciest grocery store I have ever been in. They have super high ceilings bedecked with chandeliers.

Gorky House Museum - gorgeous Art Nouveau interior.


dinner at Stolovaya No. 57 - a retro Soviet cafeteria in GUM. More chicken (a reasonable portion this time) in sour cream and tomato sauce. For side dishes I grabbed a beet salad, and picked up something fluffy looking that turned out to be somewhat of a savory cheesecake.


GUM - to be admired more for architecture, inside and out, than the range of designer stores within selling overpriced items. We checked out apparel at Bosco Sport, which is hawking Russian Olympic team gear, and almost nothing was under $100. Most items were well over.

Russian fast food in the form of bliny, which were really quite tasty. Cheese, mushroom, and yogurt.

The Kremlin - cathedrals, enormous cannons and bells, and displays of goose-stepping and rifle-flipping during the Presidential Regiment procession. Despite being born and raised without a shred of religiousness, I quite like the Orthodox churches, with their iconostasi and how every inch of the interiors have been painted. And I finally saw a Fabergé egg in all of its eggness at the Armoury. I remember being shown some pictures of them when I was a kid, and I couldn't really fathom why someone would want to decorate an egg quite that much. They didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. It makes more sense now, that I understand the importance of Easter in the Russian Orthodox church, but was disappointed by the eggs on view. I expected them to be...more Fabergé than they were.

dinner at Cafe Mu-Mu. I had to go because it's cow-themed, with chairs, bowls, and cups patterned like Holsteins. Also, it's two blocks away from our hostel.

breakfast at Cafe Mu-Mu. Kasha, apricot bliny, eggs on toast, and a little container of a yogurt drink that seems to get handed out with every breakfast.

Walking around Moscow at midnight on a Saturday. The atmosphere was almost exactly the same as it had been twelve hours earlier, except it was dark out. Crowds of people were clogging Red Square, lolling about the lawns in the Alexander Gardens that border the Kremlin, snapping photos on the bridges of the Moscow River, making out along the embankment of the same, riding bikes through the plazas, and in general milling about the streets. Traffic was just as nuts as it had been during the day. Saturday night was an event called Museum Night, where the museums are free and stay open late, past midnight. Lines were still spilling from the doors of some, and on a whim I hopped into a line that was moving quickly, and saw a photo exhibit from the Moscow Biennale.

Lenin - I suppose this is what you look like after you've been mummified and maintained for over 80 years by a secret (not-so-secret anymore recipe). Kinda waxy. The interior of the mausoleum is all black marble and the lights are low, which can be hard to navigate after you've entered from sunlight outside. Not to worry, there are guards posted at every turn and corridor whose only movement is to raise an arm to indicate the direction to go. There's no stopping to gawk once inside the room; if the sight of the guards posted at each corner isn't enough to keep you going, I've read they will physically prod you forward, should you come to a halt. Lenin's tomb shines like a beacon in an otherwise black room. I was concentrating so hard on him during my walk through the room, I took in no other details. Once inside the mausoleum, you're out again with just a couple of minutes.

Communist kiddies singing anthems on Red Square - I don't actually know if they are some Communist Youth League, but as we were waiting around to view Lenin, we saw groups of children sporting red caps and white shirts, waving red flags with depictions of Lenin and the hammer and sickle starting to gather. As we left the mausoleum, we saw that the entirety of Red Square (and it's pretty big) had been closed to everyone else, and hundreds of kids were gathered in the middle singing anthems.

Saint Basil's Cathedral - if you've seen a picture of Moscow, you've seen a picture of Saint Basil's. The interior is a number of small chapels, rather than one large space. Wandering through the corridors and navigating the staircase within a wall made me feel like I was in The Name of the Rose. Inexplicably, there was a couple on the verge of making out in one of the chapels. Public displays of affection are pretty common here, and don't tend to raise any eyebrows that I can see, but I sort of assumed there was some rule that applied when inside a church. Apparently not.


Moscow River Cruise - not terribly stimulating, and the boat really poked along, but I was happy to be off my feet for a few hours. I have at least four blisters from pounding the pavement.

Novodevichiy Convent and Cemetery - nice for a wander, and a fun scavenger hunt for graves of famous people. I sought out Russian composers. The cemetery is very green with lots of trees, birds making a nice-sounding rackets, and extra large bumble bees drifting around the flowers.

Romanov Boyar House - a glimpse into how the boyars lived. I was pleased to see some of the textiles on view looked exactly like those illustration in The Firebird.

Getting lost wandering around the streets. I like to wander cities I've never been to, and just get lost in the streets, including going to neighborhoods the average tourist may not venture into. As stimulating as places like Red Square can be, I want to see the places that Ivan Average spends his days.

In two days I'll be on a train to Saint Petersburg. There's still so much to see here.

searching for Baba Yaga

здравствуйте comrades, from Moscow!

My mental image of Russia has been indelibly shaped by Boris Zvorykin. He's the illustrator of an edition of The Firebird and Other Russian Fairy Tales that my parents bought when I was a kid. I think they actually bought it for my sister, but I've, uh, acquired it. And now here I am in Mother Russia. I'm hoping to come across some clever, talking animals and toys who can get me out of a jam, beautifully patterned fabrics, colorful architecture, and Baba Yaga. I suppose I'll realistically only find two of the above, but I'll still be keeping an eye peeled for a little house on chicken legs.

high tech low tech

One more day in DC. I spent the morning being wishy-washy about what I wanted to do. A couple of people had recommended the Udvar Hazy Air and Space Museum, a sister museum to Air and Space on the Mall, but out past Dulles Airport in Virginia, so it's a bit of a commitment to get to, plus I'm not really all that interested in planes and flight. I wasted time drinking coffee and changing my mind every few minutes. I finally committed. There was only one other thing I wanted to do before the day was out, so I may as well spend a few hours in transit. Plus, it meant not having to walk anywhere.

Udvar Hazy doesn't do a good job of letting people know how to get out there. I knew because I asked someone at the Mall museum, but that had been the day after I arrived, and I did some online snooping to find more info, and found some Virginia transportation timetables posted in 2007, so who knew if they were current, and further, the buses weren't running as frequently as I had expected. To cut a long story short, my pain is your gain, and here's how to get to Udvar Hazy from downtown DC:

1. Catch the 5A bus from L'Enfant Plaza to Dulles. It costs $3.10 one-way, and is a one-hour drive. I took a nap.
2. Once disembarked at the airport, wait on exactly the same platform (2E) for a short, white shuttle that has a LED destination sign of either Dulles to Dulles or Air and Space Museum. And when it does show up, double check with the driver which direction they are going. This shuttle costs 50 cents, and takes you directly to the museum in 15 minutes.
3. If you're smarter than me, you'll do more timetable research to time the transfer, and be more travel-efficient.

When I got out at Dulles there was nothing telling me where to wait for the shuttle, so I went inside to ask the info desk, who knew exactly where it stopped, and had a printed schedule to give me. Unfortunately, I was talking to them at exactly the same moment the shuttle was stopping outside. The guy told me to hustle, so I turned and hustled, but missed it by a couple of minutes, which meant waiting on a bench for 45 minutes.

When I left the museum I stopped at the info desk to tell them about the problems I had getting there, and suggested that they list some more descriptive info on their website, rather than just the link to the Virginia transit site. All four guys behind the desk were all ears. I think their museum suffers from low attendance; probably from a combo of factors - their far-removed location, because people may think they have seen it all after going Air and Space on the Mall, and because most visitors probably don't stay in DC for more than a few days, and a several hour trek out to the boonies to visit a museum doesn't fit on the agenda. I'm quite used to spending several hours in a museum, but I suppose a lot of others maybe only visit for an hour or less.

And after all that - bus transfer misses and an inkling that I didn't really want to look at more flying machines - Udvar Hazy is totally worth going to. It's in a massive hangar, all white on the inside, with smaller craft suspended from the ceiling and swooping around the larger craft on the floor. Even though I don't love airplanes, it's a really cool space to be in.


My ill-timed transportation adventure may have worked in my favor, since a free, 90-minute, docent-led tour was starting right after I arrived, and I figured it would be the best way to spend my time. Our docent was a Vietnam chopper pilot who had been a professor at GWU (or GU?), with a healthy sense of humor and gift of gab and storytelling. He led us through the exhibits, detailing the development of flight, airplanes, and science, beginning with the first balloon flight and its passenger list of a duck, a chicken and a goat, up through the space race - "In 1957, the Russians did something naughty. What was it? Sputnik! They sent up a dog, we sent up a monkey. They sent up a man, we sent up a man. They sent up a woman, we sent up another man because we didn't have any women." He was a hoot. Since he is a veteran, he also included some thoughtful comments and questions about war, right and wrong, and love and hate. The museum displays quite a few war planes from all nations, including the classic kamikaze plane, looking all the world like a bomb with a tiny cockpit, little short wings, and no wheels, since they weren't intended to land. The Enola Gay is at this museum, and draws a protest each August 6th. There's also a Concord, and a Blackbird recon plane, which increases in length by five inches when it reaches high speed. Since the fluid systems need to move enough to compensate for this expansion, it leaks more than than a British automobile when parked. It's enormous, has a skunk painted on the tail (it was developed by the Lockheed Skunk Works), and flies only with one pilot and one operator. If the pilot goes out of commission for any reason, the operator is in big trouble. The Space Shuttle Enterprise is here, but my fave is a little acrobatic plane nicknamed The Little Stinker.


Thinking it would take me two hours to get back to DC, I left after only two hours, back on the shuttle to Dulles. I took the opportunity to go get my boarding pass for the flight home the next day, and finally did something right with my time. I got off the shuttle, found the Southwest desk, got my pass, and made it back to the bus platform in less than ten minutes, and just in time to catch the 5A back to town.

The last thing to do was to go to the annual Smithsonian Craft Fair, being held in the National Building Museum. In two weeks in DC, it's the only entry fee I had to pay. According to the experts and the word on the street, the exhibitors and their wares are supposed to be the few molecules of cream floating on top of the rest of the cream that's floating on top of the bucket of milk. For sure there was some quality goodies, but I really expected more and better. I don't know what process decides who gets in - evidently competition is stiff and fierce - but if there's any lesson from the museum glut on this trip, it's that art, beauty, and worth are all subjective and in the eye of the beholder, and that I have a constitutional right to speak my mind. You have a constitutional right to tell me I'm looney tunes and full of it, so go right ahead if you want. To me, some of the craft on display wasn't of a better quality or more innovative design than other craft I've seen, by both pros and recreational players. I mean to say a lot of it was Good, but I couldn't divine what made it Better Than The Rest. Still, I bought a ceramic bowl, because I thought it was pretty.

No evening stroll that night. I just went back home. As if to underscore my previous comment about the number of fire calls in this town, there were six fire engines at the intersection of U and 14th. It was almost an exact replay of the 18th Street fire - a ladder was extended to the roof of a restaurant, this time the Seafood and Crab joint, and a fireman, maybe the same one, was scampering down. There didn't appear to be any actual fire, and by the time I got there most of them were taking off, no doubt to other fire calls, questionable or real, in this fine city.

The last bit of random amusement arrived in the unlikely form of Jim, who cycled up to me while I was waiting for the bus to the airport.

"Is this your blue bag? Hi, I'm Jim."
"Hi Jim." I was clearly looking as confused as I felt.
"Are you the person I'm buying diapers from?"
"Noooo....."

Turns out Jim was meeting someone near the HUD Building with a blue bag and a red shirt to buy some reuseable diapers for his newborn. What were the chances there were two of us? We had a laugh and he cycled off to meet his supplier.

Goodbye Washington DC! I'm writing this on the plane from Chicago to my transfer in Las Vegas. Libations are flowing, and everyone is getting plastered and noisy. People keep walking to the back galley and returning to their seats with multiple cans of beer and those mini bottles of liquor. I think they should just save their time and effort and give me all the money they are no doubt going to lose. I need to start funding my next trip to who knows where.

putputputtering around

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of George Washington? Freemasonry!

The Temple of the Scottish Rite, with its huge expanse of steps, sphinxes, and columns (DC loves columns) has firmly staked out its place on a corner just down the street from where I'm staying, and cruising by one day I noticed they had a Visitors Welcome sign outside. I was hoping to learn or see something scandalous, but it's all quite tame - at least, what they present is all quite tame. Feigning ignorance, which is partially true, I was shown a short film on freemasonry, and then guided around the building by an intern. The most titillating thing not on display are the bodies of some bigwigs interred in the walls, vertically, behind their busts. I was shown a couple of meeting rooms, draped in purple and tidied up to within an inch of their lives - probably using a large mason's layout square - and the library, which includes a copy of the The Hungry Hungry Caterpillar for when kids visit. I resisted the urge to ask about conspiracy theories, unsolved murders, and world domination, and left with a handful of souvenir coins. They have this bizarre mishmosh of emblems and symbols - masonry tools, I get that part, but also Greek and Egyptian gods and imagery, numerology, sun rays, and who knows what else. Not that I have a problem with borrowing gods, imagery, or ideas from other cultures and mixing them up, I just couldn't figure out how they all synthesized into the masonic creed. If I had been on my toes a little more on the tour, I would have asked, but I think i was the only visitor in the entire building, which was almost empty, so it felt a little weird.

By this point I had knocked off most of the items on my Must See list. There were still a number of Might Be Nice To Sees, but I wasn't feeling hugely motivated. I returned the the National Portrait Gallery to try to get a glimpse of the conservators in action, and found out there was a conservation talk later in the day, so decided to come back. I went to Ford's Theater, despite a fair warning it wasn't worth it, because I was told the Peterson House across the street, where Lincoln finally expired, was worth it. Ford's Theater gets a big fat red F in the sightseeing grade book. They tell you you can only see the house after attending the theater talk, which consists of being hustled into the renovated theater, and subjected to a 20-minute retelling of Lincoln's assassination, which you already know about because you (a) went to school, (b) know how to read, and (c) were probably exposed to the entire story at another Lincoln exhibition in town. By the time I realized what was happening, it was too late to escape. They do a really swell job of trapping their audience. I was told that the elevator ride to the permanent exhibit in the Holocaust Museum is supposed to instill a sense of being trapped and disoriented before being released into the exhibition, which really does have a whammy introduction of a wall of steel plate with the words The Holocaust cut out in stark, block letters - I'm getting off track. I didn't feel trapped or disoriented at the Holocaust Museum. I felt totally trapped at Ford's Theater.

We were finally freed from bondage, and everyone moved across the street to the Peterson House, like a big herd of brainless sheep. Imagine a theater full of people waiting in line to enter a standard-sized doorway, at the top of a small flight of stairs. It was almost time for the conservation talk, so I just bailed on the house, but popped back into the lobby of the theater to see Lincoln's very fine overcoat on display. And they couldn't even get this right - the glass on the case is reflecting so much light and shiny surfaces of the lobby you can't even see the coat. Thoroughly disgusted, I went back to the Portrait Gallery (they are only two blocks apart), and had my faith in interesting and quality things for tourists restored. Turns out the Portrait Gallery is the only museum that is exposing its conservation labs, and somewhat as an experiment, since no one has done it before. We saw a couple of conservators hunched over work tables, doing their stuff, and our guide talked about the mission of the museum's conservation efforts, as well as the conservator's code of ethics; even though they may restore a piece, structurally and cosmetically, everything they do is designed and engineered to be undone, should it become necessary to do so. If a cosmetic fix is applied, it may not be visible to the naked eye, but under advanced means of scrutiny, their work can be easily identified and distinguished from the original work, as they always use different materials. Fascinating stuff.

After that I finally got a proper look at the National Gallery's East Wing, after a swing through their sculpture garden (more questionable "sculpture", including one work that's a big square of one-inch thick steel that's being allowed to weather. Whatever). There's an Andy Goldsworthy installation that's so huge I only realized by accident that it was art, and not part of the building. I wasn't dazzled by their collection. For contemporary art, I prefer the Hirshhorn.

I didn't want to waste daylight hours sitting inside, so for an evening stroll I took the Metro to Foggy Bottom/GWU and walked to the Potomac, passing the Watergate Building, famous for, oh yeah, Watergate, but also because up close it's the ugliest building in DC. It's uglier than the Slovenian Embassy. If you find yourself by the water behind the Kennedy Center, it's sort of hard to find a place to cross the street without being reduced to a smudge on the road, so I kept going until I hit the back of the Lincoln Memorial, and then cut back up to Foggy Bottom. And then it was time to go home.

A quick word on home - home is a room in a private apartment. I don't mind staying in hotels, but they always cost way more than I want to spend, especially for two weeks. I briefly investigated couchsurfing.com, but the few profiles I read asked that surfers not stay more than a couple of days, and I didn't want to bother having to pack up, move, and resettle every few days, even if it was free lodging. craigslist wasn't turning up any decent sublets. Then I stumbled on Airbed and Breakfast. It's sort of the compromise between couchsurfing and a hotel. I think it's a good idea, and worked really well for this trip, so I wanted to give it a plug. Also, part of the purpose of this blog is to document travel tips, information, and discoveries, just in case they help someone else out in the future.