Eurotrip: Wachau Cruisin’

Notice only one of the clocks is real.

This day was potentially the highlight of the whole river cruise. It was, you see, the day with the most river cruisin’. We woke up cruising and went to sleep cruising. But in the middle there we did go to the extremely lovely Gottweig Abbey.

To get to the Abbey the ship pulled over at Krems and we hopped on some busses. The drive was only a couple of miles but very scenic, over the Danube and then up to the Abbey on the top of the hill. It’s a great spot for an Abbey, it overlooks the surrounding towns and forest valleys. The Abbey is a bit of a throwback, I am to understand, in that they own like 1300 hectares or thereabouts and lease it out to the locals while the monks also attend the parishes. I guess you can be a monk without being a priest but I haven’t looked into it.

Look at those views.

Upon arrival at the Abbey we watched a short video about the Abbey’s history while sipping on a welcome glass of sparkling wine. We then met up with our tour guide, who looked and resembled nothing so much as a young but slightly (only slightly) less buff Arnold Schwarzenegger. I can only assume all Austrians are like this and we got a standard one. He was acting as a tour guide while finishing up his degree, I think in hospitality. The Abbey was a very pretty place to walk around, and as we walked I noticed that the church had a painted-on clock along with some fake, painted-on windows (see top photo). These were meant to be temporary cost-savings measures. The Abbey itself isn’t actually even “finished,” with the latest renovation in the 18th century having envisioned much more square footage. The second clock and painted-on windows were thus only meant to be there long enough until they could install a real clock and keep building the wing, but that never happened. And now the Abbey has a protected status which means they couldn’t install a real clock if they wanted to.

St. Altmann in the dessicated flesh.

The Abbey’s other claim to fame is the largest Baroque staircase in Austria, topped by a big ole’ mural with Charles VI in the middle. That was nice, we spent some time admiring it. We also spent some time admiring the church. This was also impressive, but less pretty than Mattias church in Budapest I thought. However, what they do have is a skull. More specifically, the head of their founder St. Altmann is in a “precious Baroque shrine” down in the chapel where the monks do their prayers multiple times a day. Metal. The relics in Vienna were top notch with Jesus’ loincloth, but come on. You can see this relic from a bit of a distance, which our young Schwarzenegger was telling us. My dear sweet mother, though, is a bit hard of hearing, and couldn’t understand, and so was asking me what he was saying. So soon enough I was yelling in my mom’s ear about a dead guy in a box right there in the middle of a very peaceful church.

Following the tour we then went off to a dumpling demonstration which we had paid extra for. Besides heads in boxes, the other thing that Gottweig is famous for are their apricots. They like to do a lot with apricots; after this demonstration we also had a tasting of apricot wine which was great. But the dumpling demonstration was all about their special apricot dumpling recipe. I have it somewhere, though this appears to be it online. It’s an old-school boiled dessert and also very delicious with a whole apricot right in the middle. Since going to the demonstration I have just been waiting for apricot season to roll around so I can try making it myself again. Having been both wined and dined at the Abbey, we exited via the gift shop (they have some wonderful stuff) and it was back to the busses and ship for our afternoon of cruising.

And what an afternoon it was! It was us heading on up the Wachau Valley while Paul, our tour director, gave commentary. We enjoyed the tour up on the sun deck in the shade. The valley really is beautiful and cruising through while admiring a book is very nice. Just to run through the highlights, we saw the rabbits of St. Michael’s running along the roof, the Hill of 1000 Buckets (buckets of wine that is, referring to the Hill’s production capacity) apparently dubbed that by Charlemagne, the Ruine Hinterhaus, Willendorf (of Venus fame, so that was an enthralling brush with celebrity), and the Burgruine Aggstein. We were also on the lookout for nude sunbathers, which Paul sternly warned us were a hazard of navigation in these parts, but I’m not sure we saw any. Even without that though, it was simply a great afternoon on a boat in a river admiring the sights, the sort of thing you figure all of a Viking cruise is going to be until they occasionally kick you off to look at a castle.

A vineyard.
This is the famous Die Wachauer Nase of course.

Right around the time any sunbathers would have been packing up, we eventually head down ourselves for a strudel demonstration hosted by the ship’s pastry chef. This was very entertaining and as an added bonus of course we got to try strudel at the end. There was also tea, and once that was over the lounge cleared out and we spent the rest of the afternoon there lounging of course with our books. This is how every day should go.

This whole time of course I had also been admiring the other river traffic, like this VERY cute Danube tugboat. Here again the pilot house goes up and down which must be so fun.

Eurotrip: Charlemagne’s Vienna

Our second day in Vienna was destined to be all about art. We started appropriately with the oldest stuff before moving to the new, and to that end we gathered up the family and went off to visit the Kaiserliche Schatzkammer, which I too would have assumed was a sex act illegal within any incorporated U.S. territory, but turns out to be the Imperial Treasury!

That place was absolutely stunning. I guess that you shouldn’t be surprised that the consolidated treasures of a 1000 years of imperial domination would be impressive, but the sheer craftsmanship on display I would not have comprehended until I got there. The place isn’t too large really, but there is room after room of items of exquisite mastery. From a sheer artistry standpoint I think the most impressive items were all the textiles. They had a number of liturgical vestments that used a “needle painting” and embroidery technique to make these portraits out of thread and I just did not know that you could do that. It is amazing that in the span of human history we mastered needle painting and then like 300 years later got around to a flush toilet with an s-bend.

Rudolph II’s crown (1602), sorry I cut off the shiny gem at the top but this picture showed the repoussé better.
A coronation mantle from 1133!
I didn’t take a picture of where this was from but damn, needle and thread did that.

Like I said the fam was with us on this one, or more accurately we were with them, as this was the chosen destination of my brother. His interest, you see, was in the fact they casually have the Spear of Destiny sitting around in one of their display cases. I am sure it is the real one and has real powers. And since I am sure of that, what was even more impressive was all of the other relics they have just sitting around. Here is a short list of the, again, completely authentic items they have on display:

  • A thorn from the crown of thorns of Christ
  • A piece of Christ’s mockingpipe (that’s what Google translate said)
  • A piece of the True Cross
  • A piece of the loincloth of Christ
  • A piece of the tablecloth from the Last Supper (Beatlemania previewed, no?)
  • A piece of wood from Christ’s manger
  • A tooth and a piece of a robe of John the Evangelist

That is not an exhaustive list, be assured. Also at the Treasury were crown jewels too, those were shiny. I know the Imperial Crown is what they like to put on their marketing materials, but I liked best the crown of Rudolph II. That sucker is gold and pearls and gem all around, with scenes done in gold repoussé depicting the highlights of his own life, which is definitely a flex. And again, just remarkable craftsmanship. It wasn’t until a few decades later that humanity got around to inventing the corkscrew. Wild.

This is the bit of loincloth.
This is the bit of tablecloth.

Emerging from the dim, textile-protecting lighting, my super amazing wife and I split off from the fam to go fortify ourselves with some classic Vienna chocolate cake. From there we wandered around Vienna some, looking at various sights from Atlas Obscura, before making our way to the Albertina Museum. Needing something stronger than just chocolate cake, we also had lunch at the museum café where I spent most of the time jealous of a beautiful little orange tree they had sitting there.

Mediterranean Landscape (1952) by Pablo Picasso

Having lunched, it was into the museum! The museum was smaller than I had thought it would be, but it was nice. On the top floor they had every impressionist you could think of and a whole room of Picasso (I now understand this might have been a special exhibit). I was very impressed with the technique of some of them. Then we went over to the exhibit “Die Wiener Boheme” which is a very funny name. A Bohemian wiener, ha ha! The exhibit was mostly filled with sketches and watercolors this group of dudes did while hanging out in cafés. They are merely sketches but man those guys were so good, it is stunning, representing faces and bodies and whole scenes just in pencil, I can’t imagine how they do it. Some of them were pretty funny too, and several had (from my notes) something resembling an art deco theme.

Autumn. Nowak Feasting (1893) by Maximilian Lenz
Panel of Flowers and Panel of Trees (1897) by Adolf Boehm

Wandering off from there we saw a photography exhibit and then some neon works that were better than I thought they would be. One was titled “Email” which is funny (I wrote that down at the time, now I’m wondering what I meant). I also gathered that the Austrian German word for “enamel” is in fact “email,” so back at the Treasury many of the crown jewels and the like were noted as being made of email. At this point, me too buddy. Full of centuries of art we were sated enough to make our way back to the ship for the night.

Email (2021) by Brigitte Kowanz

Eurotrip: Maria Theresa’s Vienna

Reading this week:

  • Sir Harry Johnston and the Scramble for Africa by Roland Oliver

The second full day of our river cruise on the mighty Danube I woke up while the ship was still moving, mist-shrouded Austrian-looking buildings sliding past in the quiet morning. Very neat! Right before we entered Vienna we went through another lock. Since it wasn’t our first it was much less exciting, and we experienced it as we ate breakfast, i.e. we watched a concrete wall slowly lower (from our perspective) until we broke out into the sun.

Ship operations continued to fascinate. After breakfast we went up to the sun deck again and enjoyed experiencing the ship cruise underneath low bridges, close enough to jump up and touch. In places the ship’s bridge descended even below the handrail, so we were looking down at the captain as he piloted us through. Then we were entranced by docking, followed by the crew getting the ship’s brow in place. This involved crane operations which was very fun and again I admired how carefully the ship is designed with the brow arranged to go in any direction. Also on ship’s operations one thing I wanted to mention from our initial ship’s brief is that I learned the ships are split up by language. I had wondered how tours would work if you had a whole mix of different people, but that is a straightforward solution, and meant our ship was mostly Americans with a smattering of Brits, Irish, and Australians.

Language was moot for us on this day anyways because my super amazing wife and I skipped the tour. She had spent a week in Vienna the previous year and so was an expert and we had no need of a tour guide. We stepped out into Austria (a whole new country from where we started! Wow! Travel! Very cool!) and made our way to the Vienna highlights. We started of course with the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (do you need some water for that cough), i.e. the State Hall of the National Library!

I have just noticed that its website describes the library as “one of the most important libraries in the world,” which that’s gotta be what every library thinks of itself, right? It is very nice, and older than the United States, like much in Europe is I suppose. And it is very ornate. Gigantic frescoes on the ceiling, gold everywhere, and filled with statues and globes. I enjoyed all the globes that still had California as an island. Oh and books! It’s a library you know. So many old books. At the library I read that all the books are digitized online if you want to read them (a cursory look online did not make obvious where that was) and I wonder how often the books are opened now. Once a century or so? It is not so large a library though. Like, it is a very big room, but doesn’t take too long to poke all around it. My favorite part was probably the not-so-secret secret doorways, where the shelves opened up into other rooms with more shelves and more books. They had a special exhibit on at the time, as they usually do, and after perusing that and fantasizing about more home-appropriate libraries we head out.

We were in Vienna of course, so the day’s itinerary was one sign of imperial power to another. Next up was the proof that we are all mortal, i.e. the Kapuzinergruft! It’s the crypt where they keep not all but a lot of dead Hapsburgs. Interesting place there. You kind of go through a doorway off the street and down the stairs and there is a person who will take your entrance fee and some lockers to store your bag and then you pop in and admire all the sarcophagi. They go up and up in ornateness until you get to Maria Theresa. She commissioned her massive sarcophagus covered in decorations to both signal her temporal power along with the power of life over death and here are tourists coming down to gawk for about $15 a pop. What would she think? I would so love to know.

This finally brought us to the Schönbrunn Palace tour. This tour we arranged via the ship though I think the average Vienna visitor would really be able to manage on their own. We had returned to the ship to get on the bus to the castle. We arrived and like, honestly, not impressed. I mean it is big but it seems like it is in a whatever part of town. It’s not bad there’s just like, a town outside. We did have 30 minutes before the tour started though and so we wandered around the back into the garden and like, okay, that bit really is impressive. We didn’t have too much time but we took some pictures and I think I helped an influencer out by taking pictures for her.

The garden looked much grander if you faced the other way as this picture but I thought this statue was so very risqué.

Anyways we went back around the front to begin the tour. Our guide started with some Hapsburg history I wasn’t too into and then we began looking at rooms. Again, for a while there I thought it was pretty dingy. The waiting rooms weren’t much for a palace and I kept comparing it in my head to Spain. But after a while we got into cool, decorated rooms that were really neat. We saw the deathbed of Napoleon’s son and the parade bed of Maria Theresa. I thought the Porcelain room was really nice, and there was another room done in parquet with illustrations cut out decorating the walls, apparently from a book presented by Mongolia. We had some more free time after the tour and so poked around the garden again, but it wasn’t enough time to give it a real good look.

After this it was a return to the ship for a quiet evening reading and admiring a lunar eclipse. The rest of the fam all reported they enjoyed their tours and cafés and chocolate cake and we went to bed excited to spend a whole second day exploring Vienna.

Eurotrip: BudaPAST

Buda Castle from our cabin at night.

Alright alright, we’re finally getting out of Budapest here. Promise! But we still have a little bit of Budapest to go. We awoke on the ship still moored in good ole’ Budapest. This was our first real day doing ship stuff on a Viking river cruise aboard the Tor and we were pretty excited. Not yet used to the routine we missed my family at breakfast but don’t worry, we would miss them more when we were in separate groups for the bus tour (after this tour we would always be in the same group).

On the Viking cruise every day there is at least one activity already included with the cruise. You could in addition pay more money to do more stuff, but we only wound up doing I think two of the paid extras. The included tour this day was “Panoramic Budapest,” i.e. a bus and walking tour of Budapest. My super amazing wife and I had spent several days already in Budapest, but for most of the cruisers, including the rest of my family, this was going to be most of what they saw of the city.

So off we went with our guide Andresh for a cruise around the city. As a novelty in our particular trip we focused on the Pest side, driving past Heroe’s Square and glancing at Europe’s largest synagogue and various other things all apparently built in 1896, that year being one millennium after Hungary’s founding in 896.

That roof of Matthias Church I mentioned.

But enough of Pest. We were heading back to Buda castle once again for another look around the castle district. The highlight here was Matthias Church. Given how experienced we were with Buda my super amazing wife and I had already walked past it a lot and even admired the roof but we had mostly ignored it. This was a tour of Europe so it was inevitable we were going to see a lot of churches. The tour director on the cruise even said our ABCs would evolve – starting by admiring “Another Beautiful Church” and ending with hating “Another Bloody Church.” But Matthias – man what a church!

The place was gorgeous. You go inside and the entire church is absolutely covered in painted motifs, each apparently representing the different Magyar tribes that founded Hungary. We had never seen a church like this and it reminded us not so much of any other church as it did the Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba. The Matthias church was actually a mosque there for a while the Ottomans were in charge and we had wondered if that influenced the decoration but according to Wikipedia not so much; while a mosque the decorations were plastered over. But if you’re in town it is def worth a wander to see what has to be a uniquely visually stunning church.

And with that the tour gave us some time for some souvenir shopping and then the moment came – we were leaving Budapest and off to rendezvous with the ship. The ship had gotten underway while we were touring about so we had to drive up-river some to enable it to pick us up. This rendezvous point was our second church of the day, the Esztergom Basilica (so already here we go with all the churches) but we only admired it from afar. There was lunch onboard and the afternoon and evening were entirely river cruising, which was great. Being such a fan of ships my biggest problem with cruises is that you seem to spend so little time underway, but on this river cruise there was actually a fair amount of cruising time, allowing you to read a book on the sun deck as the European scenery slowly slid past.

Our ride arriving; the Basilica is off-camera to the right.

The day finished with a very exciting event though: our first lock! At this point my super amazing wife and I had been watching a whole lot of Kris Atomic and so were thinking about canal locks a bunch and were excited to go through one. Clearly though the English canal system and the Danube were two different beasts. This first lock was to get us past the Gabčíkovo Dam and it was actually a quite popular event on board. We arrived in the lock as after-dinner drinks were going on and a good crowd of people ascended up to the sun deck (moon deck at the time) to watch the goings-on.

Gathered on the moon deck; there was a lock going on.

A few observations. The Viking longboats are very well designed for Danube navigation. While most everyone was crowded around the bow my dad and I had noticed the ship’s bridge and all the controls so we were hanging out back around there. He was bold enough to duck his head in and after the captain returned to his post got the full run-down. The ship has four controllable thruster pods underneath (I’m having trouble fact-checking this) which makes it very maneuverable. Parallel parking is not an issue for these boats.

Peeking into the bridge.

Where was the captain returning from? The neat auxiliary control stations that must be more convenient for docking or, as we were in this case, navigating a lock. The ship also has autopilot which apparently does a lot of the work, which sounds nice. Meanwhile the boat is also designed to go under very low bridges. To accommodate bridges, the ship’s bridge goes up and down on hydraulic lifts. The deck railings can also be lowered, and to go under the very lowest bridges the ship’s bridge can go all the way down to be flush with the deck, with a hatch in the top for the captain to stick his head through until the very last moment.

But none of that was needed for the lock, which was a pretty staid experience. We went slowly up and when the water was at the right level, the upper gate lowered and away we sailed into the night. As King Matthias (Corvinus) would have said, on to Vienna!

Eurotrip: BudapART

Today would finally be the day that we joined the boat portion of this river cruise vacation. Not the river cruising itself! That would be the next day. In the meantime we had the morning to poke around Budapest more before embarking on the ship, and then after embarkation we would still have more time to explore Budapest.

I keep saying “explore Budapest” but man we spent a lot of time in Buda. For example, this morning we were heading once again up to Buda castle. The previous day we had taken a tour of the castle but now we were seeing the Hungarian National Gallery, housed in the castle itself. We were going to take the funicular up to the top, but turns out it is $15 each, which is a bit steep (funicular joke there).

I think this gallery of worthies lacks nothing for grandeur.

The gallery is really great! Lots of 19th and 20th century art. I suppose they had older stuff but it was very religious or Hungarian in a way I didn’t understand enough to get. The interior was redone in the 1980s and it looks it. On the Buda castle tour the previous day our guide was complaining that the interior now lacked the grandeur it once did, but I thought it was great. If you did find the interior a bit stuffy though a surprise for us is that you could go all the way up to the dome on top of the building and step outside for some stunning panoramic views of the whole city. Worth the price of admission alone.

View from the dome of the gallery.

But back to the art. Since its the Hungarian National Gallery, clearly there is a big emphasis on Hungarian artists. They were well tapped into the art movements of the time and so is just as gorgeous as everything else. Of the two paintings below, the first is Bathing House (1872) by Pál Szinyei Merse and the second being A Visit in the Afternoon (1879) by Mihály Munkácsy. I liked the bathing house scene for being slightly cheeky, the trio of girls obviously being sent to gather up the boy swimming and trying to maintain some propriety while doing so. The second I liked for being a colorful and breezy look at friendly domesticity.

A lot of the even more modern stuff really struck a chord with me. Occasionally I see some art and I want to take a stab at recreating it myself, these pieces now that I’m thinking about it typically being sculptures. Two from the museum are below. The first is Sphere (1965) by François Morellet and the second is Energetic Sculpture (1977) by Adolf Luther. I like Sphere as it reminds me of nothing so much as a depiction of crystal lattices that is on display in the Smithsonian. Plus recreating it seems like a good excuse to get a spot welder (having just did a quick search man you can get some dangerous stuff for real cheap). The second sculpture with its mirrors and geometries just seems like it could create so many possibilities. So far attempting that has been a good excuse to get a heat gun, but that is about as far as I’ve gotten.

Another aspect of what I liked about this gallery is clearly the gallery designers had done a lot of work assembling and juxtaposing different artworks to create a new statement. Below is a photo of two paintings placed across a doorway, both by Károly Ferenczy. On the left is Painter and Model (in the Atelier) (1904) and on the right Double Portrait (Noémi Ferenczy and Béni Ferenczy) (1908).

And then I’m not so sure the below juxtaposition was intentional but I do think it is funny. It is Sitting Worker (1934) by György Goldmann (already clearly a comment on The Thinker), along with a “no sitting” sign:

Intellectual work, physical work, no rest from work, man what avenues we have for self-expression. The exhibit that really blew me away the most was a whole exhibit on Art Nouveau they had going on at the time. All that work was so intricate and gorgeous and if I was anything resembling an artist I think I would be trying so hard to master the art nouveau style. I like the bold dramatic colors and outlines and how more can be more.

Poster for a publishing house (1898) by Alphonse Mucha
Design for calendar sheets (1913) by Ferenc Helbing

But I promised a boat. With the afternoon rolling around it was finally time to embark on our Viking longship, in our case the Tor. We picked up our bags from the hotel, hiked across the Chain Bridge, and were intercepted by two very nice men from the ship who carried our bags direct to our room while we checked in. What luxury! And then we pretty promptly turned around again to head back into town, pausing only briefly to reunite with my parents and brother who were coming down the gangplank. My dad didn’t actually recognize me standing right in front of him (he was distracted) but don’t worry my mom did. They were exhausted, having come directly from the airport, and so we left them to the room to do some souvenir shopping.

I write this paragraph mostly to plug a particular gift shop the Hungarian Folklore shop. It is located here. The big tourist spot to go to in Budapest is the Great Market Hall, which is pretty neat and filled with all sorts of stuff, and great stuff at that. If you go on a tour they’ll take you there, and on our official ship tour of Budapest the next day (where we would once again visit Buda castle) we did indeed visit the Hall. But we had spotted the Hungarian Folklore store on the map and tried to visit our first day, only to find a planned power outage blocking us. So it was a priority for us to visit once we were able and we are glad we did. They had all sorts of handicrafts authentically made from around Hungary. The prices reflected the craftsmanship, and so there was a lot of neat stuff beyond my price range, but we did get some really gorgeous affordable souvenirs. So make sure you go when you are in Hungary!

Having finally managed to visit we returned to the ship where we had dinner (my dad, continually convinced he should be on a diet, only ordered the appetizer for dinner, then discovered it was European portions instead of American portions, and so ordered the main as well, but refused a dessert until he saw how small they were, and then ordered his own, but then also ate my brother’s after my brother discovered the dessert was not to his liking, so that is my dad’s diet, a full three course meal plus an extra dessert). Once evening hit we head out into town once again to admire all the buildings with the lights. We were not alone in this and I was most amused to see women all dressed up and posing in front of the Hungarian parliament building. It is perhaps the most dramatic building in Budapest’s skyline, but I struggled to imagine women doing the same for the Capitol building. But some décolletage for democracy can’t be a bad thing, right?

Interior of the Great Market Hall, which is actually a pretty fun place to visit.

Eurotrip: Hungarian Invasion

I have labelled these posts “Eurotrip” without so far reaching the continent. But this day was the day that was all going to change, because we were off to Budapest to begin a Viking river cruise through Europe! This was sponsored by my parents, who wanted to lure the kids in to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. My super amazing wife and I were of course delighted to fall into the trap of a family cruise through Europe, though we were easing into the affair. We had already spent a few days in Scotland of course and while now we were proceeding to Budapest, we planned to arrive a couple days before the family to allow us some more staid sightseeing.

The travel to Budapest was smooth. We had a bit of a RyanAir experience, having to go from literally one side of the airport to the next as the gate changed, but we made it after what for us felt like a pretty quick flight. Going from the usual Scottish weather to a still summery feeling, warm and sunny Hungary was a pleasant shock to our system. Further shocks were a taxi driver who became increasingly antagonistic towards the other drivers as we went along, but thankfully we arrived at the hotel before things boiled over too far.

In a hungry daze, we barely unpacked before stumbling out of the hotel to get something to eat, promptly picking the most proximate café for some paprikash. That was utterly delightful. With the food and a drink and the weather and suddenly there we were eating out on the sidewalk by the beautiful Danube each with the love of our life admiring a beautiful neighborhood in gorgeous late summer European weather and I understood, just a little bit, why people like the continent.

We spent the rest of the afternoon hiking around Budapest, or Buda anyway. It is a beautiful town and we admired views of the Danube and watched a jet ski tour go by. We passed a book cart which would have been more enticing had we been able to read Hungarian, and eventually we hiked up to Gül Baba’s tomb, though we didn’t get there before closing. That climb rather knackered us and so after an errand and admiring some more gardens we returned to the hotel to fairly promptly fall asleep.

The next day our big activity was a tour of Buda castle. Since it doesn’t understand how fortifications work, Google Maps had told us the walk to Buda castle was “mostly flat,” but that’s okay because after climbing up all the stairs to get there we were early and so had plenty of time to rest while admiring the gorgeous views of the city and cliffs and monuments. We rendezvoused with our guide, who didn’t want to be posted on the internet but did want everyone to leave a review on Get Your Guide, and the tour began.

It was a good tour but there was a lot of history to take in, with lots of sentences beginning with something like “let’s start in 1240…” Our guide explained it all fairly well I think but neither my super amazing wife nor I had much of a basis from which to understand Hungarian history. This meant we were surprised by things like the Huns having been there, something we really should have gleaned from the name “Hungary.” This was a good moment to start hearing the word “Hapsburg” though because they would be fairly relevant to the rest of the trip.

And so anyway we walked around the castle. They are rebuilding most of the buildings to how they were before WWII; most of the buildings were destroyed either in WWII or destroyed by the Communist government, or both (I emphasize everything I’m recording here is what I think I gleaned from the overwhelming amount of information presented on the tour). Some of the portions seemed to be a far cry from their original grandeur, as our guide liked the point out (she was very bitter about many of these buildings being destroyed), but I guess as the project continues they are getting better at it. In the middle of the castle was the lion courtyard which reminded me of nothing so much as Bancroft Hall, whatever that implies. The finale of the tour was St. Stephen’s hall, the significance of which I didn’t understand at the time and still don’t really. It is really nice though! Very intricate. I thought it was especially interesting that the painting of St. Elizabeth (done, like all the paintings in there, on “pyro granite” in multiple layers) is modelled on Empress Sissi, or the face is anyway.

Elizabeth/Sissi is in the middle there.

The next big adventure we did that day was a trip to the Museum of Hungarian Applied Folk Art, a series of words guaranteed to get us to come to your premises. They had one exhibit going on which was all about traditional Hungarian folk art being used in fashion which was very very good! The most charming part is that they labelled all the items on display with the same formula, so surrounded by all this intricate embroidery and colorful motifs deployed on towering dresses was a suitcase from Hungarian airlines with the label “Unknown Artist. Malev-suitcase, undated. Artificial leather, synthetic fiber thread.” The sorts of things that were on display in the exhibition included everything from Gottex swimwear to the results of the Hungarian dress movement to party dresses. I really liked that the traditional Hungarian motifs centered on flowers and colorful designs, which meant they could really be incorporated in so many ways.

From there the rest of the evening drifted away, us fortifying ourselves with chimney cake before admiring the lights of Budapest at night. We were far from done with Budapest at this point but having walked around it was still hard to get a bead on where the soul of the city lay. My super amazing wife’s impression was that the city was so medieval, but I had seen the same buildings and felt it was so thoroughly 20th century. The first day I had noticed that some of the “stonework” on the newer buildings was already starting to crumble, revealing that it was really brickwork and plaster. But then on this day I noticed that where Buda castle itself had been damaged, it was also brickwork and plaster. So was it that the ancient castle was ersatz, or the new buildings done in the ancient style?

Eurotrip: Royal-tea

Our final full day in Edinburgh (for this trip) dawned. When we hung out in London for a while I visited the SOAS archives and this time in Edinburgh my big dream was to visit the National Library of Scotland. It wasn’t archives I was after but instead a copy of Arthington’s Million, an annoyingly difficult book to track down. It is the only real biography of Robert Arthington (of “donating to the London Missionary Society and thereby establishing the modern day Zambia-Tanzania border” fame) and so I wanted to read it. I had to go all the way to Scotland, apparently, to do this, but that is no problem because it was fun to visit the library.

There’s a famous sibling somewhere nearby.

I set out first thing in the morning and on the way managed to stop in to the Dalry Necropolis as I was looking for a Little Free Library (I had a book I wanted to release into the world). That was a nice little wander, and excitingly a sign revealed that the cemetery was the final resting place of Alexander Graham Bell’s brother, Melville, who does not himself have a Wikipedia page (yet). Reaching the library I collected my library card and got the rundown on reading room procedures. I had previously requested Arthington’s Million so there it was waiting for me, and I was delighted to be able to go through it. You’re not supposed to just take pictures of every page of a book there, so I won’t say I did that, but it was a delightful time in the reading room and after I had done what I came there to do I exited via the gift shop (I picked up some tea and shortbread for gifts).

From there I rendezvoused with my super amazing wife at the Waterstones with the nice views of Edinburgh castle for our real adventure for the day: visiting the Royal Yacht Britannia. To get there we took the tram and got dropped off in the mall wherein lies the entrance to the yacht. It is weird to get to a ship via a mall but there you go. The first thing you wander through is a little introductory museum where the biggest thing we learned is that the yacht (and the Queen) had both visited Sierra Leone which we thought was neat.

What am I doing with my right hand?

Aboard the yacht, our first actual priority was lunch. There is a tearoom onboard with a fairly extensive menu. The dining room is an enclosed structure just sorta plopped on the deck which provides some nice views of the harbor. The food was very good! We just got lunch instead of something more afternoon tea-like. Though we also got a scone because come on, you have to. It’s what the Queen would have wanted.

Tea out of the way we finally toured the ship in earnest. The first stop was the bridge which I thought was neat. The yacht is built just like a Navy ship, because it was in fact a Royal Navy ship (perhaps the Royalest Navy ship), and so the bridge looks Navy ship-standard. It’s got sound-powered telephones and the like and from my notes was meant to serve as a hospital ship in a pinch.

After perusing the bridge we continued down the decks. You don’t go up or down on the ship, but instead depart across to a tower which has a stairwell. Probably safer than having people navigate ships ladders. Walking around the main deck, a few interesting notes. The ship carried something like 10 boats which at the time I thought was mad but now maybe I’m thinking that would be an average number of boats for that size ship. The windows that looked into (and out of) the royal rooms are higher than the rest of the windows (from the outside) to keep people from peeking in. The sailors apparently did not wear their covers in the Royal country to avoid the royals having to return salutes all the time, which I suppose is nice.

The Queen’s (I think) cabin.
Are we in Dalrymple or the North Atlantic?

Inside the ship the furnishings are pretty remarkable. I guess if they were like at your grandma’s house they wouldn’t look too wild, but inside of a ship it was kinda jarring really. The royal reception area, or whatever it was officially called, looked like nothing more than a country living room but, you know, it was on a giant yacht. The formal dining room is also gigantic and had stuff all around that had been presented to the royal couple, along with a whale rib that Philip had picked up.

Past the royal area you got to the officer and crew quarters. An important detail that my super amazing wife noticed before I did is that the captain’s slippers were appropriately port- and starboard-colored which was a nice touch. With the ship having such a history there were lots of artifacts and donated things about like portraits of Nelson or Nelson’s buttons or other Nelson what-have-you. I also took note of the books around, and there were a lot of books on Africa I would actually rather liked to have had, so I was jealous.

There’s a bar at the end there.

This brings us to booze. Man. It is a British ship and so they never had a Josephus Daniels. The ship had four bars. Since it was such a special ship, the Junior Ratings had their own bar which meant it had more than usual. That doesn’t count the built-in for the royals’ use. Though, speaking of special, I did enjoy that the rum tub they had onboard was labelled “The Queen God Bless Her,” which isn’t unusual, except they actually had the Queen nearby who would understand their appreciation. At any rate reviewing my photos I do not know which bar I missed taking a picture of.

How do they keep it so clean.

Which finally brings us to the best bit of the ship: the engine room! I had been expecting the whole tour to find that the ship was powered by diesels, but how silly I was because I was very pleasantly surprised to find that it had steam turbines. Oh, to have a steam turbine-powered yacht. And most stunningly of all the engine room was spotless. They have a sign saying some American officer thought it was a fake show engine room and they had a real one elsewhere, and yeah a fake engine room does seem more believable. It is all shiny and polished and man must have been so much work.

But having inspected the engines the tour of the ship was over and it was once again a matter of exiting via the gift ship and us making our way back into Edinburgh proper. We did this via several more book stores where, to our utter horror, we bought more books. We also tried to find things like elderberry cordial without success, and finally arriving back to our place on very weary feet we heated up some leftover fish n’ chips to properly close out our time in Edinburgh.

The (aft) end.

Eurotrip: Dundee II

Our story continues from where we left off last week, almost about to begin a tour of Verdant Works…

John’s intro having finally wound down, we went on inside the jute mill. The museum tells the whole story of jute, beginning with how it was grown in India. It was subsequently processed in Dundee of all placed due to the whaling industry. As whale oil was needed to soften the jute, it made sense to process jute where there was a lot of whale oil, which was apparently Dundee. Anyways once it is softened the jute is processed much like flax and also much like wool, so my super amazing wife and I were having a hoot looking at all the mill equipment. The stuff they have in there comes from a training college, and it seems they still use it occasionally.

In the mill they then talked about the industry some, and addressed the relationship with India. They touched on colonialism and how eventually the Dundee industry just couldn’t compete with the Indian industry that eventually grew with the help of Scottish engineering and managers that were sent over there. The museum clearly wanted to do a good job addressing this aspect of the industry. And then another section talked about jute’s attempts to modernize into fashion though without much success. Jute still apparently backs linoleum and carpet though, so there is a future for jute yet.

From there you go upstairs and learn about the mill workers, a section I think is aimed more at like school groups. It talks about class differences and the like, but in a friendly way. The funniest part (skip to the next paragraph to avoid ruining the surprise) was a room labelled “cludgie” with the door partway open. If you try to open it you see a mannequin with his pants down on a toilet, and he yells at you. Some humor is universal. We also wandered up to admire a refurbished mill roof and a big ole’ steam engine. I will have to look more into early steam engine design to really understand what was revolutionary about each development.

This trip taught me that I have so much to learn about condensers.

Having learned all about jute, we then, finally, proceeded (with a short detour for a slice of Dundee cake, which was perfectly alright, it’s basically fruitcake) to the Discovery. The museum had some really interesting stuff about arctic exploration and most importantly had my favorite thing in a museum, old food. They had, framed, 114-year-old biscuits, and upon reviewing the photos I was charmed to discover that the caption in the frame was marveling that they were only 40-years-old. They also had unopened coffee packed for the original Discovery expedition, and cake fragments in a very nice box “alleged to have been sent to Captain Lawrence Oates on board the Terra Nova expedition 1910-1912.” Amazing!

Old biscuits.
Old cake in a box.

After the museum you head out and onto the ship. It really is an amazing ship, and very much a product of Dundee. It was the town’s experience in building whaling ships (a throughline from jute to Antarctic exploration) that gave them the ability to build the Discovery, and as it was in fact the “last traditional wooden three-masted ship to be built” in the UK (according to Wikipedia), it represents the zenith of the town’s skill. And for being the last wooden ship, on later voyages she actually carried a seaplane, and it just boggles me every time the overlap in different technologies.

This way to the Wardroom indeed.

Being a bit up there in years the ship does show its age and was getting a good chunk of work done. As we were exploring we were hearing hammering, which turned out to be people caulking the hull. At that moment I was remembering the caulking we saw in Kigoma and I was left thinking about the reach of time and tradition. The engines are no longer in the ship though they have a model of the fire box, and the wardroom and officer cabins are still there and look very very cool. You could so easily imagine yourself going on an expedition, and so fun to know that so many famous butts sat in those very chairs.

Having gotten quite a lot in during one day, we eventually picked ourselves up and got back on the train to Edinburgh. While waiting in the train station Costas sipping a hot chocolate and a chai latte though we spotted the Royal Scotsman (a train) which, after having watched so much Scottish travel YouTube felt like a real celebrity sighting. We took my final trip (for now) over the Forth Bridge and landed back in Edinburgh, picking up rather too much fish n’ chips for dinner. Our trip in Edinburgh was not over but it was remarkable to us how little time left we had in Scotland.

Famous butts.

Eurotrip: Dundee I

During our time in Scotland, the next big outside-of-Edinburgh adventure we had planned was (as you guessed from the title) Dundee! Getting to Dundee is much like getting to Perth, except you stay on the train slightly longer, so once again I got to experience the engineering magic of going over the Forth Bridge! Amazing.

We had so thoroughly enjoyed going to the V&A Museum in London that we figured it would also be a lot of fun to go to the V&A branch office in Dundee, and so that was our first destination. We arrived in town about 20 minutes before the museum opened so we admired the Dundee waterfront. They have a big ole’ sculpture of a whale, and of course the River Tay was gorgeous. You could imagine rather large fish coming out of this part. Given my enthusiasm for the Forth Bridge it was interesting looking across to (and having just crossed) the location of the Tay Bridge Disaster.

Eventually the V&A Dundee opened and so we head back toward the entrance. The building is very pretty, with no straight lines outside and it is covered in these pre-form concrete blocks (we learned they were pre-form on the inside, I’m not a concrete expert). The RRS Discovery (I’ll get to that) is right next to it, so you can hardly miss the ship connection. The V&A also has these shallow water pools beside it and the wind was whipping them up while we were there, and as you looked out from inside you could almost get the sense you were at sea. Meanwhile, the Discovery was in a dry dock, so an interesting contrast in building-like-a-ship and ship-like-a-building.

Inside the V&A we went up the stairs into the first gallery on Palestinian embroidery. That stuff was gorgeous. Here is the link to the exhibition Thread Memory: Embroidery from Palestine and another link to a longer related article. What the exhibition was displaying is tatreez, a type of embroidery and “a rural women’s craft, embedded in village life,” with different styles from each village. Dundee, turns out, is “twinned” with the Palestinian city of Nablus, hence the connection, and as such the exhibition did not shy away from current events. The signs noted that “for the past 45 years, the Palestinian flag has been displayed at the City Chambers in Dundee, even during periods when the flag was outlawed within Palestine.” One of the art pieces were plastic bags, embroidered with the things refugees carried in them as they fled.

Kiass by Aya Haidar, 2018-2025

Even without the weight of history, the garments on display were gorgeous. They were all so intricate, and the signs pointed out some of the symbology. The colors and geometric designs really spoke to the care that went into these garments that meant so much. And speaking of not-so-current events, one interesting detail on a particular taqsireh jacket from Bethlehem was that it was lined with tartan, which had been imported during the British mandate.

Departing the exhibit on tatreez, we bopped across to another gallery on Scottish designers, which had a hodgepodge of a lot of different Scottish stuff. They had fashion and they had paisley and they had ships and ships and ships. A great museum, what with all the ships. One sign said that in the early 20th century, fully 1 in 5 of the world’s ships were built in Scotland.

Model of the Saiko Maru, about 1888.

Our tour of Scottish design history done, we went outside to Heather Street Food to pick up some lunch. Between my super amazing wife and I, we got one “New York” and one “Philly” bagel, creations that were pretty good even if I am sure they would be disowned by their namesake cities. We also got two donuts. As we were eating a seagull was stalking us, which my super amazing wife referred to as a “Scottish monkey,” referencing the more traditional types of monkeys of Tarangire which stalked unawares tourists. We managed to finish our lunch and then made our way to Verdant Works.

Verdant Works is a really nice museum. It has a small courtyard, so you wouldn’t think it was so big, but behind that small courtyard is a large facility. Having bought tickets, our tour began with an intro by a nice gentleman by the name of John. John was a fairly charming, slightly older gentleman with a very thorough Dundee accent. Two Scottish ladies (who I think hailed from Aberdeen based on a later joke) joined us, and this caused John to go down a variety of tangents. It was very nice.

Interesting notes from John’s intro included that the mill owners hired women because they thought the women were less likely to unionize (and also got paid less), and Dundee was represented by Churchill at some point. I didn’t understand all the political history he was trying to explain but I was enthralled nonetheless. Though speaking of women, Dundee was apparently a very women-forward town, with so many being the breadwinners of their families from working in the jute plants (I haven’t mentioned it yet, but Verdant Works is a museum made out of a jute processing plant and telling the history of Dundee and jute).

Our story continues next week, woven together like jute…

Eurotrip: Mountain Whisky

Reading this week:

  • The Zambezi by Malyn Newitt

One of the most charming aspects of the place we were staying in Edinburgh is that one of the other apartments had a cat that just liked chilling right outside the door. Like, all the different doors to the various apartments led into a central stairwell. This door had a catflap, and sometimes there was a cat just chillin’ right on the doormat. The cat didn’t seem to go anywhere besides the doormat, and there weren’t any windows to the outside or anything, so this cat obviously just liked watching the passers-by in the stairwell. Oh, to be a cat.

A cat that knows that they’re about.

The big plan for this day was to climb up Arthur’s Seat. I was fairly excited for this. I had been to Edinburgh several times and Arthur’s Seat is right there and by all accounts is not too hard of a climb so it feels like I should have climbed it already. It was exciting to cross it off the bucket list. First we had to get there which involved a bus ride, a brief stop at Dunbar’s Close just because we were in fact close, and a few moments admiring the Burns Monument. We also walked by “Dynamic Earth” which featured a model of the Earth outside and a sign which read “Do not climb on the globe, the Earth is fragile,” which I thought was funny.

Eventually we got to the bottom of the hill. We had tried to take the easy trail, but it appeared closed, though having been there I do not quite understand any of the maps you find. So we instead diverted and more or less followed the crowds up the hill. I had thought it would be somewhat easier than Leicester Peak to climb but it was steeper and rockier than I expected, though not too bad in the end. The weather was about as good as could be hoped for, with sun and clear skies, though at the top of the hill the wind could threaten to knock you off your feet.

The summit, no chairs or lounges or any sort of seat in sight.

At the top the views were gorgeous. The way up had been gorgeous too, with heather in patches and the city gradually opening up. It gave a really different perspective on Edinburgh. Before climbing up Arthur’s Seat I hadn’t quite understood how sprawling and new the city really is. And from the top it is somewhat fantastical to be looking down upon Edinburgh castle and from afar. You could see clear to the Forth Bridge and for miles and miles around.

The way down was of course easier and by the time we got there we were quite peckish. The most convenient spot for a bite to eat was the café at Holyrood House which I can say I highly recommend. We had really only meant to pop into the gift shop, but then my super amazing wife got a mug that came with a free fill of tea at the café, and well, we were hungry anyway, but it was a visually cozy spot to eat and the food was pretty great and reasonably priced. Best venison sausage roll I’ve ever had.

Having demonstrated our dominion over earth and sky the next bits were water and fire and for that we went to Holyrood Distillery (via of course Ginger Twist Studio for some more yarn and knitting books). For all our time tramping around Scotland we hadn’t yet actually made it on a distillery tour and we were fixin’ to fix that. It was a really nice tour at Holyrood! The place is obviously set up for tours in mind which made it all pretty pleasant. Our tour guide was Diego, from Honduras, and he must have an interesting story. Most of our tour group was also from Latin America, though there was a French couple and a woman from Indiana. But that is all by the by, and we were there to learn about whisky. I just made an elements joke, but Diego told us that distilled alcohol was in fact called at one point “Quintessence,” the fifth essence.

The Holyrood Distillery tries to set itself apart from other distilleries by trying to glean different flavors from their whiskies by using different types of barley and yeast to get specific flavors. I did enjoy all the different flavors of the whiskies and gin they gave us to try. They had started us and the tour off with an elderflower and gin cocktail which my super amazing wife and I both very much enjoyed. Another big thing I learned is that Scotland apparently produces 1/3 of the world’s gin, and as just mentioned they do gin at Holyrood. I had thought that whisky distilleries would start making gin at the beginning to get some profit while they were waiting for first batches of whisky to age, but no, to produce gin they buy the alcohol from a supplier and then the stuff they do is the flavorings. Holyrood’s thing was making gin with only juniper (and beeswax and salt) to highlight the flavor of the juniper.

Getting back to whisky we did the usual bits about mash and what have you, and the final part of the tour was of course about barrels. Barrels used to age sherry are valuable for subsequently aging whisky, so much so that, according to Diego, all the money is in the barrels so people will age sherry in barrels, only to throw out the sherry and only sell the barrel. Interesting stuff. I wound up getting a small bottle of whisky at the gift shop to later to give to my parents for their anniversary.

So between the mountain and the whisky it was a really great day. Also too, the other thing in the middle of everything was that my super amazing wife and I were buying an unjustifiable number of books. We went to so many used and new bookstores that day. Between walking out of the apartment in the morning and returning to our orange cat friend in the evening, we were nine books heavier. We visited Topping & Co, McNaughtans, and Till’s through the course of the day and any willpower to not buy a book simply fell apart. These are the struggles we live with every day. Drained from our book-bosomed guilt, we cooked up some quite good fish pie for dinner in preparations for more nautical-themed adventures on the ‘morrow.